Stop Judging People. Go Meet Them. | Peter Santenello

It is easy to judge people from a distance. It is much harder to reduce them to a stereotype once you have sat with them, listened to their story, and tried to understand how they see the world. In this episode, Ryan talks with filmmaker, traveler, and author Peter Santenello https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello about what he has learned from meeting people across America. They discuss how our bubbles distort the way we see others and why curiosity is more useful than judgment. Peter also explains how traveling to 85 countries changed the way he sees the United States, why America is more hopeful than the headlines suggest, and what happens when we stop talking about people and start talking to them. Peter Santenello https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello/featured is an independent journalist and filmmaker with over four million subscribers on YouTube. He’s traveled to eighty-five countries and lived in five, building a global audience by letting people tell their stories in their own words. These days, Peter’s lens is focused squarely on the United States, where he explores the diverse, complex, and often misrepresented communities that make up the fabric of America. 📕 Pick up a signed copy of Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home by Peter Santenello https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/your-fellow-americans-dispatches-from-across-the-country-we-call-home-signed-by-author?_pos=1&_sid=b20e47d09&_ss=r at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/your-fellow-americans-dispatches-from-across-the-country-we-call-home-signed-by-author?_pos=1&_sid=b20e47d09&_ss=r: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/your-fellow-americans-dispatches-from-across-the-country-we-call-home-signed-by-author?_pos=1&_sid=b20e47d09&_ss=r Check out Peter’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello: https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello Follow Peter on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/petersantenello/?hl=en | https://www.instagram.com/petersantenello/?hl=en Peter’s Website https://petersantenello.com/ | https://petersantenello.com/ 📚 Pick up a copy of the books Ryan recommended to Peter at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC http://ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. I told you a couple of days ago about our crazy road trip down the Washington, Oregon, and California coast. I've driven across good swaths of this country. I've, I've seen quite a bit of it. There, there's some parts I haven't been to, but I've seen my share. And I think that's important, right? I talked in Wisdom Takes Work about travel, and it is important to travel all over the world and see all these distant lands. But it's also important to travel through your own country as a, as a tourist, travel through your hometown as a tourist, right? It's one of the things we've tried to instill in our kids. Like, they're always wanting to watch screens and YouTube or whatever. One of the things we do allow them to watch a lot of is like travel videos on YouTube,

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  where people are traveling to new places, exploring things. I love that because then we can go to those places, right? I want to encourage them to hear about something, be interested about something, and then go see it in real life. We're about to embark on a road trip in a couple of days. We're driving across a good chunk of the South. We've done it many times, but every time we do it, we discover new things, new people. We have friends we stop and see along the ways. And one of the YouTube channels we've been watching is Peter Santenello's channel. He's traveled all over the world, but all over America. He actually has this really great new book called Your Fellow Americans,

• 1:45Ryan Holiday?

  where he's trying to introduce people to this country and all the different parts of it. That was so amazing on our trip to Washington, just like the sheer difference in climate from where we'd taken off and where we landed, and then even from where we started driving to where we ended. That's just like how big America is. Although I was talking to someone in Australia a couple of days ago, and we were talking about just how big Australia is and how, how few people in Australia know all the different parts of Australia. Anyways, I want to get you to today's episode because it's a really awesome conversation. Peter was fascinating. Also, he sent me a text afterwards.

• 2:29Ryan Holiday?

  He went home and saw Rush. I went home, saw ACDC. We had this marvelous connection. We both kind of spent a chunk of our late teens in the same small town near Lake Tahoe, which was pretty cool. Anyways, I'll just get into it. And do check out this new book. I love books about America. I love books about traveling across America. And this is a new one that is going straight in our collection. We're going to carry it in the bookstore. He's signed a bunch of them. You can pick them up. And if you want a great YouTube channel to start following, check out his channel at youtube.com/petersantinello. He's got 4.27 million YouTube subscribers for good reason. Let me pull this up. Oh, he's done 850 million views.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  It's a huge channel. I'm just looking here at his most recent ones. He's traveling across Maine, across Philadelphia, Memphis, the deep South, the Ozarks, one of America's fastest shrinking cities, Arkansas, Colorado, some guy living in the Everglades, in old Florida, a modern company town. All this stuff is awesome. You will love his stuff and you will love this conversation. Thanks to Peter for coming out. And then hopefully he and I are going to get together when he comes back to Texas and do some collabs together as well. Do check out Your Fellow Americans. By that, I mean his great book. And if you live in America, your fellow Americans or your fellow citizens, wherever you happen to live. I felt good reading your book.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  I've lived in two of the places, and then I just did a road trip down through the redwoods. So I felt like I was reasonably familiar with it.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  All right, all right. What place is in the redwoods?

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  We started in Seattle and we drove down through Sacramento. So we did all of Oregon, basically all of Washington, all of Oregon, and then a little bit of California at the top, and then down through. I had a talk in Portland and San Francisco. So we started in Seattle and did a road trip with the kids. So that was the most recent one. But then I've lived in East LA and I have lived in Louisiana. So I've done, done all of it.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. You have, you have stories.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I do. I'm, I'm a big road trip guy. I think it's like the best way to see a place.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And we're in the country for it.

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. You, you said America is kind of like a choose your own adventure country or like a make your, like, it's a country I think you have to see by car. I mean, we did invent the car, so it makes sense that you have to see it by car.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  My wife, who's from Ukraine, says it's a build your own bowl country. That's what you said. Pick your protein.

• 5:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Pick your toppings, your dressing.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  And that's geography, that's climate, that's even politics, who you want to be around.

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Million choices.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  Driving from, from Washington to Sacramento, it was weird going like, it's June and it's cold in America. I was like, what? You know, and like not being in Alaska or something. I'm just like, wait, it's cold. Like San Francisco was the, was the warm place on the drive. And I was just like, what is happening right now? Because I left Texas, it was like 100 degrees.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  And I basically didn't see the sun for like five or six days. And then, you know, like the ocean in Seattle is so radically different than the ocean in, even in San Francisco.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:46Ryan Holiday?

  And I've lived in LA. And then that's, you're like, how is this all the same? Then we've been in Hawaii a couple of months earlier. Just like so many cuts on the same thing.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  But the United States is so big that it totally changes what you're experiencing.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you, and you can fly around, obviously. People have been to Las Vegas or New York or Miami. But when you connect it through that road trip.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  And then when you get off the highways.

• 6:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And then you really start connecting the dots. It's endless.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  It's a lifetime.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  I think the one thing that you find, and to me, this is what I sort of took from the book. It's like, people are people.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  Like, even though they might speak with radically different accents, they might have different political views. They might have very different lifestyles. But like, it's all basically people. I mean, you get that, travel all over the world, but it's, you also get that at home.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  There are very few, I don't swear on my channel because I got a bunch of kids watching. So I'm going to try to continue that. Okay, jack offs. Let's call them that. There are very few, right? If you go in with an open mind and you're cool to people, you get that back.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I run into very few problems. Like, I can't even think of any.

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it is weird. People are like intimidated by travel. And I don't know if I've ever experienced anything that would confirm that intimidation anywhere I've been in the world.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  So you, you've been to a lot of these places in the book?

• 7:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Any, any new places you didn't know of?

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I've never been to Alaska.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:11Ryan Holiday?

  So I thought that was fascinating. And then even, that is another thing you find when you travel is like, you think a place is one place. And then you realize like, yeah, it's a place plus a bunch of islands. Or do you know what, you know what I'm saying? Like, you're like, Alaska is Alaska, and then it's also a bunch of islands. Like, you think Taiwan is an island, but Taiwan is an island and other islands. Like, the Philippines is like a bazillion islands, like.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  It's, it's too much for one mind to comprehend.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  So we, we use easy labels, like the US is this, Italy is that, right?

• 7:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  And then you can break it down to like Texas is this, California is that, right? And then you can break it down to counties. And then you can go granular on the town.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And every town's in its cycle right now in America. It's either coming down at the bottom or going up and peaking. And so I was just in Austin, haven't been in Austin for a little bit.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Lot of energy there, a lot of excitement. You can feel that's on the up. Or I don't know if it's at the top, but it's on the up. It's rising.

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I was just in Maine, did a series there. Was in a town where it's, it's on its floor.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Right? So even when you talk about a state or even a county, it depends where you are in that place.

• 8:19Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  But it's too hard to explain all that.

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  I try to get into that in my content. Don't label easily because Sacramento is different than Tahoe.

• 8:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Roseville's even different.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I love the Sierra foothills, Nevada City, Grass Valley. You can live a different life out there.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  So we're, we're in a, in a tense time. I think we can all admit. And most of our dialogue is political.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Which a lot of it's needed, and we should have that conversation. But politics isn't everything. And we need to not forget a lot of what's so cool about this country. And my perspective comes from living in four other countries, traveling in 85, and then in 2020, coming back from Ukraine, lived in Ukraine for four years, and seeing Amer- in America in a whole different light.

• 9:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  More pumped on the country than ever before, which sounds odd to most people.

• 9:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  But that's what the videos capture and that's what the book captured.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the politics thing is interesting because people will go like Texas is red, California is blue.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  And it's like, well, I live in Austin, which is blue in Texas.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  And then I grew up in Sacramento in a county that was incredibly red, like one of the most red counties in California at that time.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's like, my experience was conservative upbringing, living in a liberal place now. But on a, on a zoomed out enough map, that doesn't, that doesn't seem like it would be true.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 9:47Ryan Holiday?

  And then of course, it's like, what's your, for the people that live there, it's like, what is their friend group like? What are their neighbors like? If, if you're talking to a, a theater kid in South Dakota, they might have one experience.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:01Ryan Holiday?

  And you're talking to, you know, a, a son or a daughter of parents with a very different occupation. They, they could, you know, it, it doesn't match the labels, I guess, is what you find.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It doesn't at all.

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  In California, okay, I live in Florida now.

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, where in Florida?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I live in Palm Beach Gardens, north of West Palm, about 20 minutes, so hour and 20 north of Miami.

• 10:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Okay, Florida has its labels, California has its label. I lived in California the majority of my adult life.

• 10:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Right? And both labels are true to some degree, but then once again, once you go granular, you can break them up in, in, in two seconds, like with what you just said. You can choose in either, one of those big states like Texas, Florida, California, they're their own countries.

• 10:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  There's everything there.

• 10:48Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Every type of person there.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. What's the line about Florida? Like, the further north you go, the deeper south you get?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  The further south you go, the more north you get.

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  You go down far enough, it's, all my neighbors are New Yorkers, we're from Jersey, right?

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And then when you get down south enough to Miami, it's the capital of Latin America.

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  That's what they say.

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  It's all mixed up.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So Florida's is, um, it's as redneck as you want.

• 11:16Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  It's as gay as you want. You have Key West.

• 11:19Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  You have Miami Beach.

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  It's as Latino as you want. It's as retiree as you want. It's as business.

• 11:27Ryan Holiday?

  Disney as you want.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Disney, it's business centric, a lot of entrepreneurs. It's like Texas, it's attach, attracting creators.

• 11:33Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Uh, so it's many things.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  We often go off the last bit of information we have.

• 11:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  For example, my mom, when I said I'm moving to Florida, she said, what are you retiring? She's like, she's gonna be around old people.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  Right, it's also whatever your sense of that place, different places mean different things to people based on the era that was most formative to them.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And, or let's take Mexico City, for example. When I first went there in 2008, so many people said, don't go there, it's dangerous.

• 12:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  And they're going off information, yeah, there's danger there, sure. But they're going off information when it was way more dangerous.

• 12:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Or you could even say that with the Balkans and Sarajevo, for example. Sarajevo is fine to travel to now.

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  The last bit of information people have the war in their head.

• 12:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Quite often.

• 12:21Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm. It's very hard to correct impressions.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  You have to update constantly. All these places are always changing. San Francisco, where I left, when I left in 21, it was at its low point.

• 12:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Right now, it's, it's much better than what it was. Not totally different, but a lot better. And so people will go, oh, it's so terrible there, but have you returned lately? Have you checked it out lately?

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  So, to go with everything, I mean, it's the same story with everything. It's just, the book tries to go into these stories through individuals in this country that most people probably have never met, these types of people. Cause we're all in our bubbles.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter where you live. You can be in the richest neighborhood, you can be in the poorest neighborhood, everyone's in a bubble. And this gets you out of your bubble into a different bubble.

• 13:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Smith Island, Elizabethan English still being spoken there. I met this guy, his family's been there 370 years. Because it was so removed for so long, the old timers still have some of that accent.

• 13:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like there's a, a form of Texas German, then there's like, uh, Louisiana French, you know?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:26Ryan Holiday?

  And, and like, that feels like it would have been a long time ago, and then it's not. The tradition is still there.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I don't know Texas too well. Does Texas, when you get close to Louisiana?

• 13:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Is there any of that Cajun culture coming over?

• 13:38Ryan Holiday?

  A little bit. I mean, yeah, Houston and Beaumont, like, there is, you're just so far north in Louisiana, you're, you're out of it.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 13:45Ryan Holiday?

  But, um, I mean, there were towns, like, there's this story that Robert Caro tells in, in his book on Lyndon Johnson, where, uh, one of the first sort of foreign leaders that Johnson entertains when he becomes president is the Chancellor of Germany.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:59Ryan Holiday?

  And he brings them to some town in central Texas, or right around here in the Hill Country, one of those Texas German towns. And the guy's just like, what is this? He's like, I'm back home.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:09Ryan Holiday?

  You know, because like, the, the Germans had come there, you know, a hundred plus years earlier, and their community they created was so insular, they were so isolated, that it was basically Germany, you know? And like the idea of the six flags, right? Like, how many different flags have flown over Texas or these different parts of the country? That feels like distant history.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  It's not that long.

• 14:32Ryan Holiday?

  And it's not. It's one or two generations in some cases.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Right, right. The thing is, we adjust and change quickly.

• 14:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Which makes it exciting. Seeing all the cranes in Austin right now. My hotel, I'm looking down on a massive construction site. Coming out here, you can see the sprawl coming out. It probably doesn't make you too excited, I can imagine.

• 14:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you move to a small town and then it doesn't stay small.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Right, but this is happening all over the country. It's like, places are attracting or detracting.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  And it's easier for people like you and me, well, you're pretty tied in with your bookstore, so you're probably not, it's not easy and you got kids here. But if you're working online.

• 15:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  It's a new phenomenon. I want to go where it's gonna work better for me. And you pack up and move, and it's happening all over the country. And I think it's fascinating.

• 15:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I mean, we've always been a country of migrants, from abroad and internally, people always moving around for the opportunity.

• 15:22Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's weird because there's kind of a divergence there, right? It's like, some people are incredibly mobile and some people are not mobile at all.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:29Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so much of the driver of American prosperity was like, if New York was on fire, if LA was hot, people could go there and, and live and work. And part of the problem of the housing crisis is that it, it's just, it's hard to move, right? If you have money, it's not hard. If you don't have money, it's very hard.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  If you have money, you're not tied in super deep to your community, many generations. And I'm sure out here, there's a lot of that, which I admire very much. I think it's very cool. The more I travel the country, I really admire these, these places where the, you know, the family's like six, seven, eight generations is cool. I think it's an awesome thing. You either have that or you don't.

• 16:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  But so fresh in the American story, all our ancestry, how insane were they? They're just like, I'm gonna leave my language, my work.

• 16:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  My family, I'm going for this new thing, no guarantees, we'll see what happens.

• 16:19Ryan Holiday?

  Have you seen the new Little House on the Prairie?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Haven't.

• 16:22Ryan Holiday?

  It's kind of an interesting take on it because, like, we've often celebrated the pioneers as being like courageous.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:29Ryan Holiday?

  And whatever. And obviously, there's the whole, you know, taking other people's land part of it that we didn't do a good job talking about in the past.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:35Ryan Holiday?

  But the, the other thing we've missed is that like, to borrow a very offensive, we weren't always sending our best. Like, it wasn't people with options that were choosing to cross the plains by wagon, okay? Like, these were somewhat impulsive people. These were people that had blown up their lives. These were people that were fleeing from something. And so one of the things they do a better job of in the show is like, why are they moving so much? It's like, because the dads kind of, not a deadbeat, but like, not, like, the reason Lincoln moves around a lot as a kid is his dad was just kind of an air do well, right? Like, if it's working, you stay where you are.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 17:14Ryan Holiday?

  You know?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:15Ryan Holiday?

  And so part of that American spirit is like, it's not working here, I'm gonna walk a thousand miles and start fresh in Oregon.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  There's some gold over there.

• 17:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. And, and there is a little bit of, I mean, it's fundamentally irresponsible to take your family by a covered wagon through unsettled lands and, you know.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  To be in the Donner Party?

• 17:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, because you read a newspaper article that said there's stuff over here, and then this guy sold you a map, you know?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Who'd be the modern day version of that?

• 17:46Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the, the Donner Party guy was a charlatan, like, the, the guy that sold them the secret path or whatever. Like, he was like an internet marketer, basically, right? He was like, this is how you, you know, and so, um, but just to follow that is also crazy, you know?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  It is crazy, but there's that adventure in all of us, right?

• 18:05Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  To some degree. Some have more of it than others.

• 18:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  And I could imagine in those times, you're just getting by, and then it just sounds so good. It's sort of like the internet today, right? Some people can make some things sound so great.

• 18:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  And people follow it.

• 18:20Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Right? And so you're like, oh man, my life sucks, but I'm gonna get some land over there, Homestead Act, 160 acres.

• 18:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I can farm it, I can live my dream.

• 18:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And now it's like, oh, you're watching The Trad Wife, or you're watching, uh, this person or this person. And you're like, that's what I want my life to be.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Just a different medium, huh?

• 18:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, totally.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Similar impulse.

• 18:39Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Different medium.

• 18:41Ryan Holiday?

  And the same people willing to tell you what you want to hear and sell you what you want to hear. The wishful thinking of, of, of hearing it and not checking it too closely.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:50Ryan Holiday?

  You know?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:51Ryan Holiday?

  It's all there.

• 18:54Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things I was thinking about as I was reading your book is like, travel is a little bit like reading in that there's all the places you want to go, just like there's all the books you want to read. And the problem is some places traveling to once or reading once is not enough. Right? Like, it's hard to justify rereading when there's all these books that you haven't read.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:15Ryan Holiday?

  But there's something about traveling to the same place, like we were just in Rome and it was, it's maybe my fourth time and it was crazy to think I'm walking around on the forum. I could afford this time to hire this really good guy and she's showing this stuff. And I'm like, I don't remember seeing this. And she's like, oh, this just opened. And I'm like, it's been here for 2,000 years and I was here 10 years ago and I couldn't see this.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:39Ryan Holiday?

  Like, they just excavated it. So like 10 years is that in Roman history, but it fundamentally changed the experience that I was able. So it's hard for someone to afford to go to Europe once. It's hard to do a family road trip across the United States once. But actually you have to do it like three or four or five or 10 times to actually get it.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so this, this tension between reading and rereading, traveling and coming back is like, that's the tricky part.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  That's a great comparison. Yeah, that one, I mean, it's a good problem to have firstly, but I understand what you're saying. Like, I'm not trying to toot my horn. I've been 85 countries. I could have been all of them.

• 20:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  But I went back to Istanbul 20 times.

• 20:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Lived in Ukraine, wanted to go to somewhere warm in the winter. Two hours. Okay, cool. And I love that city. It's fantastic. In Italy, how is it, it's, it's really hard not to go back to Italy.

• 20:31Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  So I get you and the older I get now, it's, I don't need as much adventurous stuff. Don't need to go to Pakistan again. Uh, Iran, I don't really think that would go so well these days. Right? But going back to some more stable and I'd say easier travel places as you get older makes sense.

• 20:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, are you going to understand a handful of places really, really deeply?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:55Ryan Holiday?

  Or are you gonna have been like, you know, you hear, they're like, oh, we're going on this cruise and we're gonna stop in 16 cities.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:02Ryan Holiday?

  And you're like, okay, you got two hours here, one hour. I mean, it's better than nothing, but like you skimmed the surface.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  It's go everywhere, see nothing.

• 21:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And so that's a tough balance and that's tough to sell to someone who gets two weeks. Like, if you're working the average job in the United States, what are you getting? Two weeks?

• 21:19Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Right? And so Christmas, family, Thanksgiving, family, you're lucky if you're going overseas. And so you got six days in Italy.

• 21:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Do you just want to stay in, in Rome and just see Rome where you're like, I gotta see all these things I've always dreamed of going to. Everything's a choice, you know? I saw with my father when I was growing up, he never, we never traveled growing up and he never got vacation time. His, his industry didn't allow for it. And so I'm like, okay, if I want to see the world, don't do that.

• 21:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And you can sort of line it up at a younger age and be like, okay, these are my priorities. And maybe you don't know your priorities at 18, but if you're like, I really want world travel. Well, you can X a lot of things off your list.

• 22:02Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  And you might be broker than your buddies who got that corporate job.

• 22:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And ascended the ladder. That's all a personal choice. Or there is some of this attitude, like you got as, you know, the, the more well traveled someone is that, you know, the higher they are in the hierarchy or something.

• 22:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Which I think is total BS because, you know, I've, I've sacrificed not having a family. I'm married. We don't have kids. And so to do my work, the sacrifice in that is, well, if I want to be a great parent, I'd have to cut back on that.

• 22:33Ryan Holiday?

  You have the fantasy of traveling with your kids and then you realize like, it's actually not really fair to them. You know what I mean? Every time I hear someone, they're like, we're selling everything and we're going to travel for a year on a sailboat. I'm like, yeah, okay. I'm sure, I'm sure that's actually great for your kids, not, not a nightmare.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:50Ryan Holiday?

  No judging, but you get what I'm saying. It's like, it's like kids need routine and structure and obviously also novelty and adventure. But like, they want to go to their friend's house. They don't want to go to France.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And when you become a parent, that's, that's your number one priority, right?

• 23:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It should be, right? I would think. And so greater point is everything has a sacrifice and just seeing as many countries as possible.

• 23:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Doesn't win you any award, in my opinion.

• 23:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they don't, they don't get a prize and you're probably not on your deathbed being like, I'm so glad I went to so, I, I saw all the countries, done, you know?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 23:24Ryan Holiday?

  You're going to be thinking of a handful of experiences, not the long list.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  The beauty, and you're going to get a very pro-American talk with me because that's the premise of the book and my videos and the beauty of this country is a lot of people have that option. I get it. If you have health issues, if you're taking care of your parents, you're not going anywhere. But more than anywhere I've seen, and I've been very open-minded with it,

• 23:48Speaker 01

  you can cut your own life here.

• 23:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  You want to open up a bookstore, have a cool pod, do what you've done, live in a small town in Texas. Go for it, you can do it. And many places in the world, let's take Ukraine, for example. You know, it's war now, it's a bit different, but if you want to do, take your career to the top, it's pretty much one or two places to go.

• 24:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. You also see this in foreign countries, particularly Europe. You're like, oh, like the social safety net makes it, creates a floor.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:22Ryan Holiday?

  But there's also kind of a ceiling.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 24:24Ryan Holiday?

  You're like, oh, like waiter is good job. You know what I mean? And so there, there is especially like for young people, you know, there's, there's, there's either like, if I stay here, there's limited opportunities or I have to leave.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:40Ryan Holiday?

  And you can kind of feel that. And, and in America, you can leave and just go to another part of America because it's so big.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And without having to do anything with the government.

• 24:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Okay, you get a new driver's license.

• 24:50Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  There are other countries you have to like, you have to get approved to live in different regions of the country.

• 24:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  You can't just get up and go.

• 24:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  And so it's interesting, my wife, being Ukrainian, I lived there for four years. We were married a couple of years before we came back to the US, seeing it all through her eyes. And she edits all of our content. So that's a full-on crash course on America, seeing different regions.

• 25:16Ryan Holiday?

  Just how insanely big it is.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Insanely big and how different the people are.

• 25:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And like the most pro-American person I know.

• 25:25Ryan Holiday?

  That's funny.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Because she, she loves it. She's totally embraces, she speaks English perfectly. You're seeing things through someone else's eyes for the first time and like, oh, I didn't think of that or I didn't see it that way. And she was a big help in this project too.

• 25:37Ryan Holiday?

  That's why it's important that Americans travel. So you can see how other countries see the world and then how other countries see you. Like, one of my favorite passages in, from Bill Bryson, who's like one of the greatest travel writers ever. Um, he's talking about being in Australia and picking up a newspaper.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:54Ryan Holiday?

  And just how absurd the news fell to him. He's like, he's reading about some murder and it's not scary because the names are ridiculous and the circumstances, you know, don't seem real. He's reading about their politicians, but he doesn't care. He has no stakes, right? It's just, he's just able to see it as this thing. And then like, we were in Australia two years ago, like during the 2024 election. And on the one hand, it's weird how much American politics are on the front page of, you know, other countries' newspapers and then also their news broadcasts. At the same time, like we're watching Olympic coverage from another country.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:35Ryan Holiday?

  And you're just like, oh yeah, they're rooting for different people. Like, it's, it's just totally, like, it's just this, you're watching the same thing, but the lens is different.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:44Ryan Holiday?

  And it forces you to realize, oh, like my perspective is not the only perspective.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 26:50Ryan Holiday?

  And that everyone is going around, it's like everyone's the main character in their own movie. And, and every country is the main character in their own movie, even if America looms so large, uh, literally and figuratively in other people's stories.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, in international travel, it allows, because we're in the game, I like to say we're in the game right now.

• 27:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  We're on, this is, it's World Cup time or just finished, we're on the football field.

• 27:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Right? When you're in it, you only see what's in front of you in that perspective. And then when you're in the stands, you're looking down at the game from a different perspective. And that's international travel. I've learned more about the US in many ways from being outside of it and viewing it as a spectator than sometimes when you're in the thing.

• 27:35Ryan Holiday?

  And that probably is, I mean, in your videos, like, there's usually like some person from there showing you around. Right? You have that person's perspective on that place.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  I have two styles. So one is I meet up with someone that let's say is an expert, is like, this next video we're doing is about a lobster man in Maine. And so I want to get into that world and show that perspective. Other videos, about half of them, I call it wing it videos, where I have a, a plan, what I'm going to do, where I'm going, but it's really who I run into along the way. And the goal is to show the audience, like, things are way more mixed up than we ever think they are.

• 28:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I never know what anyone's going to say and it's my responsibility to be the conduit, to bring that message out, whether I agree with it or not, and let the audience see it.

• 28:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Sometimes someone will say something. You know, that's over here. And then the next second they're saying, you know, someone else is saying that something that's totally different. And that all exists. The only way to truly get a story, how many people live in this town?

• 28:36Ryan Holiday?

  Eight, eight to 10 in the town, and then it's like 80,000 in the county.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so let's say, say there's 10,000 here would be to do 10,000 stories.

• 28:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure, because everyone's experience is different.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  It's the only way to really get it in an accurate way. But usually there's some consensus. Like, for example, if there are, you know, people on the streets, you know, every other step, someone's passed out, you know, on fentanyl or something. Pretty much everyone say, hey, we have a fentanyl problem.

• 29:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Right. So there is some consensus with most stuff.

• 29:07Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  But then you realize how wildly different people are with what they think. And that comes from their experience. And it's not for me to tell them they're right or wrong. It's to tap into that because I didn't, I didn't live the life they lived.

• 29:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, I mean, I feel like life is about figuring out how the other half lives. You know, like, oh, this is what it's like for you, you know?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:30Ryan Holiday?

  And then what do you do with that information? I guess is the question.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  When you can understand where someone's coming from, it definitely develops empathy.

• 29:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I want everyone to be able to watch or read this and not feel all triggered. And here's where I'm at.

• 29:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  The number one comment goes something like this. My family and I can't get together for Thanksgiving without arguing about politics. We can't watch anything on TV that has anything to do with culture. Because Uncle Larry starts arguing at Aunt Jane and blah, blah, blah. Your content is something we can all sit around and watch and enjoy together.

• 30:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's my lane.

• 30:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Now, does politics get into things? Because politics gets into life. There's no way around it sometimes. And things are going to go into that. They're going to flirt along that.

• 30:16Ryan Holiday?

  Everything is the way that it is because of politics.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  It's all policy, right?

• 30:20Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Pretty much everything and results are because of policy.

• 30:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  And economics, which is from policy.

• 30:27Ryan Holiday?

  County is doing well and the other isn't. Why the freeway is here as opposed to here? Why they grow soybeans instead of this or that, you know? All these are ultimately are incentives and policy decisions.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I think about this all the time. I always talk about, we were in Natchez, Mississippi. And we were driven up from New Orleans, we were in Natchez, Mississippi. And we're going to Vicksburg. I wanted to see the Civil War battlefield. And we're talking to this waitress and she was telling us she's from there. And I go, oh, so have you ever been to Vicksburg before? What's it like? What should we expect? And she's like, I've never been. And I'm like, it's like 30 minutes away from here.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Ryan Holiday?

  You know?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Ryan Holiday?

  And you, you realize like, oh, just some people have literally never, for whatever reason, have never gone outside their little area, right? You talk to people, they're like, I'm going on my air, you know, I'm flying on an airplane for the first time to visit my aunt in Nashville. And you're like, okay, you're in your 40s. And, and so that's just a very different way of experiencing the world. Put aside passports, put aside international travel, whether you're, you know, setting up routes in one city or traveling by train. It's like, some people haven't been to the next town over.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  For sure. The most extreme form of that would be the Schwarzentruber Amish.

• 31:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  The Schwarzentrubers are what most people think of when they think of Amish. No technology, basically living in 1871, kerosene lamps. And I met up with some of those people when I was in Holmes County. Holmes County, people think of Lancaster County was the home of the Amish. Yes, it is, but Holmes County not, not far behind. And so like everything, you have the Schwarzentruber on this end. For those listening, I got my hand way out to the right. And then you have the Beachy Amish on this end. And now that's almost Mennonite.

• 32:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  And the Beachy are going to drive around, use microwaves and have electricity. Now they're all technically Amish. Now, when I was with some Schwarzentrubers that I met accidentally. And, you know, I was very respectful. I'm like, guys, I'm making a video. They didn't really even know what a video was.

• 32:36Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  They didn't know who the president was.

• 32:39Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Ryan Holiday?

  That'd be nice.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  They just had no clue about any of this stuff. They're living in their own world.

• 32:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, do you mind if I show some of this? And they're like, yeah, just don't have our faces on it. So I made a video without putting the camera on their faces. And the woman said to me, her number one question, I said, is there anything you want to know about the outside world? She looked up and she's like, have you ever flown in a plane? And I was like, wow.

• 33:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  And she's like, what's that like? And I had to think about it. What's it like? I don't know. It's sort of like flying in a dream state through clouds and gets you somewhere really quickly.

• 33:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, she's getting you to think about something magical that you have completely taken for granted.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Totally. And I looked in the rearview mirrors as I was leaving and she's looking up at the sky like a little smile. And you realize she's just as American as you and I, in the same country. But yeah, that's a different world.

• 33:38Ryan Holiday?

  And we also tend to think that those things, it's like, oh, way over here, far away. Maybe there's these Amish people that are very, it's like, there's a Mennonite community like five minutes from here.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:48Ryan Holiday?

  And it's like, if you look from.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  There's so much.

• 33:52Ryan Holiday?

  You're closer to people living in a completely different reality than you, than you think. I mean, right down to unhoused and homeless people are living in a completely different reality. Every state, you know, who's the richest person in that state? What is their life like compared to yours? Like, they might live in Texas, but they don't live in Texas. You know what I mean?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:14Ryan Holiday?

  They live in the world and their domicile is in Texas, right? And like, just the wide, enormous breadth of experiences that different people looking up at more or less the same horizon are experiencing.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a part in the book called Neither Here Nor There.

• 34:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And it's about people that are in the country, obviously.

• 34:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  But sort of living in their own world. Siberian Yupik, up in St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. You can see Russia from it. It's 30 miles away. Three times the size of Maui. They still hunt whale every year, reindeer. Yeah, you need an invite to get on the island.

• 34:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And then you go to Molokai too. I mean, just like the Hawaiian Islands are radically different than each other.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Molokai and Oahu, two different universes.

• 35:04Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  So the St. Lawrence, in St. Lawrence Island, Siberian Yupik people, you know, they've never seen a tree before. It's just too far north, right? And then you have the Chicanos, you know, East LA. And if you tap into Chicano culture, it's its own thing. You'll meet guys that have a Spanish accent that don't speak Spanish.

• 35:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Like they're speaking English with a Spanish accent. And then the Amish, I think, is the class, you know, top example of, you know, beating to their own drum.

• 35:34Ryan Holiday?

  I remember I was, I was giving a talk to a baseball team and I was just asking all these questions. This guy was telling me the interest in culture between like, they were like, one of the faux pas is like, if you assume one of the black players speaks Spanish. Because like in that world, it's different than other parts of America.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:52Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like, yeah, like you're like, oh, right. Because this is such a global game. You're drawing different distinctions, boundaries, in groups, out groups, whatever, that I'm even clocking is happening.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah. I'm excited about Texas.

• 36:09Ryan Holiday?

  Texas is great.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do, I don't know much about Texas. I worked at, when I was living in Lake Tahoe in my young twenties.

• 36:16Ryan Holiday?

  Where in Lake Tahoe?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  I lived in Kings Beach. I lived in Homewood. I lived in Tahoe City.

• 36:21Ryan Holiday?

  Grew up in Homewood every summer. I worked at, do you know Obexers?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 36:25Ryan Holiday?

  I, my first job was at Obexers.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  I started a business off the Obexers Community Board.

• 36:31Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Ryan Holiday?

  That's amazing.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  When I was, I was hammered drunk one night and stoned with my buddy. And we're, we're young Tahoe guys, snowboarding all winter and summer's coming around. What are we going to do for work? This was 2000, probably.

• 36:45Ryan Holiday?

  Roughly then. It would have been 2000, the summer of 2000, maybe 2001. So maybe, maybe I made you a sandwich.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I got those sandwiches all the time. Huge sandwiches.

• 36:55Ryan Holiday?

  I loved it. PDQ is better.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  You did half of the time.

• 36:58Ryan Holiday?

  PDQ is better than Obexers sandwich wise.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  PDQ was better. So I was with a buddy late night and we're like, what are we going to do? How are we going to stay in Tahoe? We're just, right, didn't want to have anything to do with getting a corporate job or anything.

• 37:09Ryan Holiday?

  There probably isn't one.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  There isn't. You'd have to move off the hill. You'd have to go to Sacramento or the Bay. And, um, like, okay, there's all these wealthy people here. They need their cars cleaned. Auto detailing. I, I posted something at the PDQ, get a call the next day. And we, my buddy and I tore it up all day.

• 37:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  This is when I drank many years ago. Get a call the next day. And the lady's like, I'm calling about the auto detailing. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

• 37:37Ryan Holiday?

  You had your first customer already and you'd already been.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  I, I had no clue. And then I'm like, uh, she's like, when can I get in the schedule? I'm like, hold on one second, ma'am. Let me, let me check the calendar. I'm like, oh. Should I do this or not? And then I said, yeah, so my first job came out of there.

• 37:50Ryan Holiday?

  There you go.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:51Ryan Holiday?

  Nice.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  But West Shore, what a, what a place.

• 37:53Ryan Holiday?

  It's the best.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  The best shore.

• 37:55Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I lived seven or eight years up there. But you, you know, if you want to further your life, unless you're in real estate, construction, I guess, own a restaurant.

• 38:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  There's not much.

• 38:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or you're a tech billionaire or something.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  You're a tech billionaire. Now Incline Villages take, I mean, it was always wealthy, but it's really taken off.

• 38:15Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and then the point about you think it's one thing, it's the other. It's like, right? Cause you cross the state border and the taxes are different.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:22Ryan Holiday?

  So it tracks as a different clientele. And so it's just different worlds. The borders are made up and arbitrary, but one side of the line versus the other can mean a totally different experience, conception.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do miss that part of the country. You're in Tahoe in the winter and there's eight feet of snow out your door.

• 38:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  And in the same county, there are palm trees. You go down, you go down to Auburn.

• 38:46Ryan Holiday?

  I moved to Granite Bay when I was in high school and our house was in Placer County and my parents' little cabin in Tahoe was also in Placer County. So it was like as suburbs as suburbs get and the mountains that, you know, I guess we're closer to the lake. But anyway, you know, what's the lake at? Three, 4,000 feet?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  No, 62.

• 39:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So, so like that much elevation climb in one county.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:09Ryan Holiday?

  And then different worlds, different climates.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  And then you go to Reno, it's dry, high desert, eight inches of rain a year.

• 39:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  And then you got the bay, San Francisco, my heart's there. I love that city.

• 39:20Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And then obviously the coast. It's, it's really spectacular. I do miss it a lot. Do you miss it back there?

• 39:26Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Cause this is totally different.

• 39:29Ryan Holiday?

  It's totally different.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  What do you, what do you like here? Just the big open spaces?

• 39:32Ryan Holiday?

  I love the big open spaces. I, for me, as I travel, I was in the middle of the country. It's nice.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think I like the space. I kind of like the heat.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  People are nice.

• 39:41Ryan Holiday?

  People are nice. You bounce around and you find your, your place, you know? I was ready to be done with California.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Okay. When, when did you move out?

• 39:49Ryan Holiday?

  2011.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's been a while, but I've lived all over. But this is like, not compromised, but this checks a bunch of different boxes that I wanted. Then you set up roots and then you're like, oh, this is where I live.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 40:03Ryan Holiday?

  Which is the interesting thing. You meet people and you're like, why are you here? And they're like, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes I think you think people have an affinity for why they're there. And it could be the most, people are there because they're taking care of their parents. People are there because their car broke down at 40 years ago. And they were like, this is where I live now. Nate Bargatze has a joke about, you know, he grew up in this town and it was named after Andrew Jackson. And people go like, he was a bad guy. And he's like, we didn't know him, you know? Like, that's not why we live there.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Jacksonville?

• 40:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. But his point is like, we just put so much on people about where they live and why they live there and what it means. I mean, I was talking to, there's a woman, she is a dermatology clinic down the road. She's a dermatologist. She went to Harvard. I'm like, why are you here? You know, she's like, because if I set my clinic up here, I got my student loan debt compensated. And if I did it in Austin, I didn't. So that's why I live here. You know, like, you just realize like people live in different places for all. And when you're open and you're curious, it gets so much more interesting than when you think you know what it says about somebody.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's a big uptick in people moving to rural areas. I mean, depending COVID was big for that, but and it also shows you, you know, we, we have a housing crisis in this country and housing's expensive in so many areas.

• 41:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And then it's not.

• 41:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  In like, do you want to live there though? That's the question. But I was just in, uh, Little Rock. I did a video there. I met this young couple. They bought a really cool home for 182,000 with land. Nice ranch style. You can go way cheaper. Even California, if you want to go up to Crescent City.

• 41:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  And buy a, I mean, it's not dirt cheap, but I think you get something for like 250.

• 41:50Ryan Holiday?

  Or anywhere in central California.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Central Valley. Yeah.

• 41:55Ryan Holiday?

  I remember I was driving from, where were we driving? We were driving from 30A to Orlando.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:01Ryan Holiday?

  So down the Panhandle into Florida and, and we're like, I was like, I feel like just this six hour drive, you could solve the entire housing crisis in this country. You know, you're just passing through nowhere with nothing in one of the now more expensive states. Right? And you're just like, how, you know, you just realize like, the one thing we do have is lots and lots and lots of space.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  We're so lucky. I think we're just a hundred years behind Europe.

• 42:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  With that, right? Europe's tapped out. Western Europe, if you go to Switzerland or Italy, it's like, in a way, every score and inch is sort of taken. I mean, there's plenty of nature.

• 42:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  But as far as housing, if you're in Switzerland, they don't have the opportunity as a young person in America who could, like, again, you gotta be the, have the right mindset, but like.

• 42:51Ryan Holiday?

  They're not building a development with a thousand houses like they're doing down the street, anywhere in Europe. Because how? Where?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. When I moved out of Tahoe, I so badly wanted to move to San Francisco.

• 43:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Like so badly. And I just was, I was very practical with the numbers and I'm like, man, if I move to Reno, which sounded, it's, it sounded awful when I said that to everyone, everyone gave me, gave me a hard time on that one. They're like, what are you, you're ruining your life. Why would you go there? I'm like, yeah, but I want to own a house. And so it's 45 minutes down the hill. That mortgage was cheaper than rent in San Francisco and I wanted to go back to college and I'm just, I had to pay my way. So University of Nevada, no, it's not Harvard, but hey, I could have the opportunity to go and I was paying. So I was like, all right, crunch the numbers, could do that. That time Reno is cheap. Reno's not, not cheap anymore.

• 43:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Like that blew out. And so there's always this next place where like, how do you see it before the thing gets expensive? And there's still plenty of places in this country.

• 43:59Ryan Holiday?

  That's the energy of America. There's still places to go and people are able now to go back. Like it was Detroit for a while, right? You could go to places.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  You can go back. Yes.

• 44:09Ryan Holiday?

  You go back to places that were once nice. And that's sort of, that's your point about cities being in different points in the cycle.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yep. Detroit downtown, when I was there last, it was actually pretty nice downtown. But yeah, the, the population cleared out. Common story, I mean, that's a theme I get into a lot. I think about, you know, I want my videos not just to be a travel video. That doesn't interest me. I would do something else. But is there meat on the bone? Is there substance in there? Can we learn something? Like, what's the culture doing? And a theme I just see a lot is industrial town, industry left, jobs left.

• 44:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Thing collapses.

• 44:46Ryan Holiday?

  And how that cycle repeats. I mean, the reason this area is booming between Austin is because Tesla is here and SpaceX is here. And the born company is here. And then all the adjacent things are coming around. And it's like, I don't know where that is in the cycle, but it doesn't last forever, you know?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:02Ryan Holiday?

  Studebaker seemed like it would last forever. And, you know, all these companies did, and now we refer to that area as the Rust Belt, right? It's so, it is, it's a cycle and it might be your lifetime. It might be two generations or it could be a really fast cycle. There is booms and busts. You know, you see that in the old west, that this was a metropolitan city and then it's Tombstone, Arizona, right?

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Or the fact we still have company towns in Arizona. So the company town was huge, what? 80, 100 years ago.

• 45:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Lot in West Virginia. Got paid in script, company money, go to the company store.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And I've done a lot of those videos. And then I, I was looking late night on Google Maps. I'm like Baghdad.

• 45:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Baghdad, Arizona? What? And so I go in on it and I start researching the town and it's like, oh, Freeport-McMoRan owns this town?

• 45:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Okay. It's a copper, copper mine. And so they still have that old school structure as in my company owns all the real estate. Everyone that lives there works for the company. And I went in thinking, well, company towns don't have a great reputation in the past. I mean, they were almost slave.

• 46:14Ryan Holiday?

  Like an indentured servant.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Invented servants, right? And you're stuck there. And then if your, your husband dies in the mine, the wife has to leave the housing immediately. It was awful, right? In many ways. I get out there to Baghdad, sort of with that in the back of my mind. And I've talked to as many people as possible. What's it like living out here? And that starts into something else. Cause Americans are great at opening up and wanting to talk if you take interest. And so I'm getting into the story. They're like, oh, average salary, I believe about 90,000. My rent for my three bedroom, two bath home is $350. All healthcare taken care of. My kids are taken care of with summer camps. School's great. No crime, because if someone, if someone's had a line, the company kicks them out of town.

• 46:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. It's good while it lasts.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And it's good while it lasts. Copper's good right now. Not for me.

• 47:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  I'm guessing not for you.

• 47:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  I don't want to be in that mold.

• 47:05Ryan Holiday?

  But for somebody, it's the dream.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Totally get it in this time now where it's like, where's your job going? Where's inflation going? How expensive housing is getting? I saw just like tamp down on the pressure.

• 47:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Of modern life. I was like, that's pretty cool. And there are two of those towns. There's another one, Morenci, which is bigger in Arizona. And these open mine pits are insane.

• 47:28Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read Nomadland?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  I haven't. I've heard of it. I haven't read it.

• 47:31Ryan Holiday?

  She talks about that. That's the dark side of the company town is Amazon sets up a temporary Christmas fulfillment center. Or it's these people that travel from sort of temp job to temp job in campers and RVs. And by the way.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  That's a video also, right?

• 47:47Ryan Holiday?

  Okay. It's a movie also.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  It's a movie. I've seen it.

• 47:49Ryan Holiday?

  The book is incredible. The movie's also good. But just like, you realize like the company town isn't, isn't always so permanent. Because it's seasonal, right? All the people that work adjacent to national parks or this tourist season or this, you know, big shipping or fulfillment or, you know, mineral season, like, and that you're temporarily here and then we're all going here and we're chasing and it's, you're never setting up roots. It's, there's a sadness to it also.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was out, I believe it took place there, Quartzsite, Arizona.

• 48:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  They're living on BLM land. And a lot of people are sold.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Hey, live a cheap retirement.

• 48:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Live out of your car, live it out of your van. And that's all great until the summer comes around. And a lot of people die out there.

• 48:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  It's pretty hardcore.

• 48:38Ryan Holiday?

  People should spend some time in some RV parks and get a different slice of what, what America is for some people and has become because of the screwed up nature of our social safety net, income inequality, how expensive stuff is.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are a lot of retirees suffering. And they

• 48:59Ryan Holiday?

  People's never required from the financial crisis.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Their social security isn't keeping up.

• 49:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  And for example, my mom's, her property taxes just went up 25% in two years. She's on a fixed income.

• 49:10Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of those situations. I remember being in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's a boom town. It's really taken off. And this old woman, just been there since the beginning, tiny home, and her property taxes were nothing.

• 49:25Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  And now because of the comps around her, gets reassessed and she can't afford

• 49:31Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  to live in her home, which property tax is an interesting one because, look, I'm all for doing my part and I pay quite a bit of taxes. I'm sure you do too. But the property one's interesting because if you own your home and then you want to go monk mode, you're old, you don't have any money, maybe you don't have any money. It's not your home.

• 49:51Ryan Holiday?

  Who is the tax code favoring? Is it people who make lots of money? Is it people who make lots, you know, and you realize like the part of the Texas, Florida dream is that it's actually quite hard on the low end of it. Not only do you not get the social services, but if you own your own home, retire or whatever, you're just getting slaughtered on these property taxes.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't

• 50:14Ryan Holiday?

  They go up every year. In California, they don't go up.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't think the conversation would go into that, but it's a good one.

• 50:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Because I think about this a lot because everything gets oversimplified, right? The 1%. So the 1% could be that surgeon in Irvine making $2 million a year.

• 50:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Earned income, ordinary income, not to bore your audience, but it's like you're, you're making money from an employer. That guy's paying over 50%, right? And so that's in the same group as Jeff Bezos, right? The 1%.

• 50:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, somebody who, somebody who sold a company for $200 million might pay less taxes than the surgeon who makes $2 million.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  And that one never opens up clearly.

• 50:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Because the way it's set up for the uber wealthy, take out loans against your assets. You're not getting ordinary income. None of them would live in, live in California if they're getting ordinary income and paying the full rip, right? And you depreciate X, Y, and Z.

• 51:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And at that super high level, your effective rate is not much.

• 51:16Ryan Holiday?

  And then also on the other end of the spectrum, there's the people who are renting and then the people who maybe this, they've had this house in a, you know, not so great part of town that's been in the family for a couple of generations.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:26Ryan Holiday?

  Right? You know, a black family in the segregated part of Austin. The parents gave it to the kid and maybe a grandkid lives in it. But now the property taxes, which were low even 10 years ago, are now $10,000, $20,000 a year. It's crazy.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  It's complicated, but the property tax thing, when it's too much is out of line. Now in Hawaii, they have the lowest property taxes. And I think it's because, look, Hawaii became a state in what, 1950?

• 51:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  All the natives would be booted off, right? If they had to keep up with those tax rates, a lot of them would. My brother lives in Kauai. Until recently, he rented from a native Hawaiian. There aren't many natives left, truly natives, like native, native, because everything gets mixed eventually. And his guy, he's like right in Honolulu. The place is probably worth, I don't know, $5 million. It's not, nothing much of a home, but because of location, if you had to pay the tax bill.

• 52:16Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  You'd be smoked. Or you can go to native reservations and that's a whole, whole different story. 576 federally recognized tribes in this country, all different.

• 52:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you drive through and you're, you realize just how big some of these reservations are. Now, I mean, a fraction of obviously what their ancestral lands were.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:35Ryan Holiday?

  Which was the whole country.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Navajo Nation is the size of New Jersey.

• 52:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Size of Israel, basically.

• 52:41Ryan Holiday?

  As we wrap up.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:42Ryan Holiday?

  Loved your book because it's an introduction to your fellow Ameri- I think it's a great concept, like who are these people? We're all Americans, but we live in such radically different universes, different countries. I thought I'd recommend some of my favorite, we're in a bookstore, I'd recommend some of my favorite books that will also help people meet their fellow Americans, maybe more in a historical sense.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 53:01Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know who Frederick La Ohmsted is?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Have not read it.

• 53:04Ryan Holiday?

  But do you know who he is?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 53:05Ryan Holiday?

  He's the designer of Central Park, okay?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 53:08Ryan Holiday?

  And Audubon Park in New Orleans. So one of our great designers, but lead up to the Civil War, he rides a horse through all of Texas, several weeks, months, just all over Texas. One of my favorite things is he complains that Austin is getting too expensive. But he does this journey through Texas on horseback. And it gives this enormous glimpse of America at that time. He's meeting his fellow Americans right before we go to war with each other. Tony Horowitz wrote another book where he recreates the journey. It's his last book and it's called Spying on the South, also amazing. So take that.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 53:44Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read The Warmth of Other Suns about the Great Migration?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Have not.

• 53:48Ryan Holiday?

  Oof, okay, so this is obviously coming out of the Civil War, the, the reemergence of Jim Crow and segregation. Black people are like, we're majority, but we're always going to be a minority. They've kept us out of political power, so we gotta go somewhere else. So where do they go? They go to New York, they go to Chicago, they go to Detroit, they go to California. That's what we call the Great Migration. That's what changes the, the, the face of the country, right? Because millions of people, it's like this great immigration.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  To the industrialized areas.

• 54:20Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  They're going up to Detroit, Chicago.

• 54:22Ryan Holiday?

  Out of the deep south, chasing jobs, chasing family. This is like 10 books in one.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 54:27Ryan Holiday?

  This is a recreation of Journey Through Texas. So you're like that. And Life on the Mississippi.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Have not, no.

• 54:34Ryan Holiday?

  Rinker Buck builds a Mississippi flatboat.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:37Ryan Holiday?

  Gets in Illinois and recreates Lincoln's journey to New Orleans.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:42Ryan Holiday?

  Does all of the big American rivers as they would have done it 150 years ago. You will love this. I think, I think there's a book in there for you. Okay, Ghost Rider, you're a Rush fan?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Of course. I'm seeing them, I'm seeing them in two weeks in New York.

• 55:00Ryan Holiday?

  Me too, me too. I'm gonna see them, I think they're in San Antonio. I saw them on the 30th anniversary tour, so I got to see Neil Peart.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:06Ryan Holiday?

  And then now the

• 55:07Speaker 01

  My first show, Montreal, 16 years old, Rush, Counterparts Tour.

• 55:11Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Neil Peart was the best.

• 55:13Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read this book?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Professor, yeah.

• 55:15Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's the best road trip book ever written about North American.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And Nico Niles is doing a pretty good job. She's not Neil Peart, though.

• 55:20Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not gonna watch any videos, I'm not gonna listen to anything. I just want to be surprised.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  No, they're, they're doing well right now.

• 55:27Ryan Holiday?

  I'm also seeing Iron Maiden in a couple of weeks.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 55:30Ryan Holiday?

  And they have a new drummer too, because their drummer retired, so I'm excited about that. Okay, so great road trip book. And then Joan Didion, this is her table, by the way, does a road trip book. She's from Sacramento, but she does a road trip book through the South. It was supposed to be a, a larger book, but this is all that survives. You'll love this. Small and Mighty by Sharon. Man, you'll love her.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Great.

• 55:52Ryan Holiday?

  She's great. What else would I add to this? I would add, have you read How to Hide an Empire?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:58Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, it's a history of the greater United States. So it's a history of all the territories, provinces, you know. Like, America doesn't see itself as an empire. America sees itself as, as the contiguous United States and then, and then Alaska and Hawaii are down here.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:16Ryan Holiday?

  Even though they're way as far as you could imagine. But we don't, at, at one point, America was 100 other territories. I mean, we saw this with the Bad Bunny nonsense, right? It's like, why do you have an American perform? And like, so I thought, I thought maybe that's your, maybe that's your, your, your sequel is the greater

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:35Ryan Holiday?

  American experience.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:37Ryan Holiday?

  Because we don't see those people as Americans, but they are.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I haven't gone into territories.

• 56:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  And that's on the list for sure.

• 56:43Ryan Holiday?

  I thought of that book when I was reading your book. I think you'll like it. Like, we don't even think, like, when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, they're attacking America, even though it wasn't an American state yet.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 56:54Ryan Holiday?

  And then when they were attacking the Philippines, you know who they were attacking? Not Filipinos, us.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Ryan Holiday?

  Because we were still, it, it was in the, it was in the process of being transitioned to home rule. But like, it would have been like Germany attacking Australia, right? Like, that's a blow at Great Britain. That's not another country.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:14Ryan Holiday?

  But we, we so didn't see ourself as a colonial power. And we've never seen ourselves as a colonial power, but we are, and we have been.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Is it because we, we weren't as bad as the Brits with that?

• 57:26Ryan Holiday?

  We weren't as bad, although

• 57:27Speaker 01

  All the Spanish and the Portuguese.

• 57:29Ryan Holiday?

  What we did in the Philippines was heinous and horrible.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:33Ryan Holiday?

  But I think the more interesting thing is coming out of the Second World War, how we cobbled together an enormous empire that wasn't inherently colonial. That was about cooperation and collaboration. And hey, we'll lease a military, instead of owning your country, can we just have this little bit of land and we'll have a military base here and we'll have, and now we're in the middle of dismantling that, not deliberately, but in a form of suicide, I guess. Like, now we are in the middle of destroying and undermining that in a way that I don't think, because we didn't fully appreciate who we were, we don't fully appreciate where we're going. And you'll love this book. I'll, I'll give it to you next story.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Awesome.