Jordan Klepper: How to Talk to People You Disagree With (Without Losing It) | PT. 1

What do you do when someone says something you completely disagree with or something that sounds totally detached from reality? Jordan Klepper, correspondent and host at The Daily Show, is known for walking into political rallies and calmly interviewing the most passionate people in the crowd. In this episode, he sits down with Ryan to explain why arguing almost never works, how silence can be more powerful than a comeback, and what most of us misunderstand about why people believe what they believe. Jordan Klepper is a comedian, writer, and correspondent on The Daily Show. You can follow him on Instagram @JordanKlepper and check out his upcoming live show dates on his website https://www.officialjordanklepper.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Think about Socrates going around in ancient Athens. He was pretty smart, although he sort of played the humble fool. He was pretty smart and most of the time he knew that people were wrong and he knew that what they were saying was laughable. So his curiosity, his questioning, his restraint, right? He's restraining himself from dunking on these other people. He's letting them work through the solution themselves or asking them to really explain what they think so he can learn from it. That's not an easy thing to do.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  I think culturally, we pay some lip service to the idea of like talking to people we disagree with, getting viewpoints from people maybe you don't know or maybe you even don't like. But like, we're sort of glossing over how like difficult that is. Like, I don't just mean like it's difficult to get out of your information budget, but like if Stoicism is the idea of controlling your emotions, not immediately reacting, it's actually super important because when you're hearing nonsense from another person, when you're hearing something offensive from another person, when you're hearing something from someone that you know a lot about and you know that they're wrong, all this requires a lot of restraint. So that's why I was really excited to talk to today's guest

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  because he's one of the best people in the world at this. If you've watched The Daily Show anytime in basically the last decade or so, you've probably seen Jordan Klepper. You've either seen him as a correspondent or you've seen him more recently as a host where he is absolutely crushing it. You've definitely seen his viral interviews at political rallies and protests. Here's a little jump cut of him being very good at what he does.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Barack Obama had a big part of 9/11.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Which part?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Not being around, always on vacation, never in the office.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Why do you think Barack Obama wasn't in the Oval Office on 9/11?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  That I don't know. I'd like to get to the bottom of that. We don't even know if he's a citizen.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you don't look at the birth certificate, there's almost no evidence there.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  So there's nothing Barack Obama could do to prove that he was born here?

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Uh, if there was maybe witnesses that were attendants at his birth.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Like his mother? Do you listen to his mother?

• 2:35Speaker 03

  No, no. She has motivation to lie.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  So you don't trust Donald Trump's birth certificate either?

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, because he's been here forever.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Well, how do you know? What's your proof?

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Um, well, his parents and...

• 2:47Speaker 02

  But no, but they're biased. I'm talking about like people who could be in the room.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Why would they be biased?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Well, like, I'm just using your logic against you.

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  He was in Austin for a live show a couple of months ago. And so I asked him if he wanted to swing by the bookstore, which he did. And I wanted to talk to him about that. Like, how does he have that ability to stay calm, to stay curious, to stay funny? I think a lot of it comes from the improv training, which maybe there's something that he can teach us in this polarized world. Because he's able to not just talk to people he disagrees with, but oftentimes get them to make the strongest argument against their own point by not jumping in, by giving them just enough rope to hang themselves. And I'm not saying that's what we should do. We should go around, you know, making people look foolish. I'm just saying there's something there.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  And it's something I wanted to ask him about, and I think you're really gonna like this conversation. Because we talk about keeping her cool, we talk about conspiracy theories, talking about the way that conspiracy theories have become kind of a hobby for some people. Bad media diets, good media diets, and much more. I'm really excited to bring you this. Jordan is a writer, a comedian, a correspondent for The Daily Show. You can follow him on Instagram, @jordanklepper. You can check out his upcoming live show dates. He is amazing, very, very funny, at officialjordanklepper.com.

• 4:18Ryan Holiday?

  You work a full week and then you're like, the weekend is actually the more stressful time for you?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think during, like, doing these stand-up shows, for sure. I mean, my, my schedule is strange in that, like, host week is a chaotic week and there's no space and time. Non-host weeks, I'm in the office, working, kind of on-call and also prepping for other stuff. And so that was what this week was. And then, yes, knowing that, like, oh, I'm gonna jump on the road and do a couple of shows, and then also we have a field shoot that's happening on Sunday, and that's based around the news, which is always changing. So we're going to Portland and we're watching the news out of Portland and whether or not federal troops are coming in or out. We're watching Chicago to see if I'm going to Chicago. So suddenly, the week was fine. The weekend is just a bunch of things up in the air that I just kind of get on a plane,

• 5:07Speaker 02

  pack some books, and I'm like, alright, I'm gonna go. I don't exactly know if I have all the flights to get home, but I know I'm going out and I'm doing these things here.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  And that's not even thinking about the fact that, and maybe it's helpful, that you're not, you have to do the performance each time.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  Right? That's just like, the logistical stress, stress of being at the place that yours, the name on the marquee says you're gonna be there.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Well, I have to remind myself, and luckily, I mean, the egotist in me, you walk into a space that has your name on a theater, it's an easy reminder.

• 5:38Ryan Holiday?

  Sure, sure.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  But, but it is, it is a reminder, you're like, oh, the, the thing I've been stressing about or anxious about is actually the thing I like to do and the thing I'm excited about doing, as long as I've planned some space internally, to realize that, that I'm great. And frankly, that's what happens with these shows. You show up and you have to show up early to do a tech, and my show has some technical elements to it all, and after you finish that tech, you got an hour and a half to just realize what you're there for.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, to do the thing.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  To do the thing, and then be ready for the thing.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and that is you can end up spending, I try to remind myself, it's like that I'm spending all this time worried about whether I'm gonna make the thing or whatever, but I'm not, I could just be putting that energy into like the thing, like, well, like, I'm not, I'm spending the time thinking about checking FlightAware or whatever, not, I could just be working on what I'm gonna do when I'm there, if I'm lucky enough to get there.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  And I mean, I think you get good enough at, you know, I've been doing versions of this for decade plus, and you get, you also realize that some of your, your most relaxing times take place on that flight, some of your, your best reading takes place on that flight, some of the only time you have to yourself, and not have the responsibilities of being a parrot happens in the hotel for the 40 minutes right there. And so I have to keep teaching myself, but I have gotten better at realizing, like, you're getting little buckets of time.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  That are of stress all around them and all the edges, but enjoy those spaces and remember to, to take advantage of it.

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And I think, I think I'm better at that now. So even if I'm thrown into a chaotic three days, I have, I understand that in those spaces, how not to go completely crazy.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, all I was thinking about, because I flew, I flew out early yesterday morning and then flew out late last night, all I was thinking was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take two naps in the same day.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  That is, that's a dream.

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And I think at first, my wife was like sympathetic, and then I think she realized, she's like, no, no, you're taking two naps.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, that's the tough part, is you have to be, I'm all for communication within a relationship, but.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Sometimes you complain about life on the road, and then you articulate life on the road to somebody who's not on the road.

• 7:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, you got two naps today?

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Oh, and all, and you just, you ate tacos all day? Oh, and a crowd of hundreds of people clap for the things that you said? Cool. Oh, that was, that must be so tough. Oh, were you sleepy?

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you're calling, you're like, I don't know if I should get room service, or if I should walk down the road to get something to eat. And then she's like, I've eaten nothing but beef jerky today.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  I also like, I can't not talk about like any media that I've ingested over the few days I'm gone. So when I go home to see my wife, if I watch like any movies at the hotel, any movies on the, the flight.

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  That's cheating.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Well, then I break down, I give her, I, I hold on to it. I'm like, should I tell her my opinions on these four films that I saw? I'm like, no, that's just gonna make her upset. And then 20 seconds later, I'm like, I need to tell you about this romantic comedy that I watched for the third time. You wanna hear my opinion on it? She's like, no. But I do it, and I lose a little bit of credibility because of it.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, right. You, you were, you have it so hard. You watched three movies over the weekend.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  It's like, I watched Goodfellas again, and I got, you know, I saw it in a whole new light. Do you wanna talk about that? And no, she doesn't.

• 9:00Ryan Holiday?

  So I was thinking about the kind of comedy you do when you're at these rallies and stuff. How do you not lose it? I guess this is basic improv, but it seems like it would require a lot of restraint to let someone hang themselves the way that you often do.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think the job is not to lose it.

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Step one.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Step two is, like, the, the gold is on the other end of that awkwardness.

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  I think one of the first things I learned at The Daily Show, I did one of these sit-down interviews, and especially when you're doing a sit-down interview, a more traditional one with somebody who you might not agree with, it gets awkward.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  And as somebody who comes from an improv background, and also a Midwestern niceness, like, the silence in conversations is death and rings and hurts.

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And so I usually wanna talk through those, give people space to, to clamp onto something and, and yes and their ideas. And I was told by, I think, Jason Jones, like, my first week at The Daily Show, was like, shut up and let them talk.

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Sit in that space. And so that was like, it had to unlock something for me, but it was like, oh, remember, your job out there is to create enough space, enough comfort, for people to reveal themselves. Sometimes by over-talking, some by, times by overthinking, but let that, let that be.

• 10:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  So that's my mindset going in. And then beyond that, I do think I have legitimate curiosity about these things. And

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I also understand the mechanism. Sometimes there's hateful, terrible things that are said that make me upset. More often than not, that doesn't make the final edit. I'm not perfect out there. I've gotten into heated arguments over things that don't make good TV or stuff we don't want to put on TV because there's hateful rhetoric that we're not going to amplify. But more often than not, what I see is people working through a narrative they haven't articulated yet because they've just read it or they've heard the president say it.

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  And they're articulating that in real time. And I also see them performing for the cameras because they feel a need to be more certain than they normally are. And I think I have empathy for that moment. And so as much as I'd like to be like, how can you believe that? I think I know how you can believe it. So I'm not surprised by how they could believe it. I'm just surprised by what they're articulating.

• 11:24Ryan Holiday?

  Or they don't really believe it. They're saying it out loud for the first, like-

• 11:28Speaker 02

  They're performing it.

• 11:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or they have this kind of gut instinct. And then it seems like sometimes your job is to get them to put it into words and then it falls apart. Which is, by the way, like why you're supposed to be reflective in your life. You're supposed to journal and talk to people about things because you realize that some of the things you think are nonsense.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:53Ryan Holiday?

  But not everyone's doing that.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  That is, I think that's spot on. This is, for the most part, it's people who have only heard this talking point echoed from their friends.

• 12:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  They're not talking to other people who are challenging them.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  And they hear a president who's often not challenged by the media in a way that they have to articulate a point of view.

• 12:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  And so they just assume this thing that they're saying right now is just settled law. They haven't had to agree upon how they got there. They just agree upon it because it's been told to them over and over again. Repetition is their certainty.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's the thing that The Daily Show pioneered, that like sort of jump cut of the talking point across 50 different shows, local, national, all different. And you're just like, oh, that, somebody came up with that phrase and distributed it. And then- People got it and it seemed, it felt true, but it falls apart if you subjected to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. More often than not, I feel like I'm running a propaganda focus group where it's, as if I go out there, like, I know what these talking points are. Let's, let's, let's see how they bubble up, how deep they've gotten. And sometimes they don't get as deep as you think they, they will. Sometimes there's conspiracies that the news talks about that doesn't grab hold anywhere else. But you also realize a lot of this stuff does grab hold sometimes because it is, it answers some question people have.

• 13:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  But more often than not, it's just the, the language, the words now that they can use to be a part of the conversation.

• 13:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  I think that's where some of it is where I, I get upset. I don't want to paint a picture like I don't, but where, where I have that empathy is, is that I don't think you believe all of these things. This is just the admission of entry is that you talk about these things now.

• 13:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  This isn't who you are. You just like being here.

• 13:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  You like feeling like you're a part of something. You like cheering for this guy and all of your neighbors are doing that too. And now we're going to talk about, okay, now let's talk about inflation. You don't want to talk about inflation. You want to get a corn dog. You want to feel good. You want to watch the parade. And now some asshole from New York wants to talk to you about inflation. And so you're grabbing from the things you've heard about inflation. And you have to pretend because there's a camera there that there's a certainty you have about this and this is who you are. But who you are is really somebody who wants to be a part of a group, wants to cheer on that famous person who's right there. And wants to, wants to not feel left out of the conversation.

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, you, you realize that the stuff trickled down from somewhere. And like, one of the things, this metaphor I love from Epictetus, he was talking about how a really good money changer in the ancient world could take a coin and by banging it on the table, tell if it was counterfeit or not. They knew the sound of the, the metal that had been diluted versus the one that hadn't. And you realize like, some people are not good at that. And, and they, or, or they only get, if you've only experienced counterfeit information, then it seems real because that's the standard by which you get paid. Like one guy saying something is to you sufficient?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:55Ryan Holiday?

  And if you haven't sort of. Learned sort of the basic academic or intellectual rigor that we tend to apply to things. If you're used to like a Bill O'Reilly history book, you know, you're not, that's not subjected to the same standards that a normal history book is.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:14Ryan Holiday?

  And so it can ring true, but it's just woefully insufficient, or it's very diluted.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  I also feel like we are, I mean, I know, I'm 46. It's, I feel like I grew up believing that anything I saw published, written down or on television was most likely true. That's where official words got distributed. And so, you know, I've, I think I understand the digital age somewhat, but I still feel like, I look at people who are specifically older than me, who believe that even more than I do. And something that they read online in any kind of format to them is truth. That's sort of how it has always been, or at least how they've always understood it. And I think about places like Facebook where, again, the admission, the admission for entry

• 16:02Speaker 02

  for Facebook is that it's not that you sign up, it's that you publish. And so these are not, they're not people who are communicating on Facebook, they're publishers. Your neighbor's a publisher, that person's a publisher, and you approach that information with the same veracity as you would.

• 16:15Ryan Holiday?

  Your neighbor's an idiot.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yes, your neighbor's, the dumbest person you know, the only way they can talk to you is by publishing the information to you, at you.

• 16:23Ryan Holiday?

  It's weird because I remember we talked about this when I was on your show. I remember the things my parents warned me about on the internet. And the irony of that basically happening to them and their, their generation. I remember I was talking to my dad one time and he was telling me this thing that just from him telling it to me, I could tell was from the Onion, you know? And, and you go, oh, okay, there, there really is kind of just a media literacy issue here, or just a set of assumptions that don't work in the media environment that we currently live in.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  They were, they were afraid we would look at boobs.

• 17:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And they ended up listening to boobs.

• 17:07Ryan Holiday?

  That's.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  And now here we are.

• 17:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, they, they were afraid of scams, they were afraid of like radicalization, they were afraid of strangers, they were afraid of all these things, and that's kind of exactly what happened.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  And then, then they got time on their own and nobody to connect to. And so they jumped into this thing too, woefully unprepared.

• 17:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, that's, yeah, the irony is like, nobody has more time for social media than the people who are most vulnerable to it.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  I ran into some, some lovely older ladies in Wisconsin and was, was there to do a rally. And again, had an expectation at this rally that it was, um, actually it was, it was just after Roe v. Wade was being overturned. I thought people were going to be really adamant to talk about that. And I show up in the Midwest, I'm from the Midwest, show up in Wisconsin and we see these sweet older women. I'm like, oh, these are some sweet old ladies. I wonder what they're going to want to talk about. Probably Roe v. Wade, women's rights to some degree. And they immediately jump into conspiracies, conspiracies about who's alive, who's dead, JFK Junior, some wild, far-fetched, like, they're like hologram death stuff. And those are the things you don't prep for back in New York. You get out there, you're like, oh, wow, I had no idea. And then talking to them about it, you're like, oh, this is your hobby.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It's not knitting.

• 18:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not doing crochet. You guys are retired. You've gotten on the internet and it's fun. And it is fun, going down rabbit holes like that. You're discovering something, you have your own little mysteries, you talk to your friends about it, and this has suddenly become your hobby.

• 18:40Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  You take it to a place where, okay, you suddenly become a publisher to all of your other friends, and then you become an influencer to people at a political event and you have the best hobby a 65-year-old woman in the Midwest can have.

• 18:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's not a lot to, I mean, my grandmother would just watch church, you know, just a lot. And you go, oh, this is, you're bored, you know?

• 19:01Ryan Holiday?

  And it's this sort of intersection of the collapse of community and the rise of these sort of forms of entertainment. And you just become vulnerable to it.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  And it's, I mean, then it all becomes entertainment.

• 19:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  And then you're like, oh, of course. Well, that's, we have nothing but access to this entertainment. The news has become entertainment. It becomes the only monoculture there is right now.

• 19:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  This, this big story of this big orange man who's affecting the world around you.

• 19:30Ryan Holiday?

  Politics and Taylor Swift are the two things that everyone knows about.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  It really, it really is. Everything else is niche.

• 19:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  We could talk Trump or Taylor and, and people have an opinion on that.

• 19:41Ryan Holiday?

  And football.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:43Ryan Holiday?

  Those are our own, and you do realize, oh, these things are actually very, you need things like that. And what happens when everyone?

• 19:52Ryan Holiday?

  Is in their own little world and we don't have things that we can. And I think, you know, this, this is also like the monoculture used to be literature. Like, and then for, for a while it was music, but like it, it was at least a form of art. And politics is important, but it's not art.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Right. It is people's lives. It should be roads, bridges, things like that, that are important. And I think there's also a misunderstanding as to what government is. When you, when you suddenly gameify it, you are so devoid of, or so far away from that, that original intent.

• 20:27Ryan Holiday?

  But if it was supposed to be literature, then we're, and then we're, even movies, right? Are at least it's, it's art. So it's designed to teach and explain and put things up for everyone to think about. And then you have this kind of common culture that you can reference. And then when a huge movie is only seen by like a small fraction of the population, then you lack the ability to, to make these kind of references or have these stories that like bind you together.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. You need that coffee. You need that water cooler talk. I've actually, I've refound sports. I mean, I was a sports kid. I was a fan, a Michigan kid and played sports, loved sports. And as I got maybe deeper into the arts and moving away, I felt less of a need to, to follow sports. I became somewhat cynical about sports and about the fandom around all of that. And then I, I realize I lack in my life, that community, that, that driving force, also that escapism.

• 21:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  And, and I've, I've refound that, especially in the last like year and a half, when I don't want to engage in the, the monoculture of the news. And I want to just like, I want to feel something. I want to emote. That has very little consequences about what I root for, what I yell for, that can put me a part of a team and connect me on a way that is really like low stakes, but high emotion.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  And I hadn't realized how much I was missing in the community that something like sports brings. Like, we want to, we want to cheer, we want to be a part of something. We want to, we want to feel like we've won. We have crafted these safe spaces where you can do that and then you can walk away and it isn't your entire identity.

• 22:07Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  And that has felt like, oh, for so many people and for me as well, like, sports or politics has become that. And it's such a dangerous space to be in.

• 22:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, although, and you could argue-

• 22:17Speaker 02

  It's also dangerous to be a New York Knicks fan, too. So there's, there's, there's, there's problems there. You're gonna be let down.

• 22:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, although, and then I think you're also seeing some of the forces that tore apart these other industries happening in sports, too, where it's like, like, who can afford to go to an NFL game? It's crazy. I mean, even just League Pass is like 500, or not League Pass, what is it? Sunday Tickets, like, 500 bucks a year or something? And it's like, I gotta have another streaming service just to watch football? It's crazy.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  It's nuts. You can't afford to go in and watch it. It's, it's...

• 22:51Speaker 02

  And then also the politics that is in there. I feel like I've also shifted my opinion on that of, of, I want some of these people I root for to have opinions that perhaps reflect my, my morals and the way I see the world. Although, living that is so gosh darn exhausting. I definitely have gotten to the point of like, I just want to see somebody who's really good playing basketball. You can say whatever you want, no judgment on what you have to say. But I'm, I'm not gonna hold you to the standards that I'm holding my politicians to. I want to see you excel at this thing that other people cannot do.

• 23:18Ryan Holiday?

  But, yeah, I was just thinking, it's like, it used to be free. It was free to watch football. And now it's $500 a year.

• 23:26Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I mean, I'm watching more games, but it is weird to think, like, it used to be free. And then it's like, no, League Pass is this, then you gotta have Prime on Thursdays. And then you gotta, it's, it's crazy how-

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:38Ryan Holiday?

  Because what they've, they've figured out that if you break stuff apart, then everyone can get a little piece and you have to have all this stuff. But it used to have antennas on your TV and you could watch it for free.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  And the process of it used to be more manageable. Like, I used to watch NFL on Sunday and college on Saturday, and that's it. And Monday Night Football was a while that, now I'm literally coming here today, I'm seeing clips from, I was like, oh, was there a Thursday night game on last night? Okay, right, now they have like two Monday night, like, what they've done with all, with news, what used to be nice- In in high school and college to read the paper, finish the paper.

• 24:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  And it wasn't mostly college. I started to read the paper, finish the paper, and then I had the news for the day. I never thought, I I I didn't have to think about getting news for another 24 hour cycle. Like now, now I can't stop looking at the news in the same way that sports, instead of just like, oh, let me engage with the NFL for one day a week.

• 24:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Understand the narrative of it all and then step away to other things. But they get your eyeballs. They want your attention. They want 24 seven attention.

• 24:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes watching sports, it helps me understand the media cycle. So you're like, like when I turn on Stephen A. Smith and he's manufactured a thing to have an argument about. And and then you go, oh, this is also what they're doing on Fox right now and MSNBC. And it it's obvious with sports, you're like, wait, why? I like watching football on Sunday. The debate about it on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday has no bearing on whether it's on what's going to happen. Should the Raiders do this? You know, is so and so the blank or is this the blank?

• 25:19Ryan Holiday?

  You realize they're just creating ways to discuss a thing or speculate about a thing that's not changing the actual thing. The the game is at noon and it will be three hours and no amount of talking beforehand or after changes what happens. And you can kind of see that more clearly in sports that like, oh, they're trolling you. And then you go, but but insert journalist I like would never do that to me over the shutdown coverage. Or whatever. You know, and it's the but it's the same hustle, basically.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Oh, it's exactly the same hustle. And then insert journalist you like, who's struggling to make ends meet. And then journalist's boss is like, well, the only way to do this is you also have to have a persona.

• 26:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  So you need to go on these television shows at night.

• 26:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  And so journalist has to buy new cool outfit. And then it's like, all right, I want to go on here. Here's an eight minute chalk. You're going to talk for three minutes. And if you're not as exciting as you need to be, you're not going to sell the commercials after the eight minutes. So be exciting. And then journalist hedges, gets slightly more hyperbolic and you just feel that and you see it. And just the the systems in and of itself that we are getting all this information in the sports, they just feel so inherently broken. I I don't see a a way out of all of these things getting so warped.

• 26:36Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I mean, the way out of it is to like, watch football on Sunday.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:40Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Or, or to like, read a book about something, or to watch some kind of thing that is a summary or an encapsulation. But, but like, I remember growing up, I think about this all the time. My friend's family, they watched Fox News so much, it was burned into the corner of the TV. Like, when you would change to watch something else.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Still there.

• 27:01Ryan Holiday?

  You could still see the, the logo on the corner. Like, no one, not even someone who is currently in elected office, should be watching that much news.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Right. Yes.

• 27:10Ryan Holiday?

  It's not, like, you know, you don't.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:13Ryan Holiday?

  You don't need to be doing that.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:14Ryan Holiday?

  And that, I think we have conflated that with being informed, but in a way, that might be the most uninformed person.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  You mentioned it earlier. It's that what we've, we've replaced reflection with like, constant attention. And so, yeah, because attention felt, reflection felt passive, or at least, to me, can sometimes feel passive.

• 27:45Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  I, I think back to like, my, my college mentality when I was first interested in the world around me and getting information. And the idea of watching the news in and of itself felt like eating vegetables. But in a way, there was like, oh, the more that I do, probably the more in tune I will be. If I watch the Sunday shows now, well, now I'm more involved with the world around me.

• 28:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Smart people do this.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Smart people do this thing. I will engage in the thing that smart people do. And I can do it full time. And now it gives me this, this zhuzh and this energy. And now I'm part of the conversation. But we do, we do miss that. I watch it on Sunday. I understand it on Sunday. And I think about it for a few days. And I have my own opinions about it. That was, that was actually the thing that I, I gave myself as a, an assignment when I was, when I had my own show, where I was waking up every single morning, have to sort of craft what the show and the narrative was going to be. I was exhausted by the news cycle. And I just realized I would wake up so early. And the first thing I'd do is grab my phone, and I'd just start looking at the news and start reading. And I was like, I, I had to put it down and say, like, my first thought every morning was like Maggie Haberman's thought.

• 28:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was like, this isn't my thought. This, I'm reading an opinion on what happened.

• 28:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  I, I have zero opinions on what happened in this day. I need to, I need to at least give myself an hour. To take a frickin' shower.

• 28:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Think about something and reflect and give yourself space to have your own opinion before it gets filtered in by somebody else's.

• 29:04Ryan Holiday?

  And why are you gonna ruin your day before it starts?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  I know, but still that that college mentality of like, well, I need all, if I don't have all the information, I can't be articulate about what's going on.

• 29:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and the idea is like, the information is out there. What actually, what we need more of is more sort of insight or understanding about what it means. And most people are not cultivating the habits or the practices or the wisdom that will allow them to to do anything about it or understand it or put it in its larger context. Like, yeah, how many people even know how the system works, but then are watching the negotiations happen in real time?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  What do you do? How do you differentiate? Well, how do you find space to to reflect that information?

• 29:59Ryan Holiday?

  I try to read mostly books. Like, I try not to watch any television news. That, yeah, I think, have you read Amusing Ourselves to Death?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  No, I mean.

• 30:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the reason The Daily Show is is great is because it is designed to be entertainment. It's embracing entertainment. But his point that basically television is not a medium by which you can communicate intelligent thought is really as spot on as it can get.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  I think that book holds up as that, that is, I think, articulates our, our day and age as completely as you can.

• 30:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and you realize, oh, okay, this is just not where I'm going to get good information.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:39Ryan Holiday?

  And so I just try to think about like, where is good information going to be found?

• 30:46Ryan Holiday?

  It's probably, I, obviously, I'm biased as an author, but like, in a book, I'm having to work for a long time on something that I need to hold up, you know? Because it's not going to come out for a year. So I've already, I'm already having to say this information has to have a shelf life of more than one year. Then it has to be worth paying for. Right? It was not free.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:10Ryan Holiday?

  And then it has to be worth the amount of hours that it takes the person to consume. And I think writing is a pretty unforgiving medium in that you have to spend a lot of time getting it all right. So I have to spend a lot of time thinking. So I just think about that as being the medium by which you're going to get the least sort of sensational and the most thoughtful and then the longest lasting information. So I try to, when I'm trying to understand stuff that's happening, I want to read about times where this has happened before. Or the underlying sort of influences of this thing.

• 31:53Ryan Holiday?

  So I can consume it and understand the basics of it in as least partisan or incendiary or contemporary way as possible.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  In regards to current events.

• 32:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  How does that drip come to you? Do you, will you, for instance, we have, we have a peace plan that is being worked out as we speak right now with Israel and Hamas. There's a lot going on. People are talking about it. Are you, are you going to places to find out about that? Are you curious about that? Are you blocking yourself off from that?

• 32:24Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's interesting, right? It's like they first started talking about it like three or four days ago. And then this goes to the sports thing. At some point, the deal will happen. But in the interim, five days are the worst days to find out what's happening.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:42Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Because like it's changing. It's coming into existence. It's like, I'll meet your baby after it's born. I don't need to be in the delivery room. I want to, I obviously wanted to be there when my kids were being born. But like, the process was horrendous. I don't, I don't.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. You could be a bad friend. You could use that logic. I'll meet him when he's three. All right. After, when he can walk, I'll get a coffee with him when he can walk and drink caffeine.

• 33:07Ryan Holiday?

  I actually, I, I need to meet fewer babies and more older children.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  That's bad.

• 33:12Ryan Holiday?

  But, but you know what I mean? Like, I don't, the messy part is now I'm having to follow it like five or six times.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:20Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I remember, I think I wrote about this in my media book where I was saying like, you know, people are like, the, the great thing about Wikipedia is it's always being updated. And it's like, yeah, but I'm not reading it. As it's being updated, I'm only reading it now. So if it's wrong now, I'm wrong. Like, I don't.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I'm not going back to see what people think about Sandy Koufax again and again and again.

• 33:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I'm not checking in on this Wikipedia page as it's getting better. Like, it's gotta do the job now.

• 33:50Ryan Holiday?

  And so, so I just think, like, unless you run a hedge fund and your job is to speculate on news, or you are, in fact, a politician who's in the mix on the thing, although I do think it's interesting, like, whatever. You should be consuming as little real time information as, as humanly possible. Because it is of almost no value to you. You should find out what happened after it has happened, not as it's happening.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Right, you don't need to fill up the hours of your day with speculation.

• 34:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  And you can wait for information.

• 34:22Ryan Holiday?

  There's a great Chuck Klosterman piece about sports where he is visiting a bunch of teams during training camp. And he was amazed that they were watching ESPN, like, that they had, he was like, you would, you think they have better information, but they don't. And there is something uniquely terrifying about Trump's media diet, like, that he watches a lot of news. The CIA put out this book during the first Trump presidency that was a history of how the different presidents have taken the, the presidential daily briefing.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:58Ryan Holiday?

  Which is like the greatest collection of intelligence in the world. And every president has had a different relationship with it. But it's like, he prefers Fox and Friends to the presidential daily briefing. And that is terrifying because they are so far downstream from what is,

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:15Ryan Holiday?

  what we know, what is known by the smartest people. Like, this is intelligence paid for and blood and treasure. And he's like, but what is Pete Hegseth's replacement thing? And so, I just think most people should not be consuming speculation about what's happening. We should wait until it's been figured out.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Especially if you're the commander in chief. I mean, I do think that's what, like, what's happening in Portland right now, sending troops because of the things that he was watching, which was video from five years ago. What's curious about even hearing that Klosterman detail is what I imagine. And knowing politicians who are obsessed with being on television and watching television, like, I think they will tell you the story that they're, they're trying to stay updated on the conversation, that they're watching information. And I'm sure that's what some of the sports stars might say is like, well, that's what I want to know. I want to know this prognostication. But I think they're watching it for vanity.

• 36:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  They want to see themselves on television.

• 36:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  They want to be a part of that conversation. That's still, there's this, this utter need for fame and to be reflected on TV. And that is, I mean, clearly that's, Trump wants to see people talk about him. He doesn't care about the information that's there as long as it's about him positively. It's, it's not the information outside of it.

• 36:22Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. The job of the leader is to be making big picture, long-term decisions. So in a sense, they should actually be as removed from the conversation as possible. Like, like if you're going to make great art, you shouldn't listen to what's popular right now. You should understand people, you know, or, or art historically. Otherwise, what you're going to make is derivative and reactive. And it's like, weirdly, journalists and politicians should be, are, are the people who consume the most news. And they should, there's an argument, I think, to be said for them consuming the least amount of it.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I think you're right. I think it's going to be a tough sell for those guys.

• 37:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  But I don't think you're wrong. Put them in, put them in padded rooms, have them just think about stuff, working together.

• 37:10Ryan Holiday?

  Which is, it's, it requires a certain discipline because it's so easy to, to default to it. And you have to go wait in an, oh, I, you need to know its background noise, like you're aware that it's happening, but it can't be driving your day-to-day understanding of things because it's, it's, yeah, if that's the tail wagging the dog.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Yes. We have a, it's, functionally at The Daily Show, one of the most comforting things is once you get into writing the show, is that you aren't aware of what is happening during the day. And again, we have to, we have to be, you know, immersed in the news cycle day in and day out and what's happening, but also how it's being told, which is overwhelming. And sometimes, especially when I did my first show, I found it very overwhelming because I had this idea that I need to know everything and which left no space for. Any kind of creative take on it. But you reach a point, and it's very early on, where we make some early decisions about what we think is important, and then you just become a creative space. And there are people who are aware of what the conversation is, but they don't need to update you on everything that happened. They update you on things that happen that are of import. And then so that that seven-hour space where you're like, oh, we are just being creative

• 38:13Speaker 02

  about the things that we know, is the most fruitful space that we have. And if somebody comes in the door and says, I mean, for a learned person, it would be something important that happened. For The Daily Show, it's like Donald Trump's penis fell out, we have to talk about this. And so it's like, stop the presses. There was a penis on TV, we must rewrite the show. So that's sort of our breaking news. But but it gives us that space, which is so crucial.

• 38:34Ryan Holiday?

  I bet the time you're doing the show itself is probably some of the most present. It's like, you know, when you you come out of a movie theater and it's gone from like daytime to nighttime and you're like, whoa, you know, because you were like fully engaged in a thing. That's that's probably your, ironically, your least connected and most connected time. Because you just spent it with this group of people doing this thing, channeling your emotions and feeling into the performance, not being like, well, what are other people doing?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  And and literally the fact that they're like, put your phones away.

• 39:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  So the 200 people, we're here for 40 minutes, no phones, we're going to do a thing. I mean, it's remarkable.

• 39:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Rare. I mean, in the performative world, it is, it's such a nice thing, but it does feel like such a rarity. I mean, even in in basic conversation with people and what have you, you rarely get the luxury of a handful of people in a room where they're all actually listening to what's happening.

• 39:38Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.