The Courage Crisis: How YOU Can Make A Difference Today | John Avlon (PT. 2)

The hardest thing in life is finding the courage to do what’s right when it costs you. In this episode, Ryan continues his conversation with journalist and historian John Avlon, diving into the dangerous myths we cling to, the lessons he learned from running for office, and the warnings history has to offer. John shares why he still chooses a defiant optimism for America’s future and why you should, too. John Avlon is an American journalist and political commentator. He was a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN, and was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast from 2013 to 2018.📚 Grab signed copies of John Avlon’s book Lincoln and the Fight For Peace at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/👉 Follow John Avlon on Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/johnavlon/?hl=en🎥 Head to Ryan Holiday’s YouTube Channel to watch him give John Avlon book recommendations at The Painted Porch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr58MBVBSrA📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. The Daily Stoic is releasing a limited collector’s edition set of all four books signed and numbered, with a title page identifying these books as part of the only printing of this series. PLUS we're including one of the notecards Ryan used while writing the series. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. What I've loved about the Stoics is that the Stoics didn't sit on the sidelines. They got involved. They got engaged. It was said that Marcus Aurelius and Hadrian drag Arian and Rusticus out of their studies and into the forum, into the arena, did not allow them to be pen and ink philosophers. And you know, it's really easy to despair about what's happening in the world. It's really easy to complain about the quality of leadership or elected officials, whatever country you live in,

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  whatever level you are complaining about, whether it's your town mayor or you know, your representative to the EU. It's harder to do something about it. And not that running for office is the only way to do it, but but my guest today, John Avlon, ran for Congress in 2024. He didn't win, but I think he learned a lot in the process. He put himself out there, and that must have been scary. It must have been hard. It must have been uncomfortable for someone who was a journalist.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  For many years, he was the managing director of The David Beast. He's been a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a journalist. He's previously a columnist at The New York Sun. But he put himself out there, and that's how we connected. He had me on his podcast during that election cycle. And we chatted about Stoicism and contributing to public life. And this is all secondary to what John is really, really great at, which is writing interesting books. He has two books, Washington's Farewell and Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, that I think are very relevant to today's world. He came out, we talked about it. We talked about Lincoln, we talked about Washington, and then many other things.

• 2:53Ryan Holiday?

  I think you're really going to like these episodes. You can follow him on social media, @JohnAvalon. And then we ended up doing a nice walk through the painted porch, where we talked about some of our favorite books. So let's just get into it. Here is me talking to John Avlon in Bachelor, Texas.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read the new Eric Larson book on Sumter?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I've started the Eric Larson book. It's weird to read another, like Meacham's book's great. I like Larson a lot.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  I just thought he did a good job, which is what I wanted to talk about. He did a good job capturing, which was something I don't think we talk about with the Civil War enough, which is basically a minority of a minority hijacks a party and then plunges the whole country into war. And there's an analogy here, like in Texas, there's no Democrat in any statewide office. And even though the state is actually pretty purple, only 3% of people vote in the Republican primary. And so that's who decides. So you have this minority by minority picking these extreme candidates. And basically, I think he makes the point that a generation of Southerners who'd been raised not just with slavery and the corrosive effects of like, you know, subjugating a group of people,

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  but at some point, the sort of powers that be decide that they can't even brook an argument about the rightness or wrongness of this. And so they raise kind of this generation of like, these aggressive snowflakes who can't like, no criticism of- Slavery is allowed, no contradictory information is allowed, no, basically no free speech is allowed. And it creates this kind of this incredibly insular, almost deranged, wacko culture that honestly thinks it can win the Civil War, you know, and then it plunges the nation in. Lincoln does essentially nothing to make them think that slavery itself is threatened. This is all in their head that they, you know, we now that famous essay about the Flight 93 election.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  They basically believe that premise then and then crash the plane into a fucking mountain for no reason.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  And, and create the very thing they were trying to avoid. And I know the author of that essay, and I do think as someone who lived through nine 11 up close, like that essay, the premise of it is.

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  Offensive, to say the least. Yes.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  But also really, really bad if your goal is to try to redeem American democracy. And that's where I think our challenge is today, but let's just talk about what you just laid out. First of all, blood and soil vision of patriotism, which is nationalism, not patriotism, right? A sense of persecution that you cultivate. So people are on a hair trigger. You use polarization and then when violence is instigated, you convince people that the aggressor is the victim.

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So the psychology is termed aggressive defensiveness. It was also used to re, you know, reclaim the South versus segregationists after the Civil War and after the constitutional amendments.

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  World War II, this is Germany in World War II.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. Germany, by the way, that's a form of lost cause mythology too, very explicitly. Blood and soil nationalism, plus a victimhood, aggressive defensive, you know, lost cause mythology. These are dangerous forces.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And I think America in particular, and this is something I believe like marrow deep. You know, we're the first nation in the world founded on idea, not a tribal identity. And therefore we're really uniquely dependent on unifying stories and tribal politics uniquely short circups our nation.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Or short circuits, right?

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  What do you do when people introduce a fundamentally false story? And they repeatedly add to it a filter information, suppress dissenting, contradictory. That the South basically tells itself this story that is a lie over and over and over. Again, that plunges them into the made up conflict that is Fort Sumter into the war that sustains the war well after it's obviously lost and then sustains the sort of lost cause mythology resistance of segregation for another 100 years. And I think we're kind of in this sort of that energy, that sort of dark energy I said, I think is still with us. When I look at a DeSantis or an Abbott, I see them just using that playbook of just like, how do we?

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  How do we lie? How do we aggressively defend? And there's a line, a spectrum from when it goes from populism to demagoguism into, you know, outright violence and war. And it's hard to know where you are in that spectrum, but it's a, it's a dangerous force that you should not play with.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Correct, and we are actively indulging it. And, and the other thing is, is an attempt to get democracies to consume themselves. So this goes back to actually what Washington in the farewell address and the founders. I've been giving a, a, a talk lately about how the founders warned us. And, and if you notice, I mean, there's a reason they use the word demagogue even more than democracy in the Federalist Papers.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  There's a reason that Washington farewell address, his number one warning is against what we would call hyper partisanship and polarization. That's how democracies die. And also foreign influence under, underpinning, which is an issue. And when the founders are directly drawing on the lessons of ancient Greece and Rome and how those republics fell. You know, they look at King Philip of Macedon pretending to be allies and undermining the integrity of a state, which Russia does to Poland while Washington is president.

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  Or even the number of times they've referenced like Cataline.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:04Ryan Holiday?

  And the Catalan conspiracy. And when you have this sort of false demagogic populist who loses an election and that threatens their ego and sense of self and what a fragile person with unlimited ambition will do in that position. They were just so scared about that. And then I guess it's somewhat ironic that they would design a system that is still to this day, remains vulnerable to that kind of person.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  But they had explicitly, here's the great thing about applied history. The founders intentionally drew on those lessons to build a system that was as impervious as possible, given human nature. But that's also why they wonder, they warn. If virtue ceases to exist,

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  democracies will collapse. We have a weakness with demagogues who rise to power on the ruins of public liberty.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Right? With populism that says they're defending liberty while undermining it.

• 8:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Which is why, you know, when you read that Hamilton letter to Washington that was read during one of Trump's impeachments repeatedly, it's incredibly resonant and incredibly relevant. And I think one of our challenges, like Lincoln and that generation is the second founding, right? And that it's easier to rally around them today for some folks than the first founding, which I utterly reject, but we can get into that, which we're now celebrating the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.

• 9:16Ryan Holiday?

  They did a Paul Revere right up this street.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  That's so cool. I love that. And, and we need to, you know, reclaim American history.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I found out at this thing? Cause I took my kids to it. They were exciting. So this town is Bastrop, Texas.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  There's also Bastrop, Louisiana. It was founded by this guy Baron de Bastrop, who was in typical American history fashion, a complete charlatan of no, of no actual European ancestry. Comes here, land speculator, gets a bunch of land from the government, from the Mexican government, whatever. He runs into financial trouble. He sells his land in Louisiana to Aaron Burr.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  No kidding?

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Oh, and that's where he was going to do the revolution?

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, the Carter Revolution.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  That's amazing. That's amazing. There's so many plays to take that, but I think that, you know, it's worth looking at the way the founders consciously drew on history and, and we need to honor our history. I think, you know, we need a, I'm a centrist, but a liberal patriotism. We need to make sure that there are a lot of, that this is a patriotic movement to preserve our democracy that's incredibly inclusive. And to the extent that Lincoln is the second founding.

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I do think that one of our challenges right now, we need to take generationally very seriously.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Is the idea that we need to enact a new founding era.

• 10:25Ryan Holiday?

  Would you say we need a third or would you say it's the fourth? Cause I would say you get 100, at the, the 100th anniversary of, of Appomattox, you basically have the March in Washington, you have the Civil Rights Movement. I would, I would include sort of Washington and John Lewis and these other guys as a sort of a third founding. I would say we'd be in fourth.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  But would you? I think, I think the fourth is fair because I think between the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement, an enormous amount happened.

• 10:49Ryan Holiday?

  New conception of.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  But the the goal in our focus now, I deeply believe should be strengthening American democracy for the 21st century. And it needs to be a whole of government effort that involves culture, too. Teaching civics again, really inculcating it. Really making sure we have a new vision of national service. We have shared experiences. Political reforms that can counteract the polarization, open primaries, ranked choice voting, redistricting reform.

• 11:11Ryan Holiday?

  The system has to work where people aren't gonna participate.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And this is where the abundance agenda folks have a great point, too, because if you create a sclerotic system where nothing gets built, people don't believe their government can be responsive to their needs. And that sets up a situation for a demagogue who promises they can, quote, get things done. So we do need to think much more holistically and about a fourth founding. And an effort after this to rebuild and strengthen American democracy for the 21st century. That's where I think our energy needs to go. It's it's it's not a defense of the stale status quo. It's something that is patriotic, but radically new, drawing on our past. And it's about making the old stories new again, which is what you do, which is what I tried to do in my books. We need to take the best of the past and reanimate it.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  So there's a sense of continuity and hope and and building something better squarely on the best foundations of the past.

• 12:00Ryan Holiday?

  I think I think Martin Luther King did this so well because he was so steeped in American history and then sort of Western civilization. But he could take them seriously and literally, right? And he like the Martian Washington, he's like, I'm here to cash a check, right? With the Emancipation Proclamation, you made a promise, I'm here to cash that check. And that's, I mean, I think Thomas Jefferson would at some level be horrified that we took him literally, right? Like, but but that I think that's part of it. And I've always loved, there's a line in in Meditations that I think about. That I think is a great example of this because it's so funny coming from Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius, he lists his debts and lessons. And he lists, he says, through my brother Severus, it was through him that I encountered Thrasse, Helvidius, Cato, Dion and Brutus,

• 12:46Ryan Holiday?

  the great sort of Stoic opposition, the great Stoic philosopher senators. And he says, and conceived of a society of equal laws governed by equality of status and speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. So it's like, it's funny to hear an emperor, the emperor of Rome say that. And yet, he's taking the tradition of Cato and all these other Stoic philosophers. He's reiterating what they said, he's saying it beautifully. And then at some level, I think probably would be first to admit, we're not even close to that. But the idea is that each generation, we aspire to get a little bit closer to.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  That's it. That's to form a more perfect union.

• 13:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  This is not a utopian vision. America is not a utopian nation because I think the founders recognized, given the understanding of human nature, that utopian dreams always end in nightmares.

• 13:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Right? You're imposing ideology on the human spirit. That's never a good deal. But what you can do is make constant progress. And each generation has its role and responsibility. And this is ours. We're the adults right now.

• 13:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And, and we got a lot to clean up and reform. But it needs to be done in a patriotic, inclusive way. And you're right about Dr. King, you know, that is such a great example about how he consciously builds, it's a patriotic nationalism.

• 13:57Ryan Holiday?

  He's not tearing down. He's saying, hey, no, no, what you believe, I believe.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:02Ryan Holiday?

  But let's make it real. I think Gandhi does this also. It's like Gandhi understands Christianity is the religion of the empire that's oppressing them. And he reflects their fundamental un-Christianness back at them. And then they have to go, well, what are we, are we going to cling to this? Or are we going to try to be a little bit better?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  And that's reconciling leadership.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Gandhi hearkens back to Lincoln. MLK hearkened back to Lincoln. Mandela hearkens back to Lincoln. You take a divided contradictory system and you try to elevate it on the basis of shared humanity.

• 14:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  You have to do that. And, and that is, Jill Lepore writes beautifully about this in one of her books. But that is, that is the essence of reconciling leadership. And it's something that Lincoln symbolizes and we need to rekindle, it seems to me, right now.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  So you, last time we talked, it was right before your election. You ran for office. What did you learn running for office? Because I mean, I think you probably identify as a journalist and as a writer and as a historian, and then you found yourself crossing that line, like entering the arena, so to speak.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:14Ryan Holiday?

  Obviously, it didn't go your way. But what did you learn about that process? And what advice would you have for people?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  I'm glad I did it.

• 15:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I got energy from it. It felt deeply purposeful. And I think for me, it was a feeling that I did not just want to talk about it. If I had been, you know, I was editor in chief of The Daily Beast in the first Trump election, and we were the first news organization, or one of the first to get blacklisted by the campaign. I was a senior analyst and anchor at CNN during the 2020 election. And the idea of enduring a third election and just talking about it felt civically lazy to me.

• 15:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  And it's a tough decision. It's tough on young families. You know, it's tough to walk away from a job and a career you really love, recognizing that...

• 15:57Ryan Holiday?

  It's probably not fun to suddenly be subjected to criticism and a grueling schedule. I mean, I imagine also, it's not a walk in the park.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  It's definitely not a walk in the park, and we don't make it easy. But I will say, having been a journalist in the Trump era and written a book called Wingnuts 15 years ago about the rise of all this stuff, I have a very thick skin. I'm used to being attacked baselessly by people who create characters, which is pretty funny if you're general, your whole purpose is about, you know, building a vital center and like combating polarization and extremism. And I don't care if it's on the far left or the far right, but I won't pretend those two things are equivalent in our time.

• 16:33Ryan Holiday?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Because they're not.

• 16:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  You know, I worked for Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor during 9/11. Before that, I'd been a Clinton kid.

• 16:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I ran as a Democrat because I was also the question of where can I do the most good?

• 16:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Right now? And my wife and I, Margaret, Margaret Hoover, the host of Firing Line, we had long and anguished conversations around this because of the costs to our family.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  And ultimately, the decision was that we didn't want...

• 17:02Speaker 01

  To tell our kids that we could have done more when it mattered most.

• 17:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  That's what honestly motivated me. And for me, my grandparents were immigrants and I I have had a a deep belief in America as a civic religion.

• 17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  I feel, and it's not an uncommon experience.

• 17:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, me too.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  For, yeah, immigrant families. And so what has been happening has been torturous to my sense of America as a great force for good. Not perfect, but.

• 17:28Ryan Holiday?

  There's a betrayal there, I think it feels like.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I didn't think we'd do it to ourselves a second time.

• 17:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Only because Trump, after the last election, had tried to destroy our democracy on the back of a lie that led to an attack on our Capitol. And I assumed that that would be a deal breaker.

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  If not the 1.1 million people dying during COVID, if not for any number, if you're a journalist, you care deeply about, you know, combating lies.

• 17:50Ryan Holiday?

  Or just to go to our point about the founders in virtue, it's like, let's say he was right about everything. There is no level on which he's not a shitty person. He cheats on his wife, he cheats on his taxes, he's mean, he's vindictive, he's insecure. He's a preposterous cartoon clown at every, even if he was right about everything, even if he could make you rich in America beyond its wildest dreams, I think at some level, how do you not just have the self-respect to be like, I don't want to hang out with that person. I don't want them in charge. And and by the way, you would never let this person coach your kid's soccer team. You would never give him your life savings.

• 18:31Ryan Holiday?

  And then the the ability for millions of people in some sort of collective psychosis or delusion to go, let's give him the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and the keys to the world economy and the keys, this, that, and the other. Even if you are pretty cynical, even if you are pretty good at understanding the craziness, the crazy things people have done in history, it's hard to wrap your head around.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  It is. And it sets a terrible example for American democracy and democracy in the world.

• 19:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  You know, our autocratic adversaries want to undermine the integrity of democracy, right? And they tried to do this in the 1930s.

• 19:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Right? Democracy is divided and decadent and dysfunctional. It can't get big things. Things done. You need a totalitarian system led by a strong man.

• 19:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  To really deliver for the people. And ultimately, you know, we sort of said that, you know, backs to the wall, we've got more strength.

• 19:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Because free, free men, liberty, equality, that, that has greater strength than a totalitarian system that rules by fear. The fact that we've done this to ourselves is, is difficult to reconcile with any vision of American exceptionalism. The people who are surprised at the chaos and cruelty and corruption right now, it's hard for me to reconcile as, as a former journalist.

• 19:42Ryan Holiday?

  But that goes back to the Lincoln thing. It's like, if it was easy to be a reconciler, if it was easy to empathize, to understand, to forgive, it wouldn't be impressive, right? Like, and so it is an example of when Marx realized, writes his passage about how the obstacle is away. He's not talking about like a bankruptcy or a, you know, a disaster. He's talking about assholes. Like assholes really make it hard for you. Like people who do fucked up things make it hard for you. It's hard to be empathetic when someone is in the middle of harming you or something you love. And that's what I think makes this moment so challenging, but it's also what demands from us exactly this set of virtues.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Exactly right. My, my favorite apocryphal Lincoln quote, sadly apocryphal is, I'm an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else.

• 20:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  And so I do think we need to be defiantly optimistic. That is sort of my default anyway. But we need to dig deep to find it. And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to interview you for my podcast right before the election, because the stakes are so high for citizens. But even in a ditch like this, now's precisely the time where you need to dig deep, to find, you know, courage, to find discipline, to find decency. And for citizens to step up, this is a time for citizens to show responsibility. And that does not mean this, this requires the deeper wisdom of Lincoln and King of, of confronting hate with love.

• 21:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Right? That, that's the way you defeat it. Because otherwise, the people who want to destroy our democracy will throw sand in the gears. They want more conflict. They want more division.

• 21:09Ryan Holiday?

  They want you to quit. They want you to go fuck them. This isn't.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I'm out of here.

• 21:13Ryan Holiday?

  They want you to move, or they want you to disengage, or just go, you know what? I'm just going to focus on my business for the next 40.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  That's right. And this is, this is like Voslov Havel, one of my heroes. The power of the powerless essay where he talks about the subtle cues that makes a greengrocer to put up the workers of the world unite sign in the window. It's not that they believe it, it's that that's a way just to stay out of trouble and go about their business. But then you become part of a cog in that larger machine. And so that's where we all, I think, need to rise up with a sense of sort of, you know, straighten their civic backbones and be active citizens and feel a sense of courage and do what we can. It's the Teddy Roosevelt, do what you can where you are with what you got.

• 21:47Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's what I felt with this thing at the Naval Academy. Everyone had their little bit of, hey, this is where I draw the line. This is what I'm OK with. This is what I'm not OK with. This is where what I think is right. I actually think this would all get back in the bounds of normalcy pretty quickly. Like, I think Harvard doing what it did makes a big difference. Columbia doing what it did makes a big difference the other way. You know, these, like, what is the point of having hundreds of billions of dollars? If you're gonna go sit in the, still have to sit in the front row and suck up to a guy who would destroy your business in three seconds if he had the power, who has called for you to be arrested. I'm talking about Mark Zuckerberg here.

• 22:29Ryan Holiday?

  You know, what is the point of being one of the hundred most powerful people in the world? That I'm talking about every senator and then just being like, well, the president wants it. It's like, no, you have been given a set of power and you are, you are refusing to take it. And what is the point? And so I think if everyone said, like, at this thing in the Naval Academy, they wanted me to remove stuff from my slide. I don't have the power to force myself on stage and give the talk. They have the power to say whether I can do it or not. But I have the power to not compromise. And then I have the power to not go quiet about that. I have the, I can make good trouble, as John Lewis said, and that's what I felt like I could do. Now, I don't know what this is gonna mean for me exactly. I'm almost certainly not gonna talk there ever again.

• 23:12Ryan Holiday?

  Like, that, that invitation is rescinded for the, the time being, but, you know.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  In the long run, though.

• 23:18Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  It is additive. In the long run, you will be invited back. You know, because you took a stand of principle. And, and just, let's, let's explain to people a little bit more around the context around this. The Naval Academy had removed over, I think, 300 books from the library. They left mine comp, but they took out my Angela.

• 23:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Right?

• 23:35Ryan Holiday?

  Stacey Abrams, who I've had on this podcast, they removed her book. So it's not this abstract thing. It's someone I know. They removed someone I know from the library.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And what was the alleged sin? If not, not like those books had actually been read.

• 23:48Ryan Holiday?

  Just too woke.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Just too woke. By, by, by reputation, association, right?

• 23:52Ryan Holiday?

  Probably chat GPT gave them a list of woke books.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Right. This is like where like the Enola gay was briefly erased from the history of the military because it had the word gay.

• 24:01Ryan Holiday?

  It had a keyword.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Right. Which, which is really sinister and totalitarian if it weren't also sort of, you know.

• 24:06Ryan Holiday?

  Dumb.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You know, laugh so you don't cry. But that stand of courage and then talking about it, right? What they do is they say, fine, just be, be quiet.

• 24:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Right? Get, get in line. And the refusal to bow, the refusal to compromise. The contrary example that you just gave is all the CEOs who took the trip down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. And, you know, Martin Abis to say the terrible thing is everyone's got their reasons.

• 24:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  And in that case, you've got the veneer of shareholder responsibility, fiduciary responsibility. I will be not doing my duty as a shareholder of representative, you know, CEO, if I don't go kiss the ring right now.

• 24:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Even though experience should tell you that bullies only respect strength. My favorite quote from, one of my favorite quotes from Churchill, you know, appeasement is feeding a crocodile, hoping it eats you last.

• 24:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  And as the law firms found out, when they didn't have collective action at the outset, they figured, oh, this is a pretty good deal. I was going to do pro bono work for, against antisemitism and for veterans anyway.

• 25:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  But it's never going to stop there.

• 25:02Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's what Stockdale, which I talked about in the New York Times piece, he calls this extortionary environments. It's due and, and so you might go, oh, look, all they're asking you to do is remove the slides because it's got, yes, but there's a or else. And the or else isn't, hey, you're going to get audited or hey, you're going to end up in an El Salvadorian gulag. But it was, you're not going to come back. Like there, there is a consequence if you don't go along. If you make trouble, like things will be removed. And, and I think what is tricky, and we saw like, where would we be right now if Mike Pence hadn't been the vice president on January 6th? Right? So there is the problem with, you said, everyone has their reasons. Some of those reasons are good. You need, you do need good people in positions of power and influence for some critical moment in the future.

• 25:48Ryan Holiday?

  I think what, what's delusional and super seductive is we tell ourselves that we're that person. That of course, we know we could do something now, but we have to hold our fire for later, then we can do the right thing. And most of us are not that person. Our job, most of us, most of the time need to just do the right fucking thing. And not be Machiavellian or pragmatic about, just do what you think is right. Draw the line. Say what you think the truth, Mark Surius says, say what you think, right? Like say what is true. Do what your duty demands. Don't tell yourself, oh, hey, if I do it, then I'll be replaced by someone worse. And then with the moment, no, most of us, most of the time, just do the right thing.

• 26:30Ryan Holiday?

  It's safer, it's easier, it's clearer. Don't get in your own head about it. That, I just had to go, you know what? Yes, sure. I could get up there. I could do the talk. Maybe I could sneak it in. I could be subtle about it. I could allude to this. Or, you know, later on, I want to give a better speech. I'm like, you know what? I've done that enough in my life. You know, there's been moments professionally where I was working with someone or I didn't say something.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  You've been open about.

• 26:54Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. And I was like, you know what? That time's over. More people just need to do that thing now.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  This is the key thing, right? And you mentioned John McCain, uh, who obviously served in the Hanoi Hilton, served quote unquote with Admiral Stockdale. And he said, you know, doing the right thing politically is, you're doing the right thing is usually the right thing politically ultimately.

• 27:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Right? But, but take that calculation out. The moment you rationalize, we're all responsible with what we, we say and do when we have the microphone.

• 27:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  So the, the backroom conversations, the quiet rationalizations, the delay of saying, how many senators I've spoken to? Who, who rationalized votes for people they knew were blatantly unqualified. They would never, this is the Lincoln idea, the politics of the golden rule. Treat other people like you'd like to be treated that we've totally lost in our politics for the time being. And we need to reassert. They said, well, I'll vote for these nominees now, but the rally line is going to be when the Senate parliamentarian. If, if we try to overrule the Senate parliamentarian on reconciliation. First of all, ain't never going to happen.

• 27:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, I E.

• 27:47Ryan Holiday?

  And by the way, two votes, Hegseth is not Secretary of Defense and we're not in this.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  One more. And Tillis had made. A deal to do it and then he was scared. Look, I understand they get threats and they say they then I gotta look out for my family. But this is where you get the larger oath, you know, the mere Pence example, the fact that he went along and did almost everything until the very end and then still was cast out with the trash. That forty members of Trump's first term cabinet secretary saying this is not a good man and cannot be trusted. The rationalization that says this time it will be different isn't should be unsupportable, but the example you set, you know, by but in your way. Is and the members of the Senate all need to be stepping up now. If you say you believe in these virtues and these values. Don't hedge, don't prevaricate, don't rationalize. Same thing with CEOs or college presidents.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  When the halfway ration, when the halfway is done, it does not work. You be strong, take collective action now because our democracy is on the line and then as citizens, we need to step up. And and really do take that responsibility to reanimate our democracy and they use this idea of a second founding and a strengthening American democracy for the 21st century. Let's look forward to build something, not simply destroying, but it begins with courage today. Now is the time to be courageous, not tomorrow.

• 28:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and we're not senators, but we all have this in our own individual sphere.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:04Ryan Holiday?

  Everyone does it in their own individual sphere. We all have little bits of power and if we assert that power individually collectively, it does make a large difference and and yeah, I don't know. We just need more of it.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  We need more of it, but but each of us in our own lives, in our own conversations can set the example. It's what Robert F Kennedy senior now said. You know, he said for tiny ripples of possibility and it does have, it can change the way people think. People need those positive examples. They need to be reminded. It's why your books remind people of the virtues in story form.

• 29:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, McMaster points this out in his his book on Vietnam about how not a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resigned on principle over like thirty years of Vietnam. Everyone at some level just either either they thought they were more hawkish and they felt like we weren't doing enough. Or they'd come to despair over the war and thought it was a lost cause and yet everyone said, and there's a famous quote from one of those generals where he goes, look, I know you think I should. Reson on principle, but what happens if I resign on principle? The next day, I'm just a bum who was once on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And that makes sense individually. But then you go, okay, 30 years, nobody did anything. And you're just in this slow moving car crash.

• 30:16Ryan Holiday?

  And by the way, you're feeding 50, 60, 70, you're hundreds of thousands of people into this grinder. You think about how many Americans died, think about how many South Vietnamese died.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:28Ryan Holiday?

  How many North Vietnamese died? And, and, and to me, that's why I'm so fascinated with Stockdale in this moment. Because meanwhile, Stockdale's in Stockdale and McCain both, along with about 500 other POWs are there. And each one of them could have just said a couple of magic words and gone home or been given a nice cell to themselves and three square meals a day. And they said, no, I'm not going to fuck over these people next to me. And all along the way, the, the people in Washington in much cushier positions, they would have gotten lobbyist jobs or law firm jobs. But they said, yeah, but see, if I, if I say what I think here, I'm not going to be Senator anymore. I'm not going to be Joint Chiefs anymore. The President will be mad at me.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Or, or even worse, they'll say, I'll lose access to the partisan economy after I lead off.

• 31:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  And whereas John McCain, as you say, refused early release when he had it offered.

• 31:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Because he didn't want to send that morale busting message.

• 31:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  To his compatriots. So if you think about the stakes that historical figures, the, the stakes that they stood their ground and found their courage and the comparatively low stakes to which we are selling out our democracy today. It is despicable, but it is also about therefore reminding and stealing the spine and straightening our civic back, but in realizing that it does still begin and end with us, the citizens.

• 31:46Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  And we have to engage it. We have to demand more. We cannot defer responsibility for our time.

• 31:52Ryan Holiday?

  That's right. You want to go check us in books?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 32:06Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know Ford Theatre?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Ryan Holiday?

  You know the spinning thing? That's where this idea came from.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Oh, it's brilliant!

• 32:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And by the way, this is so, if I didn't live in Sag Harbor in New York. We got a great local bookstore there, but you're kind of living the dream.

• 32:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's been fun.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  So there's, we have that bunch of Lincoln's over there.

• 32:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course. I think this is-

• 32:29Speaker 01

  I love Lincoln and Gettysburg probably was one of the scenes.

• 32:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, it's incredible. I like to point out that there's more pages in this book than words in the address.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure, by a lot.

• 32:38Ryan Holiday?

  But this is, did you read this one? Biography of a Writer?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  No, I never have.

• 32:42Ryan Holiday?

  So it like, because Lincoln wasn't a great speaker. Like, he wasn't, he wasn't a politician in the sense he could get up and give these like two-hour extemporaneous addresses. He wrote them all down. It's a really interesting look and they take a lot of the speeches and he kind of puts them in like poetry form.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Did this have a different title? There was a book called Lincoln's Sword about his writing.

• 32:59Ryan Holiday?

  I have that book also, but no, no, this is just, just look at him as a writer. If you haven't read that one, you might like that one. And then I think William Lee Miller is probably my favorite Lincoln biography.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Interesting. Have you ever been Benjamin Thomas?

• 33:10Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Mid-20th century kind of authoritative biography. He's a really good writer. Interesting. The problem I've got, I want the, like, William Manchester, right? So actually, when I was writing my Lincoln intro, I was fascinated with how Manchester set up the introduction of the first last line.

• 33:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  So, you know, this one.

• 33:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  And so I read it like 10 times and I sort of diagrammed it. And I used that and I didn't, you know, copy a structure, but I, but I used that as an inspiration because I was trying to figure out, why does this work?

• 33:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Because it shouldn't.

• 33:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  It's sort of like Dylan's Chronicles, which I love too. It shouldn't work structurally, but it works really well. And anyway, so I, the introduction to Lincoln, I think I, I feel like I hit the ball hard. And, but I was definitely inspired and structurally studied the introduction to Manchester. And Manchester's writing kind of- Elevates the game. McCullough elevates the game. Um, you know, I wanted to have that tactile.

• 34:06Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Feel.

• 34:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so you, I'm sure you've read Edmund Morris since you're doing.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 34:10Ryan Holiday?

  Um, have you read his Edison biography?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  So I've, I started that one too. The, the backward structure.

• 34:16Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was gonna think of opening lines. It's like, in the end as in the beginning, he subsisted only on milk.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Ryan Holiday?

  And you're just like, that's fucking weird and crazy and it shouldn't work and somehow it does.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  But Edmund Morris, like, the Dutch, his biography of Reagan, Dutch was like lambasted because he had this unbelievable access and then he kind of spurned it. And I understand why the Reagan folks were like, how did you?

• 34:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Like, but, but it's genius, it's this avant-garde biography of this like really un-avant-garde guy.

• 34:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  And, and he had his reasons for doing it. Um, uh, I talked to him at the time, uh, and, and right after, uh, because I was like a young admirer. But, but he does the tactile history and the, the.

• 34:53Ryan Holiday?

  He's, he's, and he's a bit trans, he's fucking with the constraints of the medium, which almost nobody does.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Which is great and which is something I like, you know, like my favorite writers are Martin Amis and, and Jim Harrison. And, uh, you know, like, you know, we should, we should nerd out on favorite books.

• 35:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  But, uh, but yeah, the ones who kind of push, who push the form and kind of like just make it a little more tactile. That's why I always like to like, what is it like to, oh, Wright Thompson, great guy.

• 35:20Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, this book is incredible.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  He's a buddy of mine, but he is, he is fantastic.

• 35:24Ryan Holiday?

  No, he's one of the best, I think, best living writers. Uh, speaking of your sort of project of, of hopeful patriotism, have you read Sharon?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:32Ryan Holiday?

  She's amazing.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  What's interesting about this book is twofold. One is, I, I tried to sell a book. My first book was called Independent Nations, A History of Centrist Leaders in American Politics. It came out when I was like, I wrote it when I was, I guess, 30. Um, uh, and I tried to sell a book called To Form More Perfect Union about sort of the forgotten, uh, forgotten heroes of American history. Which is a theme that I, I did a lot at The Beast, of like diverse Americans. And I was basically said, like, the, the, um, the episodic histories don't work.

• 36:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they're very hard to pull up unless you have a huge platform already.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And that she did what, what you've done very effectively, which is use a social media platform to like, um, to build out. So I think that's a great example of.

• 36:15Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read The Storm Before The Storm?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yes, because you recommended it to me. And it was one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. It was from July.

• 36:26Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, yeah, we talked about this. Yes, you're right.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  That was a really big one, and I've sent that podcast to you, and then I read the book. I love that. First Principles is great. Tom Ricks is fantastic.

• 36:34Ryan Holiday?

  He lives in Austin. This one is more, Jekker Rosen's book is more the Stoics than like, the Stoics don't really come up in Ricks's book.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  He does Cicero.

• 36:45Ryan Holiday?

  A little bit, yeah, but not as explicitly, and that one has a lot more of the Stoics in it. It's very good.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Who, who are, so what are your like, all-time favorite like, literary history?

• 36:56Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the liter, what do you mean literary history?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  I mean, like, you know, history that's written with a sense of.

• 37:00Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, oh.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  You know, Caro, I think the most recent Caro is amazing.

• 37:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I'm obviously very excited for.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  I know. And nervous because the Manchester example freaks me out.

• 37:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes, although the last book is not bad. The last, like, if you told me someone would do that good of a job finishing Caro, I would, I would take it, I guess. Have you read this book?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:23Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, take this.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  All right.

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  You would not think there would even be enough stuff to write a book this good, but incredible.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Great.

• 37:31Ryan Holiday?

  And also very much about, like, she does a really good job placing him in his context, which is, he is a politician. He's, and he has a shitty boss. His boss is Tiberius. So it's exactly, that's the timelessness of these dilemmas, right? He's in a far-flung province, dealing with problems, unrest and difficulty. This troublemaker comes up before him, and mostly what he's thinking about is, how do I handle this so my boss doesn't yell at me? Not, not what is the right thing, and you could, so when Jesus goes, you know, I am the way, I am truth, and he goes, what is truth? He's like, he doesn't fucking care, because he just doesn't want Tiberius to kill him.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  It's funny, because I gave a speech at a church during the campaign. I was asked to get up, and I decided to do something pretty different. I talked about Barabbas. And, and, and the, and Pilate is trying to like reason with the crowd and they're like, "Come on."

• 38:27Ryan Holiday?

  A little bit, yes.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  You know, "Do you really, you know, you really want..."

• 38:29Ryan Holiday?

  That's the thing, he knows what he's doing is wrong. He knows he's sending an innocent man.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  But, but then he's like, "Well, give the people what they want."

• 38:36Ryan Holiday?

  My, my job is to give them what they want.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that's where the responsibility of citizens, that's the point I was trying to make in that, in that talk was, you know, citizens have a responsibility. Like, it's not just about what vibes and what feels good at the moment. You need to think a little bit bigger.

• 38:50Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. And what I love about it is like, so Seneca writes, Seneca's letters, or Seneca writing to his friend Lucilius. Lucilius is also a governor in the Roman Empire. Like, they have the same job. Like, do you know, like, it's not like, he's not this, it's, it's, it was, there were hundreds of Pontius Pilates. Like, you know what I mean?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:10Ryan Holiday?

  Who just delegated the Roman authority, and then how do they use it? And, and, and she does a really good job comparing, uh, him to, uh, she, she, she bounces around, because there's almost no actual, like, life details that we have about Pontius Pilate. But she's like, "Imagine you're the viceroy of India."

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Ha!

• 39:30Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And, and Gandhi is your problem. And you go, "Okay, this is the timelessness of it. You're, you worked really hard, you got advanced to this job, but at some level you know there's a, a moral problem with what you do, and you just wish this person would not be pressing repeatedly on the contradiction inherent in your position, because you had, you swore an oath, you have responsibilities, and then how do you, you manage this, right? And it's, it's one of my all-time favorite books. I think it's one of the greatest.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  All right, I want to, I want to read, read that, and, and I'm gonna get a bunch of, of stuff from you, because, uh, again, like, sport local bookstores too. But that reminds me of something I read the other day. Um, so I guess, you know, this, there's a, a whole trend, particularly Silicon Valley, uh, not just ketamine, but people are sort of going on trips.

• 40:14Ryan Holiday?

  Psychedelics, yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Mid, mid, mid, or late-life psychedelic. And there's a problem because these CEOs are taking it, and then they quit within like a month.

• 40:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Because they're like...

• 40:22Ryan Holiday?

  The job is bankrupt, yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  This is meaningless.

• 40:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Which is a fascinating, like, unintended side effect.

• 40:28Ryan Holiday?

  We have, uh, then, and then, this is like one of my favorite... Favorite series is so the Princeton University Press did took little different chunks or essays from the ancients and then.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I read the the election one.

• 40:41Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, how to stop it. Did you do how to stop a conspiracy?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  No, I didn't.

• 40:44Ryan Holiday?

  So this is about the Catiline conspiracy.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Great.

• 40:46Ryan Holiday?

  Also incredible. And then this is Plutarch, how to be a leader.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Give me some Plutarch.

• 40:49Ryan Holiday?

  So we think of Plutarch as just a biographer, but he's he's like the governor of this Greek city. And and he's the priest at Delphi. So he's he's like, so.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  He's got the 360.

• 41:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And so you go, OK, all of his. His, his political experience is obviously informing how he's writing about these people, and they are informing how he's leading. And and the idea of it not being this line is great.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  And that's the way it should be, right? The way the founders are drawing on the lessons of history. My grandparents are, you know, my ancestry is Greek. And it was interesting talking about my grandfather. Like Plutarch was like part of the cultural.

• 41:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he's their guy.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, you're like, so, you know, that was a, you know, even though, you know, he was a doctor, like, that was just part of the education. And I love that. There's, by the way, you quoted a Sophocles quote the other day that I put on.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It was about, you know, you know, if you go into a tyrant's, you know, house and.

• 41:45Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, willingly, yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:46Ryan Holiday?

  You but you leave, yeah, what you leave a slave.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  You leave a slave.

• 41:50Ryan Holiday?

  Free man. Well, OK, so this is and then have you read this book?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:53Ryan Holiday?

  OK, so again, Seneca is exactly the contradiction we're talking about.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:58Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca is brought back from exile by Nero's mother to tutor this kid. And he. His access is dependent on his association with this guy, this kid, who at some point ceases to be a kid and makes it very clear that he's deranged.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  He's good.

• 42:18Ryan Holiday?

  And and so, but he is, he tells himself he's indispensable, and if I leave someone worse. And and he's right for a period, the first five years of Nero, Nero, they're called like Quinianum, Neuronium. They're good because he listens, but at some point he stops listening. And I don't know if you have, but I don't know if you have the later bad years without the political capital that people helped him build with the first five good years.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  That's interesting. Yeah. And by the way, I should say, after after the campaign and, you know, you know, no one likes to come up short. We ran ahead of the top of the ticket, I should say, but it wasn't enough. But one of the books I brought on, my son and I took a cross country train trip from Seattle to Chicago. One of the books I brought and read on that trip was Lives of the Stoics.

• 43:02Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, amazing. Well, so I think, and this is one of my favorite books.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I know the story, but.

• 43:06Ryan Holiday?

  There's a famous statue of Nero and Seneca, and Seneca's like trying to teach him, and Nero's like, like all, just not interested. Like, the body language is incredible.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I know that statue.

• 43:16Ryan Holiday?

  Um, yeah, uh, so anyways.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Emerson, Lessons from America to Stow, or do you find that, um, this is one of your favorites. I've never, Montaigne is a big sort of foundational.

• 43:25Ryan Holiday?

  He's a big character in the wisdom book that I just finished. He, he's like, uh, so, uh, there's a little biography that we don't have right now because it's out of print and we're bringing it back, but.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Oh, is that the one that, uh, the guy reads before he, uh, kills himself, the Second World War?

• 43:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, Stefan Zweig.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  I haven't, I haven't downloaded it.

• 43:42Ryan Holiday?

  Incredible, because Zweig understands in, like, sometimes because of what he's going through, he's able to, he's the first to really see Montaigne, not as this guy who just loves ideas, but as a guy who loved the world, who is forced back into the world of ideas because the world is so dysfunctional. It's in the middle of the Reformation, in the middle of the Protestant Civil War, and just everyone's tearing themselves to pieces and are horrible and awful. And he's like, I just can't do this anymore. And, and so, like, he's also, uh, you know, he's partly Jewish, he's a new, like, he realizes like, oh, it's not safe for me. And so if you see him as someone who's criticizing the problems of his time, it, just in the way that we're like, we're like, what the fuck is happening?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  But the withdrawal, like, Stefan Zweig's decision, I guess somewhat inspired by Montaigne, is, is to me, like, tragic and also, um, unacceptable.

• 44:34Ryan Holiday?

  But that, but that's the arc of Montaigne, is that he publishes these essays, which has this enormous impact, and then he reemerges and he comes back out.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  How is he like an avatar for centrism as a, um, as a distinct philosophy, a mediating philosophy?

• 44:47Ryan Holiday?

  I'll, I'll send you the, the, so he's the.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Because he's drawn on a lot.

• 44:51Ryan Holiday?

  He's the first main character in the book that I did, and I'll send you this essay that I wrote. But, but he is, he's basically, like, his, his, I mean, think about it, he's like, what do I know? That's his question, what do I know? So, in a time where both sides are killing each other because they know.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:06Ryan Holiday?

  He's saying, I don't know. And then the fascinating, one of his great essays, is they basically discovered the new world in his lifetime, right? And so all these reports of the cannibals are coming back. And he's like, but wait, we do, he's like, I just watched you burn someone at the stake.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're so civilized?

• 45:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, exactly. And, and, and so, and he's drawing, there's a famous story in Herodotus where Herodotus, uh, you know, is telling the, the, these Greeks about this horrible thing that the Indians do, that they eat a piece of their ancestor after they die, right? And then they're like, that's, well, these barbarians, what's wrong with them? It's like a very famous story. And then, um, Herodotus is this kind of open-minded traveler, he, Herodotus goes, well, watch this. And he's like, okay, so, uh, to the Indians, he's like, and this is actually people in India, not.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. The actual one.

• 45:55Ryan Holiday?

  He's like, okay, so what the Greeks do is they, uh, they put their, their father on a pile of sticks and they light them on fire. And they're like, what is wrong with you? You know, and he's like, this is my point, that everything sounds barbaric if it's not what you grew up with or you understand. So, and Montaigne tells that story also. That's Montaigne, it's just, he's like, how can you guys know this? You know? You don't know this. And it's, so his centrism is much more rooted in intellectual humility and open-mindedness.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  But that's fine, that's Benjamin Franklin, right? Like, we must, you know, trust a little bit less in our own infallibility.

• 46:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  And, and, and it's the thing with terrorism or ideology, like, I'm a big believer that sort of ideology is the enemy. And, and it's because it comes with crushing certainty.

• 46:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  And, and, and so that is, I think, that's, that's where people, like, Havel has this great line about ideology make, gives you the illusion of dignity and morals while making it easier to part with them.

• 46:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  And I think that's perfect.

• 46:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, no, he's, uh, I'll, I'll send you this thing, cause it's so.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 46:52Ryan Holiday?

  Um, yeah, that, that, so I'm just finishing the wisdom book. So the main character is Montaigne, uh, in, in the first part is Montaigne, second is Elon Musk, because how do you have a, a brilliant person?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 47:03Ryan Holiday?

  Break their mind and become so not brilliant and fall for so many things? And then the third, the sort of paragon of, of wisdom is ultimately Lincoln. So those are like the three main, main guys in the book.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Fantastic. Now, it, by the way, I should tell you that, um, So during the campaign, I read the Daily Stoic every day. And I ended up bonding with a really, really brilliant, tough, young union leader named Ryan Stanton, in part over that.

• 47:30Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, lovely.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And he reads your work every day. And there are a number of folks out in Suffolk County who, especially, I think there's a separate recovery community.

• 47:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  That like, people like when they're needing to...

• 47:42Ryan Holiday?

  There's something about the day, because it's, you know, one day at a time. So I think there's something that works with the one-page-a-day of the Daily Stoic.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And ultimately, what you've been able to build, it's this, you know, I think when you, we need a book to save your life or ground you, right? You know, it acts as a life preserver.

• 47:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And it's connecting with the broader wisdom, so you know you're not alone. I think that's the purpose of art and writing.

• 48:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  And so just, you know, you have resonated in people's lives.

• 48:07Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, exactly.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  So I'm not saying that just to blow smoke, but because it has the added advantage of being true.

• 48:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, lovely.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 48:18Ryan Holiday?

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