James Frey on Turning Chaos Into Success

Ryan Speaks to writer and businessman James Frey about the challenges of being isolated during the pandemic, the philosophy behind his sobriety, the painful discovery of human flaws in your heroes, and more. James Frey is the author of several bestselling books including A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, and his most recent, Katerina. He is also the founder and CEO of the transmedia production company, Full Fathom Five. This episode is brought to you by Ladder, a painless way to get the life insurance coverage you need for those you care about most. Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today. This episode is also brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. This deal is only valid for the month of January. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked. This episode is also brought to you by FitTrack, the best way to calculate your body’s composition accurately, reliably, and consistently. Every FitTrack smart scale uses advanced algorithms to offer insights into 17 different metrics indicative of bodily health. The Dara Smart Scale syncs with the free FitTrack App so all of your health insights are saved in one place. Go to getfittrack.com/stoic to take 50% off your order, and for a limited time you’ll also save an additional 10%. This episode is also brought to you by Talkspace, the online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist on their platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow James Frey:Homepage: bigjimindustries.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesfrey_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigjimindustriesSee 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 weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time, and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I remember it pretty vividly. I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is right as Gawker was being... If you read my book, Conspiracy, some of this will be familiar. This is right as Gawker was getting sued into oblivion and losing its famous lawsuit against Hulk Hogan. And I got this email. I'd just written a piece about it. I just hit publish from, you know, basically the hotel dining room as I was getting ready to leave to the airport and catch my flight. It's always stressful flying out of Sao Paulo because it takes like four hours to get to the airport and traffic is crazy. But I got this email out of the blue from the author, James Fry,

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  which obviously I'd grown up sort of having heard about and knowing, but was just sort of much more aware of the sort of controversy surrounding him. And it was a surprise email. And he just said, hey, I love this article. You know, he sort of gave me some backstory of his relationship with Gawker. And we got connected and we've sort of become friends. And it turned out, he's a huge fan of the Stoics and he actually credits the Tao Te Ching and Stoicism with his almost 30-year journey now with sobriety.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  Fry is, you know, he's a fascinating guy. We text every once in a while. We talk. I actually love his novel Bright Shiny Morning the most. It's this great book about LA. I've raved about John Fonte's Ask the Dust before, and so hopefully this comes off as high praise. I think this is one of the second, maybe the second or the third best novel about Los Angeles, which is, you know, a very high bar to get over. So check that out. If you haven't read Bright Shiny Morning, you should. But I really liked his newest book, Catarina, which I think is just a fascinating sort of novel about life and death, but also about the desire, the urge to be great, to do something

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  great, to be the best at something. And it's, you know, it's a fictionalized, you know, sort of take on, you can see the seeds of why James got in the place that he got. Anyways, I think he's a great writer, a fascinating guy. I don't, I'm not going to shy away from having controversial guests on the show. This is my podcast and why wouldn't I talk to him? And, and I'm glad I did. I think this is a great interview. I think you're really going to like it. Check out Bright Shiny Morning and Catarina. I don't think you can go wrong with either of those books. And here's my interview with James Fry.

• 3:35Ryan Holiday?

  So how have you been? How are you holding up?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  It's been a long year, man. It's been a long year. All things considered, I'm fine.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  I had COVID very early.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  And now I just sort of sit at home and read and write and try to get through the days.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know how you got it?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I got it. Yeah, I do. I got it from a colleague of mine who, who, I got it in France from a colleague of mine at the very beginning of March. And I was sick for, I was, I had pneumonia and I was sick for about nine days.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  And I was probably at half strength for, and those nine days were, were not fun. Like really bad flu and pneumonia is what it felt like to me and, and diarrhea, which sucked. And then I was probably at half strength for like two weeks. And, and, and then the only weird thing is ever since then, I have to take Zortec allergy medicine every morning or my nose runs.

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  Weird.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a positive antibody test in May and a negative one in September.

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  But, but that you probably still have the antibodies, right? Or, or you're still not immune, but, uh, they say that, uh, just because you have a negative antibody test, doesn't mean you're going to get it again.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I sure as fuck hope I don't get it again. It was not, not fun.

• 5:08Ryan Holiday?

  Did you have to quarantine from your family and stuff or did they get it too?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So when I first, I came back from France and I was sick. And I travel enough that I, I get sick in the winter fairly often.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  But then I got really sick and I, I, I was having trouble breathing normally. And I went to the doctor and the, it was the first week of March. There wasn't really testing even. Um, and the doctor was like, do you have a guest room? And I said, yeah. And he was like, go to your guest room and don't come out. Have your family leave the meals and medicine at, outside the door.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  And that's what I did. Ten days probably. Um, and, and I slept a lot and coughed a lot and was miserable a lot.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  The sick thing is weird. I mean, the, one of the weirdest parts of the last 10 months is remembering what life is like when you don't get a cold or the flu or food poisoning at, at least several times a year.

• 6:26Ryan Holiday?

  It's wonderful. It's like, oh, this is what this is what life is supposed to be like when you don't spend way too much time on airplanes or in hotel rooms or at train stations.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part of COVID has kind of been nice. Like recently, I've been using my phone a whole lot less and and using the only thing I really use tech for is work. And it's honestly been nice. You sort of remember what life must have been like when people lived simpler,

• 7:01Speaker 01

  simpler lives.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like my my willpower is sapping. Like, at the beginning of the pandemic, I read a ton, and I was not using the phone a lot. I do feel like as we've sort of, as we went into the election, as we and then came into whatever the last weird purgatory the last month or so has been, and then now going into the winter, I am finding like, okay, going into the new year, I'm going to need to reset some of my habits. I'm going to need to I can feel the slippery slope of like, sort of, device dependency rearing its head. Can you?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I despise device dependency, though I I am device dependent.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  It's weird. Like, I read on an iPad now, and I tried to go back to normal books. It's really hard. I've been reading on an iPad for probably seven or eight years. And I was trying to readjust some of my habits to go off the devices. But it's just easy. I have a an iPad with basically every book that ever existed at my disposal instantly.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  And I don't have to keep a light on to read. I fall asleep most nights reading on an iPad, like, literally just fall asleep, the same way I used to with a book, except there's no light. I I don't like device dependency. I know the more I use my device, the less happy I am. And I know the more I use my device, especially with social media, the less I like myself, and the less I feel just good about life in general, the less productive I am.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And, and, and I think we all know that. But yeah.

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  No, of course, of course, we all know. I mean, I've never once gone on Twitter in my life. And then after I closed it was like, I'm so glad I did that. Like I've never, I, I've never felt better about myself or my life, or really even feel like I got anything.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  So I went off Twitter about four months after Trump was elected. Just because it was too toxic. I couldn't have it in my life. And as long as I had an account, I was, I knew I was going to use it. So I just deleted it.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And I still have a, a, a like public Facebook page, but I can't say I really ever use it. I don't know the last time I used it.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And then I have an Instagram. And Instagram seems the friendliest of all of them.

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  But I still, I try to not use it. You know, the hardest part about the pandemic for us right now is just the weather, right? Like the East Coast, it's cold. We've got a foot of snow outside. And a lot of those sort of reset strategies that you were just talking about, which I, I try to, I, I, I'm resetting things in my life constantly. Right? Like as soon as I sort of aware of a habit or an old habit that's come back, I try to, I try to cut it. But the hardest part about all of that on the East Coast right now is just the ability to get outside. You know, and this summer during pandemic, I could at least go outside all day. Now, now it's a lot harder.

• 10:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's, it's, we've had this cold snap here in Austin and you go, oh, wow. Okay. Like in a way, it sort of gives you, because you're not going from sort of beautifully lit, exciting indoor space to indoor space. It sort of does give you a sense of how dependent you are or vulnerable you are to your environment or what's happening in the world. Like, because it's like, suddenly you can't distract yourself. Suddenly you can't go do this or that. And so you're just forced to like sit and stew in your own juices. And you find often how unpleasant that is.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sucks. You start spinning in your mind, whatever shit is irritating you or bothering you.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  That's worse. You know, I I've I've stopped reading most of the news. I've I've stopped using social as much as possible.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  All for the same reason, right? It's all bad. It's all bad for my soul. It all, it's all depressing. I don't, I don't, I don't give a shit about whatever the latest horse shit some politician is saying, because I know ultimately it it probably won't have a real effect on my life. They're just yelling at each other. And the less yelling I hear, the better.

• 11:58Ryan Holiday?

  How do you, it it, speaking of dependency, I can only imagine sort of getting through something like the pandemic and the stra- that must be very challenging for somebody's sobriety.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but also in an interesting way, for my own sobriety, it's actually been really great. You know, I've been sober for almost twenty eight years. I went to rehab for crack and alcohol.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And i- it's almost like the extremity of what we're involved in has forced people to deal with their sobriety in a more active way. I was never, in my whole sober life, an AA person. I I was actually, you know, I've written against it. Not for other people. I I think sobriety is a thing that's a lot like religion, that that you you have to find your own way. And whatever way you find, as long as you're not hurting another person, it's cool. And I've never used AA in my life for sobriety. I I always used the Tao, or I used walking meditation.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Or I would just go sit in churches by myself, just because I like the quiet and and and the nobility of it.

• 13:22Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  But I joined an AA meeting in May. And it's the first sort of regular AA group I've ever been in in my life in in twenty eight years of sobriety. And I do it every Friday with a group of about twelve to fifteen men. And and it's actually been great. It's made my sobriety a lot stronger. It's made my life a lot better. Um, and it's not something I would have ever done if if the pandemic didn't exist. But it was almost like being cooped up and being restricted and the stress and anxiety that comes with that and everything else, the election, the possibility of death, economic collapse.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  You know, I work in publishing and and entertainment, and neither one of those are doing real well right now. And sort of the stress of that, and I'm married and I have three kids, and and and the stress of that forced me to find something to help with my sobriety. And I found this meeting. And and it's been great for me.

• 14:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. How how does it help? Is it is it the community? Is it the is it the like, the the ritual of the process that you're supposed to do? Like, what what is it that you find so beneficial about it?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I I think both those first thing two things you mentioned, right? Like, the community for sure. It's I know a lot of the people outside of AA, so it's a probably half the group was friends of mine before the pandemic. Um, we're all either artists, art dealers, or writers. So we sort of think about and and have similar lives.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  And part of part of it is the ritual, just like I know, you know, the meeting I do is on Friday afternoons. I know that at least on Friday afternoon for that hour to hour and fifteen minutes, I will find peace in my heart and I will find like minded people who are struggling with the same things. And it helps.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  It helps. The way our, our meeting runs is, um, a person tells their story, uh, for the first fifteen minutes of the meeting. And then everybody gets three minutes to, to share how they felt about the speaker or, or what's going on in their own lives and, and you move on and, and, uh, listening to other people and, and

• 16:03Speaker 01

  and being there for them helps you, you know, service helps you. Um, but also being able to just express whatever, whatever's going on with, with me helps me, right? Like some weeks I just say, hey, great week. Loved your story. Thanks for coming. Love all you guys. Other weeks I have real stuff to talk about, but the ritual, the community, the idea that I'm not actually alone in my house, struggling with sobriety or, or struggling with whatever it is I'm struggling with, right? Um, I, I think we, a lot, I, I think people are forgetting

• 16:40Speaker 01

  that we're kind of in this together, right? I think isolation has forced us to forget that. The politics of the country right now have forced us to forget that. And it's not like I'm perfect with it, but, um,

• 16:58Speaker 01

  the AA helps. It breaks that isolation for sure.

• 17:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it's, it's really easy, I think, to get caught in your own head or in the case of some other people to get your head sort of so far up your own ass that you're, you've lost sight of the fact that, one, probably in comparison, you have it pretty good. But second, you're not at all alone in what you are going through. And that when you, I, I feel like it's like when you talk to other people about their problems, it sort of activates this part of your brain that's like, oh, here are the solutions, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and you also feel this sort of kindness and, and love towards them. And then, and then maybe you're able to sort of step back and go like, I could also do that for myself.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's part of the, the, the. The benefit of group therapy, whether it's AA or some other sort of therapeutic philosophy. Um, I know on Fridays, however bad my week has been, that my friends will be there and I'll be able to talk to them. And I'll also be able to listen to them and help them with whatever they, they, they need help with, you know? Service is a big thing that I, I very much believe in, just helping other people, just being a decent human. And I always benefit from it as much as anybody I've helped. And that's sort of the beauty of it.

• 18:26Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. When you think about being of service, like, because that's something I've sort of been thinking about in my own life a bit more. And I think sometimes as a writer, it's really easy to like fool yourself and be like, what I do is my service, you know? And that's also sort of a very narcissistic egotistical thing. When you think about like someone who's trying to get started with that, like where do you, what do you suggest? Like, how, how can someone? Because that is a big ten in an AA, the idea of being of service. But like, what is that? What does that mean? How do you do it?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I mean, doing anything for another human being without selfish motivation is service, right? How do I do it? I mean, I, I still probably get, you know, 10 to 15 direct messages or emails a day. Yeah, probably about 10 from people who are sober, who are struggling with sobriety. I reply to all of them. I, I, I have, I have had now almost 20 year relationships, almost entirely online with people who were trying to get sober and, or who are sober, who I've just met online.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  You know, my, I, I want to quit drinking. What do I do? And I, I start a conversation with them. I do things like that. I, I give away a lot of money.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Probably 10 to 15% of my income every year I give away.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I, I just try to be kind and try to be decent, you know, if, if, if you see somebody struggling and you offer to help, that's being of service. Whatever that help is and whatever that struggle is, if it's an old lady who needs help getting across the street, cool. If it's a woman at a grocery store who's struggling with a bunch of bags and kids, offer to help. If it's somebody pulled over on the side of the road and, and they look like they don't, that, that they're not okay, pull over and offer to help, you know, all of those things are being of service. It's just doing things to try to make the world better without any expectation of, of getting anything out of it, except positive feelings.

• 20:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Marcus really talks about, he's like, you do it and you don't, you don't ask for the third thing. So it's like you did a thing for the person that made you feel good. They did, you know, they got the benefit that made them feel good. The third thing is the sort of recognition, the favor being returned, you know, the credit or, or whatever. And, and that seems that it's like, I think it's sort of in the social media era, that's like hard, like we sort of want credit for everything, but it's, it's like, just being a decent person to the people you encounter in your life.

• 21:34Ryan Holiday?

  Because that's how one ought to go through the world is, is a very underrated strategy these days.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it's the best strategy, man. Like if you, if you want that third thing, it's not really being of service. And it's not really charity, right?

• 21:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  If, if you want that third thing, your motivation is not just to do something good for the sake of doing something good. It's, it's you want something. It's vastly more transactional. Right? And, and I can't say I ever expect anything back from anybody. And I don't need anything back. I don't, I don't help or be of service to anyone ever for anything back. Um, you just do it.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  To make the world better, because if the world's better, it's it's better for all of us.

• 22:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  It's sort of a sort of corny and naive as that might sound.

• 22:33Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's it's it's right. It's that idea like just be the change, you know, that you want to see in the world.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I almost not even that like.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Because it's not like I have some big grand plan, right? It's not like I I'm thinking, well, if I if I do this thing 20 times, I'll change the world. It's just if somebody needs help, fucking help them.

• 22:58Ryan Holiday?

  No, no.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  If you can make somebody's life better with a simple gesture, or even not so simple a gesture, just do it, right?

• 23:06Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I I totally agree. I just mean, it's like, it's like sort of everyone wants everyone to be nicer. They want, you know, it's like, wouldn't it be wonderful if things were less polarized? If people were nicer to each other, you know, we sort of talk in these sort of vague generalities about how we want to be in the world. And then and then it's like we sort of expect other people to start it, or it's like we we we sort of expect it to just happen. And then what we do is we go through life, it feels like sort of blind to the actual like, there's a great, there's a great, um.

• 23:42Ryan Holiday?

  What what is what is the line? I was just thinking of a quote that I was going to tell you, but anyways, it's sort of we we oh, it's um. Maybe it's George Eliot, like, you know, we lionize all forms of of courage and bravery, except that which we might sort of offer to our nearest neighbor. So it's like we we sort of expect these things to happen at this sort of grand political level like. I'm always surprised, like, you hear these people talk like, what are these guys in Washington? They're all, you know, whatever. And then it's like. Yeah, but you have like one tenth of the power at one tenth of the stakes and you're a pussy too. So how can you expect, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, just do just do it in your life and take care of that.

• 24:27Ryan Holiday?

  And let's see if that can't create kind of a ripple going outwards.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I agree with that. And frankly, I'm not perfect at it either, right? Like when you were talking about your neighbor like. In the last year, I've had problems with some of my neighbors.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And if anything, that's part of what, aside from the pandemic this year, just the politics of the United States has been really stressful and awful and divisive and whatever side you're on, it couldn't have been fun. If you're a Trump person, you've just lost and it's over. If you're a Biden person, you've been terrified for probably at least a year. And we've all been taught to hate each other and frankly, myself included. Like, but I do, but I sort of agree. I think what you were saying before is like, if you

• 25:31Speaker 01

  just practice the little things, right?

• 25:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Maybe that's enough.

• 25:38Ryan Holiday?

  It's tough, though. The last year's been tough, I feel like, because it's like, you know, you sort of do work on yourself. It's so easy to be jaded and cynical, right? And then so you do work on yourself and you're like, hey, like, people are good. People are trying their best. You know, people, people are just like me, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, and then, you know, it's, it's like, look, loving thy neighbor as thyself would be easy if your neighbor did a half decent job trying to show that they were not like a piece of shit, right? And so like, I think one of the struggles

• 26:17Ryan Holiday?

  and this is where the philosophy really comes in is like, is, I'll give you an example. It's like, I walk by, there's a, there's a house on my street. I live out in the country. There's a house on my street. These are like really nice people, but, but I go for this walk in the morning and I see two things that just like, it make it very hard. So one, instead of paying, and these are not, you know, not well off people, instead of paying, you know, the $40 a month to have their trash taken out, they just keep, they just have their own trash dump on the back of their property. They just like throw their trash in a giant hole, right? And I walk by this, like I could see it off in the distance. You know, like, you know, these are good people who are just literally littering, just

• 27:01Ryan Holiday?

  throwing their garbage in a giant hole in the ground to save, you know, $40. And then I walk past this cow that they have, and this cow had sort of a deformed horn. That's starting to grow into its own head, right? Uh, and which happens on a cow. You have to, you have to cut the horn off or you have to put the cow down or whatever. But it's like, you know, love thy neighbor as thyself, be kind, you know, be connected, assume the best in people. And then it's like, you're walking past someone, you know, uh, filling the earth with trash and then, you know, out of negligence, abusing animal. It's hard to, it's hard to maintain, like, that's where the work is, like, it's, it's easy to be cynical and jaded.

• 27:45Ryan Holiday?

  But then it's actually hard work to be the opposite of those things because people really make you look for the good.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is hard work, like, and yours is, is, isn't even that complicated, honestly. Like, the most, the most complicated things for me in the last year are people who I used to respect or like. And when I learn certain things that they believe in, I can't like them or respect them anymore. And there's a certain level of like, almost self hate that comes with that too, right? Like, why aren't I a good enough human to just let it go? Why aren't I, why aren't I a good enough person to, to accept them even?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Even though they believe in things that, that repulse me, you know? Like, I've spent a lot of time in the last year contemplating what I would have done if I lived in Germany in 1938. Right? Would I have left? Would I have stayed? Would I have? I don't know, you know?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  But I don't think, I don't think we were that far from that. That's not saying Republicans are Nazis, because I don't believe that. But I think, you know, Trump specifically was moving towards an authoritarian dictatorship. And I'm happy that the, the citizens of the United States and the courts have stopped that.

• 29:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's, it's like you can almost put Trump aside and you can put the vast majority of his supporters aside, but it, you sort of come to this inescapable conclusion that we're not all on the same page and that there's a not unsizable group of people who would be okay with things getting much, much worse and going in a much, much darker direction. And I think if you have a sense of history, it, it makes it like, you realize like, oh yeah, it's not as if these movements in the past had majority support. In fact, that's always the tricky part of them is how that sort of strident

• 29:57Ryan Holiday?

  minority manages to sort of seize power and then manipulate or cajole or bully the, the more, like I had Paul Kix, the, the ESPN writer on a couple of months ago and we were, it's like, and, and your book, Catarina is about France. It's like, you ask people, what, what percentage of France do you think was involved in the resistance? And, you know, people think it's like 30 or 40 or 50%.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Five?

• 30:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it was like 4%. And you're like, oh.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  So I read, I, I read a thing about the Bolshevik Revolution and, and it was an article about, it was probably nine months ago. And it was a theorist on revolution, but the person had done an enormous amount of historical research. And this person estimates that you need somewhere between 12 and 15% of a country's population to flip it. Right? If you have 12 to 15% of a comp, uh, country's population that are absolute fanatics, um, you can flip that country. And, and the example was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. And...

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Uh, the Bolsheviks had about fourteen percent of the population and they took over the fucking country and, and you know, booted the monarchy and built the Soviet Union and, and regardless of how you feel about all that, whether communism is good or bad, or monarchies are good or bad, the idea that you need, you know, twelve to fifteen percent of a country's population to radically alter its history is a little bit frightening. Um.

• 31:51Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's these things are very fragile.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're vastly more fragile than you think, you know?

• 32:01Ryan Holiday?

  And I think that's where this brings in, you know, the sort of stoics have this, you know, the virtue of courage, right? And, and, you know, I, I think, obviously, there's the sort of, there's the courage of the battlefield, there's the courage of, of a fireman running into a building, there's the, you know, the courage of a, of, of, of a, you know, a mother trying to lift a car off her baby. There's all the, there's the, but, but just the courage to, to sort of go, I don't like where this is going. I don't agree with these tactics, even if I largely agree with the group, right? Like whether you're talking about Republicans or Democrats, to be able to sort of look your own side in the face and say, guys, this is

• 32:42Ryan Holiday?

  going in a bad direction, not in my name. Like, I think Solzhenitsyn has that line, he says, like, "The mark of bravery is to go, let evil come into the world, but not through me," right? Like, to say, like, "I'm not gonna be complicit, I'm not gonna be a part of that." That seems so basic, and it seems, I think, everyone tells themselves that when it really gets bad, then you'll step up. And I think that's what's been interesting about watching, watching what's happened in America now, but that, since that's so hard for people to, to see, I think the French Resistance example is a good one. It's like,

• 33:22Ryan Holiday?

  your country is literally taken over by the Nazis, like, literally overrun by the Nazis, and ninety-five percent of the population says...

• 33:33Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I guess that's the way that it is now, you know, and, and that if that doesn't wake you up and, and make you realize the importance of saying something when you think something, I'm not sure what will.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I frankly have been amazed people haven't been more disturbed by the activities of the last month, right?

• 33:58Ryan Holiday?

  Insane.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Trying to flip an election that was, that was lawfully won. Thankfully enough, people have, have been willing to do that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of courage, not in the grand gestures, the grand extreme situations we hear about in war accidents, but like people who are working in hospitals right now, they're the, they're the most courageous peoples in the country, right? They have been for the last year. I'm not putting myself in harms way every day. I just sit at home. But there, there, you know, as there has been a lot of horror in the past year, there's been a lot of beauty and there's been a lot of greatness and there's been enormous amounts of courage.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And that's kind of how, that's kind of how it always is, man. Like, I mean, people will say it'll always be okay, but like, the world kind of generally is find its way.

• 35:05Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that kind of goes to what you were saying earlier. Walk me through how the Tao Te Ching is connected with sobriety for you. It's not something I, I've, I've heard other people say before, but it's fascinating.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  So I went to rehab when I was 23 and I was in bad shape and I had been an addict, an active addict since I was probably 16.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And I went there and I was a pretty hardcore atheist. I didn't believe in God. And AA is predicated on a belief of God. The dogma requires a belief in a higher power. And I don't believe, I didn't believe in one. And, and my brother came to visit me. I was in rural Minnesota at the Hazelden Foundation. And he brought a bunch of books for me because I had, I was, I was and have always been a big reader. Um, and the situation that led me to rehab, I didn't have books, so he brought a bunch. And one of them was the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And I remember I was a little skeptical of it. I was like, what's this corny self-help horse shit? He was like, just give it a read, man. You might dig it. And I read it and I couldn't quite believe it existed. You know, the, the Tao translated, depending on how you want to translate it, means the Tao Te Ching either means the way or the art of the way. Um, and it's a really simple, beautiful guide for living that, that teaches a lot of things, but the core tenets of it are, uh, we as human beings should think about patience, compassion, and simplicity

• 36:51Speaker 01

  as guiding principles of our life, patience with ourselves and others, compassion with ourselves and others, and simple in our thoughts and actions. And the book just spoke to me and it made sense to me in a way that nothing ever had before. No religion, no philosophy, no, no guide to life.

• 37:19Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  What I think is weird about it is like so much of it feels really opaque and confusing to me and I have no idea what they're talking about. And then, and then you'll, you'll get to a passage or whatever, and it almost feels like the clouds part and you're like, oh, I get this one. That nails it. You know what I mean? So there's this like sort of mysticness. It's like, if you've ever read Heraclitus, there's some of that too, where there's this sort of mystic kind of poet poetic beauty that may or may not be nonsensical, or it may just be that whatever wisdom it's expressing, you are not at a place that you can unlock yet. And if you come back to the book at a later time or at a totally different moment, it

• 38:10Ryan Holiday?

  actually will make sense.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's almost too simple, right? Like it's an unbelievably simple book. It's 81 poems that are between four and 20 lines long.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  The way I often try to explain it to people is, you know, the force in Star Wars is based on the Tao, right? Lucas is very open about it. And Jedis are essentially Taoist, ancient Taoist monks. But it's just the idea that there is something, that, that life is a force, a universal life force that we call the Tao. And it is simple and compassionate and patient. And the more we can sort of align ourselves with it, the better our lives will be, the more peaceful they'll be and the more productive they'll be. I know as I have read a lot of Stoicism over the past probably eight years, I, and

• 39:14Speaker 01

  we've talked about this before, I absolutely believe that one of the early Stoics had to have had a copy of the Tao, because the philosophies are remarkably similar in, in a lot of ways. It's, it's almost like it's two Christian denominations of the same thing. One of them, let's say Taoism is, is.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Like being a Baptist and being a Stoic is like being a, you know, a product of something else, Presbyterian or whatever, but they, they teach a lot of the same things. With the Tao, it largely depends on the translation for me. There are, there are so many translations. And the Steven Mitchell one is the simplest and the most sort of adapted to Westerners. He was a very early American Zen monk who, who started translating things. And it's just a beautiful book. It's just an incredibly simple way to think about and try to live your life. And, and I know whenever I have trouble, whenever I have problems,

• 40:22Speaker 01

  whenever I feel lost, I go back to it and, and, and it, and it, and it helps me find my way back. And, and to a certain extent, the Stoics do the same thing. I mean, I read the Daily Stoic. You know that. And I believe in Stoicism. It's, it's been an aid to me too, as, you know, the Tao, you can read in an hour. I've probably read that book 2,000 times in my life.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  And, and you almost read it so much that you forget it, right? You, you, you do take a lot of it in and just sort of subconsciously start to live that way, but you also forget it. And, and, and Stoicism is a slightly different take on it. And, and it's one that has helped me a lot too.

• 41:12Ryan Holiday?

  But it's funny because, you know, the logos in Stoicism, which is also the sort of the logos in Christianity, is just means the way. And so this idea there kind of being this like energy in the universe, some, some sort of like, like the Stoics talk about living accordance to nature. They talk about it, the, the, the smooth flow of life. There is that, there's this sort of similarity between the two, like they're, they're about sort of tapping into this jet stream or this flow Zen state. It does really make it seem like they were drinking from the same pool.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I just pulled up a thing that Cato the Younger said, right?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  "I'll begin to speak only when I'm certain what I'll say isn't better left unsaid," right?

• 42:05Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Very simple. The Tao basically says the same thing. The Tao says, "Speak when you have something to say, and when you don't, don't," right? It says, "Those who speak know, and those who don't speak know, and those who speak don't know." Meaning that the more you talk about all that you know, and it's odd that we're on a podcast talking about all that we know, but...

• 42:32Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  You know, that you don't really have to talk, that most of our words are wasted. And it's two guys essentially saying the same thing, and there's a ton of stoic philosophical sayings that are very remarkably similar, and I think probably these...

• 42:52Speaker 01

  I guess you could call them elite academics. Marcus Aurelius was certainly as elite a member of his society as any that has ever existed. But I think they probably had access to some of these other materials that sort of wound their way around the world. I think there probably was a connection between Stoics and Taoists.

• 43:17Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, and maybe this is actually a pretty philosophical idea from both of them too, which is like, you know, it's sort of the same thing happening over and over again. I mean, Confucius and Seneca are both these sort of, you know, successful advisors to, like, sort of philosophical advisors to princes in the correct, you know, sort of times of excess and autocracy there. I've almost come to think about it more like, it's actually almost better to me that maybe they never did overlap because it lends itself to the idea that there is some sort of deeper, profound truth that they're tapping into. It's like... I think about, I've likened it to sort of convergent evolution.

• 44:02Ryan Holiday?

  Like, you know, there are species in Australia that also exist in, you know, North America, let's say, that, or whatever, where like, it's very clear that they evolved. I mean, obviously, we all share a common ancestor, but the idea that they evolved from, that they evolved to similar states from very different starting points, to me, actually bolsters both philosophies.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  One of the things the Tao says is that everything it teaches is obvious, right? That we know everything it teaches us before we read it, because it is the obvious truths of life. You know, if you are patient with other people and patient with yourself, your life will be more peaceful. That's fucking obvious, right? And I think there probably is a certain accuracy or legitimacy to your idea, right? These are, you know, and you could say that the founders of the United States sort of arrived at a lot of the similar conclusions.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  All men are created equal, right? The Stoics say that, and the Taoists say that. And, and we are sort of all dancing around in the same energy, in the same universe. I personally try to keep things philosophically as grounded as I can. You know, I don't believe in astrology, or, you know, I think a lot of the wellness industry, like crystals and smells and all that stuff is just kind of nonsense. But simple words really can, can, can help you. And, and, and so I ground my philosophies in, in basically Stoicism and Taoism.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And they are very similar and, and.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  And they do make your life better if you can learn to embody them.

• 46:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like if they were radically different, I feel like it might increase the probabilities that one or both of them are way off base. You know what I mean? The fact that they're circling around the same idea should hopefully make it more likely that it's because they were getting to the... Like, if you do a math, if you do the same math problem and I do the same math problem, we should get to the same result. We could, you could use your own math, each of us could use our own methodology, but you gotta get to the same number, or it doesn't work.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and honestly, like, if you read the Gospels of Christ, right? If you read the Gospels of Christ in the New Testament, they're not that different from Stoicism or Taoism either, right? Like, Christ was saying a lot of the same things: love your neighbor, be kind, be patient, do the right thing, not because it brings you riches, but for the simple sake of doing it.

• 47:09Ryan Holiday?

  I've written about this before. I have a thing going out for Christmas. We're talking before Christmas, but it's like, you know, Jesus and Seneca were born the same year, in the same, like, both in distant provinces of the Roman Empire. Both were enormously popular philosophers in their own lifetime, and then both died at the hands of, you know, the authorities in that same empire. And you're just like, oh, wow, that is, uh, that's both beautiful and perfect at the same time.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what made one of them the son of God and what made one of them just a philosopher, right?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  We know that answer, but um.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  And I would say that that answer is what in the the the first Catholic like church dogma gathering, there was a big debate, is Christ divine or not? And they voted, right? The early Christians voted and and the side that voted that he was divine won. So Jesus has been divine since that day, but early Christians didn't think of Jesus as divine.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  And he actually never claimed to be the son of God himself. People would ask him and he would always say, if you say so, are you the son of God? If you say so.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  But yeah, a lot of these core tenets say the same thing. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism, they're they're preaching the same core tenets, which sort of gets back to what you were saying, that it's just this stuff that's floating around in the universe and it's it's kind of like, how do you find it? We're all trying to tap into it in different ways and.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could draw any analogy you want. There's 40 kinds of beer. Which one do you like? They all take you to the same place.

• 49:10Ryan Holiday?

  I wanted to I wanted to ask you about someone you told me that you'd gotten to know towards the end of his life, someone who who would almost certainly have some strong thoughts about what's happening in the world right now. But also at the core, you know, you go to this idea, it's I feel like at the end of it, like all all great writers are saying the same thing, too. But but I wanted to ask you about Kurt Vonnegut.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew Mr. Vonnegut before he passed away. I was frankly very fortunate to know Vonnegut and and Norman Mailer before they passed away. And I had dinner with Kurt maybe four or five days before he died. I mean, I'm happy to discuss him.

• 49:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what do you think he would? I mean, so there's a couple of things there, I guess. What do you think he would think about what's happening in the world right now? And then I'm also just curious, like, is he

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Pandemic pandemic wise or

• 50:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, pandemic and politically, because I mean, here you have a guy who experienced the firebombing of Dresden. So I got to imagine, although he was sort of politically active and, you know, sort of had strong opinions. I also got to imagine experiencing one of the worst things that's ever happened to modern humanity would turn down the volume on the outrage for you a little bit. It'd give you perspective, certainly.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I think in a weird way, he would probably sort of giggle a little bit at the pandemic and think that we deserved it.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  I think he would be both amused and disgusted by people who would deny the reality of science and almost militaristically resist simple measures that could keep you alive.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  I think he would be absolutely dreadfully horrified by the political environment that we live in. And in a weird way, I think he would probably say, but of course we're here. Where else could we have ended up? We're idiots, right?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  I remember that last dinner, I asked him, are you working on anything? What's interests you these days? You know, I was, I'm always curious about what other people are into, right?

• 51:36Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  And I remember he laughed. He goes, you know what I'm doing, man? You know what I'm doing?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  And I said, no, what? He's like, I just watched Law and Order all day. He's like, do you know there's a law and order on every hour of the day? He's like, you can go through your whole day watching Law and Order. And I sort of laughed. He goes, no, it's true. I've tried it. I've tested it. I've gone through 24 hours of period, 24 hour periods where I found a law and order somewhere on Cape every hour of the day. And, and when I had first met him, which was a few years before he passed away, I remember that one of the first questions I asked him was, are you writing anything? And he just laughed. He was like, writing is a young man's game. I'm done. I just scribble now.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  But he got really into art and, and making other things and just sort of, you know, writing short things. But I, I think he would have been both amused and deeply horrified. And I do think he would have seen Nazi Germany in present day, United States and been horrified by it.

• 52:50Ryan Holiday?

  I think of that exchange that he had with Joseph Heller on a probably a weekly, sometimes even a daily basis where, and, and you've probably experienced that too, where you're in, you know, the, the, the house of some incredibly rich person who, you know, makes it in some boring, if not outright evil industry. And, and you're just like, this person made more money today than my books will make in their lifetime. And, uh, and, and Vonnegut's making fun of Heller and Heller goes, but I have something that he doesn't have. And, and Vonnegut says, what could that possibly be? And he, and Heller says, enough.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Did Vonnegut have enough? Like, was he a happy guy or no?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  I, I don't know if I would call him happy or unhappy. I, I would call him complicated and, and, and complicated, right? Um, I think he probably was like a lot of people, sometimes happy, sometimes deeply unhappy, sometimes.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Thrilled to work and sometimes depressed and not wanting to do anything. I didn't ever know him as somebody who didn't think he had enough. You know, I, I, he had a wife he had been with for a long time. He had children that he loved. He lived in a place in New York that was very nice and, and, and of his choosing.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  And I don't, I think when I knew him, he was probably past the stage of thinking he was going to get anything more in his life than he had had. Right? If anything, he talked about the abundance he had. I, I remember one time we were eating and, um, I went to grab the check and he grabbed it.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, let me pay Kurt. He was like, do you know how many people still buy my books? I'm gonna get them.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Um, but I never, I never knew him as somebody who didn't think he had enough. I, I think at the end of his life, he was ready to go. That was my feeling. Like, I wasn't deeply shocked, even though I had just seen him when he died. I was sad.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  But I wasn't shocked.

• 55:22Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 55:28Ryan Holiday?

  We did a video about this recently. Like a stoic can't be afraid to ask for help. A stoic is not an emotionalist robot who stuffs all their emotions down and pretends they don't exist. No, as Marcus really says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. If you've got to ask a comrade for help, so be it. And as it happens, the stoics helped influence the founding of CBT therapy, which connects us well to today's sponsor, Talkspace. Talkspace therapists give you the support you need to feel your best. Talkspace has thousands of licensed therapists trained in over 40 specialties, including anxiety, depression, relationships, and more. I find that the money I spend on the therapists that I've had in my life has been some of the, the best money I've spent. It's been a great investment and Talkspace is a fraction of the cost.

• 56:12Ryan Holiday?

  Of in-person therapy, instead of waiting for an appointment, you can send unlimited messages to your therapist 24/7 and they engage with you daily, five days a week. Look, they give you guidance, they help you, they offer counsel, and I think it helps you better understand the philosophy you're studying here with us. So as a listener of this podcast, you get $100 off your first month with Talkspace. And to match with a licensed therapist today, go to talkspace.com or download the app. And make sure you use the code STOIC to get 100 bucks off your first month. Use the code STOIC, it helps support the show. Also, it saves you 100 bucks. So go to talkspace.com or download the app and don't be afraid to ask for help, people. That is part of this philosophy.

• 56:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's, there's a, there's a weirdness to meeting some guys like that.

• 57:04Ryan Holiday?

  Not as, not this is a gender thing at all. I just mean, like, you sort of, you meet these people who is sort of done, done it at the highest level, sometimes are the sort of icons in their own life or whatever. And you just sort of, you, you go, you get this sense, it's like, oh, they are just still like regular people, like they're still just human beings, like struggling with the fact that they're old or struggling with the fact that, you know, this or that, like, it's very, it's a very sort of stoic, and I think Daoist idea too, which is like, like, uh, human beings are very fragile and

• 57:45Ryan Holiday?

  the same thing happens to all of us towards the end, which is that we fall apart and then die.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was watching, uh, you know that Clint Eastwood movie, Unforgiven?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  I was watching that a couple of days ago and near the end of it, the young kid who goes on, on this sort of mission to kill somebody with Clint Eastwood says, well, we killed him, but I guess he had it coming, right? And Clint Eastwood sort of, Clint East responds by says, by saying, we all got it coming, kid.

• 58:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  And I, I mean, I've met a lot of, you know, I've met a lot of my heroes. I've met a lot of- Famous and wildly accomplished people. And yeah, you learn we're all human, right? They fart too. They take shits. They wake up scared. They have trouble sleeping. That almost that takes you, or at least it takes me back to sort of some of the core beliefs of Taoism or Stoicism because if you have succeeded on, on, if, if you have made your dreams come true, you can be proud of yourself for that achievement, but it doesn't make you feel any better necessarily.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  You still wake up and, and you think, okay, well, what now?

• 59:09Speaker 01

  And they are all human. I, I remember when I was 21 in Paris. I moved to Paris when I was 21 to be a famous writer. And I remember I was at a cafe with my roommate. And this was in 1992, who was a very flamboyant gay man. And we were talking about our sort of idols and we were drinking and partying. And he was like, listen, listen, you fools. He's like, there's 10 of us at this table. We're all smart. We're all gifted and we're all working our asses off. Like a couple of us are gonna do it. Somebody's gotta do it. Somebody, and, and, and the point was somebody's gonna be that famous writer

• 59:51Speaker 01

  or that famous athlete or that famous actor or that famous philosopher or that billionaire hedge fund manager or whatever you wanna talk about. But they, they, they're, they were at one point in their life in the same place where we were, right? Just start now. And somebody's gonna do it. And, and I always very much believed that, well, fuck, why not me? Right? I'll work as hard as anybody. I might not be as smart as them, but I can work harder. That somebody's gonna do it and it might as well be me. And, and, and.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  And I think there's a lot of power in that belief and a lot of power in that basic sort of idea, if you can really let it sink in. There's so many people I know or I met, I want to write a book. I'm like, well, why don't you? Well, I don't know where to start. I'm always like, with the first word, man. That's where you fucking start. And it's like, it's just that. It's like, you gotta take the shot. You gotta try. Or at least I believe you do, and I always have. Sometimes to great success and frankly vastly more often to failure.

• 1:01:09Ryan Holiday?

  To go to that point about the sort of the people you admire being these sort of flawed humans, I remember what struck me as an example that one time was reading that like Socrates had an unhappy marriage. And you're like, here's the wisest guy who ever lived, and he picked the wrong spouse. And you're just like, oh, you know, people are people. And that oftentimes people who are very smart in one area of their life are just totally stupid, or you know, stuck in some destructive pattern in another part of their life.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know a lot of people who who who almost need that destructive pattern too, to be to have that other side of their life, right? Like, I can't think of how many artists or writers or musicians I've met who need the chaos of of life to be able to do what they do, right? Like, and certainly I don't know Aristotle, but maybe he needed that pain that he got from his marriage to be able to do what he did in the other aspects of his life. Or maybe he was just human and chose poorly.

• 1:02:23Ryan Holiday?

  Well, to go to your, to go to your point about wanting to do something big, I think that's like, I think you and I sort of share sort of some trajectories around that. And, and there are other Stoics, I talked about this guy, Diotimis, in my new book, Lives of Stoics, but it's like, sometimes that ambition, that desire, like, hey, I'm gonna make something of myself, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna be the, I'm gonna be one of the people that, that, that gets over the chasm, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get there. That can be an immensely powerful force, but it's also kind of a volatile one, one that's difficult to control, and it may get you what you want, and then it may also blow

• 1:03:05Ryan Holiday?

  up exactly what you wanted. And I feel like your story has a little bit of that. My, mine, the blow up was a little bit less public, and I didn't do it on Oprah's couch, but, you know, you know what I mean?

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I mean, when I was a kid, I mean, when I was a kid, when I was in my late teens and twenties, early twenties, I decided I wanted to try to be a famous writer, right? And I made that decision after I read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. And, and Tropic of Cancer is a book that was banned for the first 35 years of existence in every English-speaking country in the world. Henry Miller was the most notorious writer in the world for most of his lifetime.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  And I remember, when I, when I read Tropic of Cancer, I kind of liked the Tao, I couldn't believe it existed. I couldn't believe somebody wrote it. I couldn't believe somebody put those words down and, and lived the life that allowed them to feel and know how to put those words down. And when I set out to be a writer, that was it. I was like, I'm gonna be the most controversial, most notorious writer in the fucking world.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  And it took a long time for me to learn how to write a book. I moved to Paris when I was twenty one and I got my first book published when I was thirty one. Um, and for those years, those ten years I was working, I was working every day to try to pull, pull it off. And then I did pull it off. Um, you know, uh, again, I don't wanna be some braggart, but I sold a lot of books and I've had, I had a lot of books at number one and, and the one you're speaking of was the first, A Million Little Pieces and.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  I remember when Oprah chose it and, and the sort of previous Oprah books, you'd sell, you know, between five hundred and a million copies and, and it was great and your next deal would be better. And you'd become a whole pro- high-profile writer and, and then she chose my book and it blew up. It sold five million copies in three months. It sold fifteen around the world. And it's a book about drugs and alcohol and how I got over them and, and it, it became sort of a, a bible for people or, or a guide for people in a way that I never expected.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  And certainly I never intended. The Million Little Pieces shouldn't be thought of as a self-help book, right? I- i- if it helps you, great.

• 1:05:47Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  But it's as, it's as much a self-help book as Tropic of Cancer is or On the Road is, right? And I, I bring up those books because those were both books written by people who, who very absolutely wrote about their own lives. Um, and used themselves as the protagonists of their own stories. And after A Million Little Pieces blew up, it was, it was, it was selling like crazy, but it, it, it didn't feel right. I wasn't, I was, I, I, I remember I started seeing a therapist, actually a guy you know. Um.

• 1:06:21Ryan Holiday?

  Fader.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Fader. I was talking to Fader this morning. He says hi.

• 1:06:25Ryan Holiday?

  I talked to him last week.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  But I remember I went to see him and it was and I said, listen, man, like, this isn't what I signed up for. I didn't sign up to be like Deepak Chopra or like Oprah's rehab guy. I was like, I'm in this to be the most notorious motherfucker in the world. And what the fuck happened? Um, and I was having trouble dealing with fame. I didn't enjoy fame. I still, you know, it sounds bratty or whatever, but I, I still don't. I don't, I never had any desire to be famous. I had a desire to be great. And I had a desire to be notorious and I had a desire to, to write things that changed people's lives and changed the world in the way books like

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Rimbaud's Season in Hell or Baudrillard's Perispline or Celine or Henry Miller or Kerouac or Brett Ellis or Norman Mailer or Kurt Vonnegut. The way their books changed me and changed the world.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  And then it all blew up, you know? And I remember I got, yeah, I got screamed at by Oprah. I got lots of bad things written about me. And I remember the next time I went to see Fader after it started to blow up. He was like, well, how do you feel, man? And I was like, I don't really know. And he goes, well, you got what you wanted.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  How does it feel?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  And I hadn't really thought about it that way. I was just sort of in the, the madness of, of

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  relentless negative press and all the rest of it.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  And I was like, you're right, man. I don't know how it feels yet. But, but that moment where he was like, you got what you wanted. It, it was kind of a profound moment for him because I, for me, because I, I realized he was right and, and I realized that contrary to what people thought, like I wasn't down. I wasn't miserable. I didn't think my career was over. It had moved to a place where I wanted it to go and where I had absolute freedom. Right? To do whatever the fuck I wanted. Nobody expected anything from me. I had money. I knew whatever I wrote was going to be published. And I knew it would get enormous amounts of negative attention, which was cool with me.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Um, you know, the Tao has this saying, if you care what other people think, you will always be their prisoner. And and and I've always believed that and and I was like, all right, well, fuck it. Everybody thinks I'm done. What what what got me here and what can get me out? And it was writing. Right? People don't read a million little pieces and it still sells a shit ton of copies. You know, you you talk about evergreen books, right? It's an evergreen book. Um.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  And and and it was like, people don't read it because of the things I lied about or I wrote about like. The big controversy was I wasn't in jail for as long as I said I was. Cool. Some of my friends killed themselves in different ways than I wrote about them. Cool.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  But people read that book because I I think I tapped into some deep part of our emotional selves and and and it moves people. And that's really was the only goal was to move people, right? The books I've mentioned all just moved me deeply and that's all I wanted to do. And I believe that just because Oprah was mad at me. And just because a bunch of people who work for the New York Times and the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune were fucking mad at me. And just because some lawyers were mad at me, that didn't take away what I could do. And what I could do was put words together, one after the other, after the other, and move people's hearts and souls in in a profound way. And so I just got back to it.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  I didn't read the media. I didn't give a shit. I left America for a while and I wrote another book. Um, and I I deeply believed, and this is very stoic, I I think, and very.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Taoist, that if I put my head down and I kept working, that everything would be fine and and it was. And and I was, I can't say I was right, but the the the lessons I learned from Stoics and Taoists were right.

• 1:10:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and there must be a part, I think there is like in that ambition, that desire to sort of touch the world and be known and be seen and, you know, maybe even be hated. There's, it's, there's, there's kind of a self-destructiveness to it. But if you can survive it, you come out at a better place. You know what I mean? Like you, you sort of, once you really feel what it's, what it feels like to have a lot of people really angry at you and you can survive it.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Well, it was interesting.

• 1:11:28Ryan Holiday?

  You come out better.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  You were bringing up Vonnegut and, you know, guys I was talking to when I was going through that, I was talking to Bret Easton Ellis, who had been through it with Psycho. I was talking to Bret McInerney or Jay McInerney, who had been through it with Bright Lights, Big City. I was talking to Vonnegut and I was talking to Mailer, who'd been through it in 20 ways, right?

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  And I, it's part of the game. You know, writing in books is sort of a dying art and culture now, but back when I first started doing this, it was a big deal. And part of the game was writing controversial things that caused problems, that held mirrors up to societies in ways that societies didn't want to look at themselves. And, and if you wanted to be a great writer, you better be prepared to get hammered.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Except that when you're a young writer, you don't think of that, right? You think of, oh, Henry Miller's book was banned for 35 years. How fucking cool is that? But you don't realize what it must have felt like to him to have his great masterpiece unreadable, right? Or you think about Norman Mailer getting, getting hammered for god knows what, you know, which book of his didn't he get hammered for? And you think about the fact that he just kept going, right?

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Vonnegut, surviving World War II, surviving Dresden, surviving a lot of years where he wrote incredible books that nobody read, right? And he just kept going. Brett Ellis, psycho, just kept going, and I just sort of realized like, this is part of it. If you want to play a big boy's game, you're gonna get hurt. And if you can't take it, get out.

• 1:13:25Ryan Holiday?

  If you can't stand the heat.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was willing to, you know, football analogy, I was willing to stand in the pocket. And I was willing, I was willing to stand there until some guy crushed me. Because I always believed, and still do to this day, that I can get up.

• 1:13:46Ryan Holiday?

  I think about that line in Kipling's If, because I've been reading it to my son at night, where he says, you know, and bear to have your words twisted by nays into a trap, to make a trap for fools. Like, you know, to know that's like, hey, you're gonna do something from this perspective. Maybe you're even gonna be upfront about it. You're gonna come from a place of this intention or that intention. And just like, hey, like, people, people are not only not gonna get what you're doing. They're gonna take the exact opposite of what you're doing and describe the exact opposite of your intention. And you're basically just gonna have to sit there and take it. And that's, that's the gig, man. That's the fucking gig. Get used to it.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I, one of my books.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  And part of what I like is when they're done, I just get rid of them, right? And, and learn, meaning I get rid of them from myself. They're in the world, they're gonna have their own life. People can say whatever they want about it. It, it's, it has nothing to do with me.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  And, and, and almost that, like,

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  lets me just keep going. You write a book, you put it in the world, you understand it's gonna have its life, you understand, like any life, there will be ups and downs, there will be positive times and negative times. And if people want to kill you for it, I don't care. I, I, I never care how people interpret my books. Because I don't read them, I don't even remember a lot of what's in them.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  And I, this must have been about 10 years ago, there's a, there's a really great event, I hope it still exists in Lyon, Lyon, France, called the International Symposium of the Novel. And they would invite like five or six writers from different countries and you would come. And it was every two years.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  But I remember when I went, which was like eight or 10 years ago.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  A part of what I did there, and you go for like a week and you do all this stuff, was I met with five French doctoral students who were writing their dissertations on me. Right?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  And I remember the questions they had about things I wrote. And I honestly, I, I, I think I just bummed them all out and disappointed them because I was like, I didn't, no, that's not what I was thinking. Or no, that's not what I meant. And, and.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  It ended up being sort of an interesting, but I think almost unsatisfying exercise for them because I was like, listen, you can write whatever the fuck you want about my books. I don't give a shit. However, you want to interpret them is cool with me. Whatever you think my intention was, was cool with me. I don't care. Say whatever you want. This book is, is in the world and it's, it's on its own, right? It's almost like having a kid that you, at 18, you just send them out. Say, see you later, kid. Don't ever call me again. That's kind of how I do it with my books. It's like, see you later, kid. You're on your own. Good luck. And I just walk away.

• 1:16:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Churchill said at some point, you, you kill it and fling it to the public. And that's sort of how it goes.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  I've never heard that, but yeah, that's, that's how I play it. Right? You, you, you finish it.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  And you walk away and you move on to the next one. Or you take some time off or you do whatever it is you want to do.

• 1:17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's, that's the, that's the perfect place to, to close this, I think. We'll, we'll kill it and we'll fling it to the audience.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Let's kill it and fling it to the audience.

• 1:17:25Ryan Holiday?

  There we go.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Hey, man, I, I do want to say like, you've been a great friend to me for a lot of years and I really. You know, maybe this isn't the place to say it, but I don't care. Like, I appreciate it. I think you're awesome. I love this.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  And frankly, I love your other work. I think Conspiracy is one of the best books I've read in the last decade. Just an astounding piece of fucking work.

• 1:17:49Ryan Holiday?

  Man, thank you. No, you were so, you reached out to me. I was in Brazil doing a talk and you sent me a note on, over email or Twitter or something. And I'm so glad you did because we've gotten to know each other and you've been very nice and very supportive and given me a bunch of great advice as well. So, so right back at you.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. When this is over, let's meet up somewhere and have a dinner like we have before.

• 1:18:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, let's do it again.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  All right. Well, thank you and love to you and love to the family and

• 1:18:21Ryan Holiday?

  Likewise.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  And stay safe.

• 1:18:25Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to another episode of The Daily Stoic. It's mind blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads of this show. It means so much to me to have all of you listen. If you want to help spread the word about the show, please leave a review on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcasting platform is. It helps a lot. And then of course, click subscribe. That's how we know how many people are listening and that that makes sure you get the episodes as they come in. So thanks again for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.