Jordan Klepper: How Mob Thinking Takes Over | PT. 2

When does belonging start to matter more than being right? In Part 2 of Ryan’s conversation with Jordan Klepper, they dive into how mob thinking takes over, how cultural permission shifts what feels acceptable, why people double down even when the facts are clear, and how leaders shape the tone of an entire country. Jordan Klepper is a comedian, writer, and correspondent on The Daily Show. You can follow him on Instagram @JordanKlepper and check out his upcoming live show dates on his website https://www.officialjordanklepper.com/💡 Go to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 at checkout to get 20% off the Spring Forward Challenge! Challenge yourself to spring forward and become the person you aspire to be. The Spring Forward Challenge starts March 20, 2026. 🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You just never know how stuff's gonna work out. You never know if you're gonna get the break, if you're not gonna get the break. I remember back in April of 23, I was putting out The Daily Dad, and I was supposed to do CBS This Morning, which is a huge win. I was so excited. You know, I thought, that's as good as it's gonna get. It's amazing. And then we got this call from The Daily Show. The Daily Show wanted to have me on. Jordan Klepper was the guest host. I brought you part one of his episode earlier in the week. They wanted to have me on. And so you might go, oh, that's amazing. But there was a conflict, which is CBS This Morning basically had the exclusive on the book.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  Like, we had to run any other appearances by them for approval. And naturally, they don't want you to go on another show first and then go do their show. And my wonderful publicists and the wonderful producers of The Daily Show managed to work it out. They made an exception. So I got to go do The Daily Show to talk about Stoicism. And then a few days later, got to go on CBS This Morning to talk about parenting. But like The Daily Show, I remember the first time I watched The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was the host. And I watched it, I was homesick one day, I think in middle school, and I watched it on TV. And I just thought, what is this? This is amazing. And I watched it sporadically in high school. I would watch it every night in college.

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, I went and saw a taping of The Daily Show. This would have been like the summer of 2005. So for me to come full circle and be able to be on The Daily Show, it was amazing. Let me bring you a little clip of that.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Ryan, I've been a fan of yours for quite some time. You're a popular man. 12 bestselling books. That's a lot of books. That's almost more books than I've read. But you have a lot of fans out there. From very successful comedians like myself, to folks in the NFL, to senators. Sort of what you speak to goes across many aisles, if you will. And I will say, I've taken a lot from some of the ideas you have. I will also say that you kind of, you talk about philosophy and it helps me work through life. And then a byproduct is that I go home and I tell my wife how she should work through life.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  That's a great idea.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  And just before we get started, I wonder if it's possible for you to apologize to my wife for me.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  People ask my wife what it's like living with a Stoic philosopher, and she usually answers, "I don't know."

• 2:46Speaker 01

  That feels Socratic, but mostly, maybe it's just passive-aggressive?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Yes. One of us writes about it, and then the other is sort of naturally it.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  It kind of lives it. For those who don't know, a Stoic philosopher, what are the tenets of Stoicism?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Stoicism, if I had to summarize it in one sentence, I would say it's this idea that we don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life. And the Stoics say that basically every situation, big ones, small ones, ones you wanted, ones you didn't want, it's all an opportunity to respond with these four virtues. The virtues are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. So the idea is that that is what life is asking from you. One or all of those virtues in some kind of a combination, that's what it's demanding of you. And what's cool about the Stoics is, like, I think when people hear philosopher, they think like, you know, a tweed jacket, or an old white guy in a toga, or whatever.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  But the Stoics were philosophers, they were thinkers, but they were also doers. The most well-known Stoic is Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperor of Rome, the philosopher-king. But there were Stoics who were slaves, who were soldiers, who were artists. There were men and women. They were people trying to do what we're all trying to do, which is make sense of the crazy world that we live in.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  Okay. And so the person interviewing me there was not Jon Stewart. It was Jordan Klepper, who is today's guest. He was in town for a live show. He was doing it at the Paramount Theater in Austin. I was very grateful that he was able to squeeze that in. I know what it is to to sort of do press the same day you're doing a performance. So that was really cool. And then we got to nerd out about some books at the bookstore. In this episode, Jordan shares what it's like to do what he does, what it was like being at the Capitol on January 6th. We talked about the First Amendment and his message to young people. I think you're really going to like this. Part one was really great, too. And I'm excited to bring you part two of this episode now. Jordan is a writer, a comedian, a correspondent for The Daily Show. You can follow him on Instagram at Jordan Klepper.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  You can check out his upcoming live show dates. He is amazing, very, very funny, at officialjordanklepper.com.

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  When you do those interviews, the other thing I think about, it's always remarkable to me, is when you have what seems like a nice person nicely saying a horrendous thing, you know? Like chatting with them, you get them to be like, yeah, maybe the Civil War was a mistake. Or, you know, or, or maybe we should just throw them all in jail. Or, you know, I can't tell what that is. What is your feeling about it? Like, are they disconnected? Are they putting a smile on a horrible thing? What do they think is happening?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  I think a few different things are happening. What I noticed originally, when Trump first ran in 2015, and then we went out there, like birtherism was a taboo.

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  It was widely considered, at least among the masses and on television. And I think culturally, like a racist theory.

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Not that people didn't believe it. That there were people who had these feelings, but people weren't going on television and saying it.

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  So if I were to go to a rally and talk to people, which I did when that was coming out, nobody would admit to the idea that Barack Obama wasn't born in America.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  So I could, I would, I went to an early Trump rally.

• 6:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  And would ask, go down that path and nobody, maybe, maybe one out of 10 would allude to birtherism.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And Trump started then talking about birtherism very openly and how he thought, you know, Obama was born in Kenya, yada, yada, yada. A couple of months later, we were at like seven out of 10 people talking about birtherism. And at that point, I, I don't think he changed that many people's minds.

• 6:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  But I do think he completely changed the discourse of what was acceptable.

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. What, what people would keep to themselves and what they would feel comfortable saying out loud.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  He has like this baseline of culture.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  That gives permission for cruelty. He gives permission for some of your innermost thoughts that are perhaps thought about without reflection.

• 6:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  That have unkindness and perhaps hate behind it, or even ignorance behind it. I think those were suddenly elevated in a way that if, if he is talking about this.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  If the culture is talking about this, then I will be open about this. Now, I don't think everybody thought that was true. Again, I think there's another pocket of people that we're talking to who are just trying to be a part of the conversation.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  And are catching up. And this apparently is the thing that people are talking about now. And I see that, that is that, that mob mentality. Like I've seen that on January 6th on all different places where it's, it's not everybody who believes this thing, but suddenly when you're a group of people who are all talking about this thing, and such a powerful, famous person tells you this thing, you go along with this thing. We're seeing so many people going along with it. And so I, I, I see it as a mix of Donald Trump raising their, or lowering the bar of what is socially acceptable to reveal.

• 7:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Uh, in, in, in public company and on television, as well as a mob mentality of this is the thing I must talk about now because this is culturally where we're moving.

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  Is that an argument you think for political correctness? Like, there's been this backlash against political correctness, but I think we might be throwing the. Baby out with the bathwater, like it serves a purpose to be like, hey, we draw some lines about what we do and say in public.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I think, I think it definitely, it's an argument for integrity in with, for people in positions of power.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you and I both know, we hold very little power.

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  But we have microphones in front of us.

• 8:29Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And so even when pushed on more extreme topics and doing interviews elsewhere else, like, I'm sure you have an idea of like, well, these are the types of ideas that I want to push out into public and the ones I'm choosing not to.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  There's a carefulness.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  There's a carefulness that even at your most, I don't want to say unhinged, but open.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  You're still aware that there's a microphone that is, other people are listening to and take into account. I think most respectable people have that awareness.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And it does make me look back on American history and say what you will about many of the presidents and people in charge of our country, but there was a understanding, a belief in the institution of the President of the United States, that even in times of public distress, you're talking about people coming together. I think, looking at what happened with the Charlie Kirk shooting, what became so frightening is, is I think Trump's response afterwards.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Just fanning those flames and I hadn't fully put it together, be like, oh, right, when things like this normally happen, even if you don't buy it.

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  The president comes on television and he sets the bar.

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  And the bar is, these are difficult times, violence is never acceptable, and we need to tone down the rhetoric and come together as a country.

• 9:36Ryan Holiday?

  There's things the queen does and doesn't do, or the king does or doesn't do, and it's this sort of performance role.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Ryan Holiday?

  And that you're trained in understanding, this is what I do.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I'm realizing, I think Americans have always been partially shitheads.

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  But we've also believed in these, this idea of better angels.

• 9:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  That we can ascribe to something more.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And I think that's mostly performative from people in charge.

• 10:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Some people are closer to actually believing that.

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  But the baseline has always been, you gotta still perform that shit.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  You gotta still pretend like we are better than this, that we can achieve greatness in these types of ways, that we can come together and we hold ourselves in high regard. That was, at the very least, an empty performance, but it was still a necessary performance.

• 10:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And now you have this bar dropped to the point where the guy there has no problem being a dickhead.

• 10:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  But he feels no compulsion to pretend like he's better than that.

• 10:31Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, even like if if you had 200 million Twitter followers and you're Elon Musk, you would think about the things that you say before you say them because you would think about what would happen if even 1% of people took this seriously or it was misinterpreted. You would you would be careful, right? Just like you guys are, you have people, there's no law mandating that The Daily Show have certain kinds of fact checkers or standards in practice. All of this is kind of voluntary, responsible behavior that you engage with because you're a business, you're owned by a corporate, there's just like these layers of like, and some people

• 11:13Ryan Holiday?

  rightly push back on it as bureaucracy and frustrating and it has some minor consequences, but but it also prevents, you know, you're not giving unqualified medical advice or whatever because you you know that's dangerous.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  There's a baseline responsibility.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I think adults have.

• 11:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  And we are so far away from that at times that I think you and I are, we're trying to wrap our heads around that, which, yeah, if you had 200 million followers, a baseline responsibility is not a crazy thing to assume that you would have in this conversation. But that baseline responsibility has been replaced with like the possibility or the idea of like edgelord politics isn't of itself like more redeemable equality than basic responsibility. So that like

• 11:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  success in being in negging, being outrageous, crossing that line, like that, it's always funny because comedy gets looped into this about like, what can you say and woke and all these kinds of things, but more often than not, the people that I know who go out there and do it have that baseline responsibility and choose to step over the line.

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Through a tactical nature because it's something they believe and they want to provoke in a very specific way. I think those who don't understand the baseline responsibility just, I think, are are removing are something that is not a creative choice, but more of a a basic human quality that all adults should be expected to have.

• 12:36Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the First Amendment debate is really interesting because we tend to focus on whether stuff should be legal or not. And it's like, it should definitely be legal, but you fucking suck if you say certain things, you know? It's been weird that we've kind of lost track of that. Like, obviously, a whole bunch of abhorrent things are allowed under the First Amendment. Because if you make them illegal, a bunch of good things would also become illegal. But like, we should have, like, we should have no problem being like, only an asshole would do this, or say this, or think this. And so it's weird, too, like, obviously, there's been this reaction against cancel culture.

• 13:20Ryan Holiday?

  But there should be social consequences for saying and doing shitty but not outright illegal things.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. We should still have a basic morality or an understanding of like, oh, you're being irresponsible, you're being a dick, we can call you out for being a dick. And there can be, yes, there should be consequences for that.

• 13:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I think like what has gotten so interesting as of now is like, that loose idea of cancel culture has suddenly been, like, again, we have so little, both understanding publicly and respect for what government does, that in that equation, people have gotten confused as to what a government can and should do. And so the fact that like, the Trump administration is weighing in, leaning on the FCC and doing all these things, you're like, we're not talking about what culturally we're doing. We're talking about what like, an elected government is now imposing.

• 14:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  But we're all just lost in this mix of conversation that all just feels like it's part of the same, same stew.

• 14:19Ryan Holiday?

  But I agree, like, there's something, there's something that shifted in the culture about what we accept or allow. Like, political assassinations are very, very bad. And you cannot have a civil society where people murder other people. Like, George Wallace shouldn't have been shot, John F. Kennedy shouldn't have been shot, RFK shouldn't, no one should be shot, right? Charlie Kirk. It was weird to watch people struggle to wrap their heads around the fact that he said a lot of horrible things about people. Like, if you tweet that when you get on a plane, you're suspicious of black pilots, you're a bigot. Like, that's the definition of what being a bigot is. Now, should you be murdered for that? No, of course not.

• 15:04Ryan Holiday?

  But that's a shitty thing to say. It's a shitty thing to think. And just because you said a lot of other things that people like doesn't mean that that doesn't really suck. And so, like, I think, like, they call it the Overton window, but just generally, the things that we've not held people accountable for, for saying, has gotten so bad that it all, I think it's all just kind of swirling around, when those are the kinds of things... Remember, they got rid of a Republican, was it the House Majority Leader? Who just complimented a segregationist, which, that seems like a good punishment. That you should not be in elected office if you think segregationists were good.

• 15:48Ryan Holiday?

  Like, that seems like a society that's getting better would swiftly deal with something like that. But like, our ability to handle people who have abhorrent ideas, shouldn't just be like, "Oh, just say whatever you want, you're cool." Like, again, you shouldn't go to jail, and you shouldn't be murdered for them. But like, I don't feel any compunction about going like, "You suck, dude."

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should be open to be critical of the things you say. Everybody who has a microphone in front of them is pushing out ideas and thoughts that people should be critical of those. They should have consequences for it, obviously, not consequences that are violent in any kind of a nature. But it speaks to like, how our culture's so... It's such a hard time having an earnest conversation around this. Like, that whole incident, it just became a tool for the culture war, where people who didn't, weren't even aware of who that person was, now it just becomes a thing that they can use to try to cancel somebody else for, and tighten speech. And then you also feel, because that happened, seeing people on the left shy away from being... Like being critical of the things that were said in a way that that that double spooked me.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Where suddenly we're putting up these boundaries here where we're right, we're now using the words that somebody said in the conversation about who this person was is now being deemed something you could be canceled for. It's not how a republic should be working.

• 17:09Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's also just not how like a moral society. It's like, okay, there's a video of Dana White hitting his wife. He's gonna put on a fight on the lawn of the White House?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:22Ryan Holiday?

  That's insane. First off, we don't need to be like boxing's been a sport for a long time. They never, even Theodore Roosevelt wasn't like, let's have.

• 17:31Ryan Holiday?

  Who loved boxing.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Bears can wrestle on the White House lawn, but people, let's not have that happen.

• 17:35Ryan Holiday?

  Even he was like, eh, this is, this is something we do in the dark, you know? But like, if there was ever a thing to be canceled for, that seems like one of the things. Again, they shouldn't take all of his money. Although if it was a crime, you know, whatever, it's a crime. But it's interesting that we're just like, okay, yeah, you could, you're gonna still have your polite society card. But then somebody else over here, like some 20 year old kid that does something stupid has gone forever.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  This is where I get worried. We talk about these people who I talked to on the road who say stuff that feels abhorrent. And you wouldn't expect it to come from them. Like I look at these conversations and you point to the actions of the most powerful person on the planet, the pardoning of J sixers. Like all of these actions suddenly, I don't think if I talk one to one, and I do talk one on one with a lot of these folks at MAGA rallies, off camera, what have you. Kind people. I think your moral line is very similar to what yours or mine would be. But there's such a nihilism that comes with Donald Trump's view of the world.

• 18:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  The fact that he's looking to pardon J sixers because they supported him, but also because it would piss off Democrats.

• 18:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Like so much of this has to do with pissing off people. He's like, he's talking about pardoning P Diddy. And people like, well, why would he do that? I think only just because it would piss people off. The Dana White of it all is, it's there to piss people off. It's edgelord. Politics.

• 19:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  And I don't think mom and pop in the middle of America give a shit about that. But in the last two years, this seems to be what the competition is. And so like if you're like, if you bought the hat, you're a MAGA fan and this is your guy. And now this is the world of it all. You root for the actions of that. And these actions are so amoral and, and an edgelord in a way that now you have 65 year olds who are like, yeah, I guess I want people to beat each other up on the lawn. They're talking about Conor McGregor being the person who does it also.

• 19:32Ryan Holiday?

  Isn't he a rapist?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah. And he was brought into the White House. Trump shook his hand, talked like, he's flaunting that. And I think these actions, again, baseline responsibility in the old, I'm not saying we didn't have terrible people in that Oval Office, but they knew not to, they knew to perform better. And we are performing worse as an attempt to, to own half of the population.

• 19:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there would be a system where a press or communications secretary would go, okay, here's a list of 10 box or 10 MMA fighters that we might have do this thing. Okay, well, this one's a rapist, so he's out. And, uh, you know, this one did this and this one did this. Hey, these three are just as good as that one. So this is the safer political pick. And, and again, I think people took that as like somehow false or inauthentic. But it turns out that it's actually essential to a moral society that you make some judgments. And that there's some kind of like, yeah, just mechanism by which you go, look, I'm not saying he has to go into exile,

• 20:36Ryan Holiday?

  but he's not who we're gonna, like, we each have this little bit of platform, this little bit of say. And how do we use that say? Who are we endorsing and spending time with and who are we not? That just seems.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  They will have that list now.

• 20:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And I don't doubt that they will articulate, if they articulate, who is a rapist and who is not. And I think instead of saying that, that person shouldn't be a part of this.

• 20:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I think, I think.

• 21:00Ryan Holiday?

  That guy really likes me.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  He likes me.

• 21:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And this will piss people off.

• 21:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  They indulge in the cruelty and that, that Adam Surratt article, the cruelty is the point. I think that is such a big part of it. It's not all of it, but it's such a big part of it. In these decisions, wouldn't this piss these people off? They want the images of these ice raids in Chicago. They want little kids zip tied.

• 21:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  You get people one on one, I don't think they want that. But you get them in that gosh darned group and this person just froths at the mouth for that cruelty and lowers that bar. It's such a scary, despicable place to be.

• 21:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the fundamental insight of the civil rights movement, we don't give them enough credit for their media savvy. They were like, we are going to force confrontations that are going to create an overreaction. And then that cruelty will be documented by reporters with cameras. And then that will shock and stun the conscience of ordinary Americans. Gandhi did the same thing. Gandhi actually understood that fundamentally, the British people were moral people. They just didn't fully understand what running India as a colony looked like because it was obscured from them.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 22:15Ryan Holiday?

  That's the whole point. It would do it far away, so it's not bad. And so he said, if I can reflect this back to you, you'll have to choose between the policy and your conscience. And there is something profoundly alarming about the exact opposite of that strategy being put into play and it working. Like, we went from virtue signaling to like, the cruelty is the point. Or the corruption is the point. And it's not as repugnant as you would hope it would be.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think we've reached that point where if we can't give you success and joy, we can show somebody has it worse. They will pay.

• 22:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And that seems to be the thing that excites. Nonviolence is not, is going to be, I mean, the one difference, oh, many differences. One of the differences between the 60s is those images were being shot out on three channels.

• 23:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  And now they're being shot out on a thousand devices and being warped in all these different ways. So it's like, how does that message get out? How do you distill it to just what one image is? And you are right. Like, if suddenly the images of cruelty is not enough to like, sicken us, then what are the images that could change your point of view? Or is this more reflective of what this nation actually wants?

• 23:31Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, and maybe this goes back to what we're talking about with the monoculture. So if the same unfiltered image is getting out to everyone, there is this sort of shared revulsion. But if part of the population is getting the revolting thing, and then the other part of the population is getting it filtered, or edited, or flipped on its head in some way, you're not getting the shared consensus.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  I really don't know how you find that shared consensus. I do think J6 was such a, it was the most-

• 24:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you were there, right?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I was there. I was there. I was hanging out, working. I was working. But that was such, that was the most documented crime of all time.

• 24:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  In human history, we've never seen a crime from so many different angles. And I remember J6, but I remember going and talking to people after J6, and there was that little dip of like, shared consensus of a reality and of a story. It's almost mind-boggling to watch members on the House and Senate floor, the day after, on January 7th, talk about it. Lindsey Graham and all of these Republican senators were very much sharing a reality of, this is not who we are.

• 24:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  What we saw was terrible, we were running for our lives, this can't stand, let's move forward.

• 24:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  There was that little moment, really, all right, we all saw that.

• 24:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Of course, we all saw that. And then, two months later, three months later, going to events again, and just seeing how, without even a consistent narrative of what was different about what happened. People couldn't decide if like, it didn't happen, if it was low-key, people couldn't decide if it did happen, but it was all FBI agents, it was Antifa, some people were telling me it was ISIS. There was not a coherent narrative. There still isn't a coherent narrative as to what didn't happen on January 6th. But there was such a need to divert from the shared consensus, that we got there so quickly, and now we live in it, now we're, there are political heroes.

• 25:20Ryan Holiday?

  It's kind of amazing, yeah, in those early days afterwards, where you saw the workshopping of ways to excuse it, or whatever, and how, in the moment, with the memory being fresh, it was preposterous, and obviously untrue, and transparent. I don't think-

• 25:39Ryan Holiday?

  As cynical as I can sometimes be, if you told me, hey, flash forward five years, actually, many, if not most people will have absorbed one or more of those ideas as a way of not having to carry the weight of what they obviously saw and what it meant. And if it wasn't so important and tragic, it would really be a pretty incredible case study in how cognitive dissonance works and how sort of propaganda and conspiracy theories sort of use that human tendency to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I interviewed a guy, you wrote a book. He drove down from, I forget where, but maybe Pennsylvania down to Washington DC, day of January 6th, met up with some people, tailgated, shotgunned some beers, went to the Capitol, got with some guys, fought with cops. There's video, he punched a cop in the face and then he goes inside, climbs inside a window, goes inside the Capitol, gets arrested. They have all the video of punching of the cop, all this kind of stuff. He goes in, he pleads guilty, spends time in prison, has prison tattoos of the Capitol on it. He showed it to me all. And this is a man who drove to January 6th, punched a cop in the face, pled guilty. And when I

• 27:10Speaker 01

  asked him, who did January 6th? He was like, Antifa. And I was like, you did January 6th? You did? You drove there? You punched that cop? You stood up in court and you said, I am guilty. And then when I press you, you're like, well, I was coerced to do this. Like, he had an ego that wouldn't allow him to say, like, I was completely manipulated. He acted of his own volition to do all these things and would tell you to your face that, of course, he did. But still, in his own head, he can't even comprehend that he was pulled into the mob to do these things, making all of these decisions. And I couldn't get past, like, This was an action that you took very openly. And repeatedly, you copped to this being an action.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  There's videos of that's why it was so, it's why you were so clearly guilty and admitted to it all. And yet you can't even sit with the uncomfortable reality that you found yourself here and therefore reach for whatever conspiracy that gives you a chance to move on with your life.

• 28:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and that's where the modeling from leaders is so important, right? Because, yeah, there is a performative element and most of our politicians are hypocritical in some way or another, and sometimes are actually really shitty people. But there is like, there is the ideal that, hey, I take responsibility for my actions. Or I try to be consistent in some way. Or, but when you have the most powerful person in the world, sort of reveling in contradiction and hypocrisy and never owning what they say or do, I think that's where it trickles down. And I'm actually, I'm not that worried about like what the president is going to do to me.

• 28:51Ryan Holiday?

  I'm worried about what people who are cosplaying as the president's, as a guy like the president, what they're going to do. Because like for most of us, given the American system, the president doesn't have that much day to day power over individuals. But the county sheriff does, and the local prosecutor does, and the governor does. You know what I mean? And that's where, like, going back to the ancients, like the founders knew these sort of monstrous characters from history, Catalines and various demagogues. And they sort of held them up as these cautionary tales. And then they held up these, these other characters that they were, like George Washington

• 29:33Ryan Holiday?

  is cosplaying his whole life as this probably fictional Roman named Cincinnatus. Do you know about Cincinnatus? So, so Cincinnatus is the, the movie Gladiator is also based on this. Cincinnatus is made dictator of Rome when Rome is about to be defeated. He defeats the enemy and then 17 days later resigns as dictator. So he could have become a Roman king and he doesn't. And so when Washington resigns his commission from the Continental Congress, he is, he's cosplaying as Cincinnatus. And then when he walks away after two terms as president, he's doing it again.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:09Ryan Holiday?

  Washington is not a perfect player. He is a tyrannical man in the sense that he is owns these human beings who he puts out newspaper ads for and whips and things. But he is cosplaying as this character of like what a leader is supposed to do. And, and we get closer to it and better at it as we go. But the, I, I think you, what happens when you go from cosplaying virtue to cosplaying like, uh, mob boss, it gets real bad, real quick.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  I think that is it in a nutshell, right there. Yeah. That we, there doesn't seem to be, the large question that we're asking, like, is there a thirst for the cosplaying virtue anymore? I still think there is. I hope there is. I really hope there is. I think when you're looking for other potential candidates or people on the horizon who speak to that, but there's such an American thirst to, to follow this person who is this, this mob boss. Although I wonder how much of Americans seeing this, this tough guy pretending to be even tougher than he is, how much of that is them enjoying the mob boss? And how much of that is enjoying just the fame of somebody like that? I think like the success of Donald Trump is in his, part of his success is, is just

• 31:22Speaker 01

  him being famous and a part of people's life as this idea of success for so long that they will follow any choice that he makes, less because of the choice that he makes and more because he is just this epitome of what success looks like from a, a middle class perspective, looking at the rich guy in New York.

• 31:38Ryan Holiday?

  The hope is that it's a singular thing and know that, that it's not replaceable. No one else could inherit that because it's such a historical and media fluke.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  If we're cynical about it, and you, I feel like going back to the, the media literacy, the McLuhan, the medium is the message. I think all of that, what I worry about is virtue doesn't play on these very well. A little bit, but it obviously pulls us towards our worst instincts. There's no spaces for the conversations to sort of elevate beyond that in these, these places. You can do it in literature, but that feels like the, the current events conversation is only happening on these, these short form spaces. That's where I worry. I'm like, cruelty travels. Anger travels. Charlie Kirk traveled and became popular in his life because he had beat down videos of the ways in which he shamed other people or said outrageous things about black pilots. Like, these things travel.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  These are the things that, like, college kids see as like, how do I find success? Will I become an influencer? How do I become an influencer? I say things like this, like, where are those virtuous influencers?

• 32:42Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I had, I interviewed Terry Verz, who's running for senate in Texas. He's an astronaut. And I was like, my kids don't want to be astronauts. They want to be YouTubers, you know? How do we get back to that? Like, that used to be the highest, noblest, coolest thing you could do.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:58Ryan Holiday?

  Like, the only thing my kids are impressed by is that YouTube plaque. They don't give a shit about any of my other things. And when their friends come, they're like, oh, my god.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 33:08Ryan Holiday?

  Because it's the only part of my world that intersects and has currency in their world. You know?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  You know what was, I don't think I talked to you about this. What was, the last special I did was looking at sort of this new right MAGA movement. And I talked to, like, Hasan Piker. I went to a Turning Points event and was talking to a lot of, like, 18 to 22-year-olds. And the conversation got into their algorithmic feeds, TikTok and what TikTok is feeding them. We talked a lot about how, like, men are being feeding, like, Andrew Tate videos. Kind of pulled into this uber masculinity world. There was even, I think it was an Australian study that kind of talked about if you started neutral on these algorithms, within like 12 minutes, they would get pulled into these

• 33:56Ryan Holiday?

  You watched one Jordan Peterson video and you are

• 33:59Speaker 01

  You're all that.

• 33:59Ryan Holiday?

  That's going to be the best one that you saw.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. It's dark, but there's a little William F. Buckley vibe in there that maybe isn't quite as hateful as some of these other ones. But it also, they was also pulling to your videos. And talked about Ryan Holiday videos.

• 34:14Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:15Ryan Holiday?

  The study did?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  The Australian study talked about the things that it pulled towards were these, and it was talking mostly about, like, men, what they came to. And I thought that was fascinating and exciting. I immediately distanced myself from you. I was like, I don't know who this guy is, this Andrew Tate.

• 34:28Ryan Holiday?

  Reasons I make this stuff is that I like, I would love young men to be like, all I do is read books. Because that's what I did when I was 20, but that's not representative.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:39Ryan Holiday?

  They're mostly consuming stuff on social media and on YouTube and podcasts. And so the, I think one of the big problems is that responsible, decent, productive sort of voices have just seeded that field. Like they, they took self, by, by looking down their nose at self-help and sports and these other things and comedy, they just seeded it to people who don't have any, not, not all of them, but to a lot of them. They, they just seeded it to people who don't share the same notions of responsibility or morality or whatever.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I, I talked to Hasan Piker out there and it was really curious seeing the fan base he has. He's, he's very political, but he, outside of the traditional left norm, he's, he posts workout videos and all, all of these like typically masculine videos, sports videos, like that interest, fashion videos. And so many people on the left don't know what to do with that, but he articulated, I don't want to misuse his words, but in a sense, just sort of how like, these are younger people who want to learn more about the world.

• 35:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Feel, he said something that resonates, they feel like they can't change the world because it's so chaotic and moving on without them. It's not going to give them a house, not going to give them a job. So the least they can do is change themselves and better themselves. And they're looking for answers there. And so if that means working out and physically getting better, it's diet. I think it's, it's philosophy and finding ways in which like, oh, Stoicism can actually give you space for that. I thought that was, I think you're right, a lot of people, a lot of people seceded that space in that lane on these, these mediums, where it actually is the stuff that does seem to, to get through. And when I talked to a lot of those 18 year olds, I saw that. I, I didn't see the cruelty that I assumed I would see. But I see the older people at these rallies, I saw a lot of people who are looking for ways in which to shape their life,

• 36:32Speaker 01

  understand the world, get some power within it, but also to figure things out. And that like thirst for curiosity, that did give me a little bit of, of hope and see that it is heading in these, these directions.

• 36:42Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I, I saw this interview with Ruben Gallego and is that his name?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Ryan Holiday?

  And he was saying that the male constituents, he's like, they want a big ass truck. He's like, that's what they want. He's like, you're not gonna. Get elected telling them that having a big ass truck is dumb. You know, and it's not dumb.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:00Ryan Holiday?

  If that's what they want.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:01Ryan Holiday?

  Like, that's what they want, right? I have a truck.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a big ass? Is it big ass?

• 37:05Ryan Holiday?

  I wouldn't describe it as a big ass truck, but I like it because it has legroom and I can fit my car seats in it. Do you know what I like?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  You gotta work on that branding. Call it a big ass truck if you want those clicks.

• 37:13Ryan Holiday?

  It's a regular car. It, here's the funny thing. A Ford F-150 and a Chevy Silverado are the number one and the number two best selling car in the country. So it's, you're not the normal one by thinking they're dumb. You know what I mean? Like, that's the normal thing. And so what do people like? What do they want? And how do you meet them where they are? It's, a politician's job is not to tell you that your truck is dumb. You know? Your, it's to solve some of your problems, right? And so there was this kind of snootiness and condescension. Like, I remember when, when my books first started working, there was some article, I'll never forget the headline. It was like, ancient philosophy designed for Greek slaves, popular with Silicon Valley.

• 37:59Ryan Holiday?

  And it was like, it was saying that it was so dumb that these people were interested in, and it's like, okay, first off, that's a preposterous misreading of the philosophy. But second, tech bros, reading about ancient philosophy is a good thing. You know? You're making them feel stupid for liking this. And so they're either gonna go like something worse to spite you, or they're just not gonna see the other things that you think are important as important. And so there was, I think, a driving away of people into these different communities. And now you want them back and they're not gonna come back.

• 38:41Ryan Holiday?

  Like, when I was in college, we watched The Daily Show and we watched South Park. And we thought Republicans were dumb because they wanted to tell us what we could do. And, and somehow they managed to flip that. They managed to flip that by, by making fun of the other things that a normal, average dude would be into.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:05Ryan Holiday?

  It's really bad.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Democrats, if you're out there, talk about the trucks. People like trucks. They like truck nuts.

• 39:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Don't be negative. I'm still gonna make jokes about truck nuts, but, but understand there's a desire out there. I do think that is off forgotten and how it is also connected to like people wanting to feel a sense of control, wanting to feel a sense of like a path towards betterment. There's very few paths towards like intellectual curiosity for young men. I feel like such a, sometimes in the, in the New York bubble, you know, people have questions. How do, like, at least a couple of years ago, there was such a question about like this desire, like why young men were listening to so much Rogan or Manosphere podcast kind of stuff. And, you know, I was talking to this really interesting guy, he was a bartender, and he was paying for a podcast that gave him unbiased look on the left and the right and presented things that way.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  And I was like, you pay for this podcast? He's like, I totally pay for this podcast. He's like, I'm tired of all of the noise. I want these things too. And he also listened to Rogan all the time. When I talked to him, I was like, well, what draws you to Rogan? He's just like, he's a guy who works at a bar, shows up early, has to set up the bar for a couple of hours. He's just like, I'm just, I like that he has interesting people on. This week he had an expert on bees on, and I thought it was fascinating. I was just like, right, there's, there's so many people out there who desperately curious.

• 40:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  And it's just a desert of interesting things that are out there. And finding people who can point them towards curious thinkers, things that expand their mindset beyond what a normal 22-year-old might think about, like, it's very exciting to most people. And there's very few on-ramps for something like that.

• 40:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. No, no, you have to, you have to meet people where they are and bring, bring them in.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then sell them books. And then sell them books.

• 40:48Ryan Holiday?

  Right, that's why I was always, it's like, I'm selling them books. We're on the same team here, guys.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Guys, let's not get mad at him for the books.

• 40:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, this is good.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  This is a good thing for God's sake. They're reading, they're reflecting, they're sitting in their thoughts. It's a nice thing.

• 41:02Ryan Holiday?

  You wanna go check out some books?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I would love to check out some books.

• 41:04Ryan Holiday?

  Alright, let's do it.

• 41:06Ryan Holiday?

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