The Stoic Secrets to a Good Life (ft. Ryan Holiday)

There’s an ancient philosophy that could actually help you give fewer f*cks, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of it. Stoicism has been helping people manage their stress and anxiety for thousands of years and today, it’s more relevant than ever. @ryanholiday is the New York Times Bestselling author of multiple books on Stoicism. He believes that Stoicism is the framework that can help you be a normal person in an increasingly crazy world. Today’s episode dives into the life-altering benefits of following a philosophy that encourages you to focus on what you can control, and fuck the rest. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Why Stoicism Resonates in the Social Media Age 00:02:01 What Do You Give Too Many Fucks About? 00:03:48 Control, Anxiety, and Why Stoicism Appealed to Ryan 00:05:29 The Unexpected Success of The Obstacle Is the Way 00:09:45 How Success Changed Ryan's Relationship with Stoicism 00:12:00 What Ryan Gives Too Few Fucks About: Presence and Relationships 00:14:06 The Pandemic Reset: Taking a Year Off and Choosing Family 00:18:39 Regret, Guilt, and Grieving the Life You Could Have Had 00:17:30 Ryan's Legendary Productivity and the Cost of Optimization 00:24:13 Carrying Your Own Weight and Making Amends 00:25:55 What Most People Give Too Many Fucks About 00:29:13 Inherited Assumptions and the Adapted Child 00:31:19 Marriage, Different Definitions, and Renegotiating Meaning 00:33:28 The Nuclear Family Trap and Unreasonable Expectations 00:35:35 What Most People Give Too Few Fucks About: Other People's Suffering 00:38:53 The Implementation Problem: Theory vs. Reality 00:42:20 The Need for Chaos: Why Some People Want to Watch the World Burn 00:44:30 The Long Game: Why Moral Progress Takes Sustained Commitment 00:47:29 Closing: Right Thing Right Now and Paying It Forward ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

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

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Why is it that a 2,000-year-old philosophy suddenly becomes massively popular, selling tens of millions of books and garnering millions of adherents around the world in the age of social media? Why, when made more aware of the problems of the world, do people seem to be more apathetic than ever? And what keeps the world's most prominent stoic up at night? These are just a few of the questions that we're going to be touching upon in today's episode with my good old friend, Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is a 10-time bestselling author, marketing genius, and founder of the Daily Stoic brand. He has single-handedly brought a school of ancient Greek philosophy to millions of new people around the world. He's been so successful at marketing the philosophy that his name has become almost synonymous with it.

• 0:44Mark Manson?

  It's interesting because my books have often been compared to Stoicism, and people often mistakenly assume that my background is Stoic philosophy, and I'm pretty sure that's Ryan's fault. So, thank you, Ryan. This episode was fun for two different reasons. One is that I visited Ryan down in Texas, and we shot this in his beautiful studio. We actually recorded two podcasts. I was on his show, The Daily Stoic Podcast, in the morning, and then we recorded this episode in the afternoon. By the way, that episode I did with Ryan is also out today on his podcast feed if you want to go check it out. The other reason it was fun is because I've known Ryan for about 10 years, and he and I have an easy rapport with each other. In fact, I think he gets more personal here in this episode than I've ever heard him

• 1:27Mark Manson?

  get in public elsewhere, as we talk about his family, his regrets, his anxiety, and how he continues to wrestle with the question of how to spend his time well. But before we begin, I'd like to ask that you take a second and follow and review the show. It helps us out immensely when reaching out to new guests and putting together new episodes for you. All right, that's it. On with it. Here is Ryan Holiday.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  20 million books sold, zero fucks given. It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 2:01Mark Manson?

  What do you give too many fucks about?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Ooh, I was gonna ask you that question and I didn't, but that is a good question. Like, most things, I think that that's why you wrote such a huge book about it, because we all care about way too many things that we care about. When you have kids, one of the things that you care about a lot is like, that's that you know you shouldn't care about is like, how you come off. Right? Like, in public with your, like, every parent, you get on a plane with your kids and you're just like, God, I hope they don't like, cry this whole flight or get like, there's this thing of like, you don't want to be seen as a bad parent.

• 2:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  But then you're inherently at the mercy of this like unpredictable autonomous person, right? And then you add on top of that, which is a new thing for me, which is like, I used to be able to just go through the world as me, just like as a random person. And like, fame is the wrong word, but let's say I'm no longer anonymous. And so, the being able to be in public with my family for all that, the unpredictability that that entails. And then this sense that I'm being watched, I just shouldn't care at all, right? But, and it, I'm never glad afterwards, like, I'm so glad I corrected that behavior over and over again, because like, it really matters.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  How much noise you were making, you know, as we walked down the hallway in this building. I find myself like in that trap that all parents do of like, not wanting to be seen as a bad parent. And then the sense that I'm being watched as a parent all the time. And it's compounded by the fact that I live in a small town and the people know.

• 3:36Mark Manson?

  Everybody knows everybody.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  So I just, I just have, I'm struggling lately with just this sense that I'm having to perform all the time. And I wish I was just more comfortable, like, this is who I am. I don't care what you think of me. I think I also give, I, I give a fuck too much about things that are outside my control. That's like the main one, just like needing things to be a certain way on a certain time, like, you know what I mean?

• 3:58Mark Manson?

  Are you like a little bit of like, control freak type stuff?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Control freak is.

• 4:03Mark Manson?

  A strong term.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Well, you know, what I would say is that it all depends on what that's stemming from. I think I would define myself as a, as a naturally anxious person. And ritual, routine, structure, control are all ways of trying to treat or mitigate that anxiety.

• 4:21Mark Manson?

  Gotcha.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And so like, I see it more like that.

• 4:24Mark Manson?

  Do you think that's why Stoicism appealed to you so much?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because anxiety doesn't serve you well. It tortures you. It doesn't do anything. And the idea that there's a very ancient philosophy that has something to say about dealing with that. That's other than like, take this pill or do this therapy. I like that.

• 4:45Mark Manson?

  I think there's an interesting intersection of Stoicism in kind of the present cultural moment with the technology. You've said many times that when you started writing obstacles, the way you accepted very early on, you know, this is an obscure form of ancient philosophy. I don't expect this to sell a ton of books. I don't expect it to become a thing, yet it did.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:07Mark Manson?

  And it is a huge thing and there are millions of people who resonate with it and now might even consider themselves Stoics. Why do you think that is? What is it about this moment? Obviously Stoicism has been around and it's been popular in intellectual circles.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:21Mark Manson?

  For centuries, but what is it about today that the masses are resonating with it?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Well, it is funny, right? Because in retrospect, it seems like obviously it would be popular, like because it is popular, right? And so, so sometimes people criticize me or they go like, you know, he popularized this thing or he cashed in on this thing. Like I remember, so I wrote, Trust Me, I'm Lying, which had gotten a very big advance for being a 25 year old who'd never written any books. And then when I had the idea for the obstacles away, my publisher offered me $75,000.

• 5:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Which is not nothing. That's like, obviously that's a lot of money, but you have to go, that's several years' work.

• 6:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah. For, for people not familiar with the publishing world, that's, that's not that much.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's the kind of advance they give you because it's easier than saying no. Like they didn't want to, they didn't want to lose me as an author. So that was the least amount of money they could give me without. Hurting my feelings or driving me to someone else. So and my, my editor told me this later. She was like, we hoped you would do this book. It would not work. And then you would go back to doing marketing books because they're a business imprint. Yeah. So like, not only do I remember that, but that's how I went into putting it out. And I think it sold like three or 4,000 copies its first week, you know, like, not nothing. Again, if you're comparing this to a self-published author or some, you know, like starving artists who put out their first novel, this is all great, but like it was not what it is.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  It is not even a blip on the radar today. Yeah. I mean, there are days when it sells that many copies, you know? Yeah. Many days. So I went into it thinking like, if I could, like, I knew, for instance, like Machiavelli and Sun Tzu had been made popular for business audiences in the eighties and nineties. And like I'd fallen in love with Stoicism and I thought, well, maybe there's a market for this ancient philosophy in this bit. That was like the most I was hoping for. Interesting. And so the freedom of low expectations is a really important thing. That's why I try not to have goals. If you have goals that are outside your control, like you need to sell this or your company needs to make, you're just like, it's just an arbitrary

• 7:33Speaker 02

  target and it, you're better off just like seeing where it goes. And the funny thing is, if I'd had any kind of goal remotely close to what it ultimately done, it would have been because I was a delusional entitled asshole. Do you know what I mean? Like if I could have said, hey, I'm doing this school, this book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy and I'm hoping it'll sell millions of copies and set in motion like a series of books. Yeah. Like you would have been like, this person's insane. Out of your mind. Yeah. So that was the, the, the freedom of low expectations is a big part of it. But I think the reason it resonated is the reason that Stoicism has always resonated. And it's not fair to say it's an obscure school of ancient philosophy, really, because all schools of philosophy are obscure, right?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  But for thousands of years, like real people doing real shit have said like, You know, if you ever read Marcus Rilus or Epictetus, these have been like the kind of underground, like, it's like when people say that like heavy metal is like underground, but it's also enormous at the same time.

• 8:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah, Stoicism is like your favorite intellectuals, favorite intellectuals.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yes, and also the people who, the favorite of the people who are not intellectuals. Like, it's the favorite of just, they've only read one philosophy book in their life. This is one of those people, like, and so I think what Stoicism speaks to and has always spoken to is this idea that like, we don't control the world around us, but we know we have some control over ourselves. And no one really tells us like what we should or shouldn't be, like, this question of like, well, what's a good framework or operating system for like, being a person in this crazy fucked up world? That, to me, is what Stoicism is, and it's kind of been refined over thousands of years.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Like, you know, here's a way of thinking about it, do the, you know, it's just, it's that. That's really cool.

• 9:23Mark Manson?

  Has your relationship with Stoicism changed since becoming so successful with it?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, Stoicism as a philosophy for dealing with adversity, or, you know, like, ordinary life is great. And on the one end of that, this spectrum of Stoics, you have like Epictetus, you have Zeno, who found Stoicism after the shipwreck where he loses everything. You have Klianthis, who was like a, basically a manual labor who worked in the gardens of these rich people in Athens. So like, it's always been on that end of the spectrum. There's been a ton that Stoicism can tell you, like, what to do when a tyrant throws you into exile, right?

• 10:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  But on the other end of the spectrum, Stoicism has also really been popular with extremely successful people. Not that Stoicism helps you be extremely successful, but like, Marcus Rilus is relying on the same philosophy as Epictetus, but their, their lives are as different as they could be, but there's a horseshoe element to it of like, the emperor is not as free as you would think, and the emperor is stressed beyond you could possibly imagine, and tempted in all of these ways. So I think, like, Stoicism as, as the books have worked, and I've done other stuff, and Stoicism as a philosophy for dealing with that, for dealing with ego, for dealing with, you know, ambition, for dealing with temptation,

• 10:40Speaker 02

  for dealing with self mastery, like, in a way, it's almost more interesting and more helpful, I think.

• 10:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, because it's when you're at the top of the totem pole, there are no guardrails.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:52Mark Manson?

  So in many ways, it's harder to say no to things than it is to get out of adversity.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  It's easy to say no to things you're not being offered.

• 11:00Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  You know?

• 11:02Mark Manson?

  That's a good way of putting it.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  It's easier to not do things that you're not in a position to do.

• 11:07Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  So you can imagine Mark's really this like unlimited power. So when he says, you know, he talks, this is beautiful passage in Meditations, he was talking about, he says, take care not to be Caesarified, not to be stained purple.

• 11:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Like, the only check on Mark's Aurelius, because the Senate at this time in Rome is a ceremonial body almost entirely. Like, the only check is Mark's Aurelius. Like, he's the check on himself. You could say the philosophy is the check on him. It's the final check and balance. And so, yeah, I think I've relied on it more than I did early because, I don't know, early, like, my life was pretty good. You know? And not to say I didn't experience adversity or difficulty, but it's just like, it's a different set of obstacles when you achieve the things that you want to achieve.

• 11:56Mark Manson?

  What do you give too few fucks about?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Ooh, what do I not care enough about?

• 12:01Mark Manson?

  I feel like this is a question to ask your wife.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  I think, I think you, if you're like a creative introverted person, you can kind of live in your own world. You know? And one of my favorite novelists, Walker Percy, if you're in like the moviegoer or anything, he talks about this problem of reentry for creatives. Like, you go out into this world, then you have to re-enter the regular world. And it's, it's exacerbated by the fact that a lot of the advice, you know, for successful people is like, outsource everything. It's almost like you're, you design your life to be this like pampered baby that only does things you want to do. And there's value in that, like, you know, you don't need to be like changing your own oil if you can pay somebody to do it. But at the same time, like, this says something about me.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  But it's taken work for me to be like, I'm only the main character in my own life. But if you are in relationships, how I've had to consciously give a fuck about.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Just first off, how my mood, my decisions, whatever, have consequences for other people? And then also just although the temptation is there, not designing your life where everything revolves around you and you only do the things you want to do.

• 13:17Mark Manson?

  Would you say part of that is being present?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Definitely being present, especially when you're working on a book because you're always working on a book. Like it's, it, there's some part of your brain that's working on it all the time. And how do you like actually be where you are? You get really good at just following your mind wherever it's taking you. But that's not fair to a three year old or to your spouse, or it's not fair to the just random person in front of you that you're talking to. So I think that, but also just going like, you took like a year off. I, I, the justice book that I did was finished in January of 23. It was supposed to come out in the fall of 23, but I pushed it until June of this year. And I just decided to just like, just be kind of home and around more. Like I, I really sort of consciously just decided to like, just

• 14:06Speaker 02

  do more shit around my house. Like I'm going to do most of the drop offs and pickups. The, just the division of labor in a house.

• 14:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  When, you know, you can, you can set it up in your favor when you're the primary breadwinner. When you have this thing that's hard for, that no one else can do. You know what I mean? Like, and so just the decision to do that. Like I decide to give a fuck about things that I got really used to never thinking about because they took away from my main thing, which was writing. So the decision to be like, I want to be really good at what I do, but I also want to be more of a functioning person in the world.

• 14:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Having worked really hard at like almost, well, the, the word for it in really, they call it weaponized incompetence.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Like a, a lot of dudes do that especially.

• 14:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Just naturally, but it wasn't so much that. It's just like, if you're a genius theoretical physicist.

• 15:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  You, just in the way of you're a, a all star point guard, they're just like, Ryan shouldn't be booking his own travels. Like Ryan, you know, like we, how do we make things as easy as possible for this star? You know, and so you just get used to not caring about things that are not that.

• 15:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  And I, I don't know, I just decided to care more about that stuff.

• 15:26Mark Manson?

  It's interesting. Every time I come and visit you out here, it's incredibly impressive. Like you, you have constructed a life between the bookstore, the studio, the farm, everything out here. Like it is so optimized around what you're optimizing for in your business and in your life. And, and from the outside, it's incredibly impressive. But a lot of people, I don't know if people know, but you know, a lot of us authors know each other.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:52Mark Manson?

  You know, you, me, James, Tim Urban, like we're all, we all known each other for many, many years. And it's funny because the conversation about you, when you're not around is like, dude, does that guy? Do anything other than write books? Like, does he sleep? Does he take a Saturday off? Does he ever go to a movie? You know, it's like your level of productivity and optimization is maybe the highest of anybody I know personally. And that is a quasi compliment.

• 16:24Mark Manson?

  But it's, I guess what I'm getting at is that it sounds like some of this is the fallout of that.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  It's definitely the fallout of that, but like, and the pandemic was very helpful because it just blew up everyone's life.

• 16:33Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  And so it allowed me to reset in some ways and I, I'm probably, if my wife was listening, she would maybe take some umbrage with the idea that some of these were like decisions that I made. As opposed to say ultimatums and come to Jesus conversations, or just finally getting things that have been, someone has been attempting to communicate for a very long time.

• 16:53Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  At the same time, I've always like, my wife and I have been together since we were 20 and I, I've, I'd never worked 20 hour days. I've never pulled all night. Like I've always been, I think more rooted and a homebody than maybe people think that I was.

• 17:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  But like, I work banker's hours and that's like generous. Do you know what I mean? Like I got here today at nine and I'm going to pick my son up at. Three thirty.

• 17:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  You know, and that's like a normal day for me. So I do feel like I'm much more disciplined and have better boundaries than like a lot of, first off, than most creatives, then I think people assume that I do because of the output. And to me, that's because I think a lot of people are bullshit. And they're, they're incredibly inefficient.

• 17:44Mark Manson?

  Yes, you are incredibly efficient. It's funny because we did your podcast and we had lunch and you were like, when do you want to do yours? And I was like fifteen minutes and you just disappeared, like disappeared. And I think, and this is not a knock on you, like this is, I've known you a long time. I'm like, oh yeah, it's Ryan. But like, probably every other person I know would probably still hang out at the table and just shoot the shit for fifteen minutes.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:06Mark Manson?

  And.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  I was trying to be, I thought you would want some space. I definitely did, but I also was like.

• 18:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not knocking you, but it's funny because it's, you know, if we were meeting for the first time, I'd be, I might be like, what the fuck? You know, but it's, I've known you forever. I'm like, yeah, it's Ryan Bean Ryan. So I could see when it comes to being present.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:33Mark Manson?

  Being both physically and mentally present with a family. So how, how has that worked out?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  The, the improvements or the, sorry, the changes I'm talking about?

• 18:41Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  I, I feel weird talking about the horrors that was the pandemic of having emerged from it much better. Because like, it just, I mean, first off, I didn't travel. Like we, we drove some places and we out, we had a little camper show. So we, like, I wasn't like stuck in my house.

• 18:58Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  But like, I didn't spend the night apart from my family for 500 days.

• 19:04Mark Manson?

  Wow.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Which is like the most I've never like not gotten on an airplane, probably in, including my own upbringing.

• 19:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? And so it was like, it was just a total reset in a lot of ways. That was amazing. And it took out a bunch of stuff that, I don't know, I just like, don't really do shit anymore. Like, I don't like, Austin Kleon, when, actually, when I first moved here, he told me he was like, work, family scene, pick two. Yeah. And I think about that all the time. Yeah. And so I basically don't do the scene thing at all. Yeah. Which has meant I pass on like a lot of stuff that's cool. Like, you know, I've been offered like Super Bowl tickets multiple times from teams in the Super Bowl. And I've said, no, like, I would be cool to do that. Or it's like, we're all going heliskiing. Do you want to come? Or like, you know, just like I turned down like cool stuff because I understand it's coming at the cost of the two more important things for me. Is that hard?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I would say it's hard in some ways and it's easier and it's easy because I think I'm naturally pretty introverted and I also like my life. Yeah. It's hard in the sense that there's a I know my life has been changed by random things that I said yes to. Mm hmm. Right? And then it's it, but it's easier when you start to make a habit of it. Yeah. Like, I imagine for you when you took a year off, when you decided to take a year off and then you started saying no to things. Yeah. It it becomes the default. And then when it's the default, it's great. Yes. The problem is the default for most of us, most of the time is yes. Yeah. But I would say like it, I think two things. I talk about this afterward of the justice book a little bit like

• 20:38Speaker 02

  the hardest part was not the changes. The hardest part was you make the changes. And then you can't make the changes and not have to face the implications of how self-absorbed or selfish or unbalanced it was previously. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And this is the other thing, like, like this generation of people spends like more time with their kids than the last generation and the last generation last year. So that's all great. But one way, another way to think about it, instead of like, how shitty were men back then? Yeah. Is like, what were men missing out on back then? Right. So that's another bit of cognitive dissonance that can be painful when you go, oh,

• 21:21Speaker 02

  I didn't do these things because I thought it would affect me professionally or whatever. Yeah. Then you change and it doesn't affect you professionally. And you go, so what was I doing it for? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, you would think it'd be like, hey, I'm suddenly going to be home more and I'm going to do more stuff. And I'm going to take on these things. You know, like, nobody throws you a parade. They're like, where the fuck have you been? And also like, like, I get this, like, when I get, like, if I try, like, I go to do a talk and then I come home. Sometimes my wife goes like, you understand, like, nobody hit pause here.

• 21:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  And then you have to re-enter into this thing.

• 21:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Right? And so real, like, the implication being like, the idea that you can just come and go as you please. You can only maintain that if you decide you're the center of the universe, which you're not.

• 22:11Mark Manson?

  I can relate to that. You know, my reset showed me a lot of the same things of how, when the default becomes no, there are all these opportunities that when you took them, you thought they were so valuable and, oh, my God, this is a once in a lifetime thing. And then when you start passing them up, you realize like, oh, it's nothing. It like, doesn't mean anything.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  I think the one I still struggle with is this, you have this insecurity mixed with this sort of like scarcity mindset mixed with this idea that the musical chairs are going to stop at some point.

• 22:41Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Which they are.

• 22:43Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  But every time you turn down an offer to do something, part of what's preventing you from turning it down is the belief that it's the last time you're going to be offered that thing.

• 22:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  That you're not going to be sitting back at the end of the year and go, this year was way busier than last year. I did more than last year.

• 22:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I still struggle with that a lot. So it's so hard for me to say no, that part of why I live here and have set up my life and I have a reputation is so I just get asked less.

• 23:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  What I don't know about can't give me FOMO.

• 23:15Mark Manson?

  You mentioned in passing kind of a sense of lament or struggling with feelings of guilt or regret. Would you describe that as a regret?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a regret. There's guilt. There's a sense that, I don't know how I would think about it, actually. Yeah. I think I think all those things. It, it's just, it's my favorite thing. And how often I prioritize things that were not even close to my favorite thing to do that. Do you know what I mean? And when the stuff went away, I didn't miss it.

• 23:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  But I would miss this.

• 23:49Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  But then why do you choose that thing over the other thing?

• 23:53Mark Manson?

  I think it, it's interesting to me because, and this is a drum I bang on quite a bit, which is that self-improvement is often accompanied with a lot of. Negative feelings, guilt, regret, shame. And it comes in different forms, like sometimes you have to like grieve an old identity.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:11Mark Manson?

  And in this case, you know, you, you almost have to, to grieve a life you could have had or a time you could have had, but didn't.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Epictetus's, the philosophy classroom is like a hospital because you weren't well when you entered. Like you say, you're sick. You came to it because something wasn't working.

• 24:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  You weren't who you wanted to be. You weren't what you were capable of being. When you do this work on yourself, you find like assumptions or decisions you are making or patterns that you're in. And most people come face to face with that and then decide to double down or deny it or blame other people. And then there's the other path where you have to wrestle with it and deal with it. And like, you can't do anything but make amends for it. You can't do anything but try to be different in the future. Or just grieve what could have been, that wasn't. Again, I don't feel like I, I wasn't terrible at it, you know, but.

• 25:08Mark Manson?

  It's not like you were deadbeat dad.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  No, no. And yeah, I'm not like coming belatedly, but it's just more like, even though I was doing, it's like, I was doing the, the large building blocks were there. You know, I was never like, oh, I was gone for a month to do this thing or whatever. But it just was just like not fully understanding how much of the load of what you do is borne by other people.

• 25:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  And the decision to be like, I'm going to try to deal as much as I can with my own. I'm just gonna, all you can really do in this life is carry your own fucking weight.

• 25:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And the decision to, to, to see where you are, haven't been carrying your own weight and carry that weight is like the starting point. And then hopefully you can also help other people with theirs. But that, that's kind of how I've been thinking about it.

• 25:52Mark Manson?

  What do you think most people give too many fucks about?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Oh, um.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think most people care too much about the things that other people told them they should care about. This is Rene Girard, right?

• 26:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  That we don't know what we want, so we want what other people want. And they don't really stop and go, here's what makes me happy. Here's what lights me up. And because they haven't done that work, they're just like, well, what seems to light other people up? What are the things that are important? You just end up trying to like win these races where first off, maybe the outcome isn't really up to you. And then the outcome is like, not great.

• 26:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  You know, like, how many people become lawyers because they don't know what they want to do with their life? Even though, like, the data is very clear on how unhappy lawyers are.

• 26:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Right? And so I think that's a big one. It's like, people just, they don't really know what to care about or not care about. And so they kind of just default to like, whatever they fell into, or whatever seems a lot of people care about. And the real problem with that is that by definition, that's the most competitive stuff. So when you're kind of doing your own thing and you set your life up in the unique way that is only possible for you, chances are you're not fighting for, you know, like, if you live in New York City, because that's where you heard people like you are supposed to go. I don't think it's a surprise to go like, it's more expensive to live there because a lot of people want to live there.

• 27:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  But if actually you're uniquely suited to live in Gary, Indiana, you're going to find out it's very easy to live in Gary, Indiana. I mean, you're paying for it in other ways. But the point is, you don't understand you're paying a premium in, say, rent.

• 27:35Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Or taxes for a thing that you're not getting. Now, if New York is the only place in the world for someone like you, or San Francisco is the only place, or Paris, or whatever, then by all means gladly pay those, what it costs to do that thing. But are you sure that's the thing for you?

• 27:51Mark Manson?

  I love this topic because it's, part of it, I think, is just necessarily human. Like, if you look at young people, like, the way you learn anything is you mimic and adopt the scripts and narratives and skills and behaviors that other people exhibit and try to mimic them yourself, adopt them for yourself. The next step after you've done all that, you know, that is, in a sense, what education is. It's just taking all of civilization's knowledge and forcing young people to mimic it until they understand it or can behave in the appropriate ways. I think what probably most people never get to the point of doing is just realizing that those are simply scripts and narratives that were handed down

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:31Mark Manson?

  through the generations and that you don't necessarily have to follow it and that you probably should question each of those things. And it's fine if you question it and decide to come back to it, you know? It's like mom and dad raised you in a certain religion or a culture. You deviate, you question it, you experiment outside of it, you decide, no, I like mom and dad's way and you come back to it. But I think that experimentation outside of whatever your default script is, is so important from just like a self-esteem perspective, because when you do come back to it, at least now you know, I tried the other thing, wasn't for me. Mom and dad had it right all along and then you can like live in that with confidence. You don't have to like put blinders on and.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  You gotta learn the rules before you break them. But my sister-in-law said something to me once, she was talking about how she had always been like scared to drive at night, like she didn't like driving at night.

• 29:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  And then she was saying that she realized that actually her mom was scared to drive at night. Like this was just a thing that she just heard. Mom was scared to drive at night. Mom talked a lot about it's dangerous to drive at night, always made dad drive at night, whatever, right? So it just became this like inherited assumption, this part of her worldview, but like had never actually challenged it or said like, is this true for me? Now, it could be ultimately that it is true for her, but in that moment it wasn't. And she was just realizing that it was like an inherited unquestioned assumption. And we all do this, right? Cause stuff happens to us in our childhood, as I understand it, you have these things that happened in your childhood or you're neglected, you have some problem in your

• 30:07Speaker 02

  childhood and you come up with some childish way of addressing that feeling or distress or pain.

• 30:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  They call this the adapted child, right? And then you become an adult and you have to ask yourself like, am I being the adults? Or am I being the adapted child? Right? And, and I think a lot of people give a lot of fucks or care a lot about things that are about coping with assumptions or environments that they're no longer in, or that they're on paths that were set up for them by their parents or their culture, or, or even just like the era they grew up in.

• 30:43Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  And they haven't stopped in, that's this really essential question, which is, is this still true? And is it true to me personally? And so those are really powerful questions and you can free yourself of a lot of baggage. And it doesn't have to be judgmental, right? It could just be like, this was true at the time. This is what I thought or what I needed when I was 15. It's what I needed when I was 25. It's what I needed when I was 35, but like, that's not me anymore. And so I don't have to care about that stuff.

• 31:11Mark Manson?

  You know, my marriage, especially marrying somebody from a completely different culture.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 31:15Mark Manson?

  There are so many times throughout my marriage where we'll like get into an argument about something. And ultimately the root of the issue after like going around in circles for 30 minutes, the root of the issue is simply, we have different definitions of the same word.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:29Mark Manson?

  Like, like her idea of clean is different than my idea of clean. Or her idea of saving money is different than my idea of saving money. And until we actually like get to the point where we can look at our definitions and ask ourselves like, well, is that a good definition? Is my definition good? Okay. Yeah. No, my, my definition actually probably doesn't make sense. Or let's find a compromised definition.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:50Mark Manson?

  I, I feel like so much of a relationship conflict. And actually probably the healing part of relationships as well is renegotiating the meaning of a lot of those narratives and stuff.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Was it my opinion that was driving it? Or was it, hey, I want to do this, this way, or I think it should be this way, or it should be this many times or whatever. Was that actually based on like my needs and desires? Or my sense of what my needs and desires would be?

• 32:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Or how I would feel if someone else knew about it? Right? So it comes back to this Girardian thing of like, is this what you're after? Or is it what you feel like you should be after? Or how you saw it in your household? And the ability to sit down and go like, well, what do I really believe? What's actually important to me? What are my needs? How do I want things to go? Are we actually totally in agreement here?

• 32:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  And there's just some like external noise that's adding pressure on this situation? And then you can kind of reset. Do you know the Kurt Vonnegut thing where he says all fights in marriages can be boiled down to this one idea, which is that you are saying to that other person, you're not enough people? And, and I think that's totally true. He was commenting primarily on the, the sort of the new, the idea of the nuclear family.

• 33:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  That, you know, people used to live in these extended networks and the spouse wasn't asked to do so much. And I think you could say, yeah, it's you're not enough people. And then also like a, a lot of them are rooted in, a lot of the arguments and stresses are rooted in assumptions that neither of you actually believe, but have just gotten used to insisting on or thinking is what you want.

• 33:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah, there's an inertia that happens with, with values and beliefs. And the nuclear family thing is interesting. I had David Brooks on the podcast and he talked about that.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  He's great.

• 33:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I, it was amazing conversation. He talked about how the idea of two parents and X number of kids is like a really recent idea and.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And that both of them would be employed?

• 33:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Full time or something?

• 33:54Mark Manson?

  That's a super, that's like a two generation idea. And he pointed out that like, it might be unreasonable to expect all of your needs and wants to be fulfilled, or all of the, the duties and expectations to be fulfilled by like a singular person.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:10Mark Manson?

  Whereas in the past, there was probably like siblings, in-laws, aunts, uncles, you know, either in the house or in the neighborhood who could like take off some of that load.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we're, we're asking both parents to do way more than they've ever done before.

• 34:25Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  In the sense that like families used to be like pretty okay with like a couple of the kids dying. Do you know what I'm saying?

• 34:33Mark Manson?

  Like. We knew, I, we need to go back to that.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  No, I'm just, like, it would be like, you know, uh, like you just, when you read history and you read about like. The incredible amount of preventable deaths.

• 34:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm saying it's way better that we, but it is like a lot. Do you know what I mean? Like, like I was just reading some book. I forgot what it was and it was like the mom had to go do something. She just like left her kids that are my age, just like in the cabin by themselves for like two weeks. You know what I mean? You would never, you would get arrested and spend like years in jail.

• 35:05Mark Manson?

  Oh, I, I've seen multiple news stories of parents getting arrested that I was like, my parents did that, you know?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 35:11Mark Manson?

  Like leaving a kid at home overnight, you know?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:14Mark Manson?

  Plane out, plane outside until like nine PM like.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm not saying that that's like the way it should be. I'm just saying like, we're now expecting people to do more.

• 35:24Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  With less.

• 35:25Mark Manson?

  And I think it's an unreasonable expectation.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yes, I agree.

• 35:27Mark Manson?

  I think it's, we've maybe overcorrected. Last question.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 35:32Mark Manson?

  What do most people give too few fucks about?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, just as I'm thinking about this with the book I'm doing now, I think most of us give too few fucks about basically anyone but ourselves. So we care way too much about like what other people think and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we are very indifferent to the vast amounts of preventable suffering that are happening in the world. Like, so Peter Singer, the, the ethicist, uh, the ethical philosopher is like, premise is like, okay, if you were like walking to work and you saw a child drowning in a puddle in front of you, you would obviously not allow that. You would not jump over them because you didn't want to get your like clothes dirty. But like some version of that is happening all over the world constantly, right?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  And, and a lot of it is like quite affordable to make a substantial indent in doing this. We're talking about like malaria nets or, you know, whatever. So I feel like we just don't care a lot about what's happening to other people. The pandemic was obviously a huge example of this where like for a couple of weeks, we were kind of all on the same page. And then although we were arguing about this or that fundamentally, one segment of society was arguing with another segment of society as to why they should give a shit about how their actions. Affect other people. That's obviously horrendous, you know? You think about something like the opioid crisis, which is this devastating, slow moving,

• 37:03Speaker 02

  like, human catastrophe. It's not like it's this totally unprecedented thing. Almost exactly as the opioid crisis was beginning, the crack epidemic was ending. And America specifically decided to see the crack epidemic as like a moral failing of a certain group of people or segment of society, or as primarily an inner city problem.

• 37:28Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Right? Had we decided instead to go like, this is a public health crisis. And if one community is threatened, potentially all other communities are threatened. And decided to figure out as a society, what you do about addiction, instead of just criminalizing drug use and like locking people up. Or ignoring that it's happening altogether, you know, maybe we would have been in a better position to do something when a much more potent drug epidemic happens that affects like everyone.

• 38:00Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 38:01Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  And so I think you shouldn't care what other people think. You shouldn't care about things that are outside your control. At the same time cultivating a sense about the validity and dignity and sacredness of life itself. You know, I think Albert Schweitzer had this expression, I think he would say it in French, but it was like a reverence for life. Like just caring about life is probably what we don't give a shit enough about.

• 38:29Mark Manson?

  There's a lot to dig into there. I want to go back to this Peter Singer thing.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:33Mark Manson?

  So on your podcast a couple of hours ago, we were discussing moral philosophy.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:38Mark Manson?

  How it's one thing to toil theoretically with moral questions.

• 38:46Mark Manson?

  And another one entirely to think about implementation. And I think about the singer thing and I'm like, okay, yes, from a moral point of view, a kid drowning 10 feet in front of me. Yeah. And a kid starving to death in Africa or wherever. Morally, those two things are equivalent. And yes, in a perfect system and a perfect world, if I can just pay 10 bucks. Yeah. And save that kid in Africa's life, I should do that. I think what gets lost in that, and I don't have a high conviction, like my beliefs on this are not high conviction. So there are coordination problems. There are executive and administrative problems. How does that $10 get there? Yeah. Who is spending it? Where are they sourcing it?

• 39:28Mark Manson?

  How does that sourcing affect other parts of the economy in that area of that $10? How much is actually making it to the kid? And how much is, you know, going to like, you know, some NGO in Switzerland or something? Again, it's the, in theory, I agree wholeheartedly. I think we, we had a whole conversation earlier about how the trickiness of moral problems is almost always in the implementation. And I would argue that with things like the pandemic, the opioid crisis, and maybe even the crack epidemic. Obviously there are some horrible people who just don't give a shit and they're very cynical and callous about it.

• 40:07Mark Manson?

  But maybe I'm naively optimistic, but I feel like the opioid crisis, I think there's probably almost universal agreement that this is, it's a horrible tragic thing, yet seemingly nothing is really being done about it. And when I look at why, I think it's, it's in those questions of administrative systems. You know, how are things executed? What are the implementations of it? There, like, there's probably a network of systems that are so interlaced and tied up in each other. That to get anything to move or change is like.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Oh, I totally agree. And look, there's so many problems with the effective altruism, not just philosophically, but practically, as we we we have seen. I think I do think it's illustrated that like effective altruism is like a recent invention. Like, we've been obviously generous for thousands of years, but no one was ever like, how do we actually get good at this? You know what I mean? So I'm just saying, but they're obviously like psychopaths and sociopaths who don't care about other people. And then there's people who think that just caring about other people is enough.

• 41:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  And that so on both ends of the spectrum, I don't know if I would totally agree that most people care. I would argue there is this impulse in every human being to look at a problem that is happening in the world. And the mind is very good at looking at that thing and trying to figure out a way that you can say to yourself, this is either not a problem, or it's not my problem.

• 41:31Mark Manson?

  Not my problem, yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  And that's sort of what I'm talking about. The idea that because someone's different than you, they live differently than you, they have different beliefs than you. When we make decisions or we put in policies, they affect people like now someone can't get IVF. Now someone can't worship the faith that they want to worship. Or you're like, so again, it's across the political spectrum, but thinking about how the decisions you make or the views you have land on other people, presumably people you will never meet and know nothing about.

• 42:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That, to me, is something we could use more of a we could care a lot. We should care less about a whole bunch of things that don't really matter.

• 42:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  And that's the thing that really does matter.

• 42:10Mark Manson?

  So Derek Thompson published a piece just, I think, a few days ago about a new study, actually done by it's really interesting, a Danish political scientist did a study on American voters, which I love. It was really interesting what he did. So he intentionally put out fake conspiracy theories about both Republicans and Democrats on social media. And then he tracked who shared what, who liked what, who did whatever. The expectation, obviously, was that Republicans were going to like and share conspiracy theories about Democrats and Democrats were going to like and share conspiracy theories about Republicans, was not what happened at all. What he found is that there were a minority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans who shared everything.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:54Mark Manson?

  So it was basically like. 90% of people just don't give a shit about conspiracy theories. They see them for what they are. And then there's 10% of people, regardless of party, who share all of them. So the Democrats shared conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton just as much as they shared conspiracy theories about Donald Trump. And he actually went and interviewed these people. And his conclusion was that there is a small subset of people in the United States who seem to just have this need for chaos.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

• 43:24Mark Manson?

  Exactly. That's exactly what it is. That they have given up hope on the system entirely, that they have no illusions that it's ever going to do anything for them, either party, no matter what. And they, they just want to sow chaos, which, yeah, that scares the shit out of me.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:42Mark Manson?

  Because I, I don't know how you retrieve those people.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  No, I don't know if you can't. The ease with which people can be infected by those people, or those people can care so much that other people who are busy and, and generally do care, go like, it's not worth it.

• 44:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just, this is a morass of, this is a, an un, an unending, unwinnable battle.

• 44:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  I'm just going to focus on other shit. And, and when you don't really understand sort of like how civil rights movement happened, you forget, like, the reconstruction ends because the South realized that although the North could beat the South in a civil war, it could not perpetually occupy the South, and it wasn't prepared to win a battle for the hearts and minds over this issue, which the issue was not whether we could own people or not. Ultimately, it was whether the country was really predicated on the idea that all men were created equal. And the South just realized, if we lynch enough people, if we sow enough chaos, if we cause enough trouble.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Eventually, the North's will will collapse. And at some point, they'll need something from us. And we'll be able to negotiate a compromise where we get to not reinstate slavery, but protect enough of the status quo that we can live with it. So then, like, when you watch these videos, like, during the civil rights movement of, like, the fire hoses and the beatings and the, you go, what did they thi- how did they think this was gonna get, like, what they knew was, hey, if we're awful enough and we're, we make it hard enough to enact these federal laws at the state and local level, Democrats won't be in office forever, you know what I mean? Or, like, one of us will win the presidency?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Or just people get tired and move on to the other, they just knew that eventually they would give up, right? And so I think the problem is, like, the crazy, awful chaos agents, wanna, cynics, whatever, they ha- it's like an asymmetry where they know that if they just make it hard enough, painful enough, uh, you know, exhausting enough, you'll just go back to your own life, right? And so it's not just that you have to care, you have to, like, really care, like, you, to wrap your head around the sustained interest and commitment it took to abolish the slave trade, to, the women's rights movement took, like, 70 years, like, Seneca Falls to the

• 46:25Speaker 02

  passage of women's suffrage is, like, 70 years, something like that, right? And, like, it took forever, and every fucking state and every fucking city was this massive battle over an issue that's obviously morally, you know, clear, right? In retrospect, but, like, it wasn't like, some people really cared and some people didn't care, but, like, if you wanna make any kind of moral difference in the world, you have to care, like, to an incredible degree. So this is also why you have to pick which fucks you care about. Yeah. Like, you know, do you care about, like, pronouns? Or do you care about, like, you know, legal protections?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  And you know, so you have to pick your battles, but I, I don't know. That's, that's, I don't mean to sound like I'm on some high horse, but it's just what I've been thinking about a lot and realizing like what alarms me about the world that I'm bringing my kids into, but also what I see is just like, it's not apathy, but it's, it's almost like in energizing of awfulness. I don't know. I probably took this way far.

• 47:29Mark Manson?

  Ryan Holiday, everybody.

• 47:34Mark Manson?

  In his high horse.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  You can read about this in my worst selling book. I'm still at virtue of justice.

• 47:40Mark Manson?

  What is, what is the justice book called?

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Right thing right now.

• 47:44Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  And then the subtitle, which I've gone back and forth, you tell me if you hate it because it's things on trial, but it's right thing right now. Good values, good character, good deeds.

• 47:54Mark Manson?

  It's not bad.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  You want, ideally you want something better than not bad, but.

• 48:00Mark Manson?

  It's not terrible.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  I don't hate it.

• 48:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to be, uh, you know, whistling it to myself when I drive back, but you know.

• 48:08Mark Manson?

  It will suffice.

• 48:11Mark Manson?

  How is that for a promo?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I'm actually going to put that on my cover.

• 48:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Ryan Holiday's new book, It Will Suffice.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Not terrible.

• 48:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, not terrible. I've read worse.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  As far as the title goes, I thought it was okay.

• 48:29Mark Manson?

  No, I, I like it. It's catchy. It's got a little Van Halen thing going.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:35Mark Manson?

  Right now.

• 48:39Mark Manson?

  You should get Sammy Hagar to, you know, come, come on your book tour with you.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  You know, uh, David Lee Roth is mentioned as an offhand comment in the book, and so is David Brooks. So I have a chapter on the second mountain, like climbing the second mountain. And you know, he just decided on a lark to become, uh, uh, paramedic in New York City.

• 48:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  And I just think, that's great. That's what, like, more people should do that. You should take your success and I taught English for two years or whatever. Lou Gehrig, after people know like Lou Gehrig, it's his baseball career, catcher. He spends like the last three years of his life, he's the head of the New York City parole board.

• 49:16Mark Manson?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Like he could have made a fortune or done nothing, like, you know, putting his name on a nightclub or something. Instead he.

• 49:23Mark Manson?

  That's fascinating.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  He just approves and denies, like rehabilitates criminals, basically.

• 49:27Mark Manson?

  Wow. I wonder why he chose that.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Uh, LaGuardia offers him a job.

• 49:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  And he wants to be of use. And I think he probably, probably exactly what David Brooks is talking about in The Second Mountain.

• 49:39Mark Manson?

  Totally. Which is like, he's like, I swung a bat and hit a ball my whole life. I want to do something that's meaningful.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And also I'm gonna die.

• 49:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, totally.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  And so what, how am I paying back?

• 49:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  What I think of.

• 49:53Mark Manson?

  Cool.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 49:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah, man. This is fun.