Ryan Speaks with Kevin Rose at the Commonwealth Club

Today's episode features Ryan's conversation with Digg Founder Kevin Rose at the Commonwealth Club as part of the launch tour for his newest book, Lives of the Stoics. Get Lives of the Stoics: https://geni.us/LUN7***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: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time, and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's been a surreal couple of weeks, obviously, with the new book. You usually travel around and go to all these events and see you guys up close and sign books and meet retailers and you do media in all these local cities. Obviously, that's out the window with the pandemic. And one of the things that got canceled, at least in person, was a talk I was going to do at the Commonwealth Club in California, in San Francisco. I got to do an event there with Chase Jarvis for Conspiracy a few years ago. But we were going to do an interview with Kevin Rose, who's a friend of mine and a fan of the Stoics,

• 1:35Ryan Holiday?

  and just a great overall dude, fellow traveler on the Stoicism stuff, on some Eastern philosophy, parent of young kids like me, and then also just one of the great technology investors and entrepreneurs of our time. So I was looking forward to get to seeing him in person and doing a sort of a fireside chat. That didn't happen, but he was nice enough to agree to do an online version of it. Commonwealth Club's been around since the 1900s. I'm reading this book about FDR right now, and it's like he was swinging through and did a talk at the Commonwealth Club when he was running for president. So it's this...

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Really old timey, awesome, private club, but they do really cool events. So Kevin was nice enough to do it remotely, so he and I talked for about an hour. He asked me questions, there were some reader questions as well. It was such an awesome chat, I wanted to share it with you guys for today's episode. Since he does an intro on there, I won't belabor it, we'll just get right into it. And of course, you can check out Lives of the Stoics anywhere books are sold. And hearing great things from everyone, I appreciate it. I hope you're staying safe. I'm not doing my events, I hope you are not going to weddings and doing other crazy stuff. We're all being smart and safe and, you know, we'll get through this.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's virtual program at the Commonwealth Club of California. My name is Kevin Rose and I'll be moderating today's program. The Commonwealth Club would like to thank their members, donors, and supporters for making this and all their other programs possible. They are grateful for your support and hope others will follow the example to support the club during these uncertain times. Today, I am joined by Ryan Holiday, author of the new book Lives of the Stoic. Ryan has been credited by The New York Times for increasing the popularity of Stoicism by applying it to the modern age. His writings and conversations highlight the necessity of a balanced life and limiting the noise to remain focused on achieving a personalized version of success.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  We will be discussing the virtues of Stoicism, its core values, and a lot more in the next hour. And I want you to get your questions answered as well. So if you're watching this along with us live, please put your questions into the text chat on YouTube or on the comments section on Facebook, and we'll be getting them later into the program. But first, well, I guess I want to thank the most important person here, our guest today, Ryan, thanks for joining us.

• 3:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, thanks for having me. This is really cool. I was looking forward to doing it in person, but we'll make this work.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It's a bummer. We haven't been able to hang in a while. It's good to be reconnected. I'm excited to talk about your new book because I've always really loved everything that you've done around Stoicism and really, I mean, like the New York Times said, putting it on the map. I think that obviously we had heard about it at some point in school, but I don't think anyone has ever done as much to popularize it as you have. I'm really curious. I guess a great place to start would be for someone that has no idea what we're talking about. What's your new book about and what is Lives of the Stoics?

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  So I think of the subset of people who have heard of Stoicism, the actual number of them that know really anything about the Stoics themselves is an even smaller group. And what I was fascinated by, what I wanted to do in the book was go, okay, so maybe some people sort of vaguely heard about these ideas of the philosophy, or maybe they've read my other books that are heavily influenced by the ideas of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Cato. But who were they as people? How did they actually live the ideas? Because I think we could all agree, if the philosopher has really

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  interesting ideas, but is actually like a garbage person, that says something about either the validity of the ideas, or it says something about the sincerity of the person who's having it. And so there really is no historical work which really captures who the Stoics were, certainly in one place. And so that was the aim, is like, who were these people? And how did they actually follow the teachings of Stoicism?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Do you think that, does this book really get into practical tactics that one could use? Because I think when you talk about who were they and how they lived, for me, the exposure has always been via your blog or a newsletter or something where you see a quote from a Stoic and you're like, oh, wow, that's really profound. But there's no tactics there, really.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  So Plutarch, who's the, maybe the greatest biographer in history, whose son, grandson actually, becomes Marcus Aurelius's philosophy teacher. Anyway, he makes this big distinction between biography and lives. And he's saying, like, if you're doing biography, you're like, hear all the facts about this person, right? And when you, you know, when you get a modern biography, it's always like this thick, it's filled with footnotes. Often, you even get the sense that the biographer doesn't particularly like the subject, right? It's almost like a good, a good, a good tactic for biographers is just to try to destroy the person that they're, that they're biographizing. So Plutarch, like 2,000 years ago, was saying,

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  you know, it's not really the facts of these people that matter. It matters, like, he's saying, it may be in a joke, or in one quote, or one story, that you not only understand the, the complete essence of that human being, but it gives you something to apply in your own life. So like, take, for instance, Zeno, who's the founder of Stoicism, like, obviously, what happened in his life is interesting in that he's a historically important individual. But the fact that Stoicism is founded by a guy after he suffers a shipwreck and loses everything, I think this tells, this works on multiple layers, because it's a fact, but it's also telling us how the Stoicism actually worked. And then it's inspiring

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  us because we may be going through a bankruptcy, or a divorce, or, you know, some sort of physical disability, and, and we're, we're having to rebuild the broken pieces of our lives. So ultimately, the reason the book is called Lives of the Stoics is because it's, it's a reference to that ancient idea of, of analyzing a life in a way that makes you morally and professionally better.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Hmm. I'm curious, what were, what drew you in? Like, what was it about your life where you were like, wow, these, these, these different principles, and that I'm so fascinating, I got to go deeper here, I want to apply some of this to my own life? Was it a certain time? Was it something you were going through?

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was 18 or 19 years old, and I was at a conference, and I asked the speaker, sort of like a Commonwealth Club-style event, and I asked the speaker what he was reading, and he recommended Epictetus. I ended up somewhat ignoring him, and I read Marcus Aurelius instead.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius. This is not my original copy, but it's one of them. But I was just so amazed because I was taking a philosophy class in college. But Aristotle is somewhat interesting, but you're not like, I'm listening to Aristotle because he was great. We're listening to Aristotle because he was smart. You know what I mean? And so the idea that philosophy isn't just brilliant theories, but it's actually the hard-won wisdom of successful or influential or great men and women was a distinction that I'd never really thought of. So it's like Marcus Aurelius, you're like, wow, this guy's philosophical,

• 9:20Ryan Holiday?

  but he's testing these theories in the laboratory of running an empire. So I think what it struck me was, one, the writing style was just so accessible and interesting, but it was that this wasn't just for academic purposes or idle exploration. It was for life.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And was that the case with all the Stoics? Did they all actually apply these to their everyday life?

• 9:47Ryan Holiday?

  So the big distinction between the Epicureans and the Stoics is, and we get this from Seneca, but he says, the Epicurean believes they're going to attend to their own personal self-development unless some emergency calls them to be involved in public life. And he says, "The Stoic will only not be involved if there's an emergency." So it's like the Epicureans were much more Buddhist in their retreat from the world into the exploration of the inner domain. You could liken the Epicurean garden to the monastery. But the Stoics were generals and senators and artists.

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I was just reading this. It's so insane. So in the ancient world, there was Seneca. And for most of modern history, we believe that Seneca, the playwright, and Seneca, the politician. Slash philosopher, we're two separate people. Like, we couldn't even wrap our head around the fact that Seneca was the most famous playwright of his time, the most famous politician of his time, and the most famous philosopher of his time. So, so like, just the idea that pretty much all of the Stoics, certainly all the ones in the book, were Stoics, were doers in addition to being philosophers.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  Like, Cato famously doesn't write any philosophical works, but he's considered a great philosopher because of his political conduct.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And then, out of all these, as you've been going through this and doing the research and finding out, you know, these different ways to apply these philosophies to your own life, what changes have you seen personally? You said that you had started adopting this when you were, what, 19? So, it's been a, it's been a bit.

• 11:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I'm, I'm, I guess, in the next year or so, I'll have known about Stoicism for half the time, for, for almost as long as I did not know about Stoicism. It'll be half, half my life, which is kind of crazy to think about.

• 11:57Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, to, to me, it's, it's a, it's a complete worldview. Like, our friend Tim Ferriss calls it an operating system. So, it's, it's not, it's not so much as like, oh, because of Stoicism, I now do X. It's more like, I try to do everything through the lens of, of Stoic. But, I mean, it is filled with sort of practical exercises, whether we're talking about sort of the idea of memento mori, or, or we're talking about journaling, or we're talking about, you know, the sort of, the art of discourse, or whatever you want to choose. But I think the idea that it's, it's something that integrates into your life and then shapes whatever you're doing, whether you're a slave like Epictetus, or, you know, a senator

• 12:41Ryan Holiday?

  like Cato, the idea is, you're supposed to do that thing according to the principles of Stoicism, in the way that a Christian, like, their life doesn't begin and end in church, they're a Christian who's also a baseball player.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Right. What do you think of those integrations that you've had success with?

• 13:00Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, journaling is like my, probably the big practice that I took from Stoicism. And it's funny, I took it late. Like, I knew, obviously, that sort of Stoicism and journaling were, were always really difficult to separate from each other. But I think I thought because I was a writer, I didn't actually also have to do that. That sort of my, my ongoing writing about Stoicism publicly was the same as journaling. So about five or six years ago, I started that practice and it's been like a really great rooting, form of rooting in my life, particularly the last several months, just because it's, it's a way to sort of start the day. So, I mean, it's interesting, too.

• 13:42Ryan Holiday?

  I wish, I wish Stoicism had something as sort of singular as meditating, you know? It's like, this is the form, or praying, or the rosary. It's, it's, it's much more of a worldview. So it's, it's harder to pin down as like, this is the exercise I do because I'm a Stoic. You know what I mean?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wonder how you, how do you actually embrace something like that then and turn it from a, just a great quote that you've read and you can say, I agree with that, to like actually fully, truly believing it at your core to where it does have that mental shift and change for you?

• 14:17Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's, it's the, so if you think about what Marcus is doing in meditations, it's like, if, if, obviously, I know you know about journaling. So you think journaling is like, I woke up today and I sort of said what was on my mind. What's really interesting about meditation, so first off, meditations begins with sort of a recitation of all of the lessons he's ever learned in his life. So why is he doing it, the, from what we know, the work was never intended to be viewed. So why is he writing down all the lessons that he learned if it's not to pass it on? He's writing it for himself. And that's actually what meditations translates to, it's to himself. But like, when, the more you read meditations, the more you see that he's repeating himself, that he's sort of tackling the problems from

• 15:02Ryan Holiday?

  different angles. So it really is kind of a meditative experience where you're supposed to take the ideas and sort of...

• 15:12Ryan Holiday?

  Consume them and reconsume them and, and, and almost dance with them over and over again. And that was actually one of the really interesting things writing the book. I would go back and, and Steve Hanselman, who did a lot of the research, he was my co-writer on it, you would find an idea, like a metaphor, an image appear in one of the Stoics for the first time. And then you would notice it getting repeated over and over again by the, the later Stoics. And, and that was the practice of Marcus's writing as his sort of, it's like playing scales on a guitar. Like you know it, but it's the fact of doing it over and over again, that, that sort of integrating it.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Just like reinforcing it?

• 15:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, exactly. Yes.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Interesting. How did the Stoics live outside of, like, how did they, one, one thing I've never heard, heard this answered, I don't know if you have the answer to this, but you probably will. How, how did they eat, like, drink, exercise? Like, you know, in Zen, there's like, you know, prescriptions for that as well. Like, you know, in Okinawa, they call it, what is it? Hari Hachi Bu, like, eat until you're 80% full.

• 16:20Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Or, or eight parts out of 10, they call it.

• 16:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  And like, the eight, the eight, the eight of the 10 is for you and the extra two are for the doctor. So if you go to 10, you're actually given those, it's a beautiful saying.

• 16:30Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  But I'm curious, like, how, are there, are there thoughts there as well? Like, how they, they lived? Yeah, can you go into that?

• 16:37Ryan Holiday?

  So there's less, you know, it's not like some code or something where it's, you know, here's the Stoic prescription for dieting or something. But, you know, the key, the, the second virtue of the four virtues for Stoic, for the Stoics is, is moderation or self-discipline or temperance. So the, they, they would love the rule of eight, eight out of 10. There's even a, like, there's even a story in Zeno, like, he's at this dinner party and, and, and it's with a sort of a famous sort of glutton slash hog. And, and they serve the fish. And Xeno grabs it and he eats the whole thing. And the guy's like, what are you doing? And he says, what do you think it's like for your guests at your dinner parties?

• 17:20Ryan Holiday?

  This is like, you know, that you're creating this like competition for the food. And so there are all these anecdotes from the Stoics about their moderation and how they would eat. You know, Cato is famous. He would always give the choicest cut of a meal to his guests. That we know the Stoics like to drink and eat, but they were trying to do it sort of within the confines of moderation. And the purpose of the meal was to have the philosophical discussion, right? Cato doesn't write anything down, but we know a lot of what he's thought because of sort of quotes that survive from the dinner parties.

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  My favorite example, though, there's a, there's a passage in Meditations where Marcus Aurelius, who must have, you know, sort of been served the greatest food you could imagine. He, over the course of this page, he breaks down like what the meal is. So he's like, this is a dead bird. This is a dead pig. This wine is fermented grapes. He's like walking through, like he's trying to deconstruct the glamour of the feast. So it sort of loses its power over him. And so, and then my other favorite one, which I'm just remembering is, so at the end of Seneca's life, he runs afoul of Nero. And this reminds me of you a little bit. He runs afoul of Nero and Nero sets out to kill him.

• 18:46Ryan Holiday?

  And the way you would kill Romans is you would try to poison them. But apparently Seneca's diet had gotten so meager, excuse me. Seneca's diet had gotten so meager, he was supposedly like living off water from the stream and berries and nuts. That Nero is unable to poison him because both he doesn't have a way in. And Seneca's diet is supposedly so hearty that he becomes unpoisonable. So sort of who knows how true that is, but the idea is, is I think that this was, they saw overeating as a vice, like any of the other vices.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  How about in terms of exercise, anything there?

• 19:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so Seneca jokes that the better you eat, the less time you'll have to waste exercising and thus have more time for philosophy.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I mean, there's something to be said about that.

• 19:37Ryan Holiday?

  No, I totally agree. I mean, like, I heard a great term a few years ago that certainly applies to myself. The term is exercise bulimia, which is basically, obviously not a clinical diagnosis and not to make light of people who have actual bulimia, but I don't know about you, but like, I kind of get to a place where it's like, because I know I take care of myself physically, I allow myself to indulge in ways that maybe I know are probably not good for me. And you're kind of just keeping yourself in a perfect equilibrium, when really, if you had a little bit more self-discipline, you wouldn't need to go running and need to work out the degree that you do.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, in some sense, it, I mean, I should probably flip those things, right? Like, if I think about it, I mean, I'm in Portland, Oregon, fantastic breweries out here.

• 20:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Like, I'll go have a couple beers, or, you know, and then the next day, I'm like, okay, I need to run that, you know, five miles or whatever, maybe, maybe I should flip those around, you know?

• 20:33Ryan Holiday?

  No, totally.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Less exercise, but, yeah.

• 20:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you're working off the thing that if you're just not consumed, you wouldn't have to work off. And so I, but what is interesting is, the Stoic writings are filled with analogies about boxing and wrestling. Chrysippus is a famous runner. We don't know how good he is, but, but it sounds to be an elite athlete. So, you know, and a lot of them were Stoic, or, sorry, were soldiers and generals. So, you get the sense that they were pretty active. Although, the, the interesting thing about Seneca is, for many years, and if you have any of the older translations of Seneca, you see Seneca as sort of this lean, haggard figure, which is kind of how Seneca wanted to be seen. But the actually only surviving

• 21:17Ryan Holiday?

  bust that we have of Seneca, which we, which has been verified as being made in his own life, shows him to be, you know, a bit more Epicurean than he represented. So, there's always this difference between, I guess, practice and teaching.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Did they have any regimens like fasting or anything like that incorporated into what they did?

• 21:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so not as overt about fasting as I know, but sort of two things. So Seneca, we know experiments with vegetarianism when he's a teenager. And it's not like an idle experiment. Like at that time, to be a vegetarian was a deeply transgressive decision. It was almost associated with certain cults in Rome. So for him to experiment with his diet for ethical reasons shows him what the scholars think is a sort of a pretty bold move. But Seneca said that one day a month, we should practice either sort of fasting or eating like really small amounts of food.

• 22:22Ryan Holiday?

  He talks about sort of practicing poverty and the point being, could you sort of get outside your comfort zone on a regular enough basis that you're not scared of losing those things? And so one of the things I like about intermittent fasting, and obviously it can get a little dangerous, but you feel that sort of pang of hunger and the ability to kind of conquer that is an important skill. And so I think the Stoics would have, didn't talk about it too explicitly, but I think they, from what I gather, they were interested in pushing past those boundaries, if only for the sake of sort of conquering one's own limitations.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just going into that a little bit, when you think about, you know, I often think about experience stretching being a real thing, whereas like you go off and you experience too much of a good thing at a high level, you know, and then all of a sudden dropping down is really difficult for people, you know? Like you go out, you watch a sunset, beautiful sunset, you watch the sunset again with a fantastic glass of whiskey, even better experience. And you can just keep leveling up to where it's harder to drop back down. How do you recalibrate something like that?

• 23:34Ryan Holiday?

  So for someone like Seneca and I think some of the other Romans, I mean, they had the benefit of being in a somewhat...

• 23:43Ryan Holiday?

  Unstable, unpredictable world, right? So like, imagine you're Seneca, you've made your way through law school, you're you've sort of burst on the scene as this generational legal talent. Then you get tuberculosis and you have to go spend 10 years in Egypt recovering. Then you come back, you become a senator and just at the height of your senatorial career, you're exiled by an emperor who's jealous of you. So that like, these events were like more the rule than the exception, right? Like, life was very capricious. So I think one of the, one of the things we take for granted in the modern world is how stable something is. It's like, you, you buy a house, you're not worried like, oh, someone's going to come

• 24:27Ryan Holiday?

  take this house from me by force or something, right? And so we get really used to our things and we go, this is the new normal. And I was, I was just talking about this to a group I spoke to earlier today. You know, they're a finance and an insurance company that had started in 1907. And so I went through between now and 1907, how many economic crises, pandemics and market recessions we've been through since 1907. It was like, they, there was one the year before the company started, there was one the year after the company started, and almost every year since then, there's been some major event. The point being, what we often say is like, normal or reasonable, what we get used to,

• 25:10Ryan Holiday?

  especially lately, has been a totally abnormal sense of things. So I think that what you get from the Stoics is a kind of an appreciation and a gratitude for the good things, because they were often experiencing just like horrendous losses. I mean, Marcus Aurelius lost seven children before adulthood. And just like, wrapping your head around the magnitude of that kind of tragedy, I think it, it either breaks you or it allows you not to take the sunset for granted.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  So how would one apply that, oh, well, let's just like, look at this last year of chaos. You know, these things are impacting you, I'm sure, and your family, you know, COVID, like, all of the things that we've been hit with. What do you do when something like that comes up? When there's like a lockdown on your state and you're dealing with COVID and you see your friends and family losing their jobs? Like, how do you, how are you able to apply some of these principles to reframe your own mind so it doesn't hit you as hard?

• 26:15Ryan Holiday?

  Well, this is actually one of my favorite ones from Seneca. He has this idea of premeditatio malorum. And he says, "All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes: exile, torture, war, and shipwreck." I mean, he doesn't say pandemic, but, you know, that, I think, one of the interesting things about the pandemic is like, how surprised we all were by it, even though there've been so many warnings. And even though many of us were very much under the impression that Donald Trump would be an erratic, unpredictable figure, right? And then, but what happens is, you know, you're kind of like, Nassim Taleb talks about the Thanksgiving turkey that goes like, "Well, the last 300 days have been good, so it's

• 27:00Ryan Holiday?

  probably going to continue being good." And so, I think the first thing that Stoicism is there to do, it should be to prepare us, to sort of, give us a full scope of like, what is possible, and to sort of not be caught off guard by it. So, I feel like I was caught off guard by it, more than I would like to be, but I certainly was much more prepared than most people that I know. And I think that the other interesting thing, we talk about sort of the reading and the rereading, I mean, it was so fascinating to me. I mean, I've read Marcus Rilis hundreds of times. To go back to it in March... And for it to really fully hit me for the first time that he was writing during

• 27:42Ryan Holiday?

  the Antonine Plague, right? Like, he was writing during a pandemic that was much worse than this one. And you sort of go, oh, like, people have been through this before. And what did they learn? And where do those insights come from? And so I think Stoicism is about kind of getting that perspective. But then it's also like, it's going to the study, going to the text. What do you find? What do they have to show you? I've just been, I don't know, it's been an interesting experience for me because I think it's, it's both sort of, it's humbled me in one sense. But then it's also, I don't know about you, but it's made me much more confident in my judgment, right? Like, I feel like most of the decisions that I've made in the last seven months, people haven't always agreed with them, including

• 28:27Ryan Holiday?

  people in my own family, but they've turned out to be the right decisions.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Give me, give me an example of that.

• 28:33Ryan Holiday?

  Well, just, I mean, you and I were talking in March, like, we sort of went into lockdown really early. Texas, you know, Texas didn't get hit right at the beginning. And so in kind of like, late April, early May, people started to go, oh, this is nothing. And so Texas started to reopen. And I was just like, guys, like fundamentally, nothing has changed, you know? And so, so sort of, you know, definitely didn't get into that. And then there were, you know, like, people in situations where, you know, people would be like, hey, we're gonna have a get together. And you'd be like, oh, it'd be so fun to go see those people. And then it's like, turns out so and so had COVID, that would have been really bad. Or, you know, like, just little decisions and big decisions where you're just like,

• 29:17Ryan Holiday?

  oh, I have a pretty good intuitive sense of what I think is right. And that you have to trust that sense. And you can't really let other people pressure you or sort of push you off that block.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  That makes sense. I'm curious, when you're going through all the different Stoics in this book, do you gravitate towards one? Like, do you have a favorite? Do you have something new and interesting that you learned from the research this time around?

• 29:47Ryan Holiday?

  So Marcus remains like the most fascinating to me, but, but, and, and, and from all these different angles. But there were a bunch of other, other figures that I kind of fell in love with. So like famously Seneca is kind of the, he's the tricky Stoic because he wrote the most eloquently, but then it's really hard to square a lot of what he wrote with the fact that he was obscenely wealthy, for instance, like, sure, he has this meager diet, but he's like the richest man in Rome. And how does he get his money? He gets his money as Nero's advisor, right? So the, the hard thing to wrap your head around is with Seneca. And so I understood that maybe sort of Stoicism was tested by the corruption and

• 30:32Ryan Holiday?

  the evil of Nero's regime. But I wasn't quite aware that the, they're referred to now as the Stoic opposition. But there was a group of other Stoics who were lesser known, but were sort of on the front lines of standing up to Nero. There's one named Agrippinus, who was really interesting. There was one named Thrassia, who's this sort of lone senatorial holdout against Nero. There was one called Helvidius.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  The most badass names in the world, pretty much.

• 31:05Ryan Holiday?

  They're so cool.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  They're so cool.

• 31:09Ryan Holiday?

  Although like, one of the things we really had to work on was like, how the hell do you pronounce them? So I put like a pronunciation guide in the book, although the, the audiobook was like the hardest thing that I've had to do because they're so difficult to pronounce. But they were just like complete badass. Like Thrassia's last words were Nero can kill me, but he can't harm me. And you're just like, whoa, like, these weren't people. So when we talk about Stoicism being like a philosophy you apply, I mean, these people were applying it in the sort of highest stakes scenarios that you can imagine. Like, these are people who were ultimately forced to commit suicide, or people who were executed, people who had all their property

• 31:54Ryan Holiday?

  confiscated and then sent into exile. It was, uh, yeah, it was, it was a harsh time, but I was really inspired. I think that it's because it sort of ties in to, you know, the sort of rise of authoritarianism we're seeing across the world. I was just really inspired by the idea of like, the philosopher is not someone who sits on the sideline. The philosopher is someone who's on the front lines.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. What do you think that when, when someone picks up this book, reads through it, and what are they going to take away? How are they going to feel when they finish? And what is your hope there?

• 32:28Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I, I hope they, they understand that these were like flesh and blood people, you know, um, uh, that, that these were human beings who sort of struggled and had temptations. Like, Cato is famously considered like the sort of the, the greatest of all the Stoics. Like, he's a sort of superhero. He's the one that like, Thrasia, who's a badass, was like, looking up at Cato. Like, I could, I can't even touch this. But, you know, there's a scene in the book where, where Cato's like weeping over the death of his brother. And his brother was not at all a philosopher. Like, his brother was sort of a, not a playboy, but, but lived by a different code. And I thought it was just, I, I loved their relation,

• 33:11Ryan Holiday?

  talking about their relationship, because it, it sort of illustrates this Stoic concept. There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius, he talks about, "Being tolerant with others, but strict with yourself." And so Stoicism, even in Cato, this like, extra strict guy, he still had all these people in his life who were nothing like him, who he didn't ever try to hold to his own standards. You know what I mean?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:36Ryan Holiday?

  So I, I, I hope what you take from it is like, Oh, these were people just like me and they weren't like, they weren't dusty old figures from history, but they also weren't gods. Like they, they in some cases kind of reached a transcendent level, you know, like, like Cato's suicide to me echoes the, the monk who kills himself in Vietnam by lighting himself on fire. It's this sort of tragic suicide to set, to make a point. And so there is a moment of like sort of otherworldliness to it, but it's, it's done by human beings.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm curious on, well, the monks are a great example of someone that, you know, was able to sit there through what would many can, would consider to be one of the worst possible endings of, of life in that you're, you're dousing yourself with gasoline, lighting yourself on fire, did not move, did not cry out. Um, you know, obviously it had been training and, and meditating for, for quite a while.

• 34:37Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Do, do the Stoics ever have any realization? Like, like when you're a monk, your goal, at least in certain practices, depending on which, you know, lineage we're talking about, but oftentimes is waking up or enlightenment or, you know, some type of transformation that happens in the mind that can allow you to pour gasoline over yourself without screaming. Does anything like that transformation happen at the Stoic level? Is there such thing?

• 35:03Ryan Holiday?

  I think so. So the Stoics, obviously they talk about wisdom, but the highest level of wisdom would be a sage. And I think they kind of accepted probably like the monks do, that, that you don't actually ever get there, but you can approach it. Right? Or that, that maybe you can touch it for some fleeting moment of greatness. Um, like Cato's suicide is, so basically Julius Caesar overthrows the, the Roman Republic. He's installing himself as a dictator and Cato basically realizes like, I'm going to be used as.

• 35:37Ryan Holiday?

  A puppet to endorse or legitimize this regime, and I'm not gonna do that. And so his last night is, it's an incredible, Mo, I don't think it's about glorifying suicide in any more than the monk lighting himself on fire is, but he, he, he has one final dinner party where they talk about philosophy as if, you know, life is gonna go on as normal. He puts his friends in boats and sends them off to escape Caesar. And then he goes to his room and he reads a book about Socrates from cover to cover twice. And then he sort of realizes that it's his moment and he, he gets his sword and he, he stabs himself in the, in the chest.

• 36:19Ryan Holiday?

  And he stumbles, he falls back and in falling, sort of people rush in and they realize what he's doing and they try to stop him and they don't want him to do this. And, and so he passes out from unconsciousness and, and they stitch him, the doctor stitches him back up. And Cato comes to and he realizes what's happened. And he pulls his own wound open and disembowels himself with his own hands. So it is sort of superhuman in the way that the, you know, the monk lighting himself on fire is. And it's, it sort of stands as this epic gesture of defiance. And so some people, Napoleon being one, would criticize this.

• 37:01Ryan Holiday?

  They said, you know, he should have ran away and continued to fight, um, that, you know, to give up was, was a betrayal of Stoicism. But it's really Cato's example that hundreds of years later inspires the founding fathers of America to defy to the death, you know, their sort of British overlords. So he, he kind of ends up being this great example through history because of the sacrifice that he makes. And I would argue that was one of those moments. There's a moment in Marcus Aurelius's reign at the, uh, at the, the, the absolute worst of the pandemic where he goes through the palace and he selects the most valuable treasures

• 37:43Ryan Holiday?

  and he sells them on the lawn of the palace to pay, to pay, to keep Rome going. And so that's not as glamorous or as badass as suicide, but to me, it's touching on a level of like, here you have. Here you have the most powerful man in the world having a garage sale to raise money for other people. You know, to me, it touches a similar level of greatness.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Hmm. And is there any, is there any structure to Stoicism? Like, is there any, like, is there a path at all? Like, I think with these other, you know, religions, or even just meditation, like Buddhism, like the Eightfold Path, like these ways that are these more prescriptive ways to kind of apply these things to your life? Or is it more of like a choose your own adventure with Stoicism?

• 38:33Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's a little bit choose your own adventure, but like, these are the, these are the four virtues of Stoicism. It's courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. So that would be kind of like the Eightfold Path. Those are the, those are the, the same cardinal virtues of Christianity are the cardinal virtues of Stoicism. There's just, for the Stoics, there just wasn't also, you know, Ten Commandments, for instance. And then there wasn't the artifice built on top, and I don't mean to insult the church, but there wasn't like a structure built on top over hundreds or thousands of years of sort of organized rituals. Because

• 39:13Ryan Holiday?

  Stoicism comes almost kind of from pagan Rome, and then Christianity takes off shortly thereafter. So it never, it doesn't fully develop into, you know, priests and what, like Marcus Aurelius is kind of just like the last Stoic philosopher, and all that remains are their works. And we're kind of picking up the pieces thousands of years later.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are your thoughts on, you know, we live in a very much divided America. Are there any principles that we can take, or anything we can learn from the Stoics that could help us come together in some way?

• 39:49Ryan Holiday?

  I think, I think there is. So two early Stoic concepts. There's this word, I'm probably butchering it, but it's eucalyptus, which basically is saying like, we have a natural affinity for other people. And then sympathia is saying basically that we're all part of a one large organism. In Zen, they would say like, all is one. That's a very Stoic concept as well. So I think, you know, Marcus Aurelius says, two things I love, he says,

• 40:18Ryan Holiday?

  To do harm to another is to do harm to yourself. And then he also says, and you can do an injustice by doing nothing as well. So that I think the Stoic virtue of justice to me is that like the idea that although we might have these sort of political policy disagreements politically, like the whole point of politics is that we're on the same team. And I think they would, they would be repulsed by this sort of winner take all, this sort of authoritarian, even though they were emperors in some cases, the authoritarian impulse to shove things down the weaker side's throat. You know, Marcus realist talks about learning from Helvidius, you know, the importance of

• 41:00Ryan Holiday?

  freedom of speech, equality under the law, leaders, rulers who respect their, their, their citizens. I, I think, I think ultimately if there's almost a utopian element to Stoicism that's like, none of this stuff matters. What matters is other people.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  What, what are you, what are you still learning? Like, and in terms of, you know, you've done so much research, spent so much time. For me, you know, I spend more time in the kind of the Zen world of things. And every time I reread like an important book, I'm always like, how did I miss that? You know?

• 41:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Did you find that this time around, was there anything where you're like, this is so new and exciting for me when, when writing this book?

• 41:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I want to read, I want to read this passage. Let me find it. Uh, I just, I read it recently and it was, it like, it hit me so, it, okay, this is, this is what Marcus is saying he learned from Sextus, who was actually Plutarch's grandson. Um, he said, uh, he learned to investigate and analyze with understanding and logic the principles we ought to live by, not to display anger or other emotions, to be free of passion, yet full of love. And so that, I read that for the, like, obviously many times, but that really hit me a few months ago. Cause I think I've, I focused for a long time and it does take a lot of practice.

• 42:26Ryan Holiday?

  The idea of being free of emotions or not being at the mercy of your emotions, that, that's what Stoic means, right? People, it's about controlling your temper, controlling your anxiety, controlling your, your, um, you know, your temptations. I, that, that's been, you know, 15 years of work for me. But I think I'm coming now to better understand that second part of that equation, which is, okay, so you managed to tamp those down. What do you replace them with? And he's saying you replace it with love. And I think that's a beautiful idea that I don't know why I skipped over it, but it's, it's beginning to shape and change how I think about things. And I feel like every time I find one of those things in Stoicism, then

• 43:10Ryan Holiday?

  as I go read more, I find more of it. Like, a couple of years ago, I, you know, I came across the idea of stillness in Marcus Aurelius. And so finding that shaped, you know, my under, my understanding of, of that concept in Stoicism. And I found that it was actually a pretty big theme. So I think that's the next big one for me.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Hmm. It's, it's really fascinating in that if you think about, you mentioned kind of these things that we're trying to rid ourselves of, will there be anxiety or anger? To just pound something down and try and push it down and swallow it and just like, you know, let's, that's, you're not, you're not doing any good. You're just like,

• 43:48Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  You're kicking the can down the road for a future date with destiny, right? So it makes sense to me that you would have to figure out how to do this kind of surgical swap in a sense, and that you want to get rid of it, but replace.

• 44:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  How does one practically do that? How do you replace anger with love?

• 44:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a good example. So like, if you, all right, so like, but something that makes you angry, maybe it's a, you know, sort of people who are behaving a certain way. So you're, you could, you could be like, this makes me angry. And then through force and sheer will, you could contain that anger.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Let's just say the debates of a few days ago.

• 44:28Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. So you could, you could contain that anger. And that's certainly a skill that most people don't have. I think what Marcus is saying is, okay, that's good. But what if, what if you can make that anger go away by really understanding those people? And, and, and finding what makes them human and, and sensing the pain that they're in, or, or, or, or feel obligated to do something for them that might take them out of the behavior, or the reasons for the behavior they're having.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Some more compassion, more compassion for the person?

• 45:03Ryan Holiday?

  I think, I think he's talking about empathy. Yeah. And, and. The idea of the common good is a theme that comes up in meditations over and over again, but I think understanding that the other person is not your enemy, but in fact is another person in pain. That, I don't know, like, like, one of the things I talked about this in Stillness, but it's like, one of the things I'll do is like, I'll think, like, okay, what is the thing that like, I care the most about in the whole world? I mean, it's like kids and like, I'll think about the feeling that that gives me, like, when I see them, when they're doing something, you know, like playing in the pool or whatever.

• 45:45Ryan Holiday?

  And then I try to think of someone that either I don't like, or that's hurt me, or that's doing something I disagree with, or just some mass murderer in jail. And then I try to think about them having that feeling about something. Right? And then when you do that, you immediately realize that, you know, with few exceptions, there is some, something good there. There's something you can feel towards.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  There's a common ground and you're humanizing them a little bit? Would you say that's true?

• 46:13Ryan Holiday?

  I think so. Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, but you mentioned just a second ago about kind of the first step being containment. Would you, would you, I would think that my gut tells me containment is just, is dangerous because it's not releasing that thing. It's just trying to hold it back and shove it down. Is that not how the Stoics believe?

• 46:36Ryan Holiday?

  I don't think it's about shoving it down, but I do think, you know, like, the Stoics aren't saying like, like, for instance, there's a lot of essays from the Stoics about grief. The Stoics are saying it's perfectly natural to feel grief. But then they try to go like, Seneca writes this great consolation to a friend, he's saying, okay, the person that you're grieving, would they want you to feel horrible? Like, would that be their dying wish that you would feel horrible? Would they want you to kill yourself out of grief because they're gone? Of course not. You know what I mean? And so, so I think. Containment's the wrong word. What a stoic is trying to do is logically work through what's often illogical impulses, so you don't have it. And like lust would be a great example.

• 47:21Ryan Holiday?

  Epicurus, of all people, talks about, he's like, when you find yourself lusting for something, try to think about how you're gonna feel after you get it. Not how you're gonna feel getting it, but the shame that comes after, or the disappointment that comes after. And he talks about how that'll help you not want it so bad. So I don't think it's like white knuckling it, but it is, you know, you can, if you're afraid of something, I don't think any philosopher would be like, oh, lean into that fear. That fear is good. They would, they would urge you to logically break down that fear.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Hmm, that makes sense. Well, yeah, going in and taking the time to really explore it and feel it, right?

• 48:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  And that's, that's part of breaking it down, I guess, is to say.

• 48:05Ryan Holiday?

  But they wouldn't say like, your fear is good. Don't question your emotions. Give into your fear. You know, like, they, they, they would, they would grant that it's probably not a constructive, you know, uh, mood and that you wanna analyze it and, you know, understand it.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, gotcha. Very cool. Well, I want to get to some of these questions.

• 48:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  We've had people, uh, writing in and, uh, they, they're very important. They're awesome questions. Um, so the first one says, how do you feel we should make the most of this, quote unquote, time in isolation and quote unquote exile?

• 48:38Ryan Holiday?

  It is a little bit like exile. Um, I, I've, I don't know about you, but I'm having to think about, obviously, I want things to go back to, to normal and I want people not to be suffering and I don't want people's businesses to close. But a big part of me is, is less thinking about like, how do I get my old life back and more about like, how do I keep my life more like this? To me, this has been like the greatest lifestyle experiment in human history. And, uh, I've discovered a lot of things about how I want my life to be going forward.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's given us, for me, it's given me time to explore and adopt new things that I would never have done. I would just be too busy. I'd be too busy traveling, or going to meetings, or doing these things. And now I do have time to embrace, you know, a few other things that are more self-care, which I think it's a great time to, if you're gonna, if we have the time to kill, might as well spend it on yourself, you know?

• 49:38Ryan Holiday?

  Totally, totally.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Okay, next question here, see here. "Hi, Ryan. If you had to point to one thing in your personal life that the Stoics have impacted, what would it be?"

• 49:51Ryan Holiday?

  One, I mean, it'd be hard to come up with one thing.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  We covered journaling. What's another thing that?

• 49:59Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe we do that. I mean, the memento mori one is a big one. Marcus Rilus and Epictetus, who both had children, talk about, as you tuck your kids in at night, he says, like, actively think about them not making it to the morning, which is like a horrendously awful thing to have go through your mind. And like, if you, if they hadn't said to do that, anytime you found yourself doing it, you would, you would try to crush that impulse. Do you know what I mean? Like, you'd be like, don't do that. And he actually says this, he goes, "Now, don't, I know you're gonna think like that you're tempting fate by thinking about this." But he's like, "Actually, no, you have to do it." And I have to say,

• 50:42Ryan Holiday?

  it's totally, over the last four years, my son's four, it's totally transformed bedtime. I never feel any pressure to get them to bed. I never feel like, I always stop myself when I go like, "This is taking too long. I gotta get in the other room. I gotta watch Netflix. I gotta answer email." Like, it really makes me soak in those moments. And, like, I mean, I haven't missed a bedtime in seven months, you know? It's been incredible. But even before that, it really helps me go, it's not the idea that like, oh, this is gonna happen. It's that it could happen, and you would never want to be in a position where you needlessly cut connection short to do something that didn't matter.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's an important, I need to, to adopt that as well. I, I do cut the bedtime short from time to time.

• 51:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you're just like, you feel like because you started it, you should finish it promptly. Do you know what I mean? And I mean, obviously there's like, if they're have, if, if because of your ritual, they're not sleeping, that's obviously not a good idea. But it's like, you know, you're like, you're reading and then like, can we read one more book? And you're like, no. And why is the answer, no? There's no, you have nowhere to be, you have nothing to do. You're just, it's just a control thing, you know, in a lot of aspects. And so it's like, yeah, of course, we could read as many books as you want. Like, this is what I am literally here for. Yeah. Why am I, why am I going to answer emails that I didn't want to receive in the first place, instead of reading a book with you?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  That's funny. I mean, so many parents these days, my wife and I included, you get to the end of the day and you're just been like, you've, you've been kind of, depending on the day, you've been through a little bit of all of it, especially at the ages I'm at with two and three year olds. You're just tired.

• 52:33Ryan Holiday?

  Right, sure.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  So it's hard not to be like, okay, off to bed. Let's go grab a glass of wine, you know?

• 52:37Ryan Holiday?

  Right. No, no, that's, I would say a good portion of the time, by, we end up falling asleep together and I'm just taking a late nap, you know? But I, like, on my deathbed, whenever that is, I'll remember those moments so much more than, you know, whatever I was gonna go do.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  That's a great point. That's, that's a beautiful thing. All right. Well, you've inspired me there for sure. Next question. How can we make the virtues and Stoic teachings accepted as core learning for children in school seems more practical than teaching character education?

• 53:10Ryan Holiday?

  To me, the way you teach these things, and it's how I try to write, is you teach them with stories, right? The story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, I don't think anyone thought that was true. You know what I mean? It's an absurd story. I think that, but we used to understand that you taught people lessons by stories. And there's a reason that the Bible is written in parables and, and people used to know what those parables were. I think, you know, we try to teach people facts when really what we remember are stories. And so that's something I'm working on now. But I think the main thing you, the main way you teach kids and young people, other than by your own example, which is a form of a story, is through stories.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Lots of, lots of questions here around kids. The next one says, new dad and daily dad subscriber here. What practices or lessons did the Stoics impart on their own children that stand out for you as a father?

• 54:05Ryan Holiday?

  So that unfortunately, the Stoics don't have a lot of explicit discussions about children. There's a few here or there, but there's not that many great stories, but we can kind of look at the way they taught and, and led in other aspects. So I try to obviously do that on daily dad. I'm trying to think of like a good Stoic children's story. I can't think of a good one, but, but to me, I think the Stoics, you know, this idea of like, don't talk about what a good man is like, be one. If the counterpoint to the teach by stories is like, you can't teach your kids values. You can only show your kids values. Or if you're teaching them and then not showing

• 54:49Ryan Holiday?

  them, you're actually teaching them that you don't care about these values and they're not very important.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Next question, what is your daily routine now?

• 55:00Ryan Holiday?

  Not that different than it was before, just all the time now. Like, like, I don't know about you, but I feel like all the days have blurred together and there's no difference between, like, I think today's Thursday, right? But, you know, Fri- like, I'm not like, oh, tomorrow's Friday. Like, there's just no difference in any of the days anymore. But I get up early. Kids obviously help with that. I, we go for a walk every morning. So trying to think, how many, how many days has it been since March? What is that? Like 200 days, 300, 200 days, something like that? We've probably walked 600 miles, maybe 700 miles. We, so we do a three mile walk in the morning and then we do

• 55:42Ryan Holiday?

  a one mile walk in the evening. Although sometimes my son rides his bike now, but we, so like, we, we've just spent so much time together. So we do the walk, then I, I work or write. I've been- Credibly productive from a writing standpoint. And then I do intermittent fasting, which I sort of picked up from you. I don't, I, I stopped eating at like tonight, it was at five. And so I won't eat until probably 11 or 12 tomorrow. And then, uh, and then I don't do any kind of administrative business promotional stuff really before noon. So I try to have the morning be the big creative block. And then the afternoon is like, whatever else has to be done.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do you manage your time? Are you a calendar person or you?

• 56:29Ryan Holiday?

  I'm, I'm like the opposite of a calendar person. So like, I have a calendar, but, but my assistant knows that there should be as little as possible in the calendar. So like, my rule is I never have more than three things in the calendar in one day. So it might be a call in the afternoon or a podcast or whatever. But like, if I open my calendar and there's a lot of stuff in it, that's like a sign that I've not been successful. And one of the benefits of the last seven months is like, it's been really empty the whole time. Like, it's been great. No coffee, no, no flights to catch.

• 57:06Ryan Holiday?

  It's been, I, I think I was telling myself I was much more productive and good at multitasking and working on the road than I actually was. I don't know about you.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I find that, um, my entire routine has changed. It's, it's been, it's been crazy because I was definitely doing a lot more, uh, you know, face to face meetings and going out and flights and things like that. So yeah, it's, it's definitely been a complete rethinking of my day.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  How's your nighttime routine? Like, what is it like for you when you're getting ready for, for bed? Are you have a no screen policy? Like, what's your sleep schedule like? Like, how do you?

• 57:46Ryan Holiday?

  So we're doing, we're doing, every year we do like a new year, new you challenge for Daily Stoic and we're, I was just thinking about this because it was like, what can I improve? Like, I think I got the mornings really dialed in. I'm not saying it's my resolution because I'm going to try to do it before, but the thing I'm going to work on is I'm going to work on a bedtime. I'm going to give myself, like, I'm really good. Like, I wake up by a certain time, but I'm going to work on a bedtime. I think that's, that's my goal. Because like, it's one of the few things that's just like, well, whatever you're doing, just keep going, you know? And so I end up, you know, we'll watch TV too late, or I'll read too late, or we'll talk too late. And I want, I want to be like, no, I go to bed by this time.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  What do you do for relaxation? Like, I know you don't drink.

• 58:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  And, and you don't even do the, the flip side of that, which is you don't do coffee in the morning, right?

• 58:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  You have anything?

• 58:41Ryan Holiday?

  I like to watch crappy TV. I mean, I like to hang out. Like, I,

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Are you a bachelor guy or something? You watch like some horrible reality TV?

• 58:50Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I'm like, there you go. He has his faults.

• 58:52Ryan Holiday?

  We've rewatched most of The Office. We've rewatched most of Seinfeld. You know, like, I like to watch Law and Order. I like, like crappy, like procedural, like television. Like, when people are like, oh, you gotta check out, like, Bloodlines or something. I can make it through like, one season and it's like, too stressful. And I'm like, I want the opposite of this. Like, I'd rather read a book than watch, like, difficult entertainment.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm, I'm divided there. Like, Game of Thrones, I didn't have a problem with except for some scenes. Ozarks was too strong for me. I watched it, I'm like, these people are just fighting the entire time. This is not good for my psyche.

• 59:31Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's like, Pete Holmes has this joke about, he's like, people tell you, like, oh, go do all these things before you have kids. And he's like, what they should say is like, watch all these movies before you have kids. Because like, now I can't watch anything where like, a kid gets hurt. I can't watch anything. That's like, I think, I think the Netflix formula, if you think about the streaming formula, the incentives are like, A lot of highs and lows emotionally, and then it's to end on a level where you're like, I gotta binge on the next episode. And I think as I've gotten more healthy in my life, that feels really unpleasant to me. Like the transparent emotional manipulation of

• 1:00:16Ryan Holiday?

  a multi-season streaming show, like I go like, this is not good. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I don't really, we don't really do any TV at all, except for sports, you know, but we, that's kind of like just fun entertainment that's healthy and you know.

• 1:00:33Ryan Holiday?

  Right. No, totally. That was the, I'm glad sports are back. That was definitely one of the things I miss the most.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Moving on to the next question. Have either of you looked at the overlap of Zen and Stoicism? Any good books? Certainly seems to be a lot of common ground.

• 1:00:51Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I would, it's weird to recommend my own book, but I think I tried to do this in Stillness is the Key a little bit. I wanted to explore the, the, the overlap between the two. To me, what I like about them is that the overlap is coincidental, right? Like that they're not, like, the overlap between Christianity and Stoicism is not random. It's that the two borrowed from each other, right? Mostly that Christianity borrowed from Stoicism, but they, they borrowed from each other and they came from the same place. What I love about Buddhism is that it's, it's almost like an independently evolved species. And so they, it, to me, it proves a lot of the ideas that like they both independently came to a lot

• 1:01:36Ryan Holiday?

  of the same conclusions.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's, it's really kind of eerie when you start seeing that, that they just pop up and you're like, wait, that's very similar here, you know?

• 1:01:45Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like, I, I've heard that like, uh, sign, like different countries develop different sign languages, like, like it's sign language was invented differently. And then, but it's still very similar. It's like, oh, right. Okay. That makes sense. They, they got, they went to whatever the first principle was, like whatever, like the core thing was, they solved it.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah. I would say that for me, book wise.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Zen, the authentic gate, I think is very good. It is from a lineage that is Sanbo Zen, which is I would consider to be out of the major Zen sects, whether it's like Soto or Renzi. I think Sanbo is like the leanest and cleanest and lightweight and not, it doesn't contain any deities or heavy dogma. And I think if you're looking for like a clean version of Zen, like that's a, that's a great book.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  All right, let's see here. Next question.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Okay, what are your thoughts on the actions of Socrates with how he raised Nero as a tutor and his advisor as an emperor?

• 1:02:53Ryan Holiday?

  Do they mean Seneca? Or do they say?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  It said Socrates.

• 1:02:57Ryan Holiday?

  Definitely Seneca. It's tricky. There's a beautiful haunting book by James Rahm called Dying Every Day that's about Seneca's time in Nero's court. It's a tricky thing. I mean, on the one hand, you could look at it and you'd be like, it's just inexcusable. How can a great philosopher have been a member of such a heinous regime? On the other hand, from Seneca's perspective, he was probably telling himself, he would have been worse without me. And in fact, the first years of Nero's regime, they called the Quinquinium Neronium or something. Basically, like the first five years of Nero's regime were really good.

• 1:03:41Ryan Holiday?

  And that was largely because Seneca was in control and Seneca and a guy named Burris were in control.

• 1:03:49Ryan Holiday?

  So the, I think, I think that that's the tricky part about it. It's really hard to say, like, it's easy to say, like, everyone who disagrees with Trump should resign because the, you know, the administration would, would be unable to function. But you could also argue that all those people would be replaced with people that those people would find to be less qualified, right? So, you know, how can, what, I think it's that eternal question of what's one's obligation to themselves and their own ethical code? What's their obligation to the country? What's their obligation to be in a position to prevent bad things from happening?

• 1:04:28Ryan Holiday?

  It's a, it's, I think, the more I study it, the harder I, time I have coming up with one clear, easy answer.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  All right, it is that time in our program where we have time for one last question.

• 1:04:45Ryan Holiday?

  All right.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  So here it is. If there was one thing you hope people will take away from the chaos of 2020, what would that be?

• 1:04:54Ryan Holiday?

  That's a good question. I mean, I think you could go a couple of ways on this. You could be like, hey, this is why you have to focus on, you know, preparedness, on resiliency, on, on, on all of that. I think that's really important. And, and I feel like I've talked about that a lot. The Stoic idea of, there's a Stoic idea that character is fate, that, you know, sort of what you believe, how you comport yourself will determine the course of your life, the actions you take. To me, what the last several months of politicians of all parties, you know, friends, people I know, it's really, character seems to be that core issue, right?

• 1:05:37Ryan Holiday?

  Like, people of good character have done good things and people who have, you know, neglected that aspect of themselves have done things I find sort of, you know, unconscionable, whether it's, you know, how they're operating their business, how they're treating, you know, vulnerable people in society, whether they wear a mask or not, or, or just like what, what and who they vote for, you know? So I think what we're really seeing is that, that the truth of that idea that character is fate. And I would, I would argue that competence is a part of character, you know? Like, the, the, the desire to truly be excellent at what you do and to hold yourself to a high standard, to me, is an element of competence.

• 1:06:21Ryan Holiday?

  So when I see these politicians of, you know, both, both parts of the ideological spectrum just so fall down on the job, it strikes me as a reminder of like, hey, we have to stop thinking about like, who has all the same political positions as me? You know, who's on the same team as me? And we have to think more like you probably think when you're investing in a company, it's like, it's less like, do I like the idea and more like, can this team do what they are claiming they want to do? You know what I mean? I think, I think we are just, I really liked Marc Andreessen's essay about building and stuff, you know, like, I think we just, we desperately need competence and excellence

• 1:07:04Ryan Holiday?

  in morally and in every other sense. And we're, we're experiencing the very real consequences when you don't optimize for those things.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a great way to end it. Thank you, Ryan, so much for, for doing this with me.

• 1:07:19Ryan Holiday?

  No, thank, I really appreciate it. And yeah, it's always good to chat.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:07:26Ryan Holiday?

  If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.