A.J. Daulerio on Recovery and Finding Peace With Stoicism | What Can You Get For Free?

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to writer and blogger A. J. Daulerio about his involvement in the famous Hulk Hogan and Gawker lawsuit, his journey to recovery and making peace with his past, how he came to study Stoic philosophy, and more. A. J. Daulerio is an American writer and blogger. He is the former editor of Gawker and Deadspin. Daulerio famously published an excerpt of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, which led to a lawsuit and the bankruptcy and sale of Gawker Media. In 2020 Daulerio founded The Small Bow, a website and newsletter primarily dedicated to articles about drugs, philosophy and stories for those in recovery. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s The Daily Stoic, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. ***The first production run has only a limited quantity, so do not miss your chance to buy this beautiful new edition of The Obstacle is the Way! To order your copy, head over to https://dailystoic.com/obstacleleather. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoicFollow A. J Daulerio: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmallbow Homepage: https://www.thesmallbow.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  What can you get for free? If there was ever a success strategy, it's this: using what life throws at you. The actress Kate Winslet, who was not classically trained, recently explained that her secret on camera was to ask herself that question: What can I get for free? Meaning, if she's tired that day, she uses it in her character. If she's nervous, she puts it into her character. If her arms hurt and her feet are sore, same thing. Instead of thinking, "I can't today because..." She takes the stress, the same factors, the same difficulties and thinks, "What can I do because?" And this was Marcus Aurelius's strategy too.

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  "A strong stomach digests what it eats," he says. "A fire turns everything into flame and brightness." We use what happens to us in life because it's all we've got. We can either be made worse by events outside our control, or be made better. What will it be? We can try to purchase things at great expense, through our brilliance, through our raw determination, through good luck, or whatever. Or we can accept and utilize what we've been given for free, and which seems like a more cost-effective strategy. Life is going to give us a lot, a lot that we don't want, that we wouldn't choose if we had a choice.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  So all we can do is figure out a way to transform this into material. All we can do is put it into our character, put it into our work. All we can do is use what we get for free. That's what the idea "The Obstacle is the Way" means. That's why I have it tattooed on my arm. This thing isn't in the way, this thing is the way. It's giving me something to work with. I love that Kate Winslet is talking about it. It's what I try to apply. It's what I try to do in my own work. I remember I was writing "Trust Me, I'm Lying," and I got in a bike accident. I broke my elbow and I could have said, "I can't write because."

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  Instead, I said, "I'm gonna go for a lot of long walks. I'm gonna have to delay this process a little bit, but the book is gonna be better for it having happened. The obstacle is the way." And really exciting news, we have a premium leather-bound edition of "The Obstacle is the Way" in the Daily Stoic store. I've been hard at work at this for a really long time. I love the book, I'm so proud of it, but now it's five, six years old, more than that, almost seven years old, and people's copies are starting to be a little bit worse for wear, which I take as a high compliment. And I wanted to make an edition that would really, really last. It's got a genuine leather cover, foil-stamped logo, comes in this cool box, so it makes a great gift. It's on this Munkin cream paper, one of the best papers in the world.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's got end sheets and a ribbon if you want to mark your place if you come back to the book a lot. There's illustrations we had done, illustrating part one, two, and three. There's a letter from me explaining the book, and it comes with an Obstacle is the Way challenge coin, so you can carry the book with you wherever you go. The content in the book hasn't changed, but the packaging is new and improved, and I think perennial and quite wonderful. I'm really proud of this. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/ObstacleLeather. If you order it right away, it might come in time for a Father's Day gift. No promises, check out all the details there, but check out the premium edition, "The Obstacle is the Way." Get an Obstacle is the Way challenge coin, which you sell for like 26 bucks in the store anyway. So it's a cool package, check it out.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  "The Obstacle is the Way," use what you get for free. The book's not free, but the coin is free with it. Check that out, dailystoic.com/ObstacleLeather.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. My guest today is actually someone who makes a very brief appearance in my first book, but makes a much larger appearance in one of the books that I'm proudest of. It's a different kind of book for me. I'm talking about my book Conspiracy, which is about the sort of insane conspiracy that Peter Thiel embarks on to take revenge on justly smite down, depending on your interpretation, Gawker Media, a site that had outed him as gay roughly a decade earlier. And one of the main characters in that book is A.J. Delario,

• 5:16Ryan Holiday?

  who, as we talked about in today's episode, I met in 2012. We'd known each other. I was at American Apparel. Gawker would sometimes write about American Apparel. We were on these very different journeys, and then those journeys intersected when I was writing Conspiracy. But they intersected in a deeper way because, as A.J. talks about, his life gets destroyed. He ends up $200 million in debt. He's cross-examined publicly in the course of this trial. He's considered sort of public enemy number one. It's this devastating period in his life, an ordeal that I can only imagine going through.

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  And he's also in the middle of getting sober, dealing with some childhood trauma, and he ends up discovering Stoicism. And so he and I had this sort of strange series of conversations over the years where, on the one hand, I was interviewing him for this book, which he probably assumed was not going to be favorable to him. On the other hand, he wanted to talk about Stoicism, kind of had this weird, compartmentalized relationship. Previously, we were sort of not fans of each other, not friends with each other. I actually came to like him a great deal and struggled as I wrote about him in the book. It's an awkward thing about writing about people that, as we talked about in

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  our interview, that you know are real people and are going to read this. It was a strange, surreal experience, that book, because of the struggles that went into it for me. I'm ultimately really proud of it. It's not the same as my other books. It was a challenging sort of, it was a mountain I was trying to climb. It's up to you to decide how successfully I did that or not. I will say it's the only one of my books to be optioned to be turned into a movie. But anyways, what I really wanted to talk to AJ about was, what is it like to have your life turned upside down? Put aside blame or responsibility. What do

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  you do when you find the full weight of the legal system on top of you when you're trying to get sober? What do you do when you look around the wreckage that once was your life and realize you probably can't do your old profession anymore? How does one, how does one pick up and move on? And as it turns out, AJ turned to stoicism. Specifically, he read James Stockdale's book Courage Under Fire and sort of went down the rabbit hole that I know many of you have gone down. So, we talk about that. We talk about recovery. AJ has actually a really, this sounds kind of sad, a really sweet website that he runs

• 8:04Ryan Holiday?

  now called The Small Bo, which is a recovery newsletter. I've actually read most of the articles there. I really like it. He has a great one that really hit me. He talks about, "What's the point of truth if it destroys hope?" I'll just leave it at that, but I think you should absolutely read it. It's been wonderful to get to know AJ over the years. I appreciate the wisdom that's come out of the very real human struggle that he's undergone. I shudder to think how I would respond to something like that. I wonder how you would respond to something like that. And, you know, writing this book has made me realize that life is not so simple. Life is complicated. People are complicated. We're

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  capable of inflicting great harm on each other. We're capable of great dignity amidst struggle. No one is too far gone for a second act. And this notion of justice, which the Stokes talk about, is complicated as well. It's also mercy being an underrated virtue as well. Anyway, here's my interview with A.J. Delario. Do check out The Small Bow. You can go to patreon.com/thesmallbow. And check out Conspiracy if you haven't. And tell me what you think.

• 9:26Ryan Holiday?

  I was thinking about how weird life is. I was trying to think about when I met you or the first time. I mean, obviously, I knew of your work, but I was trying to think of the first time I met you. And I'm pretty sure I was walking in the Bowery and I spotted you through a window. You were you were having a drink with Bird Lavelle. Does that sound like the first time?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because Bird was the agent of my girlfriend at the time.

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Cat or?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cat, yeah.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  And it was it was it struck me like just how much insane stuff has happened since then. This would have been what, like '09, maybe?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  No, 2012, I think it was.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Ryan Holiday?

  But just like how much stuff has happened to you and to me and also to the world? I mean, even how much stuff has happened since we we last talked when I was writing Conspiracy? I mean, just

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  Just an insurrection and a pandemic and two impeachments and a couple of other crazy things.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  The pandemic, yeah, yeah, you named them all, I think, yeah.

• 10:31Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and then and then we both have kids and are in long term relationships. Like, just I'm not sure, would you have guessed this is where you would end up? To say nothing of the whole Gawker, whole Kogan story? Is this where you would have guessed you'd have ended up?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Well, it was because because the Gawker trial was so kind of leveling for me in the sense that it's just, you know, everything that I had known prior to that had kind of been disassembled.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I was starting from the ground up, so I had no idea what was going to be next for me. And I mean, I stayed in that space for about a year, that headspace for about a year, I would say.

• 11:18Ryan Holiday?

  What is it like to be leveled? Like, I feel like you might even have some insight into like what these sort of characters in a Greek or a Shakespearean tragedy go through where sort of everything is lost, you know, you're to blame, it's also completely disproportionate and devastating and beyond comprehension. Like, what is, what is that like to go through?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Well, this, this is what it was like. Initially, I mean, and when I'm, you're in the thick of a lawsuit as big and kind of absurd as that one was, and caught between lawyers, right? Where I'm either a villain or a victim, and neither one of those things feels great. And to kind of have to be either one of those things for close to two years. I was completely stripped of any sort of kind of personality or life that I was used to at that point. But the things that I, what I discovered was the things that I was like, you know,

• 12:32Speaker 01

  holding on to and the stuff that I thought was being taken from me was actually the stuff I needed to let go of, right? That once I began to kind of just say, you know, my, my life is going to be without these things that I held so dearly, most of those were with my career and whatnot. And what does that look like? And can I move forward from that? And then, you know, after a while, and I want to say 2017, things started to get better. I still had nothing, you know, tangible at that point, outside, like professionally. But I mean, personally, I mean, my life was wonderful, you know?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I was in love and I moved to Los Angeles and we had a baby on the way and, you know, I had friends and family that were kind of rallying around me. So, I mean, I, I had things. It was just that the perception, based off of everything that happened with the trial, was that I was kind of just like, you know, this, this washed up loser who was kind of thrown in the wilds of Florida, left to kind of just like, you know, wait for a phone call to let him out, right? But that was not the case.

• 13:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, because you woke up at one point, there's this scene where you wake up and you have a $200 million hold on your checking account.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:49Ryan Holiday?

  I've got to imagine that even if your personal life is somewhat in order or looking up, it's still sort of completely disorienting and intimidating.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was before my personal life started breaking up. So, I mean, that was, I believe that happened in August of 2016. And the buildup to that was very frustrating because it was kind of like, I mean, you know, if you, you probably have more knowledge of this than I do at this point, but, you know, Gawker and my former boss had declared bankruptcy, so that kind of left me exposed. And, you know, I was getting two different sets of advice, either just like, you know, Bob, we're bankruptcy or don't. And in the middle of me even deciding what to do, you know, Hulk Hogan's attorneys had

• 14:41Speaker 01

  put a lien on my checking account for the full amount of the jury award, which was $115 million. Now, for whatever reason, Chase, my bank, decided to double it, I think for insurance purposes. But the funny part about this, and this is where it kind of snapped me out in terms of how, you know, not real this is, like Chase had sent me an email, basically thanking me for being a valued customer for all these years, and they were waiving the $15 processing fee on it. But it was one of those things where I'm like, okay, what does negative 200, like, I mean, it's a Powerball-type number, right? I mean, it's basically just like they're, they're telling me, like, had I had $100

• 15:26Speaker 01

  million, I'd still be 15 short, right?

• 15:28Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  It was just this absurd amount of money that meant nothing to nobody. I mean, it was just kind of like this bully tactic, and I was being held hostage by these guys. But... The real crappy part was when I got the call from Gawker's attorneys about two hours later saying they had to drop me, right? So, I mean, then I was kind of left to fend for myself through all this stuff. Which, I mean, I got through, right? I mean, it was, it wasn't as real. It was just like, you know, people started to be a little more reasonable with it. I got another attorney and worked through it. And it all worked itself out. They settled. I moved on.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Everybody else moved on. And, you know, I mean, the other guys took over the world.

• 16:22Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I, I remember when I first met you, what struck me is there was kind of a glossed over look to you. Like emptiness sounds judgmental, but, but I could feel sort of a disassociation from yourself and from the world around you. And so I wonder, like, one of the things I think people don't understand about the story is that it's because it elapses over this long period of time. Like, the person who puts the article up and then the person who is, you know, sort of cross-examined in front of the, the court, these are different people. So, you know, I remember you're sort of, you get sober in between then. So, you're, you're going through your sobriety.

• 17:07Ryan Holiday?

  In the midst of this trial, was it weird or different that like, you were feeling this stuff for a change? You didn't have the tool to not have to deal with the enormity of the crisis you found yourself in?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's funny because I'm still, I'm so heavily involved in recovery now. And, you know, when I tell people or share my story, it, it intersects with the, the trial basically perfectly. I mean, I was around. Three months out of rehab when I got thrown into that trial. And, you know, if you tell anyone that's sober that story, they're like, oh, my God. Because, I mean, the first year, I mean, it's just a matter of kind of getting used to this body and this brain that had been abused and misused for so long, right? And, you know, the analogy that I made several times is just like,

• 18:07Speaker 01

  it's like having kind of reconstructive knee surgery and then joining a roller derby league right afterwards. I mean, that was kind of just like the emotional tumult that was happening with me at that time. But, you know, I mean, I think that was really it. I mean, the legal stuff and whatever happened there, I mean, I had no control over it. But, I mean, emotionally, I was so unprepared for what was to come. And that was the most jarring part of this. And especially kind of doing it without, you know, any of the things that used to help me get through those sort of ordeals.

• 18:44Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like we all have that, even if it's not directly a substance, which is that, you know, sort of feeling things is painful. So we come up with ways that we don't have to feel things, whether it's work or sex or drugs or just sort of getting sucked into conspiracy theories, right? Like, we all sort of find some some sort of thing to go inside so we don't have to face the terror of the world or like look down to see just how big the canyon beneath the tightrope that we are on happens to be.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and I, if we can kind of just, you know, merge into Stoicism, because it actually kind of intersects with this whole ordeal and it perfectly for me. Because, I mean, it's, and it was a little before I first started talking to you was just like when I was agonizing over this. And I was just, you know, I was not humbled by this trial. It made me angry, right? You know, I mean, I just, that was all I could feel constantly. And just being kind of pummeled by these thoughts of revenge and I have to get back at these people and I have to kind of just like make a comeback and write my own redemption story and do all this publicly.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Because, I mean, it's just like that's where all of this stuff was happening, right? And I remember kind of just like, I mean, Googling kind of revenge plots and then coming across the Marcus Aurelius quote about, you know, the best way to get revenge on people is not to be like that. And that, you know, then we started talking and I started looking into the work that you've done. And then, you know, what I landed on, the most transformative book for me during that time was Carriage Under Fire, the Stocktail book. And, you know, and I have that just completely marked up. And I was looking at it before we talked because, you know, I have so many little notes in the margins, basically just like, you know, Gawker Hogan, Gawker Hogan.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  And, and the thing that really helped me from that book was talking about Epictetus, basically just like feeling like a victim, right? And that that was a choice that I was making. It may have been made for me just based on the legal situation, but my feelings of kind of just like inferiority and all that stuff that I was taking on was stuff that I had to kind of work through letting go of. Now, it wasn't going to help me in that moment because most of this stuff was, was already kind of running rib shot all over me right then. But moving forward, I was like, I never want to feel this way again. And how do I become emotionally prepared for things that I am not prepared for at this time?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  And that's when this whole thing opened up for me, especially just sobriety helped with that. I mean, a lot of those things are kind of, you know, crossover in a lot of ways. But I mean, that, that was truly wonderful was to kind of be able to practice a lot of this stuff and apply it to that trial and then try to apply it to real life and being a father and, you know, kind of just building from never complaining about the kind of things that were happening to me and just letting go of externals and all the things that are there. I mean, it was just completely wonderful because it was, it came at the perfect time in my life.

• 22:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a Socrates quote that I struggle with. He says, sort of, "Nobody does wrong on purpose." And one of the insights I had into that quote was talking to you and to Nick and to Peter and Terry and all the different people involved in this case. What was surreal about it was nobody saw themselves as the bad guy. So you're talking about you were angry, you wanted to get revenge. But that was also the frame of mind of literally all the other characters, right? Everyone was convinced that the other person was the bad person and that they were the one doing the good thing, or that they were the one that was the victim, which I think

• 22:48Ryan Holiday?

  is interesting and sort of reminds you that like, you never really know what someone else is thinking, what's motivating them, but it's almost always a pretty good bet that they're not maliciously hurting anyone and in fact, doesn't see themselves as someone who is capable of doing such a thing.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I mean, I think I would have to kind of push back a little bit on this just based on how I felt the whole entire time, which was really, I mean, and you know, this is something I could not say at the time, but I'm still of the mindset that's basically just like, you know, that story was 100% newsworthy in terms of just like, you know, what Gawker determined as newsworthy. But it was also an invasion of privacy. And we lived in that world. I couldn't say that at the time, but it would be naive to sit there and say, "Oh, this is something that I mean, we're completely in the clear of," right? I mean, I worked there for a long time, worked closely with Nick, I knew who I was and I knew what my job was.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So, and I'd been sued several times before. My biggest kind of downfall was not treating that thing seriously, right? And Obviously, there's tape of my deposition, there's tape of a lot of things that I had said and done because I never expected this thing to go to trial. And to be fair, I don't think many people did on Gawker's side. But, I mean, like I said, I knew what I was doing the whole entire time. It was a very disproportionate jury award and outcome

• 24:33Speaker 01

  for that. I mean, I think if we were a just world, you know, a tape of me having sex with somebody would come out and then Hulk Hogan would blog and make fun of me about it, you know, and then everybody goes home. But it didn't happen that way. I'm fine with how things turned out for me personally. I hate the fact that Gawker got destroyed over this. I don't think that should have happened at all. There were too many good people at that company who had nothing to do with this and who were doing stuff that was nowhere near the things that I was doing personally, that suffered for this. And I think that was wrong.

• 25:13Ryan Holiday?

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

• 25:21Ryan Holiday?

  I want to go back to that because I am fascinated with this sort of Gawker diaspora. But to go to this point of like, sort of, everyone is sort of convinced of their own sort of position. Stockdale's a good example of this. And I was thinking about this because I'm writing about him in the book that I'm just finishing now. So on the one hand, obviously, torture is indisputably wrong. Everything that these prisoners go through is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Taking the ropes, right?

• 25:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And he's an incredible, you know, his survival there is this incredible feat of human strength. On the other hand, we shouldn't have been there, right? And I think about, so I contrast, like, I'm fascinated with the heroism and the sacrifice of Stockdale, and then also the sacrifice of the monk who lights himself on fire in protest of, you know, sort of our horrible allies and the evil that we were complicit in there in Vietnam. It is this tricky thing where, you know, you find yourself in these weird scenarios in life. Sometimes they're of your own doing, sometimes they're not. But they're, at a certain point, they're irrelevant.

• 26:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's just sort of like, how do you bear the, the consequences of that, right? Seneca sort of goes out in this painful, noble way. It's also totally his fault that he gets himself into that position by working for Nero for so long. So it's, it's kind of like, ultimately, a little bit irrelevant as well. Uh, I, I gotta imagine it's just, it's just difficult to go through that trial, to be, to have this enormous judgment rendered against you. All of that is just more than a human being is sort of equipped to deal with whatever their circumstances or culpability.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Right. Um, I don't know. I do, I guess I don't see it that way anymore. I saw it that way at the time, but I mean, it was, it was an important moment in my life. I mean, it was, it was absolutely as just life-changing in a, in a way that I didn't expect, but it turned out okay for me, right? I mean, like I said in the beginning of this, I mean, it was just like, you know, the stuff that I thought I'd lost was actually a lot of things I needed to let go of. And, you know, that, that, that person that was sued is not the person I am today. Um, you know, and I don't want to be that person anymore. I mean, I just, I just really, it's, it's tough for people to kind of wrap their head around that sometimes. And I get that. And, you know, I really do.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  I, I am on the outer edges of media right now. I mean, I don't kind of just like, you know, participate in the way I did before. I have no desire to do that. But, you know, I mean, I'm, I have a lot of peace. And I, I think that the, the best way that I kind of, I like achieved that was also wishing for peace with everyone else, wishing for peace for Nick. For Hulk Hogan, even for Peter Thiel. I mean, it's just like, you know, I needed to kind of just like, you know, walk away from this as cleanly as possible. And that meant kind of forgiving some of these people I thought had, you know, put me in a situation unfairly.

• 28:40Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Lance Armstrong told me something similar and in the, I think he was cognizant of not seeming flippant about it, but he was saying, you know, like, would I do it again? Absolutely. Not because he's not sorry or doesn't have regrets or doesn't see like, you know, roads he went down and maybe wouldn't have done again. But had he not gone through the ups, but then also the catastrophic down, he wouldn't have ended up where he ultimately ended up. I think people have trouble hearing that though, because it's sad. We want to hear someone say, I regret it all. I wish I could do it otherwise. And, and we want them to almost sort of wallow in that.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, there, there are parts of it, obviously, that where I felt that because like I said, I mean, I, I adored Gawker. I loved Nick. I loved all of my people, everyone I worked with. And, you know, I felt guilty for everything that I'd caused personally in it to, to, to make this go the way that it went. But, you know, after a while, it's basically just like, I had to kind of just like take the focus off me and look at it a little bigger and see that there were some other moving parts where they had no control over. And, you know, I just started to accept, you know, part of the responsibility, but not all of it.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Cause if I accepted all of it, I mean, I think that takes a little bit of narcissism on my part as well. Right? And I, and, and I just, I, I wanted to kind of just, you know, look at this and I've applied it obviously to it. Like the, as bad as it was to be in early sobriety during that, it was also great because I got to kind of roll that up and to kind of just, you know, how I recovered. And that was a big part of my recovery was working through the, you know, I guess the, the damage and the ashes of that. And, and it was helpful for me to basically have gone through that. And, you know, I've met a lot of other people who have had similar experiences and have moved forward with it.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  We have a mutual friend who was basically, you know, the one of the most helpful people and one of the only helpful people during that time because he had been through something a lot worse and had a lot of similar feelings than I did. I'm talking about James Fry. We don't have to be Yes. cute about it, right? Right. But, you know, I mean, he, you know, and he and I had known each other before all of that stuff. I never read A Million Little Pieces and I admit that to him. And but I mean, you know, when I was going through the Gawker postmortem stuff, when all the movies and the books and all those things were coming out, and that was the stuff that was really,

• 31:30Speaker 01

  really aggravating me. I would call up James and he would have an equally more absurd story that he had to go through dealing with A Million Little Pieces fallout. And, you know, the most helpful thing that he told me, and this was 2017, and I believe like he was talking about like there was a salon.com article that had come out where it had compared, it had said something along the lines of James Fry is the perfect author for the Trump era. And he read it and he went right back to that angry place that he had not been in in 10, 11 years. And what he told me is just like this stuff is always going to

• 32:11Speaker 01

  be attached to you. It's just a matter of just like, you know, not reacting to it and figuring out a better way to kind of just like, you know, live your life outside of this. Like your life is going to continue, but this will be attached to you in some way. You don't have, you can accept that. But I mean, it also doesn't mean that you have to kind of push back on everything. You don't have to email back every single reporter that says a crappy thing about you. You don't have to kind of just get mad over every book that's written. You don't have to get mad over all the stuff that, you know, I have no control over. But I do have control over basically just like, you know, who I am as a person. And it's tough sometimes to kind of just like let that stuff go. Because it's annoying.

• 32:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's going to be attached to you, but it doesn't mean you have to be attached to it.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. But that's very difficult to work through sometimes. I mean, I, like I said, I mean, I just said all those nice things about wishing those people peace that were involved in the trial. But I mean, there are still some people I wake up to every single day and I'll get a little piece of news that, you know, is, is in conjunction with the either Gawker's resurrection or something along those lines and then get sucked back into it again and get briefly mad and wanna fire off like an angry medium essay, all this kind of stuff. All these things that I'm trying to kind of control that I know I can't. Sometimes it lasts the day, but I have resources, I have people to talk to now. I have kind

• 33:37Speaker 01

  of tools that I can apply there. And like I said, the best thing for me at this point has been talking to other people who feel as adrift or had felt as adrift as I did during that. Sometimes they're going through this publicly.

• 33:52Ryan Holiday?

  I, I have people like that, that I sort of have this sort of slow boiling resentment slash frustration with. And, and if you catch me on a good day, I can say all the things that you just said, you know, I wish them well. I'm grateful for the good things they added to my life. You know, I'm grateful for what they taught me. I'm grateful for what the conflict, you know, ultimately put me on. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. But then, yeah, I catch you two minutes later and you can go right into that sort of dark place. So I got to imagine part of it, and this is why I think the Stoics repeat themselves so much, is that you're trying to will yourself to believe a thing that maybe deep down in your soul, it's going to take you a whole lifetime to actually make true.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that, that, the, how I, how I saw it is because, I mean, the most frustrating part for me was having so many other people kind of just like take control over the narrative of my story. And I was a writer and nobody would let me do it myself. Right? So I mean, it's just like, I couldn't, yeah, and I could not get in front of that. And it's, and it's, and I kept walking into the same walls. I kept talking to like, you know, reporters or you or other people kind of expecting some sort of redemptive arc that if I could participate in this, then people would see my side of things. And then is a fatal mistake when it comes to just like trying to kind of heal

• 35:20Speaker 01

  from this sort of thing. Because I mean, if I have one regret, it's basically just like talking to people during that whole entire thing. Because I mean, that only caused more problems for me.

• 35:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I found that with, I finally had to do this with American Apparel where, you know, every few months, somebody would want to do a documentary or a story or something. They'd want to talk about it. And I did the same thing you did. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do it. And I spent a countless amount of hours trying to put together something that ultimately went nowhere. But eventually, it took no small amount of willpower to go like, I'm going to start saying no to these media requests. Like, I don't have to have a part-time job forever, talking about this thing.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. And I think that was one of the most important words to learn was no. And I said no to a few people here and there. I still say yes to some people I probably shouldn't have, because I mean, I'm just a gas bag when it comes to a lot of these things.

• 36:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you said yes to me. I was actually a little surprised.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Well, because, you know, I had to kind of, I, because you, you're an interesting person in this journey. Because I mean, I had such contempt and resentment towards you when you were writing that book. But based off of just like, you know, like, all these things that I just said. And it was just like, you know, here's, here's another person who's profiting off of this in a way that is, is, I feel like is unfair. Right? But, you know, I mean, we've, we've had a lot of good email back and forth. I mean, I think we've kind of just like, you know, applied a lot of this philosophy to things. And I have great conversation with you about that. I mean, but I mean, you can easily be one

• 37:16Speaker 01

  of those people that I can turn on real quick if you ask the wrong question, or bring up your book in a way that I feel like is just gonna make me wig out. Right?

• 37:24Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  But, you know, but I had to kind of just, you know, I was talking to my wife about this. I'm like, you know, gonna go on Ryan Holiday show. And she's just like, is that gonna be good for you? And I'm like, I don't know. But I want to talk about this stuff because I believe so, so, you know, firmly in Stoicism and what it's brought to my life and what it's brought to that, you know, the outcome of that trial in my life since then. And, you know, I, I, I want to just like, you know, be honest about that. And, you know, like I said, honest about my skepticism of you and whether or not this is healthy for me. Because it's still a little raw, five years later, right? There's still

• 38:09Ryan Holiday?

  I get it.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  There's still certain parts of all of this that if it gets poked, I will lash out. You know, I mean, I had, and, and just prime example of this, where it's just like, you know, you are not in this exclusive club because we don't know each other that much. I mean, two friends of mine, you know, wrote a, wrote the Gawker pilot for Apple.

• 38:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, when I, when I found out about that, and these are guys that I keep in touch with, and will, you know, will go to their weddings and their baptisms and their funerals. And just like, you know, people I was really in close with. And I lost my mind when I found out about that. And just said completely awful things that I didn't mean because it was coming from that place of trauma, right? It's just like, I mean, once this stuff, I have to kind of respect that experience in the way that it's still was very big and has left a mark, right? I don't know sometimes when it's going to kind of reappear.

• 39:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, let me ask you, because you've been through this at a level that I think few of us have. But then also I think I, I have some sort of vague connections to different experiences that you've had.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:23Ryan Holiday?

  I go through this thing, so I'll just be honest. So anytime I get my parents reach out, it ripples through my sort of personal life. Like I'm, I'm a shittier father, I'm a shittier person at home, like I'm tensor. Like even if it's about nothing, uh, even if it's, uh,

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I didn't know we could curse in here, by the way, so that's why.

• 39:44Ryan Holiday?

  Oh yeah, you can say whatever you want. Yes. Uh, I'm sure some people mind, but it's, it's, uh,

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I'm trying not to.

• 39:52Ryan Holiday?

  But, but like, so, so, and my, my wife, my wife picks up on it. She's just like, I can just tell that it's happened before that it's happened.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:00Ryan Holiday?

  The energy is there. And she's like, it's not fair to everyone else. So how do you, given that it's outside your control, right? Like a Google alert comes up, you know, Tim Cook, submarines, a pilot written by people that you wish hadn't written it in the first place. Like, you know, you can't, you can't create a reality in which these things don't intrude. All the Stoics would say, all we can do is try to sort of limit how far it travels through us. How do you, how do you limit like, the spiral that that, those things send you into? And I'm sure there's other things, like, not just Gawker that does this to you, or, you know, because obviously, your, your issue's pre-Dakar.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  You know, I, like, I have, I have an emergency routine in certain situations where Gawker comes up in the news and my name starts getting dragged and I don't have to look at it to know what's happening because the text messages will start rolling in. And the ominous, are you okay? Text messages. And then it's basically just like, I, I can feel myself kind of freezing, right? And then starting to tense up and being, starting to withdraw. And obviously, I mean, my, my wife can see it as well. And, you know, I, I have a couple people that I worked

• 41:28Speaker 01

  with who are intimate with kind of just like how frustrating this was for me. And I talked to them. And then, look, I'll go to a meeting, I will do all the recovery work that I need to do to put that front and center. Because I mean, if, if there's, if there's one thing I can't screw up, it's my sobriety. And, you know, I mean, just the, the emotional kind of turmoil that comes up in me when this stuff pops up, is not good emotional sobriety. And so I absolutely just like, you know, use the program to kind of bail me out in those situations.

• 42:06Ryan Holiday?

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

• 42:14Ryan Holiday?

  So, so for someone who's not in the program, because let's say that's not what they have, what do you, what, what kind, how do we translate that into a normal person who just has some, none of us are normal, but let's just say like, how do, the, the trauma pokes up, like, you know, we, we've sort of come to derisively talk about trigger warnings, but I actually feel like, like, life is very triggering. It's not, it's not usually like, oh, someone used the wrong pronouns, but it's like, life reminds us of where our wounds are. I heard someone joke that hand sanitizer should be called like, like, cut locator, you know, like, it tells you where you have cuts on your hands, basically.

• 42:55Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like life does that. It finds where you have soft spots and it pokes them. So what do you do when that happens?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Well, I have a pretty rigid daily routine that I stick to, which is ultimately just like, you know, I, I, I journal, I meditate,

• 43:14Speaker 01

  and I read. And, you know, what happens to me emotionally when something like this takes over is I begin to forget about those things, but then I remember. And then I kind of double down on that stuff. So I, I, that's, that's really what is part of my recovery. And then, you know, obviously I'm going to call other people and try to be of service. And being of service is calling with someone else and to listen to someone else's problems is how I use it. So, I mean, because I've been sober for five years. I mean, I, I can be of service to someone who's only been doing it for six months to a year, right?

• 43:53Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And I will reach out to those people and make that kind of just like my,

• 44:01Speaker 01

  preoccupy my mind with helping someone else as opposed to kind of just like, you know, roiling.

• 44:06Ryan Holiday?

  No, that makes total sense. So what else from the Stoics really hit you? Like, it, it is interesting that you went to Stockdale and Epictetus, probably got their asses handed to them by life more than any of the other Stoics. But what, what else has struck you?

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Well, I, I remember, you know, Seneca's

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Stuff about anger was always something that kind of just stuck to me as well. Because I mean, and I don't even know if the quote is associated with him. But there is the quote about anger and its uselessness, that it only kind of leads to lawsuits war or jail, right? And, you know, obviously, I mean, I dealt with the lawsuit portion of that. And, and I, and I think that that is something that I just like applied it to. And just like, you know, I grew up in a household with a very emotionally abusive father and kind of just like, you know, I could have been a mom and just like there was sexual abuse when I was younger and all this other stuff. So I, I was very, very like in touch with anger and how I processed it poorly.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  So the, anything basically out of the epistles that kind of just like, you know, has anything to do with anger, I gravitate towards that when a lot of this stuff comes up. I mean, he's, he's the perfect stoic for me when I'm feeling angry.

• 45:24Ryan Holiday?

  There's actually a translation, I don't have it with me, but James Rahm, who, who I had on the show, and he did that biography of Seneca. He did like a collection of Seneca writing on anger. I think it's called How to Keep Your Cool. But you might like that one. It's just Seneca on anger.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Because I have a crappy version of on anger, right? Which is like one of those, yeah, well, but I mean, it's one of those kind of just like, you know, Amazon books that people just like kind of Photoshop and photocopy and then staple together. And I'm like, yeah, this is one of them. But, you know, I mean, I have to dig a little bit and I find that stuff, but I'd love to read that. That sounds great.

• 46:03Ryan Holiday?

  So, so you never struck me as an angry person. Maybe I sort of associate anger with sort of, sort of loud aggressiveness. Do you feel like your life, you kind of channeled that anger into your work, sort of taking on, you know, entrenched interests or the sort of Gawker belief that it was attacking hypocrisy or phonies or what? Do you feel like anger was kind of the through line that motivated you as a journalist?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I mean, I think, like, I mean, my anger was basically either was, was quiet and oppressive or, you know, drunk and abusive. And, and also just, you know, I mean, I got into some. Physical scraps here and there. I mean, and, and I mean, there, there were just a lot of places where it would pop up that I realized I couldn't control it. Right? And, um, but I mean, as far as just my, my work went, I mean, work was work for me. I mean, it was just like blogging was blogging and it was just like, I mean, obviously, I mean, I had some, some,

• 47:13Speaker 01

  some personal stuff that was happening the whole entire time, but I, I, I tried to kind of keep those things separate as best as I possibly could.

• 47:22Ryan Holiday?

  The reason I ask is this was a weird experience for me writing the book and it sort of changed my relationship with social media. Obviously by, by writing the book, by, you know, sort of taking some of the stances that I took, I didn't have a lot of friends in your sort of group of former colleagues, but I have found then and since I have never checked the Twitter feed of like sort of somebody in that world and left feeling good. Not about myself, because it's not about me, but there does seem to be this kind of sort of stewing resentment, anger, hatred for the world and how it is. For, I, I don't want to say it's generational. It's much more of a scene, I guess, because they're

• 48:04Ryan Holiday?

  of different ages, but it's, it all, that was the, whenever I talked to them, whenever I read about them, whenever I read, read stuff that they wrote, it didn't feel like these were people that were having a good time.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I don't know who we're talking about right now.

• 48:23Ryan Holiday?

  I, I'm, I'm, this is, this is obviously a generalization. I, I just mean that there, I guess I'm making two commentaries. So one is that sort of, there, there was an ethos of sort of aughts and mid aughts journalism that I felt like was, was motivated by sort of anger and resentment. But I'm also just saying that anger and resentment does, even if it's productive for the person, is ultimately not a fun space for them to live in.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I could say here, here's a, here's a primary example of just like, you know, personally, here's one experience that I had. That is one of these experiences that I will wake up to and still get mad about and still harbor a great resentment towards this person. So there's a media reporter at NPR, I'm not going to name, but it's easy to figure out who it is. So I'll just like kind of slag him that way. And he had written a lot of things about the trial, but I mean, it was always I was kind of a fixed character in his mind. And he was on a show kind of recapping the whole thing and said basically three untrue

• 49:37Speaker 01

  things about kind of something that I had done along those lines. And I knew nothing about it. Right? The only reason I heard about it was apparently one of my colleagues had kind of just like gone after him pretty hard on Twitter. And then he calls me, cold calls me, kind of out of the blue, and was acting like I should know who he was. Briefly kind of recited back to me, just asked me questions about this thing, started, you know, clack, clackety-clacking on his typewriter or his computer, sorry. And typewriter.

• 50:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, when was that?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  1960, it was 1958. But so bottom line was just like, you know, he had, he, he said something along the lines of just, you know, at NPR, we treat these kind of mistakes seriously. So I really want to get to the bottom of this. And he didn't. It was just like, he made this big spectacle about kind of just like wanting to correct the record and all this kind of stuff. And then, you know, his, his approach was really, really just grinding me. And so I called him back and I was just like, you know, you did say something that was incorrect. Could you please do that?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  And he wanted to go and, and research this a little further. And I lost my temper and I called him a fucking twerp.

• 51:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  It just came out of. Like I'm, again, we're back in 1958. I'm like Biff in like Back to the Future calling people twerk. But I mean, it just like jumped out at me. And I was like, man, why am I reacting this way to this guy? He, he does not give a crap about me. He does not give a crap about getting this right. He, he's got his own thing that he's working on right now. And I should just leave it alone.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  But it still comes up, you know, I mean, when, when I have those little flare ups, he's one of the first people I go to where I'm basically just like, you know, hmm, maybe I can kind of just like start to plant some really rotten crap about this guy. It's just into, into the universe that will cause him as much aggravation as he caused me on that one day.

• 51:57Ryan Holiday?

  You know what's tough, what's tough about it too is like, he has probably not thought about you once since that happened.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Not at all. Right. Yeah.

• 52:07Ryan Holiday?

  And so you end up carrying these, you, you end up carrying the people ju- just in the way that, you know, Owen Thomas writes the piece about Thiel. And again, whatever you think of whether he should, should or shouldn't have, probably immediately forgot that he wrote it. And it is firmly, however lodged in Peter's brain. And it's the sort of thing driving him. So that's something that I've, I've had to realize it's like, this conversation you're having with the person is totally one-sided because i- if you're right, like if they are as shitty as you think they are, then they are definitely not thinking about what they did to you.

• 52:48Ryan Holiday?

  Because you were nothing more than a means to an end in the moment that they've immediately moved on from.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Right. And I believe the, the phrase that's tossed around in recovery rooms is kind of just like, you know, drinking the poison to try to kill somebody else, basically.

• 53:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  And some variation on that. And I had so much, you know, but I mean, it's, it's one of those things where I'm just like, you know, why did this particular person bother me so much? And it was tone, really. It was just this, this, he, he could not hide the fact that he just thought I was unimportant and not a human, right?

• 53:33Ryan Holiday?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  And that was what stuck in my head, right? And I, and, and that was, those, having those sort of conversations during that time period were just infuriating.

• 53:47Ryan Holiday?

  Well, ironically, because I, I've talked to many, many people who, you know, their reaction to what Peter did to Gawker was like, he's a hero, right? Like, thank God. Like, there, it was the worst website that ever existed, right? And almost invariably, the reason they think that is that the site wrote something about them at one point, or someone that they cared about at some point. And they had the exact, their motivation is exactly what you're talking about, which is, this was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:17Ryan Holiday?

  And here this reporter, or this blogger, or this website is treating it like it's nothing. You know, so, so I, I guess my point is, I'm not trying to litigate whether Gawker's good or bad. What I'm saying is that, like, it's an immutable fact of life, which is that other people take actions that affect us negatively. We take it personally, and really, it had nothing to do with us, and there's nothing that we can do about it.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I mean, to be, and this is, and I remember that, and I recognize that. And I have done my best to start to amend some of the stories that have hurt people. I mean, I've, I've been very committed to that. And, you know, sometimes it's, it's been great. I mean, there are a couple of people that I have wonderful relationships with now. We help each other kind of just, you know, get through these bad feelings.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Oftentimes, I mean, people don't want to let go of it. It's easier for me to be a bad person. And, you know, and I get that, too, because, I mean, I had this NPR reporter in my head, and my, this Esquire writer in my head, where it's just like, you know, the worst thing that could happen to me is they say, I'm sorry. Because then that means that means I have to move on and I don't get that rush of anger that kind of just like is still satisfying to me on my worst days.

• 55:44Ryan Holiday?

  So how do you move, how do you move on? Because I had someone that that had sort of wronged me quite severely, someone that I sort of regularly have drunk that poison on that sort of looms large in my life. And they did apologize, right? Like they were like, hey, you know, it was kind of a bullshit, I'll say it's kind of a bullshit apology. They didn't really understand what was happening. But maybe this is just what I'm saying. So I don't have to to sort of fully accept it. But like, I appreciated it. It was what I said I wanted, you know, or I thought that I wanted. But I still struggle to move on from it.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't think it's, it's okay if you don't, right? I mean, it's just, it just can't overtake your life, just like this can't overtake my life. Just like, I mean, I can't, like, I think where it becomes really damaging is if I, if I keep those people in the back of my mind and look for an opening where I can kind of just like say something shitty that will make them feel bad. Right? And I still plot that way sometimes, which is just like, man, if I achieve this sort of level and have this sort of access and this sort of like ability to kind of write this story, I'm gonna take these guys out

• 56:58Speaker 01

  because I know how to do that. That's my skill. I'm very, very good at that. But I also just know that it's just a terrible place to live. Right? And I mean, I have to kind of sit here and say, just like, okay, I'm gonna like, look at my, the good and bad checklist that I have right now. And it's overwhelmingly positive, everything that's in my life right now. And if I've got these two reporters that have kind of wronged me five years ago now, that I'm still hanging on to, that's my problem. And I have to work through it.

• 57:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, Seneca talks about returning the bite to a dog or the kick to a mule. You know, it's like, it doesn't, they don't care.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:44Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't. And, and, but that's what we do when we lash out when we're angry. We think that, we think that if I bite the dog, it, it will address the pain in my arm, which of course is impossible.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that's, and that's something I, I work through constantly. You know, I mean, there's like, before I do my gratitude list every single day, I write out a fear. The first thing that I feel in the morning is sometimes, you know, there's a fear that exists. And, you know, sometimes it's obviously just like, you know, these huge things where it's just like, I mean, my, my children will be injured or my, my wife will be hurt or like, you know, I'm going to get canceled for the 85th time or something along those lines. But I mean, it's like most of this stuff that I have to address head on and write it out just because it makes it smaller and easier for me to kind of just like digest and say that

• 58:43Speaker 01

  just like, you know, I have no control over this whatsoever. I cannot focus on this negative stuff. And then I'll go right into my gratitude list. It kind of really elevates the gratitude list.

• 58:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Anne Frank writes that a paper is more patient than people. I do find that the journal helps dissipate the anger, for sure.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that, you know, the, the, the 10th step in AA, which is kind of just like, you know, really writing, doing something at the end of the day. And going through and making a checklist and kind of just like, you know, seeing exactly just where improvements can be made. You know, is a very crucial part of just my healing as well. You know, and, and look, I, I mean, I absolutely have become a, a better person in ways that I didn't quite understand I was capable of being before. I didn't understand that it was work. I didn't understand how busted up I was.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  And I also need to be medicated. Medication has helped a ton of wonders. So if anybody's kind of just like on the fence with that, I highly recommend it.

• 59:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I would say I don't think it's at all a contradiction of the Stoicism either. Like, the Stoics existed in a time when we didn't understand any of these things. And to ask, to ask for help, or to need some sort of further, you know, sort of intervention, does not, I mean, obviously, if you can avoid it, you should avoid it. But if you, if it solves the problem after exhausting the other means, I mean, what would be the problem with that exactly?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I think that there's, and there's, it's controversial in recovery circles for just like some A purest to think that just like anything you put in your body that is mind altering, then you're not sober. But, I mean, when, you know, someone like myself, who has a very severe mood disorder, you know, I need this stuff, or I act out in ways that is no longer healthy for not only myself, but for other people.

• 1:01:00Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so speaking of interventions, one we, I think we both made in our lives. You don't live in New York anymore. I live in Texas instead of Los Angeles or New York. How much was sort of deliberately leaving and setting up a much quieter, sort of less attention-seeking life, part of the sort of healing/recovery process for you?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  It was huge, but it was probably the hardest thing to do, right? Because, I mean, I think that What, because I'm not, I'm not really on Twitter or any social media channels at this point. I mean, I kind of keep a very, very low profile, which was tough to do at first, especially just like, because I'm like, well, how am I going to get work? How are people going to know I'm alive? And, you know, I, I discovered that it's just like, I can, I can do work, and if the work is good, it'll find a home someplace. You know, I can have phone conversations with people like a human and let people know that I'm available or that I'm willing to do stuff. And that's, that's been great. I mean, just like, you

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  know, geographically, I mean, I think it's, it's, it wasn't as important as basically just like, you know, what I was doing publicly. And, you know, it's something I still struggle with. You know, there's, there's, there's, there's parts of me that kind of just feels like I need to, when I get lazy or when I feel bored, I mean, it's just like, you know, eating cookies or something else. I can dive into my phone for an hour and just like read junk. But, you know, I, I don't actively participate in that world anymore, which was kind of just, you know, a huge part of my job at one point.

• 1:02:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it, it probably felt like committing career suicide or something.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Well, I, I talked to, I didn't, I never used Twitter properly to begin with, but, you know, because I mean, I, I didn't need it. I mean, I was editing Gawker, I was editing Deadspin. I mean, it was, it was, you know, I was out there in the world in some capacity, for better or for worse. So, but then to kind of have to re-enter without all of those things and with basically just like this giant asterisk next to my name, just, that felt like an uphill battle I didn't want to participate in. Like, I mean, I think that that's really the, the biggest loss that I experienced from this whole thing, which

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  is not a loss at all, which is I'm unable to have kind of heated arguments on Twitter about dumb shit.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  That's really it. That's, that's really the, the, the biggest thing that I, I no longer have in my life in terms of just, you know, public persona.

• 1:04:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's, that's what I mean. You look at some of these people, like people we both know and you're like, you, you pull them up on Twitter and it'll say how many tweets they've done. And it's like, oh, just 40,000 tweets? Like, that's so many. You spent, you spent so much time shouting into this void, trying to be heard over other people shouting into this void. That can't pop, first off, just the opportunity cost must have been immense, like to your family, your health and your own self-improvement. But that can't possibly be good for your health to, to sort of align your soul with that algorithm. Like, I never pull up Twitter or Facebook and afterwards I'm like, I'm so glad I did that. I always feel worse.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I have not had that happen in a decade, probably. I mean, when, when Twitter used to be fun, I used to kind of just like, you know, make dumb jokes about people falling on the ground. I mean, it's just like, you know, or someone saying, with sports Twitter was fun for me for a while. But yeah, it just, it, it became real rotten, especially in the last four years, obviously. And, and, and not something that I want to participate in at all. And it's not good for my emotional sobriety.

• 1:05:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and has helping kids helped you with that in the sense where like, I go like, look, if I was by myself and I was just gonna like, sort of get emotionally drunk and then hungover, or if I was just gonna torture my soul by experiencing some of these things, I suppose that would be fine. But then when you realize you have these sort of innocent little vessels running around your house who get the brunt of that nasty, it's like, it's like why you're supposed to take your shoes off when you come inside because you've stepped in and walked all over god knows what germs. I kind of feel like being able to create barriers for the mood or the influences or the inputs that you bring into your house. Sort of having kids makes that much more visibly obvious.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, and I haven't experienced this in a long time, but my, my wife is pretty big on Twitter and, you know, had a following and then, you know, has had a couple of things go viral that have just like, you know, and she's been like, oh, man. And I'm like, yeah, like some of the stuff gets brought to our doorstep that we don't want there, right? Because it just like it takes over. Cause then she's just like, oh, man, just like, do I have any old tweets I have to run and worry about? Basically just like, are they gonna bring you back into this whole entire thing? Like, you know, why? Like, and, and we don't have to do it, right? At all. And, and I think that there are just,

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  you know, choices that I can make every single day where I know full well, this will make me feel bad and restraining will make me feel better. Might be the hardest thing to do in that, in that moment, but I know that'll make me feel better. And I know like acting out will make me feel worse.

• 1:07:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's what I'm writing about now, the, the sort of virtue of temperance. How does one, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. How do you do, how do you not do stuff when the, uh, it's like the, the immediate payoff is, you know, low to negligible, but the long-term cost is the real thing that you have to, I think we're really bad at not doing that stuff.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think that, and you and I talked about this recently where just like, you know, one of the things that I have to kind of grade myself on is restraint every single day. And, and, you know, because I mean, that, that helps really, really just balance out everything for me. Because I mean, my biggest problem like historically has been over indulgence, right? And, and I can do that in so many different ways in my life. So I mean, I just have to be like acutely aware of basically just like, oh, am I doing this to kind of just like make myself feel temporarily good that'll make me feel bad for a long period of time? Or am I doing this thing, or is this a decision

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  I'm actually capable of kind of controlling in this moment and withdrawing from this whole entire situation before it gets messy?

• 1:08:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the whole, that's the whole struggle, I guess, is the, the short-term gratification versus the long-term cost. And if we were naturally good at that, recovery wouldn't need to exist, and we would never get ourselves into trouble. But of course, that's not how it goes.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, you know, I like this side of things. I like working at this. I like the journey of trying to become better and stronger and more self-reliant on this stuff, and not getting taken out by, you know, giant $100 million lawsuits when they come knocking at my door, right? You know, I mean, I think that's, this has been, this has been helpful in that sense.

• 1:09:09Ryan Holiday?

  I think I might have messaged you about this during the pandemic, but I, it strikes me, if I didn't, that it was something I at least thought of. You must have at least had some sense, having gone through whatever that ordeal was, and come out, you know, if not in one piece, then not shattered in a million pieces. You must have at least had some sense like, hey, I, I'm pretty sure I can get through this.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it was, I was pretty sure that I, and look, this is, this is more along the lines of just, you know, recovery than anything else. It's just like, there's that saying that wherever you go, there you are. And it's more along those things that, you know, the no matter what club of everything that, you know, I still have to kind of just like keep my head in these situations, or, or I know what that, where that will get me, right? Because I never want to go through feeling like I did during the 18 months of just like that trial and the aftermath again. And, you know, I'm very much kind of just like trying to get out ahead of that every single day. So, yeah, I mean, the pandemic

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  was a challenge and horrifying and just so sad for just on every single level. But, you know, I saw a lot of people doing their kind of to-do list every single day, where it's just like, meditate 10 minutes, do this, do that. I'm like, I already had that locked in, right? So I had, I had a program that I could kind of lean on during that. That was very, very helpful. I mean, I didn't do it perfectly, obviously, but I mean, you know.

• 1:10:44Ryan Holiday?

  No, and I do hope people, I have been trying to tell people that. It's like, You just survived something historical, you know, sort of a once in a century event. You're here. If you don't emerge from this with at least some sense, like, I'm not saying you, we all responded perfectly, but you are still here. And I'm not trying to imply the people who, who didn't survive and did something wrong. But the point is, you just went through the fucking wringer and you're here. That should give you some sense, the Stoics talk about the inner citadel, that should give you some sense of what you're dealing with as far as an inner citadel goes and, and help you, if not, sort of not be

• 1:11:24Ryan Holiday?

  afraid going forward, at least aware of your capacities going forward.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and here's, here's a story that was always been top of mind. It was one of the most instructive things during the trial and I've carried with me ever since, was about just like, you know, how I was reacting to everything that, you know, I, I'd always said that it was happening to me. And then like, you know, all this, 2015 and 2016 were these years that, you know, month after month, I felt like I was getting hit by a truck. I think I would use that phrase. And, you know, I had forgotten about that, you know, my friend, Emma Carmichael, who was my deputy Gawker and was also just like part of the trial, um, you know, had showed up there and also got grilled. And,

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  you know, the, the, the trial like affected her in some ways, but she kept her cool and she kept like composure. And she had actually that summer been hit by a truck. So she was coming out in public for the first time with this limp and facing the world for the first time, ever since she'd gone through this horrific accident where her whole entire body was shattered and she had to go through this rehabilitation period. And I'm like, you know, I've got nothing to complain about. Right? And that was something that she made it through and she also made it through the trial without falling apart like I did. So I, I mean, I always try to kind of remember and never use that phrase unless it actually

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  happens. Like, I mean, I, I just cannot kind of just like, you know, compete with that level of perseverance. And she's just like, you know, been one of the most inspiring people in my life.

• 1:13:08Ryan Holiday?

  Right, it's like you feel like you got hit by a truck. And one of the things you should remind yourself of is that some people actually have been hit by a truck.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:17Ryan Holiday?

  And what is worse?

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and are doing a better job of getting through it than I am, right?

• 1:13:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  My imaginary truck is somehow hitting harder than the one that actually hit them.

• 1:13:29Ryan Holiday?

  That's how it goes. That's how it goes. We like to feel sorry for ourselves.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I'm really glad we got to do this. I think back, I remember one time we were talking and you sent me an email. You're like, hey, don't email me anymore. And I remember thinking, well, that's sad, but I am glad that he's like taking care of himself. But I'm glad that you followed up with me, what was that, like a year later? I'm glad that we did get reconnected.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I needed that time to kind of just decompress and just like, you know, I, it was, it was kind of unavoidable at that point when you were doing press for that book. And, you know, I was getting asked questions about it and stuff like that. Just like, what did you think of the book? And I'm just like, I'm never going to read that book. Please don't ask me about that.

• 1:14:16Ryan Holiday?

  No, I completely understand.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  It's the power of no, man.

• 1:14:20Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. Yeah, that's the, well, Marx really says, is this essential? Because most of what we are asked to do is not, is not essential.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:30Ryan Holiday?

  Well, we will talk soon and maybe I'll see you in person again one of these days.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, Ryan. Thanks for having me.