Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Author Tom Mueller Talk Whistleblowers, Courage, and Doing the Right Thing

In today’s episode, Ryan and bestselling author Tom Mueller talk about the history of whistleblowers, the crisis of courage in the world right now, how Stoicism helps us cultivate our conscience so we can do the right thing and why societies punish people who do. Get Tom’s latest book, Crisis of Conscience: https://geni.us/AjG8This episode is brought to you by Leesa, the online mattress company. Each of their mattresses is made to order and shipped for free right to your door. All mattresses come with a 100-night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can feel confident in your investment in a good night’s sleep. And Leesa's hybrid mattress has been rated the best overall mattress by sites like Business Insider, Wirecutter, and Mattress Advisor. Daily Stoic listeners get 15% off their entire order with the code STOIC. Just visit Leesa.com and get your mattress today. This episode is also brought to you by Shippo. Shippo is a top-to-bottom shipping solution that works great with small and large businesses. Shippo will help you get the lowest rates on postage for your customers from dozens of global carriers like UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL. Visit goshippo.com/stoic to get a shipping consultation and a six-month trial of Shippo’s pro plan (up to $700 value) absolutely free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Tom Mueller: Twitter: https://twitter.com/tommuellerxWatch Tom’s TEDx talk on whistleblowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77rjqnNsP8QSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. When I was on book tour for Stillness, I read a bunch of books. I carried them all over the world with me. I was in Budapest, actually, when I started reading today's guest's book. His name is Tom Mueller, and his book is called Crisis of Conscience, and it's a cultural history of whistleblowers and fraud. I know the restaurant that I was at in Budapest when I read it, and as I was going through my notes to prepare for an interview, I could see it was all stained with soy sauce. I'd spilled some while I was eating at this sushi restaurant in Budapest. Anyways, when I read the book, I was actually sort of depressed by it. It was sad. Even though whistleblowing, as we talk about in the interview, is sort of enshrined, actually,

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  in some of the earliest laws passed here in the United States, Congress passed a law to protect whistleblowers during the Revolutionary War, and even though we sort of admire whistleblowers in theory, in practice, there's sort of a dark history of persecuting whistleblowers, of attacking the messenger, of not being quick enough to respond to very real claims of wrongdoing. I mean, the sort of misdeeds of a Harvey Weinstein were quite well-known. More recently, there have obviously been claims against the Trump administration, but as Tom talks about, no one used or enforced the Espionage Act against whistleblowers more than the Obama administration. And this goes back to John Boyd, who I've talked about.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  He was a reformer in the Pentagon who found himself sort of on the wrong side of his military compatriots who wanted to protect pet projects or didn't want to sort of upset the apple cart. So, we like to think that when someone comes forward with wrongdoing or Or fraud or waste that we, you know, sort of immediately embrace them and do the right thing. But, but the reality is that's, that's not how it goes. I, I talk a little bit about this in the interview. I, I worked at American Apparel for a number of years, which is sort of a complicated company where there were things going on that should not have been going on. And I look back at, at decisions that I made, things that I did stand up about and did talk publicly about, you know, investigations I cooperated with, decisions that the board made that I was, that I was a part of, that I was proud of.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  And then I also look back at, at, you know, sort of why it took me so long to get there, at things that I either rationalized or didn't open my eyes fully to. So we know, as Marcus really says, you know, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. But the truth is, we find other things that matter and we find, you know, excuses and rationalizations and we're afraid. We don't have the courage that we need to step forward. We don't always just do the right thing. And so I think this interview is really timely and really important. I think Tom's book, Crisis of Conscience, which is actually published by Penguin Random House, my publisher, is, is very important. It's worth reading. It's inspiring, although a little alarming. And I do talk with Tom about that, sort

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  of what inspiration can we take from these stories where people suffered and were punished in some cases for doing the right thing. And the, the other note that I thought was interesting in the book, he, he talks about this early on. He talks about this sort of Greek word, parhesia or, or paresia. And basically you can look it up. There's a Wikipedia page for it. P A R R H E S I A. And it translates roughly to sort of speaking truth to power. And this is what Socrates famously did. He's sort of the ultimate example of it. He spoke truth to power. He didn't censor himself. He did what he thought was right. And ultimately, you know, the citizens of Athens do not rise up and throw him a parade and give him, you know, give him a hug. You know, he, he's sentenced to death for it. But, but even

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  then, you know, he's, he's given the chance to recant. He could have probably gotten out of it. But to compromise in that way was anathema. It was a betrayal of his principles. You know, Cato was the same way. Thrasia, one of the Stoics who lives in Nero's time is a great example of that. Musonius Rufus is another. Agrippinus is another. I talk about all these guys in, in the new book, Lives of the Stoics, which will be out in the fall. And then we can contrast this to Seneca, right? Who takes the insider's path, who is late to awakening to Nero's flaws, or at least late in doing anything about them as far as stopping them. So, look, life is complicated. People who have admirable principles, people who put together beautiful writings,

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  you know, people who are Christian, you know, people who are highly ethical, you know, fail to often in these sort of trials. We fall short, we don't do what's right. Then, on the other hand, there are the sort of heroes that we look up to, who do do the right thing, who despite being hopelessly outmatched, stand up, speak out. You know, I think Susan Fowler is a really interesting woman. You know, she's a fan of the Stoics. And she says the Stoics were part of, you know, sort of what inspired her to write her famous essay that ultimately sort of, you know, led to a leadership regime change at Uber. So there are Stoics who stood up to the challenge. There's the Cato, and for every Cato, there's a Seneca. And so it's complicated, and I think we have to study it and research it.

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why I wanted to have Tom on to talk about this. And I do hope this is something that people are thinking about. You know, Epictetus says, "It's not about talking about your philosophy, it's embodying it." And Marcus says, again, "It's that you do the right thing." He says, "Waste no more time talking about what is a good man." He says, "Be one." So ultimately, that's what we talked about in the interview. Check out Tom's book. Fascinating guy. Hope you like this. And, you know, if you're seeing something out there that you don't think is right, say something. I think that's what a Stoic would do. So here is my conversation with Tom. So, Tom, obviously, the title of your book is Crisis of Conscience. I'm curious, obviously, that's an expression,

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  and I think it sort of encapsulates the whistleblower experience. But I wonder if it's as much a crisis of conscience, or right now, if we're experiencing sort of a crisis of courage, right? A lot of people know that things they're seeing are not right in all sorts of industries or spaces. But it seems like what you talk about a lot in the book is, is how do you actually work up the courage to do something about it?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  No, I think you're absolutely right, Ryan. It is a crisis of courage. You know, a lot of us seem to be going with the flow rather than putting our foot down and following our individual conscience. We have a group conscience, which is pretty malleable. But, you know, most of us, if we're left to our own devices, know when something doesn't smell right, doesn't pass the smell test. I think, yeah, we need to have more courage to be able to stand up and say, no, I'm not good with this. And not only am I not good with this, I'm gonna make it stop.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  And why is it, it's like, we admire whistleblowers sort of in theory, but then as a society, like, you talk about how basically whistleblowing is almost enshrined in the founding of the United States. It's sort of, it was a sort of a core thing the founding fathers were thinking about. How is it that, not just in the US, but all over the world, somehow, even though we admire whistleblowers, particularly the more distant they are in the past, yet we actually don't make it easy for people to step up and do it?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think on our own, again, most of us say, we believe in equality and equal justice before law. We believe in the little guy, the, you know, we pull for the underdog. But when we are in groups, and that can be our business, our government, our church, our nation, we tend to lean more towards obeying orders and following the crowd, following our peers. And so loyalty and obedience are valued, in many cases, a lot more than truth and justice, even though truth and justice, as you say, are enshrined in our founding documents. But if you think about, I mean, free speech, 1778 Continental Congress, before there was

• 8:39Speaker 01

  actually the United States, George Washington was fighting the Brits in New Jersey, which dates it a bit. You know, the Continental Congress received 10 military whistleblowers, 10 servicemen, US Marines and Navy men, who accused their supreme commander, the commander of the Navy, the Commodore, of dereliction of duty and abuse of British prisoners. And not only were they not jailed forever or driven into exile... Or called traitors. They were celebrated by the founders. And, and the founders passed a law saying it is the right and the duty of all citizens of this nation to call out wrongdoing by public officials. And they even made sure that these people got their legal fees paid.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  So the founding fathers were very much on side with whistleblowers. And if you think about it, they, they were whistleblowers themselves. They were taking

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  In a sense, a major, major chance by breaking with Mother Britain and breaking with their supreme, you know, their divine monarch. This is a big deal in 1778 in order to do, you know, to, to recognize a higher cause, to recognize a higher allegiance. And that's what whistleblowers are constantly telling me that, you know, I, I believe in my company, not just my boss. I refuse to follow orders. Or I believe in my community, not just my company. And I refuse to dump that poison into the river. There's a higher loyalty that whistleblowers rec- respect, which, which gives them courage.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I actually loved, it, it, it comes in a couple of the different whistleblowers in the book. They say something like, I actually don't think I'm a whistleblower. My job is to tell the truth or to, you know, sort of serve the, the taxpayers or, you know, the institution that I'm a part of. And so actually I'm not doing anything different by being a whistleblower. I'm, I'm just sort of continuing along the lines of the, the duty that I believe I have as a public servant or as a human being, or whatever it is.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That is beautifully put, Ryan. That's exactly right. I mean, if you're a nuclear engineer, you have a professional responsibility, which you sign before the law to prevent a mushroom cloud from appearing over your work site. If you're a doctor, you have a professional responsibility to the health of your patient. So it's, it's, in many cases whistleblowers have told me, I hate the word whistleblower. You know, that I was just doing my job. And why do I need a special set of laws and a, and a weird title to recognize what I was, I was simply doing the right thing. And I think that's right. I think that the fact that there's a rise of whistleblowing, it's a great thing that we have whistleblowers and it's a great thing we have laws to protect them. But ultimately it's a bad sign for society that more people aren't just doing the right

• 11:24Speaker 01

  thing as, in the normal course of their occupation.

• 11:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think one of the more interesting Stoics is Cato. He sort of stands against Julius Caesar when Caesar attempts to overthrow the Roman Republic, not far from where you happen to live now. But what's interesting about Cato is like, so here you have a guy who's sort of a ceaseless public servant, even though he's very wealthy, he's not flashy, he shares his money, he treats everyone the same, he's sort of impeccably honest and dedicated and principled and sort of believes he's living up to what they called the old ways, the precedent in the history of Rome.

• 12:07Ryan Holiday?

  And yet, and Plutarch talks about this, it's almost as if the way he lived and was acting was sort of an implicit rebuke to everyone else. And so I was curious, like, why is it that we have this instinctual reaction against whistleblowers? Is there some cognitive dissonance there, right? Is it that we, by indicting the business, the industry, the government that we live in, maybe is perhaps part of the reason why we're so conflicted about them is that they're kind of pointing the finger at us?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  I think there's no question that the first person to stand up and say, this house is rotten, there is something corrupt here, is going to get some angst among his fellow workers or members of a government organization, or church, or school, or whatever it is, because they've called out what many people already see but aren't willing to speak aloud about. And frankly, I think that whistleblowers are, in many cases, contrarians. They may not be the ideal cube mate, they may not be the perfect team player or good soldier. I think we really overestimate the value of team players and good soldiers.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of really loyal and obedient people in Nazi Germany from 39 to 45. That is unambiguously not a good thing. You have to define loyal to what, obedient to whom, before you can start saying those things are absolute good. And whistleblowers, I think it's time to celebrate, the more prickly, the more questioning, the less team player and good soldier we need, people who are willing to challenge authority and really speak out.

• 13:52Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think that's actually something that I think is interesting about Cato. So Cato actively practices wearing different clothes, living more spartanely than other people. He cultivates his whole life this indifference to public opinion, to what other people think. And so when Caesar does cross the Rubicon, and prior to that had been so aggressively usurping Rome's laws, a lot of people made a lot of excuses for it, a lot of rationalizations for it. And of course, there's also just the pressure and the temptation. I think it's in this moment that Cato's not caring what other people think really comes

• 14:34Ryan Holiday?

  back to his benefit, because he's seeing it objectively, not what's in his interest to see. And I'm curious, it is interesting in your book, just, yeah, a lot of the whistleblowers are weirdos, or strange, or marching by this own internal drum, and that's what allows them to see it differently. Is that something people can cultivate? Or should it be that companies should be cultivating, acquiring that kind of talent?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I think both. It is absolutely something that people can cultivate. Whistleblowers, as you say, Cato, the Stoics, the cynics, certain Old Testament and New Testament prophets. People are ostentatious in their refusal to accept the party line. And that is the reason that organizations that don't like that crush whistleblowers so mercilessly, and prophets, and various other critics, is because they are infectious. A lot of people look at them and say, hey, if that person can do it, why can't I? And consciously or unconsciously, organizations that are threatened by these people go out of their way to make their end a very ugly one.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  So the people sitting on the fence will say, hmm, I think I'll just stay where I am. But absolutely, one of the real predictors of whether someone will blow the whistle? Is whether they have heard a whistleblower story in the past and whether they are aware of that as an option. And many of the people that I've talked with who failed to blow the whistle, they said, you know, things are so confused. I just didn't see that as an option. And quite often, it's only when they hear about another whistleblower that they say, hey, you know, actually, I could do that, too. That's what I am. I'm a whistleblower. So, understanding that narrative is something that certainly individuals can and should cultivate. And corporations, I mean, you know, my, my book is a, is a series of horror stories

• 16:29Speaker 01

  about things that went horribly wrong. But I know full well, although I wasn't able to document it, that there are countless organizations that in good faith, fix problems before they become, before they go nuclear and, you know, do the right thing. It's just that they don't want to air their dirty laundry and, and talk to reporters like me about how they were breaking the law and realized it and fixed it. So, but good, well-meaning organizations, and there are many, absolutely must put forward the model of, you know, the conscientious objector, the prophet, the seer, the, the critic, as a, as a way of building a stronger organization. Not all yes, men and yes, women, but people who actually challenge that.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  And, and that's kind of gone out of fashion. I mean, unfortunately, loyalty by now, and if you look at Washington today, you get a sense of it. Loyalty is the number one and, and the only real characteristic that people are judged by. And that's, of course, death to whistleblowing.

• 17:29Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was actually going to ask you that because I think sort of the depressing part of your book is that if I was thinking about being a whistleblower, I'm not sure, walking away from crisis of conscience, I'd say, this sounds like a great idea. This is going to end very well. So are there some examples that, that come to mind for you? Like, if you were, if someone was thinking about sort of speaking out about something or, or sort of, you know, pulling back the curtain on something, are there some examples that you would point them to that they, you think they should read about?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think, you know, the first thing to realize is that the vast majority of people that I interviewed, even if, even if their story had, had a bitter ending, when I asked them, would you do it again? They... One hundred percent of the time said, uh, it was rough, it was hard. But yes, because I could only do this to be and be true to myself. I had to do this, or I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. So, you know, in a, in a, in a large, I mean, in every case that I looked at, even if things ended badly, people really had no choice. They had to, in order to be true to themselves, to do that. But, you know, to be honest with you, I, I think that every story in my book,

• 18:45Speaker 01

  when an individual is able to stand up to a multinational corporation, or to, to a government agency, or to an entire government, that's an amazing thing. That's an incredible achievement. And yes, the individual person may be challenged by this, but I, you know, I, I think that is actually, it is a victory story in itself. Then, of course, you could look at someone like Daniel Ellsberg, who, of course, he torched his future career in the Pentagon and in the State Department. But he actually, uh, speeded the ending of the Vietnam War and got the help to trigger the, um, eviction of, of, uh, if, if not the impeachment of Richard Nixon. So, you know, that's an incredible achievement.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  And I do think that, you know, we, we tend to dwell on the, on the dark side of whistleblowing, and particularly in, in, in this time, when, you know, whistleblower laws seem to be really flaunted by the Trump administration, ignored, and whistleblower figures like inspectors general are, are being, you know, fired out of hand. It's a rough time to be a whistleblower, but in many cases, the reason that we continue to see them is because people, individuals, have simply had enough and their conscience says, no more.

• 20:00Ryan Holiday?

  It's interesting, in sort of the history of Stoicism, you, you contrast Cato, this sort of moral purity, to a figure like Seneca. You know, so Seneca is this great writer, this brilliant thinker. He's a senator, then he's exiled by a corrupt emperor. And when he's sort of beckoned back, it's, it's, he has to tutor this, you know, seemingly promising young kid named Nero, and, and then finds himself working for, for many, many years in the Nero administration. And James Rahm has a fascinating book called Dying Every Day, which is sort of a portrait of Cato in Nero's administration. But I'm fascinated by that as a historical example because it's so easy to say like, oh, that's obviously the wrong thing to do. But it seems unlikely to me that as someone as wise and as sort of smart as Seneca,

• 20:45Ryan Holiday?

  couldn't have been at least very, very conflicted about it and would have solely done this because he's a massive hypocrite, right? And so when you look at people who, you know, and I talked to David French, the writer about this is he's spoken with lots of people who work in the Trump administration, the sort of, it's this tension of like, okay, if I leave, am I unable to steer the ship from the inside? If I blow the whistle, am I actually going to make a difference? Is, you know, and so it's, it's this complicated tension. And I'm curious if you, if the whistleblowers you talked to sort of feel, felt that tension between sort of like trying to reform from the inside or having to step outside and sort of draw that very clear line.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  There is no question that getting involved, getting your hands dirty in an administration, in a corporation, in any organization, does imply a certain level of risk that you will be sucked into, whatever the narrative is, whatever the wrongdoing is. That's something I'm sure Seneca was well aware of. He was not a contemplative, he was an active practitioner of Stoicism. And I, you know, there's, there's a lot to be said for that. Public servants, and I think many, many whistleblowers consider themselves before or after they blow the whistle to be servants of the public. You know, you really have to get out in the public arena and, and do something. You can't just sit back and talk about it.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  It is a very risky business when you are dealing with someone as profoundly corrupt as Donald Trump. You know, it is a very risky business that your own behaviors won't be warped by his expectations because you know that as soon as you show any sign of independence, you may, your head may be on the chopping block. On the other hand, yes, I mean, you know, the people talk about the adults in the room and how many military people, Mattis and Kelly and various others, have, have positioned themselves as, well, you know, we need someone grown up in the room if we start talking about nuclear weapons. This is true. But it's also very risky. And part of, one of the most interesting parts of my book, for me, anyway, as a writer,

• 22:55Speaker 01

  was understanding just how much we know about the cognitive traps and the self illusion that people fall into, particularly when they're dealing with money goals and in organizations where there's a lot of peer pressure. And it's not just Milgram, but Milgram's teachers, Solomon Ash, and cognitive dissonance, and straight down to Daniel Kahneman and, you know, Phase One and Phase Two Thinking. All of these things show that, you know, really, we are very vulnerable to reading our own, believing our own press releases. We are very vulnerable to self-serving behaviors.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And particularly when, you know, the level of power is available that you would have in a presidential administration, the risk of compromising your conscience, your individual conscience, is immense. So I, I'm very worried that people who hang around and go with the flow and say, "Yeah, well, we'll steer the ship from the back." This ship seems, remains rudderless here. I mean, I don't know. I mean, COVID is a pretty good example, that, you know, our gyroscope is broke here. So where are the adults in the room? They seem to get fired anytime they speak up.

• 24:12Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's an interesting thing I've experienced. My books have sort of made their way through, you know, sort of political parties on both sides, and you meet people and it's, there's sort of this, in Washington, there's this sort of very interesting dichotomy of, between what people are willing to say in private and then what they do in public. And I believe it's earnest and well meant, there's this sort of sense of waiting for the right moment, right? Of keeping the powder dry, or, yeah, being the adult in the room for when it really counts. And then I think that is where that tricky mechanism of your mind, you know, the Upton Sinclair thing, it's very hard to get someone to understand something, their salary is dependent on them not understanding. It's very hard, having kept your powder dry.

• 24:58Ryan Holiday?

  For so long to then finally use it, right? And I think that's sort of what we see, not just in in politics, but I'm sure, you know, people who work for for an Elon Musk or or people who worked for Howard Hughes or, you know, people who worked for Harvey Weinstein. You you you see the good in people and you see the good you're able to do through them. And you tell yourself right now it's it's outweighing the bad. But eventually that ratio shifts and it's very hard to to then go, OK, now is the moment, I feel like.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  That is absolutely right, right? And I mean, it is, you know, it is a perfectly natural and perhaps laudable temptation to say, look, you know, I can do good here. I see what's going on and I will wait for the right moment, you know, to to blow the whistle, to take action. And some people do, or some people just simply have enough and say, OK, that's it, I'm out. But, you know, the charismatic leader, the charismatic CEO or political leader or, you know, renowned professor of economics or preacher, you name it. The charismatic person tends to attract a lot of people and in many cases tends to surround themselves with people who reflect their aura.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  They like that. A wonderful book by business professor Mary Ann Jennings, Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse. Her first sign of ethical collapse in a in a an organization, typically a company, but she also talks about other organizations, is a larger-than-life CEO. You know, someone who who seems to be above the law, who actually flaunts the law and shows that they make their own rules. And the world is just going to have to get along with that. That's very seductive. It's very powerful. We are herd animals. We are pack animals. And that's how that's the evolutionary background of loyalty and obedience is deeply wired in our DNA.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  But it is also very dangerous when you have someone, a charismatic leader. You can go a long way down the wrong track. And, you know, the famous expression, all that is necessary for evil to succeed in the world is for good people to do nothing. That is kind of the situation we're talking about.

• 27:18Ryan Holiday?

  No, and I don't exempt myself from that. For many years, I was an executive before I became a writer at a company called American Apparel, which had this sort of charismatic, brilliant CEO who'd sort of built this deeply ethical, sort of disruptive fashion company that didn't use sweatshops, that, you know, sort of didn't use Photoshop models. It did all these things. Then he sort of had these kind of personal demons. And sort of you tell yourself at the beginning that the good outweighs the bad, and you tell yourself that you're steering the ship, that you're a positive force inside of, you know, a chaotic, complicated environment. And then I think the other thing that people struggle with is, and I struggled with this, is it's like, I have my team of people.

• 28:02Ryan Holiday?

  And I told myself like, hey, I can navigate this system. I can protect these people. And so I think one of the things that you that you touch on the book that I think is important, too, that it seemed like a lot of these whistleblowers are struggling with is like, hey, like, like, look, like, when Susan Fowler blew the whistle at Uber, that company lost billions of dollars of market cap. And, you know, people lost their jobs. And so there's this tension of like, well, if I do this thing, it will hurt some people that I care about. But if I don't do this thing, many other people might be hurt over a longer period of time. And so there's, I think there's this also this kind of tension between the sort of

• 28:43Ryan Holiday?

  the personal and the principled, the little and the big. And we don't, we don't give people a lot of instruction on how to, you know, wrestle with those, you know, profoundly philosophical dilemmas.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. I mean, you know, most whistleblowers that I know, they are not utilitarians. I mean, they are virtue ethicists. They see their role. And of course, you have to ask yourself, so when did they arrive at this? You know, when I, when I get their story, they've already blown the whistle. So they've already gone through this sometimes really difficult struggle to decide what to do. And a lot of their story, unconsciously or unconsciously, may be self-justifying. You know, this is why I did what I did, explaining to themselves. But I think you're absolutely right. I mean, whistleblowers tend to take the long-term view that this is going to be bad for the company down the road. They also take the bigger picture view. This is going to be bad for my company.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  You know, if if this goes on, great for my boss, however, who's raking in money on fraud. So they they see things in a larger perspective. And, you know, collateral damage is a major concern for them. They see that their colleagues, their bosses sometimes are gonna, you know, be axed or be damaged by this. Ultimately, you know, it comes back to the individual conscience and how it sits with the group mind, the hive mind. And that is, that's something that, you know, that's, this is where the courage of the individual whistleblowers that I've talked with really stuns me, really inspires me. Because at the end of the day, you know, you said earlier, a lot of us know that there's some bad stuff going on.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  But, you know, go along to get along, one day leads to another, we'll see, things will be better soon. I gotta stay inside on, you know, at the table in order to change things. All of these justifications for not actually doing something. And of course, taking a huge risk by doing it. These individuals actually hear the voice of their conscience, and this comes back to my title. It is a crisis. And and the voice comes from the individual conscience, which, well, you know, virtually all of us have. I think that sociopath is a vastly overused term. And that individual voice is so easily drowned out by the chorus of obedience and of loyalty. But these people have it and they listen.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  And when they do it, you know, the vast majority of us who don't work for that company say, you know, good for you. And I wish, I hope, when I am in that same position, I can do the same thing.

• 31:22Ryan Holiday?

  And and that, so Marcus Aurelius, you know, is a fascinating figure. You have the sort of the emperor of Rome and and he writes in Meditations, he says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. He says, cold or warm, says, busy or or tied up with other assignments. You know, he says, loved or hated. And and I think that's, to me, that's a great sort of dictum for for the whistleblower is that, yeah, you have to do what's right. You can overthink yourself out of doing the right thing. Because, you know, hey, it'll hurt this person, or what if this happens to me? Where you almost, it's almost like intuitively at a gut level, we know what's right. And then our mind and our sense of self-preservation can convince us to not do the right thing.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I completely agree. I mean, you know, our capacity to rationalize self-serving behavior is boundless. And again, that's what the the social psychologists of the middle and late 20th century have taught us that, you know, we always tend to do things that make us look like heroes. We always tend to do things, if we have a choice and are not aware that there are bad things on either side, we tend to choose things that benefit ourselves, which is perfectly normal. But so much of this happens at a subconscious level. So much of our decision making is not within our conscious control. You know, ultimately,

• 32:51Speaker 01

  I'm a big doubter of utilitarianism, of people who say, well, the greater good, because you can always redefine the greater good to mean my greater good and maybe also for everybody else. The absolutes, of course, from a philosophical point of view, are very tricky to pin down. But, you know, that's where we come back to the individual voice and the individual conscience. And a lot, you know, a lot of people on their own, without a group, will say, no, that stinks to high heaven. That is just not right. But the same behavior, the same dishonesty, the same illegality, they will carry through with

• 33:32Speaker 01

  that if they are doing it for other people or with other people. And that's, you know, we just have to recognize that as part of a deeply coded part of human nature.

• 33:42Ryan Holiday?

  The thing I thought we could close with that I think is interesting and maybe in our sort of, it's actually something that sort of worries me about our increasingly polarized society. And I experienced this a little bit. So my first book was this sort of expose of how sort of marketing and media works. And it was controversial and sort of deliberately provocative. And so I get all that. But I was, it was interesting to me to see the reaction where a lot of people would say, sort of like, I don't like that person. I don't like what they what they do. The reaction, which is to me, an entirely separate debate about whether I'm right or not. Right. And so what I think is interesting about where we are now is that because we look

• 34:25Ryan Holiday?

  at everything as this sort of team sport or this polarization, we've forgotten that that the world is very complicated and that whistleblowers are often not sort of perfect narrators or perfect figures. Like when you, when you look, and you talk about this in your book a little bit, but when you look at like sort of the whistleblowers or some of the people that ultimately ended up testifying and playing in a critical part in Watergate and in Nixon's downfall, these were not necessarily great people and certainly not people with entirely clean hands. So I'm just curious, like, how can people sort of understand that like the truth is what counts, not whether you like the person, whether you disagree

• 35:07Ryan Holiday?

  with the person. Like, if you want, if you want to bring whistleblowers out, I feel like you have to give them a place to land. And I wonder if, if part of the reason you do see some of the loyalty in the inside, say, the Trump administration, but, but other administrations too, is like, the option presented to these people is essentially become a pariah or double down and try to get a Fox News contract down the road. There's not, there's no exit. It's like, it's like you can't leave the gang and you can't go straight either.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  You know, I think that's why there is the triumph of false news, because fake news, because, you know, at the end of the day, we have bent our data so badly and we have been warped so badly by loyalty to one team or another. And we're not just talking about Trump, as you quite rightly pointed out, Ryan. I mean, the loyalty to Obama, the loyalty to George W. Bush, the loyalty to the Clintons, the loyalty to, you know, it's a binary game. You're either for or against. And if, you know, what that produces, of course, is if you bring data that is against our team, you are not just wrong, you're evil. And that's, that's no, that's more religion than, than reason. But that's no environment in

• 36:24Speaker 01

  which to hold a rational debate about right and wrong. And it's no environment in which to blow the whistle. The whistleblowers rely on an environment in which facts matter to some extent. And as you say, I mean, things have become so polarized that if I take a position that in any way reflects badly on Barack Obama. For instance, and I think my book is a good example of this. You know, a lot of people have have been really angry at me for my book because I show with perfectly, you know, abundance of facts that Barack Obama was very, very bad for national security whistleblowers. You know, he used the blunt force instrument of the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers

• 37:09Speaker 01

  in the national security environment than any other president in the history of the United States. And that is not a good thing. But when I say these things, people attack not what I've said, because they can't refute it, because it's true. But the fact that I am saying them, which makes Obama and therefore the Democrats look bad, they say, but you should be, I mean, they say it or they think it, you should be on side at a moment like this one. We need to get rid of Trump. For goodness sake, do not talk badly about the alternative. And of course, that is anti whistleblower talk right there. You know, it's either true or it's not, you know? And we cannot be so religious in our in our allegiances politically that we simply,

• 37:54Speaker 01

  you know, do what's right for power rather than doing what's right for people. It's a shocking state of affairs, but you're absolutely right that, you know, our polarization in in politics these days puts us in a puts us and puts whistleblowers in a very difficult position.

• 38:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like we have to get to a place where it shouldn't matter what the person has done in the past, what what what's what sort of party affiliation they have. Yeah, our loyalties has to be to is what they're saying true? Is what they're doing genuine? Are they at least, you know, trying to to to make the world a better place? And if that's the case, then they're on our team. If that's not the case, then they're not on our team. You know what I mean? It's like there's sort of it should be sort of team truth above, you know, sort of.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:43Ryan Holiday?

  Team America, and bless that shell, you know, team America rather than team Republican or team Democrat, whatever that means anymore. And I'd push it further, Ryan. I'd say.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  You know, we shouldn't ask whistleblowers to be saints. That is counterproductive and wrong. What we care about is facts. We don't care why they do what they do. If they bring good facts, whether it's because they are Mother Teresa and they want the good, good, good for all mankind, or because they really, really hate their boss, we shouldn't care. If they can prove

• 39:16Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  their facts, and if this shows that there has been serious wrongdoing, who cares what's in their minds? And that, and that's of course, a very, I mean, I, I confess to it myself. It's a natural human reaction to a whistleblower is to say, wow, what's going on there? Why did they do that? What's the backstory? And that, you know, it's, it's normal, but it's wrongheaded. Because really, we, it, it's the easiest way to, to derail a whistleblower disclosure is to turn the conversation from the message to the messenger and start saying, well, they must be greedy, or they must be disgruntled, or they must be psychotic, or they must be. No, no, let's look at the facts here. We don't care really, you know, the kind of person they are, their sexual orientation,

• 40:01Speaker 01

  what they have for breakfast. We care about the facts. And, and we should start celebrating rebels. I mean, once upon a time, right? The founders were rebels, rebels. They were dangerous. They were, these were really dangerous people. People sitting back in Britain, these were, these were the Taliban, these were, you know, these are ISIS. These are really dangerous people. Well, it's time that we celebrated rebels, not Taliban and ISIS, but people who are willing to risk a great deal to say, I don't think that's right. And not only that, I'm not going to go away quietly. I'm going to try to change it. There's something noble about that, that we, that we're at risk of losing.

• 40:41Ryan Holiday?

  No, I, I think that's right. And, and, and yeah, this idea of sort of making it about the messenger, we, we had, we seem to have this problem, you know, across a bunch of different domains, right? Like a criminal informant, it shouldn't matter what crimes they committed. It matters, do they have information about a different crime? And then on the other side of that, we also seem to be, you know, this is why we sort of got in the mess we got with sexual harassment and Sexual assault is that we spent a lot of time as a society trying to think about, you know, if this is a perfect victim or not, if the victim is, it has any guilt on them, rather than is what they're saying true, yes or no? And if it is, then we have to take it seriously. And if it's not, then, you know, then, then you don't. But, but we, we seem to be so caught up with,

• 41:27Ryan Holiday?

  yeah, is this person like me? Is this person on the same team as me? Has this person led a perfect life? Not, does this person help us do what we're trying to do? Which is create a better world or live up to our own standards? Or, you know, keep, keep people safe.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And the keep people safe, I, I, I think that if for all of the horrors that coronavirus pandemic has brought, it's an opportunity for a hard reset, for us to rearrange a little bit our priorities about, you know, who's on our team and who's not? And start looking at, you know, the team, which is America, not the team which is right and left and up and down and wrong. And as you say, keeping people safe. I mean, this is a time when whistleblowers, like it or not, are absolutely life and death. People who call out wrongdoing, A, in the medical profession and in healthcare in general, risks to old age, you know, facilities and, and very, and, and hospitals

• 42:28Speaker 01

  and various places where people will die if they don't do the right thing. That's one. B, trillions of dollars flowing into our economy in aid, which you know, and I know, and everybody else knows, some of which is going to be routed into schemes, frauds, scams, crimes. You know, whistleblowing right now is, is a vital concern. It's a vital tool, especially when we have such gridlock in politics. And frankly, we have a remarkable level of power in corporations. Individuals who are on the inside but have the conscience of an outsider, they're key. So I'm hoping, and I may sound naive when I say this, but I'm hoping that COVID-19

• 43:12Speaker 01

  will allow us to reset a little bit our priorities about being a public servant, about protecting the common good. And that exists, whether Trump or Obama or Biden or whatever supporters think about each other. If they were just to spend the period of quarantine together in the same house, or as my brother would say, if they were forced to ride the bus three times a month together, you know, that's people. These are people. And the vast majority of people are people we could get along with if we didn't treat them as things, as enemies, as disease. And so we need to break that down, and coronavirus might do that.

• 43:51Ryan Holiday?

  Very well said, Tom. Thank you so much. I loved the book and I appreciate you coming and chatting with me.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Thanks a lot, Ryan. It's a pleasure.

• 43:58Ryan Holiday?

  If there was something I could put on the wall of your office to inspire you along this idea of being a whistleblower and a truth teller, it'd be this quote from Marcus Aurelius. He says, "Waste no more time arguing what a good man is like. Be one." That's sort of the Stoic motto, I feel. We have a print of that in the Daily Stoic store you can check out. Go to store.dailystoic.com. And then if you want something maybe a little bit more portable that I think is also important, I mean, the four Stoic virtues to me overlap perfectly with the sort of code of ethics of a whistleblower. Courage, self-discipline, justice, that's doing the right thing, wisdom, you gotta be wise, you gotta be smart about this, you have to be strategic, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. Those are the four Stoic virtues.

• 44:43Ryan Holiday?

  And we have our Daily Stoic Four Virtues coin. Marcus Aurelius says, "Try not to trade those virtues for anything else." So check that out in the Daily Stoic store as well. We also have our Summum Bonum coin, which has Marcus's quote on the back. Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. So we're trying to not just talk about this philosophy, not just to explore it intellectually, but of course, to live it, to do it when it counts. Whether you're working at a small government office in your small town, or you're an aide to the prime minister of your country, whether you're an executive at a billion-dollar company, or you're just somebody who sees something going on down the street. A Stoic speaks out. A Stoic stands up. A Stoic doesn't just talk about what a good person is like.

• 45:27Ryan Holiday?

  A Stoic does the right thing when it counts. So be well, do good. Talk to you soon.