Gavin Newsom on Ego, Power, and Stoicism

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so a couple of months back, I'm listening to a podcast, I'm listening to Ezra Klein's podcast, and the governor of California is on there. I'm from California and no longer live there. And yeah, and the governor of California starts suddenly talking about Stoicism. Listen to this.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I hate to bring this book up because it's such a universal, obvious book. I had never read it. I've had 10 copies. I finally picked it up off the shelf. I'm like, what the heck? Meditations from Marcus Aurelius. And I'm like, where the hell have I been? Or where's that book been?

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  See, when you get into podcasting and immediately the Stoics.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  I'm telling you.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  Can't be, can't be.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Ryan Holiday.

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  Not get into the Stoics.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  How could you not? I don't think there's, perhaps there's never been more important and impactful words ever written.

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  So I ended up reaching out and we got connected. It turned out that Gavin Newsom had read The Obstacle is the Way and was reading Meditations and some other stuff on Stoicism. And we ended up connecting and I ended up going out there last month. I took my oldest son, we went on a little father-son trip. And I swung by the governor's mansion and we talked Stoic philosophy. I thought it was cool. Look, you can totally disagree with his politics. I think it's hard to miss his sort of sincere interest in the philosophy here. And, and look, I'll take it from whoever it comes from. Like, look, would I, would I sit down and do a podcast with Ron DeSantis of Florida?

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I'm not a huge fan of him, but if he was sincerely interested in the philosophy, I would talk to him about it. I happen to think Gavin Newsom is a vastly superior politician than Ron DeSantis. And, you know, certainly the very large disparity between their death rates and the.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  COVID pandemic, I think are, you know, a pretty stark and vivid illustration of their differences in competencies. Do I agree with everything that Gavin Newsom has ever done? Absolutely not. In fact, one of the things we talk about in the episode, which surprised me is I'd actually said something negative about him in one of my books, and he sort of pushed back on that. I was actually surprised at how seriously he took that. So anyways, look, I know this is going to be a somewhat controversial episode, but it's not going to be a political episode in the way that perhaps you might think. This is going to be me and the governor of one of the largest states in the Union, one of the largest economies in the world, my home state, talking about the philosophy

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  that I have made my life's work. So I think that's interesting unto itself. I read his memoir, A Young Man in a Hurry, which I related to in a lot of ways, not just, again, as a Californian, but as a person who experienced some of that same ambition and drive, insecurities, mistakes, all of that. Let's just get into the episode. I'll just keep this intro shorter so I don't piss anyone off and allow this to speak for itself. Now, this is a chunk of his podcast. This is Gavin Newsom, which you can listen to the full episode of anywhere you listen to your podcasts. But anyways, thanks to the governor for having me on the

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  show. Thanks for the time he took to talk to my son. My son thought that was a very cool experience. And thanks for letting me see the governor's mansion, which I had not ever really even seen, despite growing up not that far from it. Anyways, let's get into it. Here we go.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Hell of a time, American peril. And then you, you know, you're hardly an old man. Your wife's saying, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. Mom and dad are like, Jesus, you know, how did we raise you, young man?

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Or not. They're probably more generous.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  You know, so where are you now in terms of just you go on a walkabout? Is that when you picked up meditations or?

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  No, I found, the irony is I found stoicism before. And in college, I was in, I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day, October 2006. So it's going on 20 years.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  And what was the motive? You remember the motivation for even making the purchase?

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. You want to know who told me about the Stoics?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  There's no way you could guess. There's no way you could guess.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Robert Greene would be the safe bet.

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  No, it was Dr. Drew.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  I was, I was writing for the college newspaper and I went to this, uh, they, I got invited to this conference, uh, in West Hollywood, which was sponsored by Trojan condoms. And, and he was, he was giving a talk and after the talk, uh, I was just, I was like, you know, a young kid, I was just hungry for advice and direction and all these things. And I just said, Hey, um, you got any book recommendations? And he turned me on to the Stoics and changed the course of my life.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  And which, which, what, which Stoic and which book?

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  He told me first about Epictetus and I bought Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. And, you know, obviously it took a while for them to seep in, but, but, you know, sitting in, in Riverside, California, reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  And what was that the first, but was that the book?

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  That was the first one.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  And I just, I was so, what is this? You know?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  And it really was that immediate?

• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I didn't know there was writing like this. I didn't know there was advice like this. I didn't know it was what I was looking for, but it was exactly what I was.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  And did you know, I mean, there was about Stoicism, that he was about Stoicism? Or was it just the most powerful man in the world and that intrigued you?

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  I mean.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And its life lessons?

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  You know, we're, we're only a few years out from the movie Gladiator at this time. So I, I think I was a little bit primed, but, but there, there was something about, I think what, at the core, young men are looking for direction, right? And they're looking for direction, particularly now in a world where a lot of the old sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that regard are gone. And so there's this just kind of existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't, you don't know how to be a person. And, and there's not, it's not like there are these rituals or these groups or this kind of process by which you become a man. That just doesn't exist.

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  And so to, to sort of pick up the private thoughts of the, the emperor of Rome. And he's, he's talking to himself about how to, how to not just be, uh, you know, a productive person and a strong person, but also a wise person and a good person and how, how to deal with, you know, everything from his temper to his anxiety to his, you know, sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people. I just, I didn't. If you had asked me to define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said, I don't know, it's like, you know, it's, it's those people in togas, or it's those people on

• 7:26Ryan Holiday?

  college campuses, you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there are no answers.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it like that it's first thing, it's for people smarter than me, right?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  And, and then to read the Stoics, you go, oh, no, no, this is for people trying to be human beings, like, and trying to just deal with the difficulties of life. And that is what I think struck me so much about meditation, because even compared to the other Stoics, you know, whether you're reading Seneca or Epictetus, there, they're at least talking to an audience. And, and there's something so personal and disarming about meditations, because here it's, it's not meant for publication. It's, it's, it's just a guy, it's like a guy's inner monologue.

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  It's like the, the, the angel on his shoulder, you know, trying to be like, you're better than this, you should do this, try to do that, what about this? And, and so I think I was just, I was blown away. And then particularly that he is such a good writer, that even his notes to himself are some of the best philosophy ever written. I think that, that, that all is what struck me.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  So was that, so you sort of, you know, all of a sudden, this book speaks to you and your time of life, your state of mind, Epictetus, similarly, you mentioned the big three of Stoics, but these aren't the OGs of Stoicism. I mean, what, the broader Stoic construct for you, when did that click versus more of a contemporary version of Stoicism?

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the, the OGs of Stoicism, you go back to, you get Zeno, and you get Clantes and Chrysippus, Cato being maybe another one that maybe some people have heard of. You know, that, that was the process of kind of tracing it back.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Backwards.

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  You, you kind of, I think most people should start with the, the big three of the, of the Stoics, and then, and work their way back. There's a reason that they're the ones that are most well-known. And that is a, a really cool thing. It just blows your mind about history where you're like, okay, to Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism was ancient philosophy.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Ancient philosophy.

• 9:38Ryan Holiday?

  Like five, like, uh, Xeno is to Marcus Aurelius what Shakespeare is to us.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I was quoting Plutarch the other day, "The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Says it, you know, I don't know, 50, 70 AD.

• 9:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  The oldest and most fatal ailment. It's but, and that's so.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  And, and you take Plutarch, right? Again, yeah, probably the great, one of the great biographers. Truman would talk about how whenever he had a problem as president, he could take, he could pull out, he said, "I pull up my, my old friend Plutarch, my old friend, my old friend Plutarch, and he would have the solution to my problems."

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  But Plutarch is writing about, you know, Caesar and Cicero and Demosthenes and, and all these Greek and Roman figures who were to him what he is to us, you know? Uh, not quite that far, but, but, but we think about ancient Greece and Rome as this kind of like brief moment.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  As opposed to a civilization that lasted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Even the decline and fall of Rome is like 900 years, you know? Um, maybe a little bit less than that, depending on where you want to date it to, but the point is.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  That should give us comfort in the US.

• 10:51Ryan Holiday?

  It does a little bit, but it gives you, you just realize that, that they were like, when they were going through stuff, when, when, when Marcus Aurelius is living through a civil war, or Cato is living through a civil war, or Seneca is in exile or enduring the reign of Nero, what are they turning to? They're turning to the ancients who we are also turning to. And then what we have is generations, this is why they call philosophy the great conversation. Because it's, it's these core ideas that were sort of brought into existence at some point, but, but the genius of them is, is the layering on top of each subsequent generation

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  trying and riffing and just as, just as the founders, I, I gave you, um, Jeffrey Rosen's, uh, The Pursuit of Happiness, the founders were turning to the Stoics that, my, my nine year old is obsessed with Hamilton.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  The play Hamilton. The most famous play in the Western world in the 18th century was a play about Cato, and it was as famous as Hamilton is now. And, and in the way that, you know, um, like if, if you go immigrants, they get the job done, people know what you're talking about. When, when, um,

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  When George Washington would talk about, you know, looking at at events through the calm light of mild philosophy, or when they say, I regret I have but one life to give for my country. These are lines from that play. And so it's this great tradition of these ideas being just so perfectly expressed and the example being so powerful that people have been turning to it over and over again. And that's the that's the really powerful thing. Stoicism wasn't Marcus really, it was 600 years of of of of it in Greece and Rome. And then, you know, I mean, it continues on up. It's not like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it in the 1800 years since they absolutely have. And so it's it's

• 12:48Ryan Holiday?

  just this this energy, I think you tap into and you go, oh, these are ideas that have really been tested in the crucible of human experience.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Was the word stoic, I mean, was, I mean, when Zeno was 300 BC or something.

• 13:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Said, I'm I declare myself a stoic. It was, or was he declared a stoic?

• 13:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's that. I think it's to Zeno's credit that the philosophy is not called Zenoism, right? There's a little bit right at the beginning. There's some humility. So stoic, so so the founding story of Stoicism is Zeno's a merchant and he deals in this rare purple dye. And that dye being a commodity in those days.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Dye and purple.

• 13:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, we we we think of like, it's funny, where the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, global trade, that's the modern thing. It's like, no, the purple dye was this commodity that that was made across multiple islands in the Mediterranean and it would get traded and moved around like the same, the same navigational issues we're having right now, people were talking about then. But he suffers this shipwreck, he washes up in Athens and ends up there discovering philosophy. And that's where Stoicism starts. But he just begins lecturing about these ideas on the stoa poeula, which is the painted porch in Athens. And that's where that's what stoic means. It just stoa means porch. It doesn't

• 14:18Ryan Holiday?

  mean anything. These are just the guys from the porch, bullshitting and talking and and sharing. It is funny then that he would talk about that this. Merchant of purple dye, his philosophy would become the philosophy you associate with Marcus Aurelius, because I could tell you mouthing the words there. One of the powerful lines in Meditations is Marcus Aurelius says, this is a reference to being emperor, he says, be careful that you are not dyed purple. And he's saying that make sure that power doesn't corrupt you.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  God bless.

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  Because the Roman emperor was one of the few that could wear the color purple.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  So you're reading all of this, your portal to this, beginning with Meditations, which has had an outsized influence on everybody that's ever picked up.

• 15:06Ryan Holiday?

  Did you, when did you pick it up?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I picked up all the wrong versions.

• 15:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Couldn't understand a damn thing.

• 15:11Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I look back, it's interesting, I must have 15 or 20 different copies.

• 15:16Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  And it took me listening to you on damn YouTube to go, here's the one I recommend. I like to start reading, I'm like, wait, this makes some sense, because the translations are, you know, time of, back to decades and decades ago. So I think my father, someone, you know, was around, and then he, my uncle says, here's a book you should read. I'm like, Jesus, you know.

• 15:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  So they just sort of collected dust, but there were a few efforts.

• 15:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And they just didn't go anywhere, because it didn't speak to me with the kind of language that I understand today.

• 15:43Ryan Holiday?

  I do, I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon and I just bought a random copy that I got, the first one, I like, I got the copy that changed my life and I've now recommended it to so many people. That just, that's the, the algorithm blessed me.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Blessed you.

• 15:59Ryan Holiday?

  For someone who's so critical of algorithms, in that one case, the algorithm blessed me.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  By the way, one of the things I love that you do is you'll go back to the same, you'll go to different translations.

• 16:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And you're able to sort of lay them out. And I mean, it shows, I mean, you know, how language has radically changed.

• 16:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And how important the translation is.

• 16:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. I mean, I, so I don't speak Greek or Latin, so I don't, I don't know exactly, but it is interesting when you read all these different translations, you go, oh, like, this is the same idea, 15 different cuts on it. And what a big role the translator plays. And also, what a big role the moment in time that you're in plays. So how we, like.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  How you interpret it in the context of something contemporary.

• 16:43Ryan Holiday?

  So I've been reading Meditations for 15 years, and then 2020, pandemic hits, and I'm reading Meditations, and all of a sudden. There's all these references to the plague and to pestilence. And you realize, oh, this is a plague book. This guy wrote in the middle of the Antonine Plague.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, this 15 year pandemic that killed millions of.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And you never picked up on that, I mean, necessarily.

• 17:08Ryan Holiday?

  I guess I just, I, you don't, you, you think he's being metaphorical.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:12Ryan Holiday?

  And then, and then you realize he's being literal. Like one of the passages I thought the most about during the pandemic is this one where he goes, there's, there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character. And I, and then, then you watch over the next two years. People get radicalized. People turn off their hearts and their, their neighborliness to other people. And in other cases, lose their mind, come, you know, do and say things they, they would have been shocked by just a few years earlier. And you go, oh, that, he must have seen that. You know, he must, he must have seen that.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:52Ryan Holiday?

  And, and I think there's a, there's a famous story about Marcus Aurelius. He's presiding over some court and, and one of the lawyers, uh, makes this reference to the victims of the plague. And he, he just bursts into tears. And so you think, number one, I thought this, the Stoics don't have emotions. I thought they don't care about people.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:13Ryan Holiday?

  And then, and, and here he is just sort of weeping over these untold, uh, thousands of people who have died, you know, in some cases, people we would have, uh, cared deeply about and been very close to. And you go, oh, that's not what Sto- Stoicism isn't this fuck you, I got mine.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Ryan Holiday?

  Or like, I got a strong immune system.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Did you think it was when you first heard about it? Cause so many people see it as just, yeah, I'm just, I will have no emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, it's sort of rigid, robotic.

• 18:43Ryan Holiday?

  I think what I was, I was attracted to Stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted to Stoicism for centuries, which is it's about getting your shit together, getting it on lock, you know, uh, that sort of ownership and control of the self, which I think if anyone needs help in, it's young men. So, so I think that was my initial attraction to it. And then, and I think I was attracted to trappings of power and, you know, all the, all the things that make it, you know, interesting and unique compared to, I don't know, uh, existentialism or some other school of philosophy. But over the years, you realize, oh, this is actually a profoundly ethical philosophy.

• 19:26Ryan Holiday?

  This is about our connections to other people. This is about our responsibilities to other people. When they're talking about excellence, they don't simply mean professional excellence. And that actually professional excellence is is pretty common. But professional and personal excellence, like sort of rounding that package out is actually the the sort of thing to be more ambitious about. So I I think my initial attraction to it was one thing. And then what it it it works on you. And I I think it's interesting to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping it over the years. It's important that people understand Stoicism is a philosophy you should be reading, not a philosophy you have read.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Also, you make the point, and I don't remember exactly who said it, but you never swim in the same river twice.

• 20:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  This notion that the river's changed or step in the same river.

• 20:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Ah, I'll swim in it.

• 20:27Ryan Holiday?

  I like that, too.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  American, just up the block where you were growing up. But we change as well.

• 20:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And back to this, you know, you're reading it again, and that we're in a plague. And all of a sudden, you're reading it as, I mean, almost as a new visitor to the same same old.

• 20:43Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's so fascinating that, yeah, you picked up a book when you were one age, you picked it up again another. It continually wasn't working. And then at some point, and I I bet if you actually laid those translations outside by side, they're not that different.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  They're not that.

• 20:57Ryan Holiday?

  I think you were you were profoundly different.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Well, I was trying to find language, period. I, you know, wrote a book about my own learning disability. So just, I mean, literally, the words, they'd be just above my pay grade. That needs to be explained to me. I remember it's Shakespeare class in college. I mean, your toast is a dyslexic. You're like, me doth doc. I mean, Jesus. So you're like, immediately try to find a Cliff Notes version or something on TV that you could claim that I read or understood. Yeah. So, no, it's so you did all that, you know, so you're reading this. But you weren't necessarily going, wait a second, this is my new path, my career, that I'm going to become, you know, I'm going to translate this to a whole

• 21:35Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  different audience, that I'm going to be able to express this with new media. I'm going to be able to get a whole new generation to understand and bring to life these extraordinary figures.

• 21:46Ryan Holiday?

  No, I mean, I was introduced to the Stoics in 2006 and my first book on Stoic philosophy came out in summer of 2014.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  14.

• 21:55Ryan Holiday?

  So.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And what was the inspiration? What said, you know, I have to do my version of this? But plenty written about Stoics.

• 22:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't know. I was, I wrote my first book because I wanted to be a writer and I knew that that book had to come first. You couldn't write the Stoic books and then the media book. So I knew how to get the media book out of the way. So I did the media book first and then what I really wanted to write about was the Stoics. But no, I, I, I thought I had this idea for one Stoic book about this one passage from Archduke.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  That was it?

• 22:25Ryan Holiday?

  And, and I think.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Again, obstacles away, what stands in the way becomes the way.

• 22:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  I love it. Come on.

• 22:31Ryan Holiday?

  I know. I heard you say this somewhere.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  I mean, I just, I just, it's too good.

• 22:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's the best.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  It's the best.

• 22:37Ryan Holiday?

  Someone, what some.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Impediment to action becomes the action.

• 22:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Stands the way becomes the way.

• 22:42Ryan Holiday?

  But you want to know something funny about that quote? Again, you, you evolve your understanding of these things as you do. So I wrote the book, The Obstacle is the Way, mostly about how we deal with like professional obstacles.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:54Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like how you're trying to like do something and something gets in the way, which is obviously what he's partly talking about there. But the fuller quote, which obviously I knew is I, I edited it to put some ellipses in there. But mostly what he's talking about is, is, is annoying people and obnoxious people. He's, he's saying, people can cause problems for us. They can get in our way, but.

• 23:18Ryan Holiday?

  You know, we all, he says, we always have the ability to accommodate and adapt. He says, we can convert this to our own, you know, our own potential acting. And then he says, you know, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. And then you go, oh, okay. So when he's saying some, some person comes up and says something horrible to you, or some, some, some person screws something up for you, or some, some person, you know, is just constantly stressing you out, or abusing you, or whatever it is. What he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you to be the better person, the bigger person, to grow as a person in wrestling with and handling what this person is doing to you.

• 24:02Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so you go, oh, okay. Like when the Stoics are saying the obstacles away, they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to, you know, hey, this, this huge recession that we just got plunged into is actually a chance for you to retrench in the business and tighten things up and come back smarter and, and, and leaner and, you know, more organized. It may be, but he's saying actually, you know, this, this, this person who just broke your heart, or this person who just lied to you, or stole from you, or this person who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance for you to grow as a human being in how you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading of the passage when I'm 19,

• 24:47Ryan Holiday?

  but it's, it's how I understand it 20 years later.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  And you understand it, it's sort of the core part of what you said is sort of for you, if you were going to distill the essence of Stoicism, this notion that we have agency.

• 24:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  That, you know, it's not what happens to us, it's how we respond to what happens to us.

• 25:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I, yeah, I would, I'd be curious, like, to find some line of work in which that's not

• 25:09Speaker 01

  The case.

• 25:10Ryan Holiday?

  The case, right? Like, you wake up and somebody gives you the news, and then you figure out your job is to say, here's what we're gonna do.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. But so much of our life is this sort of victim mentality, that, you know, that it's fate, and we can't control our own fate.

• 25:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, the system's rigged against me. There's nothing I can do, nothing one person can do.

• 25:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Who, this is whose fault it is, this is how, why it should have gone the other way. Just a lot of, a lot of dwelling on why it happened as opposed to what you're gonna do about it.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's interesting to me, just, you know, I, I write a little bit and some of my, my friends like, why are you writing about Tony Robbins? But it's interesting. I, I write about it because I was, you know, around your age and all of a sudden, my contemporary version, dare I say,

• 26:01Ryan Holiday?

  How dare you?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Was this guy with, you know, who self-described with big teeth on, you know, on infomercials, selling me cassette tapes.

• 26:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  And I listened to those today and I'm like, what, so much is, you know?

• 26:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I do think that, that there's a little bit there. That's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a whole these days, right? Like, like that, that is, that's what Socrates was doing. That's what, that's what Aristotle was doing. They, they were, they were trying, I mean, Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say, teaching the, the young boys what they need to know about life, that their parents didn't want them to know, right? Or, or challenging convention, or, or, you know, teaching them a new way of thinking. And, and I guess it, it just says something that, that philosophy does not speak to people in a way that it's supposed to. It is supposed to be the guide to the good life, which, you

• 27:02Ryan Holiday?

  know, to me, the, the American dream is both a, a financial dream, but also a, a sort of a moral and a spiritual dream of a, of a better life. And, and philosophy is supposed to be part of that. And, and it's just, it's just not. And, and I think we're in extra trouble when, you know, organized religion has not just fallen away, but also, you know, alienated huge swaths of the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in the, in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew up in, or you're looking at the sort of political radicalization of sort of evangelical faith. And so if

• 27:44Ryan Holiday?

  You're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals. You're also not going to have religion. What are you, where are people supposed to learn this stuff? And, and, and it's, I think, created a huge vacuum that, that certain, you know, bad actors have stepped into film.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  And you haven't become a bad actor.

• 28:05Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  You talk about, you know, cause you, you talked, you, we can go back to sort of March 2020 and sort of the beginning and we could talk about that pandemic. People, you know, I mean, I explained more things in more ways on more days of, of everything.

• 28:19Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Our relationships, back to truth and trust is certainly our politics. I didn't fully absorb it, appreciate it at the time and what we've become on the other side and what people became, people I don't, they were unrecognizable to this day. That went through that process. We can get Elon Musk in a minute, but I knew him well before.

• 28:39Ryan Holiday?

  That's my favorite part of your book. You talked about how you came of age as all, you came of age at the same time as all those Silicon Valley people.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I was with Larry and Sergey at Google. And when Steve Jobs taps us on the shoulder and says, hey, he wasn't interested in me. He was interested in Larry and Sergey to show us, pulled out of his back pocket, the first iPhone. And we're like, you know, it was like a joy ride. We're going with our fingers like, oh, we, and they were all by, you know, they were just, and there was sense of optimism back to when you were writing this book.

• 29:10Ryan Holiday?

  So what happened, like I, I, I think that, that quote where Elon Musk is on Rogan and he says, you know, empathy is going to be the death of Western civilization. That to me was, was one. And then when I watched Marc Andreessen talk about how he has zero introspection. And, and he's like, I never looked backward. He goes, I never looked backwards. It's like, by the way, that's not what introspection is just to be like, clearly don't even know what it is. Like introspection is looking inwards, just to be clear. It's not, not looking backwards. But he goes, you know, the great men of history, they, they, they, they didn't look around. They didn't, it's like the bad ones, you know, the, the ones who were responsible for genocides and pointless wars and ecological disasters and economic calamities. Yes, they had no.

• 29:53Ryan Holiday?

  No sense of introspection or history or perspective, but the great ones, whether you're talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt, Washington or Lincoln.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  The best of the best.

• 30:06Ryan Holiday?

  All, all the great, all the greats. And I just named a bunch of, of white dudes. So I'm sorry, but like it, you know, you could.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  We could talk about that too, and where women are in the stoic.

• 30:15Ryan Holiday?

  You could expand, but, but the point is that the great historical figures have, are, are by definition profoundly considerate and conscientious people. And, and when, when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings. And so what.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  So what's happened?

• 30:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  What the hell happened?

• 30:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. What happened?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  And what happened to you that you didn't fall prey to all that? I mean, you, you, I mean, your rise has just gone, I mean, it's, you can, you were wildly successful before the pandemic, but you know, I mean, now the ubiquity and your success, it's just exploded.

• 30:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  But it's, but it suggests that people are, they're not, they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either. That they're looking for something different.

• 31:01Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, look, I've, I've definitely experienced some success. It's small potatoes compared to being, you know, one of the richest or most powerful people in the world. So I, I, I don't want to judge people whose thing, you know, who's, who's, uh, who's, you know, sort of experience is something I can't even comprehend. But it does, it does seem weird that these people, many of whom I, I also knew or met over the years and thought were one thing and sort of revealed themselves to be another. What, what do you, what's your explanation?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  I am, I'm struggling with it and I've been struggling. I mean, I struggled with it a little bit in the book. Even, you know, who I was becoming. I said, I mean, I was, you know, and, and, you know, God bless. I was reading one of your books a few years ago and took a little indirect shot at me and I thought it was completely legit.

• 31:43Ryan Holiday?

  What did I say?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  You just say, you know, back, I don't want anyone to get back. I don't, one of the most important stories you always say is what during the plague, what Marcus really did. He sold all the things and here I was going to a damn restaurant. And you made it. And I'm like, you know what? Fair. And it was legit. It hurt. It hurt because it was right. And of course I knew I was no greater critic of me than me. And so I appreciate it, but so. You know, but in a lot of what I write about in this book, I mean, talk about ego.

• 32:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, you there's some words in there.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, the whole thing. I mean, I just, I laid it all out and I laid myself out. In this sort of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery and discovering myself and my own, you know, but you know, the expectations and how I was living in other people's expectations. Yeah, I was kind of losing myself and how now, and I think it's why I sort of really dove deep into your work. It's just so, so all coincided. I'm like, oh, you know, just literally just breathe again and have perspective and grace and humility.

• 32:45Ryan Holiday?

  So you're saying introspection.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Introspection.

• 32:48Ryan Holiday?

  Like the, the thing they are running away from.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Running away from. It, and the coarseness. That's why I've got, forgive me, I didn't mean to put you behind these kneepads. And I think about with Trump, I mean, the obstacles away to me, it's so profound in the context of how I'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle that stands in the way.

• 33:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Of decent, from my perspective, decency, lack of character, all those, those cardinal virtues that you write so beautifully about. There's notion of justice and there's notion of what courage really is and temperance, all these found in what discipline looks, it's anathema to what we have today. And, but I think about, all right, obstacle is the way, stands the way, becomes the way. So how we can sort of with agency.

• 33:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  You know, manifest and take responsibility and have the discipline and the character to, you know, not just identify the problems, but begin to march strategies and iteration to address these problems and to move in a more enlightened direction. And again, you've been a huge part of that for millions of us.

• 33:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's a.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  But, but certainly for the guy sitting here as the current occupant of the governor's mansion.

• 33:56Ryan Holiday?

  That's unbelievable to me. I think, you know, there's this passage in meditations where Mark Stroud talks about fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make you.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 34:05Ryan Holiday?

  And I think about that that's what he's doing in meditations is he's trying, he's trying to be better than whatever he could get away with or whatever, you know, he would, he might just be on his own. He's sure, sure of aspiring to be some greater self. And it does feel like.

• 34:24Ryan Holiday?

  In the Silicon Valley, kind of like leadership class, there is this, and Trump, I think, obviously hastened it, but it's this kind of like, why? Why should you try to be better? Why? Just do what you want.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, get yours.

• 34:40Ryan Holiday?

  When you're famous, they let you do it, you know? And it's like the embracing of that and the idea of like, why? One of my favorite headlines of all time, there's this Huffington Post headline from 15 years ago. And it says, I don't know how to explain to you that you're supposed to care about other people. And that, and it really does feel like, like there was this concerted effort in a small group of people to just let themselves off the hook for being responsible for or to anyone, despite the incredible power and privilege that they enjoy.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  There you go. There you go. And we're, I mean, it's, and we're living with the consequences of that. I mean, we, you know, we've hit on, you know, young men, but you subtly made the point. I'll make it more express. Young men are in crisis.

• 35:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  And it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals and now, I mean, we're seeing a little bit now with religion. People are finding religion a little bit again, but we've lost those institutions, that connection to each other. I am because you are, this notion of Ubuntu, this Commonwealth, you know, and this. And, and of course with algorithms and now this manosphere broadly defined and, you know, Hustler's University and Bugatti, Bugatti, get mine and, you know, and all the just patriarchy that comes in there. I mean, and these guys sometimes trying to attach these names.

• 36:09Ryan Holiday?

  I know, I know. It's, it's a, I try to say it's not, Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a better sociopath.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  God bless.

• 36:18Ryan Holiday?

  It's supposed to do the opposite. It's supposed to, it's supposed to help you. Because look, we're all inherently selfish. We are all self-interested. The Stoics talk about this, like you come out of the womb being like inherently not just dependent on others, but you will. You will suck your parents dry, literally and figuratively, so you can survive. That's what your genes are designed for you to do.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 36:45Ryan Holiday?

  And, and that maturation or growth, the Stoics would say, is the, like, the, the, the overcoming of that, realizing that you have these obligations and duties to, to not just these people immediately around you, but everyone else. Like, um, there's this, there's this Stoic named Hierocles, and he talked about the circles of concern.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Ryan Holiday?

  And, and that, he said, the purpose of the philosophy is pulling these outer rings inwards. And to me, that, like, when I heard that, I was like, oh, that's, that's what they were talking about in church as a kid. That's also what Jesus was talking about. And so there is, there is actually a, if Catholicism especially, because it has those cardinal virtues, um, that I think you sort of, you immediately recognize it in the Stoics, that, oh, well, this was the tradition before that tradition.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:42Ryan Holiday?

  That there's a lot of overlap there.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I love, I mean, just even that, we were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, best of Roman Republic, best of Greek democracy.

• 37:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I mean, back to your point in terms, even the books, you just, thank you for the books, but just reminding me, the founding fathers, the direct inspiration from these greats.

• 38:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Washington's the only one of the founders who, who doesn't read the Stoics in Greek or Latin. Like, he only reads them in English. Because every, they were, they were so familiar, like, Jefferson has, Jefferson has Seneca in French on his nightstand when he dies. And, and so like, these were, these were incredibly literate philosophical figures. And, you know, the primary influence on the founders was not, you know, those English legal thinkers.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:35Ryan Holiday?

  It was the, it was the, when they're writing the Federalist Papers, and they're masquerading as these Roman characters, they're thinking about Cato, they're thinking about Seneca, they're thinking about Marcus Aurelius, they're, those are the people who are influencing them the most. And, you know, that, that, that does go back to, I think, the founding of America, which we fundamentally misunderstood. This idea that Yes, on the one hand, this is a country about freedom, where you're, the state can't tell you how to be or how to live. It, it, it, your, your individual behavior is not legally prescribed the way that it, it would be in another society.

• 39:17Ryan Holiday?

  But they were very much of the mind that all that freedom was to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people. And John Adams said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked. Like, the Constitution cannot, is not strong enough. He says, uh, like a whale through a net. Like a whale through, I love that.