BONUS | Ryan Holiday Curates a Reading List for Nick Thompson

After their interview https://open.spotify.com/episode/5EnvByQy7xMvGAxY6UF2tP, Ryan and Nick Thompson https://open.spotify.com/episode/5EnvByQy7xMvGAxY6UF2tP, CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Ground https://www.amazon.com/Running-Ground-Father-Simplest-Sports/dp/0593244125, headed into The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ to talk about their favorite books and swap recommendations. 🎥 You can watch this episode on Ryan Holiday's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHT1krHB6Wg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHT1krHB6Wg 🎙️ Listen to Nick Thompson's episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-habit-that-changes-everything-nick-thompson/id1430315931?i=1000734008157 | Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-habit-that-changes-everything-nick-thompson/id1430315931?i=1000734008157, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5EnvByQy7xMvGAxY6UF2tP 📚 Full list of books that Ryan gave to Nick: Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/tunnel-29-the-true-story-of-an-extraordinary-escape-beneath-the-berlin-wall?_pos=1&_sid=ae3baa1c4&_ss=r Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/dying-every-day-seneca-at-the-court-of-nero The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-pursuit-of-happiness-how-classical-writers-on-virtue-inspired-the-lives-of-the-founders-and-defined-america?_pos=2&_sid=27c5f0917&_ss=r Notes to John by Joan Didion https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/notes-to-john?_pos=4&_sid=92892a229&_ss=r Necessary Trouble by Drew Gilpin Faust https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/necessary-trouble?_pos=1&_sid=d9b9ac01f&_ss=r Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Gregory Hays Translation) https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/meditations Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/novelist-as-a-vocation?_pos=1&_sid=db11a1d06&_ss=r Letter to the Father by Franz Kafka https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/letter-to-the-father-brief-an-den-vater-bilingual-edition-the-schocken-kafka-library?_pos=1&_sid=ce4a0f268&_ss=r What I Talk about When I Talk about Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-running-a-memoir?_pos=1&_sid=387d79f7d&_ss=r Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=everything+is+tuberculosis* Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/death-be-not-proud?_pos=1&_sid=d2495e611&_ss=r Check out Nick’s new book The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports https://www.amazon.com/Running-Ground-Father-Simplest-Sports/dp/0593244125 Follow Nick on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nxthompson/?hl=en and X https://x.com/nxthompson @NXThompson https://www.instagram.com/nxthompson/?hl=en 📚 Sign up for Ryan’s free monthly reading list newsletter: https://ryanholiday.net/the-reading-list/ 📖Wisdom Takes Work https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here:https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store:https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  Only books that we love. Only books that we love. This is the new, these are books that my wife told me I should read, and then I put off reading, and then I loved them when I read them. This is amazing. This is, this woman's first book is unbelievable. Do you know this story? This couple is like, decides to go on a sailing trip from London to New Zealand. And then, literally, in the middle of it, like outside Hawaii or something, a whale jumps and sinks the boat, which you wouldn't think could have actually happened, but it did. And then they spend like, six weeks and eight weeks in a raft floating in the ocean, and they're catching sharks and turtles. It's amazing. Super good story.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  Because like, they say, they have like a diary, so there's like diaries of a good chunk of it. Amazing. This is also insane. So good. I take that one. That's about, they're digging a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin to get people out. But CBS, like, the ethics of this, you may be interested in. So CBS finds out that they're doing this, and obviously wants to do a story about it, but they can't because... So CBS, so the guy doing the tunnel says, "Okay." And he has like lunch, or something, with the president of CBS News.

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  If you give us the money to dig the tunnel, we'll let you film us while we're doing it. And so it's- This is the weirdest ethical choice ever. Yes. It's amazing. Yes, and so like he knows and maybe one of the, but it's so- You're paying your source, but you're paying them to get out of these- Yeah, you're paying them to commit like an international crime, basically. That could bring about a nuclear war or something, right? And so the stakes of it are incredible, but what it means- What year was this? Uh, depth of the Cold War. Okay. But the crazy thing too is that it also means that the whole process is filmed- Yeah.

• 3:01Ryan Holiday?

  -as it's happening and, but also like if they get caught, like the Russians are gonna go like, "Oh, you're a journalist, you're okay." Right, it's fine, no problem. So it's crazy. So take that one, and then here's the, I just interviewed you and Trump. But this is Seneca in the court of Nero. And it's all about this dilemma that we're talking about. Oh, yeah, of course, those are for you to sign. Amazing, thank you. So I think about that one all the time. Awesome, awesome. Which is fascinating, because then you just wrote another book that you have somewhere. Plato does the same thing. Plato goes and he doesn't just want to be an academic, he wants to be involved in politics. And so he's like the teacher of this tyrant who he's trying to convert to democracy.

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  Right. But really, he's, the tyrant is just using his reputation to make people think he's more democratic than he is. He's like an Anakin Obi-Wan. And so that's the interesting thing about Seneca too, is you could go like, okay, yeah, he's the adult in the room. But also, and you understand this stuff more as you, when you see analogs of it happening in the present, is you're like, okay, but also I bet other people are saying, "Well, Nero can't be that bad, or Seneca wouldn't be working with him." Right, right. Like, or you go, "Actually, you can tell that Nero is smart because he has people like Seneca around him." And it's like-

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  So, yes, on the one hand, you're constraining them by taking papers off their desk or being like, "Do you really want to murder this person or not?" And then you're also enabling and emboldening them to do the horrible things that they're doing.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  It's kind of like the dynamic between Nitsa and Reagan, where he's like a Democratic establishment, like Cold Warrior. "Oh, he's working with the Reagan administration. Reagan administration can't be too hawkish. He's California people."

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly. And so, yeah, it's in...

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Not that Reagan was a murderer.

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, of course. No, it's the analog that gives you the kind of insight. So that one's really good. This book on Churchill and his son is interesting.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  I haven't read that one. I've read a good bit about Churchill, but I haven't read that one.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  I love Robert Wright's stuff. Oh, that book is so good.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  His whole, I saw that you had some of those ones.

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  The Moral Animals, very good.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  Did you read the Sebastian Junger book on dying?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  No, but you know, Sebastian Junger, fun fact about him, he has, I believe, the fastest marathon time of any journalist. He ran like a 219.

• 5:25Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  He was here, he didn't tell me this.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he was like a brief period of his life. He was like near Olympic trials level. Kind of amazing, right?

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  Wow, I did not know.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  I saw his YouTube video on the Time of Dying, but I haven't...

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  The book is really good.

• 5:44Ryan Holiday?

  Let's see. Have you read Kafka's Letter to the Father?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  I have read Kafka's Letter to the Father, yeah.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's one of the greatest parenting... My favorite part about it...

• 5:53Speaker 01

  This one's great, too. I'm talking to him soon.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he's in the book, in your book.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  But the other one. I think that, I put that in the parenting section deliberately. I think it's actually a parenting book.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  It's totally a parenting book. It's so good.

• 6:05Ryan Holiday?

  No, he's awesome.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  But yeah, my favorite part of the Kafka thing is that he writes the letter, sends it to his mom to give to the mom, and then she does it. And then you go, "Oh." It's a dynamic. It's not just like you have one parent.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:22Ryan Holiday?

  Like, the parents were attracted to each other for some reason, too. And then they have their own toxic relationship or dynamic that affects the kids.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It's such a good collection, right, so? That started in the Atlantic, God bless him.

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he's great. Although he just joined, I just.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Did you write for her? She's a buddy.

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  I like her a lot. She's awesome. We should have August's book around here somewhere, two of them as we sold it. She was here, I like her. We should have Tom Nichols' book, The Death of Expertise, somewhere.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Malcolm, a runner, I believe.

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yes. I've run with David before, I've never run with Malcolm. We should have What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I know you're running, but it's one of my favorites. Did you read the novelist of the vocation, his writing book?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  No, I've never read that.

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  It's good. I just, so I read, I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and then I was just in, I mean, I read it 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and then so I just did the Greece marathon.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Did you read, wow, a wonderful, you actually, you like this book, her name is like Andrea, and it's a book about running with the Greeks, and it's sort of like Greek wisdom.

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  For running a marathon.

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Like what she, so she's a scholar of like Greek history and the Greeks. And it's one, it's like full of these beautiful insights about running, and then she runs the Athens marathon.

• 7:43Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Her name is Andrea Maralongo, I think.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  It just came out like a few months ago, it's so good.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  Wow, alright.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  It's really good.

• 7:50Ryan Holiday?

  Because he does it in the book, he does it backwards.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  And so I was like thinking about, would I do it that way, because it, that is the pain in the ass. It's like, how do you get 25 miles away or whatever?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  Um, but no, I did it, it was, it was fun. And then I talked to, do you know Dean Karnazis?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've talked to him a few times.

• 8:07Ryan Holiday?

  So he heard I was there, and he called me and he was like, hey, like, when are you doing it? And I was like, I'm doing it. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm out of town, I would just do it with you. He was just like gonna do it like at the drop of a hat, like.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I was gonna run 26 miles, no problem. Yeah, that guy's.

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  And then I was, and then I was like, at some, some level also grateful, because I only like running by myself. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was interesting.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there aren't that many great books about running.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, very few, very few. I like, Once a Runner is the classic by John Parker, the novelist.

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I hated that book.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  It's cliched and derky, but it's awesome.

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, it's very like

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I'll play you on that one. And Dirk by Alex Hutchinson is really good.

• 8:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Uh, Sabrina Little has like a book about running and philosophy that I like a lot that came out like a year or two ago.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, what's that?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Um, it's like, it's called On Running or something. I actually don't love the Murakami. I love Murakami. I don't love his running book.

• 9:01Ryan Holiday?

  Really? What don't you like about it?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I just think it's a little bland, it's a little too self-involved. Like, the density of like beautiful sentences and important thoughts to total amount of content is not as high as

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  So if you were his editor, what would you have told him to do?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I would have told him to like spend another year on this book.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  Hmm. It does feel like, yeah, it's kind of thrown, thrown together and it's probably, if you, if you looked at the bones of it, probably like a collection of essays that got like stapled together as opposed to like a book on

• 9:28Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not up to Murakami's level. There's Born to Run, which is

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  amazing, but completely false.

• 9:34Ryan Holiday?

  You don't do the barefoot thing?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  I mean, like,

• 9:39Speaker 01

  we have run the experiment, right? Like, everybody read that book and started running barefoot. How many people run barefoot?

• 9:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, very few.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Very few, because they've like all stepped on nails and also because like we've invented shoes that make you go much faster, right?

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  That's true too.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Which is what he said wasn't happening, right?

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  Right, that the shoes are slowing you down.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  That said, the book is awesome.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  It's got great descriptions of running.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  So the Dean Korn has a book that I read while I was there doing it. He does, so the, the story is that that guy runs from Marathon to Athens and that's why it's the marathon. Actually, the guy ran from Athens to Sparta and back.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 10:11Ryan Holiday?

  So it's like a hundred and fifty miles. And so, uh,

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Wait, Philippies?

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Really?

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 10:18Ryan Holiday?

  That's why, if he died, that's why he died at the

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Cause he ran a hundred fifty miles?

• 10:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So the whole, the whole army runs from Marathon to Athens.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 10:27Ryan Holiday?

  Cause they beat, they, they fight

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Fact checking.

• 10:29Ryan Holiday?

  They fight the, the Persians at Marathon. And what the Persians had done is they'd split their forces and they sent half

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  down to Athens. So Athens is left undefended. So there's this uh, Athenian general who's like, no, no, we, we'll fight them here and then, and then we'll race there and fight. And so that's what they did. They fight and then the whole army makes the twenty-five mile-ish run, uh, in the army, in the armor, having just fought a battle. And then when they show up, The Persians go, "Oh, it's not undefended," and then they leave. So that's... So what had happened is they send the runner from... Before any of this happens, they send the runner from Athens to Sparta to ask Sparta if they would participate.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  Which they didn't. Maybe why they were so willing the second time around to give everything at Thermopylae. So, that's the actual story. So, but there's a... It's called the Spartathlon or whatever. There's a run that starts in Athens and ends in Sparta. And he did that. And it's a good book called The Vote of Sparta. And he does it, but he tries to like only eat... He only eats like figs or something on the course of the run or something.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I try to make it more like what it was.

• 11:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Great, great.

• 11:37Ryan Holiday?

  So, that... There was that.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  That's not great for your digestive system.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  I think if I'm remembering correctly in the book, he talks quite at length about problems that it's feeding in my digestive system.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, running books sometimes have a little too much on that, but yeah.

• 11:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:51Ryan Holiday?

  But yeah, there's not really that many great running books.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Peter Sagal's book is kind of fun, but it's not... It should be better. It should be more.

• 11:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, why... I wonder why that is.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 12:00Ryan Holiday?

  Especially because they might listen to it on audiobooks while they're running.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:03Ryan Holiday?

  Now the market is...

• 12:06Speaker 01

  There are more running books coming out. There've been a whole bunch that came out in the last year, but nothing that I've totally loved.

• 12:11Ryan Holiday?

  I think the tie between writing and running is interesting, too. That's, I think, obviously what comes off.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And that is a nice thing in Murakami's book, right? Like, it's like his lines about what he's learned about writing and how it ties into what he's learned from running. That I liked.

• 12:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. What else do you like? What have you read? Have you read any of these recently?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  I've read this one, of course. He's amazing. No, this book's awesome. I love it.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, he's the best.

• 12:35Ryan Holiday?

  He was just...

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Obviously read the Janet Malcolm, David Halberstam. I read the Walter Isaacson on Dainah.

• 12:49Ryan Holiday?

  I don't know why that's in history. That should probably be a better...

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  This... Tom Ricks and then...

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Tom Ricks is great.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  And Jeffrey Rosen. Those two books are sort of... The Stoic influences on the founders.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Oh, that actually... Can I read Jeffrey Rosen? That sounds awesome. I would love it.

• 13:10Ryan Holiday?

  We'll tell that soon.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  You don't want to like upset your book.

• 13:25Ryan Holiday?

  The John Green book on tuberculosis is really good. This one? Yeah. It sort of goes to the point on the RKA that we're talking about. Basically, he's like, "We could live in a world where no one gets tuberculosis. We just like choose not to." Not to live in that world. Yeah. Because, because we think it's not a problem that affects us. And he's like, "Let me tell you, here's what it's like with COVID. What's gonna happen is they're gonna develop, we're gonna develop a new strain of tuberculosis that the current medication doesn't work on." Yeah. And then we're all gonna have tuberculosis again. It kills like a million people a year. And we're just like, "Yeah, that seems like an okay number." Which is of course insane. Yeah. This book, this guy was a friend of mine in college. You knew him? Yeah. Wow.

• 14:10Ryan Holiday?

  He was a buddy's, that's a hard, that book's incredible. It's the best book about dying I've ever read. Uh, it's just the, that someone could write that book, period. Yep. Who's not like a professional writer is insane. In his thirties? And to do it as you're dying is insane. Yeah. That book just like, I, that book made me cry so much. Have you read Death, Be Not Proud? Uh, do you know who Johnny Gunther, or John Gunther was? The journalist? So he, his son gets a brain tumor at like 16, and his son's like a genius. Oh, he's about to be accepted to Harvard, and he gets a brain tumor. And it's like about his, the last year of his son's life. And it's, uh, obviously devastating, and then also just one of the most incredible books that you've ever read. It deserves to be next to that. It's surprisingly great.

• 14:55Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, it's so good. But it's, cause it's probably the greatest ghostwriter in history. Who is the ghostwriter on that book? I'm forgetting his name, but he did, so, and maybe the best selling ghostwriter of all time, cause he does this book, he does the Phil Knight Shoe Dog book, and then he did, um, uh, Prince Harry's book. Oh, Spare? Yes. Did you like this one? This guy was actually on the Stanford track team with me. I liked it, I liked it. So, I mean, they're like an okay band, I mean, they're like a pretty good band. I don't like the music, but it- But you wouldn't be like, "Oh, let me, if I, if you're like, okay, this is the lead singer of the airborne toxic event, tell me what his life story was." Yeah. You wouldn't guess like his mom's in this weird cold. Right. And that, I thought, it's, um, it's one of those books where like, the, um, the memoir is unexpectedly good. Yeah.

• 15:40Ryan Holiday?

  And thus, like- Because it plays against type, I think. I really liked it. I just read another book that I would put in a similar category and I'm totally blanking on it.

• 15:52Ryan Holiday?

  But it, yeah, just like an incredible weird, strange life. So, but you knew him?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, like, we were on the track together for a year.

• 16:01Ryan Holiday?

  Wow. Uh, no, I thought it was really good. And then kind of a sim- I mean, it was, the, the mother character was really interesting. Cause she's kind of like a child. That's probably why she ended up in a cult in the first place.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Right. You've got your Didion, you've got a, like, a portrait in your desk.

• 16:19Ryan Holiday?

  Uh huh. The new bu- did you read the new one? I've been giving it to people.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  What's the new one?

• 16:23Ryan Holiday?

  The Notes, uh, Notes to John?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:26Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know the story of this one?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Is this like at the?

• 16:29Ryan Holiday?

  So, so her daughter is an alcoholic, which doesn't get mentioned in any of the other books.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Really?

• 16:36Ryan Holiday?

  She drank herself to death and then...

• 16:37Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 16:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Ryan Holiday?

  But, uh, so she's, a- as her daughter is struggling with alcoholism, she, Joan Didion starts going to therapy. And, uh, and obviously her daughter's in therapy. And so the book is like, the notes that she would write after the therapy session, summarizing what they talked about to her husband.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 17:00Ryan Holiday?

  And they found that it like neatly, this is her office, like neatly stapled in a pile, like in a drawer in her desk.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 17:09Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's on the one hand, like, not intended for publication.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:14Ryan Holiday?

  But then also, it's Joan Didion, so it clearly is.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Kinda is, and it's neatly stapled.

• 17:21Ryan Holiday?

  And so would she have wanted it? Would she, wouldn't she have wanted it? And then, and then weirdly, it reads like this kind of epistolary novel about this. Like, if someone said, okay, this is like a fame, this is a well-known person, or just an ordinary mother, and they're watching their, their daughter drink themselves to death, and it's a novel told in the form of notes to their spouse about the form, about the conversation they have with the therapist, be like, well, that's a really interesting concept.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:49Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's actually like really haunting and beautiful. And then, because it's Joan Didion, it's, even her notes are better than most writers.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:57Ryan Holiday?

  So it's really good.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Of course. Incredible.

• 17:59Ryan Holiday?

  Um...

• 18:00Speaker 01

  This book store is great.

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you like it?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  This is amazing.

• 18:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so this, uh...

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Cause they're all like, they're from your, like, home and...

• 18:07Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, these are just, there's actually a company called Books by the Foot.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 18:11Ryan Holiday?

  And you just buy it.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  We have a standard like a large winding stairwell in the Atlantic office and it's filled entirely with books by people who've written for the Atlantic. Which is half the great writers in American history.

• 18:20Ryan Holiday?

  So I got the idea from Ford's Theater.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:24Ryan Holiday?

  It has the spinning power of books about Lincoln.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 18:28Ryan Holiday?

  So that's what it is.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, we've, so it's a similar thing.

• 18:31Ryan Holiday?

  That's very cool.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Can I take one of these home for my son? I think this is great for my fifteen year old.

• 18:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's a journal?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. I just thought it would be a good way for him to learn. He like keeps track of his workouts and he like trains harder than I do.

• 18:44Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  So.

• 18:46Ryan Holiday?

  And then, yeah, this is, this is fiction over here.

• 18:51Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, this is the book I was thinking of. I wouldn't have thought she would have an interesting life.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Huh, yeah, I would have no idea. Like, you just think Administrator of Harvard, like?

• 18:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  But she's great.

• 18:59Ryan Holiday?

  She came from this kind of like fancy Virginian family and her mom was an awful, it's, it's actually very.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Very well.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It's a great cover.

• 19:06Ryan Holiday?

  And then she gets drawn into the civil rights movement.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:10Ryan Holiday?

  And it's, yeah, it's.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Wow, okay, I'm excited to read this.

• 19:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  This is gonna, it's gonna cover the next week.

• 19:18Ryan Holiday?

  Rich Cohen's written for the Atlantic, I think, right?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  What is this, a matador bookstore?

• 19:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, this is.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Do you have a safe room?

• 19:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Ryan Holiday?

  What are you, what running shoes do you use?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I, um, I use, I've been racing in Puma R3s. I have just did the last one in ultraflies, the Nike ultraflies. And then I'm torn into meros, got a little bit of knee pain.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  And this is where I write.

• 19:49Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, cool!

• 19:50Speaker 01

  This is in here, this is where I write.

• 19:52Ryan Holiday?

  This is incredible.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  This is amazing. Look at its face.

• 19:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Your own bookstore downstairs.

• 20:00Ryan Holiday?

  That was the idea.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  This is your inspiration wall?

• 20:02Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I'm doing a biography on Stockdale right now. So this is the James Stockdale? Yeah. Yeah. Like one-time vice president? Well, so that's, that's what, so, okay, so. He's, he is a stoic, right? Like he's. Yeah, he gets, he gets, well, he gets introduced to stoicism at Stanford. Uh huh. He's, uh, the Navy sends him for a post-grad degree in his, like, early 30s. Uh huh. And he, um, he, uh, he's walking through the philosophy department where he's not taking classes. And this professor's name is Philip Rhinelander, uh, who had been in the Navy. He sees him and he thinks he's like a professor. Yeah. And they're just talking and then he finds out he's a, you know, in the Navy.

• 20:44Ryan Holiday?

  And he, and he gives him, uh, let me see if I have, uh, gives him. He gives him this. I have it somewhere. This edition of Epictetus, uh, I guess I put it somewhere. Uh, but gives him a copy of Epictetus. Ah. And that's what he's reading in his bunk on the carrier, like, the day that he takes off. And so he famously is testing stoicism in the library. But I've been, uh, I'm, he's a, he's like, I mean, so he's born in 23. So he's kind of born in this, like, we tend to think of the Vietnam guys as being of a certain generation. Yeah. But he's like 38 when he gets shot down. So he's, he, he graduates in 46 from the Naval Academy.

• 21:28Ryan Holiday?

  So he's technically like a World War II guy. Yeah. Uh, he goes, he's, he's in Jimmy Carter's class at the Naval Academy. So he kind of, he's kind of like in this, uh, like elite circles, but he's never the main guy. Like, uh, Bill Crowe is his, uh, is his, like, roommate who, uh, so anyways, like, one of his classmates goes on to run the CIA. So he's kind of always, but he was never the main guy until he gets shot down in the war. But the crazy thing is, uh, which I haven't gotten to yet, because I'm still, Korea hasn't happened in the book, uh, where I am. But, um, he, uh, he is, he is in the air.

• 22:12Ryan Holiday?

  The night of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 22:16Ryan Holiday?

  And reports that nothing happens.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 22:19Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm fascinated by this.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 22:22Ryan Holiday?

  So you spend, you spend seven years as a prisoner of war being tortured to give up your secrets.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:30Ryan Holiday?

  And you have the most explosive secret there could possibly be.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:36Ryan Holiday?

  That, uh, not only is it an explosive secret, but it would make you doubt whether you should be loyal to the country that you are currently giving your life to not betray.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And he knew the consequences of the secret he held when he was.

• 22:55Ryan Holiday?

  He gives us memo, he's like, we were shooting at ghosts. There's nothing there.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:59Ryan Holiday?

  But, um, yeah, I, so I haven't gotten quite gotten there, so I don't know exactly, but, but there's this, he has this terrible secret. And I'm interested in how he wrestles with that secret in the midst of the, the whole thing. And then his wife is obviously very interesting because she sort of goes to war with the Nixon administration about it. And then.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Wait, so he's in prison sixty-five to seventy-two?

• 23:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So he also, I'm, so the idea that he's born, he's born kind of like his, uh, his, uh, one of his aunts attends the, uh, the Lincoln Douglas debates.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:38Ryan Holiday?

  So like, he's of that era, right? Like it's cra- like, you know? So, so like I'm presenting him as this kind of man from the past. And then, so he goes in in sixty-five when Vietnam is still not the Vietnam, like what's the famous New Yorker, uh, piece that kind of blows it open? But, um, Vietnam, he, he, obviously there's problems with it, but it's not the same thing. So he goes in in sixty-five, he comes out in seventy-two, like he's this kind of Rip Van Winkle character.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:07Ryan Holiday?

  Where he misses all of it. And, and his war is at thirty thousand feet, not at.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:13Ryan Holiday?

  He's not like watching people.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  And he also misses the whole career of Jimi Hendrix.

• 24:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. So when he comes back, his son.

• 24:22Ryan Holiday?

  Who was like in middle school.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Ryan Holiday?

  Is now at college protests against the war.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:30Ryan Holiday?

  And so, yeah, so it's this fascinating arc. And then we like the, the political thing at the end is this kind of weird story because the reason he has this debt to Perot. Because Perot does all this work for the prisoners while they're in there. Takes care of their families. He sends the plane that picks them up. So when he says, hey, do you want to be my vice president? He's like, of course duty bound. So he kind of is that, and then, and then he gets up there and he thinks he's asking this philosophical question. Like, he was like, who am I? Why am I here? Like, he's, he wanted to say like, I'm not a politician.

• 25:15Ryan Holiday?

  I'm a whatever. And then we just laugh him off the stage.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:20Ryan Holiday?

  So that's, that's, that's the arc of his life.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Cool. That's great. That's great. I love that you're doing that. That's a, that's an ambitious project.

• 25:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, we'll see. It may not work. That's why I'm fascinated by the Buckley book, because it's another book about a not well-known person, but it's interesting.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:38Ryan Holiday?

  So.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  I mean, one of the things that I loved about getting to write about Nixon candidates that I felt like studying their lives made me smarter every day, just like understanding how they made choices and what they did.

• 25:48Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read this guy at all? He's written for The Atlantic.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I have not read.

• 25:52Ryan Holiday?

  From the old days. He's one of Emerson's friends. So he is a translator of Epictetus in the 1860s. And then he raises and leads one of the first black regiments in the Civil War.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:07Ryan Holiday?

  And he wrote, he wrote a book about it too, which I forget what it's called, but this is a collection of his, this has probably got some of his. Atlantic pieces.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 26:17Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, let's see.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  It's a nice amount of history that you can be proud of as a publication. Because it's not true.

• 26:22Ryan Holiday?

  It's all of them.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  No, no, of course, some of them. They publish some real shitty people.

• 26:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Uh, we publish some shitty things too, in like the 1890s.

• 26:31Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, like who?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  We had some severe anti-immigration pieces.

• 26:35Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, there was a real kind of spasm of racism in the publication. Like, the editor was a... I can't remember exactly what it's called. I can't remember the guy's name. But it was, you know, like...

• 26:48Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, like a Ghazi or whatever it is?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Basically, close this, close that island. Right, like, stop letting these smelly people in.

• 26:54Ryan Holiday?

  Huh.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. In fact, there's a famous poem that is like the poem used by anti-immigrant crowd that was written by an editor at The Atlantic, yeah.

• 27:02Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, and then his other thing is he discovers and publishes Emily Dickinson.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Oh, good work.

• 27:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Good work. Um, does he mention it, like, The Atlantic?

• 27:11Ryan Holiday?

  I'm sure.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Dickinson. Atlantic S. Higgins. There you go, Atlantic Monthly Magazine.

• 27:18Ryan Holiday?

  Cool.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:21Ryan Holiday?

  But he's like, that's sort of, to me, again, the tradition of, like, the Stokks being active and engaged in a way that we don't think of.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  His writing career advanced by invitation to be among the first regular writers to the newly-founded periodical, The Atlantic Monthly.

• 27:33Ryan Holiday?

  There you go.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Cool.

• 27:39Ryan Holiday?

  Awesome. Well, thanks. I think we should have to take a picture and then you're...

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Let's do it. I read a lot. It's sort of my job. You can't write without reading. For almost 15 years now, once a month, I send out an email with my favorite book recommendations for that month. Books that I've been reading, books that I've been going through, books that changed my life, that inspired me, that I can connect to what's happening in the world. And you can sign up right now at ryanholiday.net/readinglist.