There Will Always Be People Who Don’t Get It | Hasan Minhaj Tests Ryan Holiday’s Stoic Knowledge

People are misinformed. People have skewed priorities and conflicts of interest. They’re not always going to understand.🎥 Watch Ryan’s full episode on Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9rKyzig4AI👉 Follow Hasan Minhaj on Instagram and see his upcoming live dates here🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 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?

  There will always be people who don't get it. Do you think everyone understood why Cato was so alarmed about Caesar? Do you think everyone understood why Thrasia or Agrippinus refused to bend the knee to Nero? Or why Rutilius Rufus made a legal martyr of himself when corrupt interests brought him up on false charges? Of course, they didn't. In fact, Rutilius's friends begged him to defend himself. Cato and Thrasia and Agrippinus were seen as obstinate, alarmist, even annoying. People are busy. People are misinformed. People have skewed priorities and conflicts of interest. They're not always going to understand. They're not always going to get it.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  Whether it's politics, or business, or personal, you just can't expect everyone to see what you see. Honestly, if they did, it would probably mean that you're heading in the wrong direction. That's what Chrysippus said anyway, that if you wanted to follow a mom, he wouldn't have become a philosopher. Stoicism isn't about being appreciated. It's not about fitting in. It's about doing what's right. It's about saying what needs to be said. It's about being who you feel you need to be. So if you're waiting for your friends to understand you, if you're holding back until you get approval from family members or colleagues, if you hope 100% of your audience is going to be on board, you're waiting for something that may never come. Do what you believe is right.

• 1:44Ryan Holiday?

  Do what you believe is just. The rest isn't up to you.

• 2:01Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so in the fall, I went and I did something in New York. And I posted about it on Instagram or something. And I got a text from Hasan Minhaj, who said, hey, why didn't you tell me you were in town? We should have, we should have linked up. And I said, I didn't tell you I was in town for two reasons. One, I thought you live in like Connecticut. And two, I just didn't think you would want to hang out with me. And he said, no, no, no. First off, I have an office and a studio in New York. And I would love to see you. Tell me when you're going to be in New York next and we'll do the podcast and we'll get together. And I was like, sweet, that's amazing. Hasan Minhaj and I, first off, I'm a huge fan of his comedy.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  But we had very different, yet also very similar childhoods. We both grew up in Northern California. Although when people think Northern California, they don't think Sacramento or Davis. But that is Northern California. And it's a very, well, Joan Didion was right when she called it the Midwest of California. Anyways, I've gotten to know him. We got connected, I think, over something with the Sacramento Kings. He's a Kings fan, I'm a Kings fan. I love his comedy. He'd read some of the books. Anyways, he did have me come out to the studio. And we had a really awesome conversation. I want to bring you a little chunk of that. If you don't listen to his podcast, Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know is hilarious.

• 3:28Ryan Holiday?

  It's produced by Lemonada Media. You can watch it on YouTube. You've almost certainly seen a million of the clips. He's hilarious and actually does a really great interview. And I thought I'd bring you a little chunk of that. Go listen to the whole episode, I'll link to that. But in the meantime, here's me talking with my friend, who I'm glad that I told I was in town.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  So we're gonna play a simple game. I'm going to read you a quote from one of these 12 philosophers. You tell me who said it.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  However, there is a catch. Some of these are from Kanye West.

• 4:07Ryan Holiday?

  So will I know it by the virulent antisemitism?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I mean, you're gonna have to navigate this yourself. Are you ready?

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Okay. Let's go with number one. "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."

• 4:20Ryan Holiday?

  Marx's really is.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Classic. "If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable."

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  "We suffer more in imagination than in reality." "Giving up is harder than trying."

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  That sounds like Kanye.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Kanye West. "Our work is never done."

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  Kanye?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Kanye, correct. "The fates guide the willing and drag the unwilling."

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  Ooh, Klyantis.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  "If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures."

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  Musonius Rufus.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. "I am a Nazi."

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  Ah, ooh.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Just really, really think about this one.

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that, that sounds like Kanye.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Kanye West. Why did Stoicism speak to you at a particular period of time in your life?

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  I think it spoke to me for the reason it speaks to a lot of young men, which is, you know, how to live a good life, but also an interesting life of how to deal with setbacks and how to be resilient, how to sort of take these feelings and this energy inside you and direct it properly. That's not what they talk about in school. And it's not even really what they talk about in church anymore, right? And so, so Stoicism or ancient philosophy as a, as a framework for living, as a way to design your life, I think that it was addressing a big hole in...

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  My upbringing, and I think it, that's historically what, like, imagine-

• 5:45Speaker 01

  But what was happening in your life that you didn't get from dad, coaches, the church, cousins, teachers, and more? So both me and Ryan were NorCal kids.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  So what was not happening at Granite Bay that needed to be filled here? Because by the way, you know, dad didn't hug me, that part of the algorithm, that is, that's catnip to me.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't say my dad never hugged me, but like-

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  I wasn't getting that sort of guidance about like, this is how to be a man, this is how to be a person, this is like, this is what we do, this is what we don't do. There's just kind of this assumption that you'll like, you'll pick it up as you go. You know, there isn't, there isn't like a tradition, there's no, you know, like, there's no sort of, this is the coming of age thing, this is what we do when, you know, you turn 13 in our culture, right? There wasn't any of that. And so I think-

• 6:37Speaker 01

  You went to church, right?

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  I did. I grew up Catholic until we moved across town.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So you have Mass, you have-

• 6:42Ryan Holiday?

  Church was too far away.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Okay. But were you baptized and all that stuff?

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  I'm a confirmed Catholic. So I do think Stoicism resonated in a way because the teachings of Stoicism and Catholicism are pretty, they share the same cardinal virtues. Like cardinal comes from the Latin cardos, which means pivotal. And so courage, discipline, justice, wisdom, those are the, those are the virtues that Xeno lays down in the 4th century B.C. that also, you know, are inscribed in every Catholic church.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And what was it about specifically those teachings that resonated with you more than say, Old Testament, New Testament, that stuff? Because a lot of this stuff predates the Bible.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I mean, what I think is interesting about the Stoics and a lot of philosophy is they're making a rational argument. They're not saying, hey, do this or don't do this, or you'll end up in hell. I think fundamentally Stoicism is saying like, don't do this because your life will be a form of hell. Right? Like, to not be in control of yourself, to, like the quote you mentioned from Musonius Rufus, he says, you know, "If you do something easy in the pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure goes by quickly, but the shame endures." And then he says, "But if you do something hard..." Hard in pursuit of something good, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures. That is, I think, that overlaps with the sort of Christian teachings.

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  But nowhere are they saying like, also, God will be mad at you. You know, like, also, you will rot in hell.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  What they're trying to do is, are you saying, basically, it grapples with physical reality on earth as we see it, feel it, and experience it?

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think it's making a relatively rational argument, a logical argument, for why some things are good and some things are bad.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Why do you think it's so popular right now with titans of industry? You'll hear that Bill Clinton loves meditations. He'll read it every year. He revisits it.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  That's not new. I mean, first off, Stoicism was popular in the ancient world with the quote unquote elites, right? This is what you would send your son or daughter. Musonius Rufus writes this fascinating essay, you know, 2,000 years ago about how the question is, should women be taught philosophy? And then the other essay is like, is virtue the same in a man as in a woman?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, is he writing New York Times op-eds?

• 8:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes, hot takes. But he's saying, yeah, ultimately, like, virtue is virtue. It doesn't know gender. So like, the Stoics are grappling with sadly, some of the same things we're still grappling with today. But the argument then was like, this is what you want to teach young people so they can grow up to be not just good people, but contributors and leaders in society. So I think it's sort of relevance with those people today shouldn't surprise us. I think it's more interesting that your sort of regular folks are interested in it. And that probably says something about what a train wreck the world is right now. Like, Stoicism is not resurgent and popular because everything's amazing and going super well.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Right. Perhaps a guidebook or a handbook to the craziness that people are experiencing their day to day.

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like, Cato's in the fall of the Roman Republic. Marx realist is in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Zeno is there, you know, when the sort of world created by Alexander the Great is falling apart. So, you know, it's popular again, you know, in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolutions, you know, the American Civil War. It's popular when shit feels like it's coming apart.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So Stoicism, from what I understand, is not a partisan philosophy. But it most recently has been hijacked by different partisan groups. And I wanted to talk to you about that because you're someone who has tried to research Stoicism, dare I say stoically, you know, like, hey, let me be cool, calm and collected and write about what these men were teaching. And you're a big reason why Stoicism became so popular. But there's also been a huge rise of what I call broicism.

• 10:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  The manosphere loves this shit. If you just go to Twitter right now and you type in any of these names from the quiz, oh, my God, the accounts that are reposting them, you know, I don't know if they're people that I would want to be like per se.

• 10:53Ryan Holiday?

  Which is weird because when I went to my publisher in 2012 and I was like, hey, I want to write about this obscure school of ancient philosophy.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  They were not like, oh, that'll crush it with dudes. Like, this is all an interesting turn of events.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  For you.

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  For me, too.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I mean, I understood and thought it could be popular, but I didn't think that it would be this enormous.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  You didn't think nerdy tech titans wouldn't read this stuff and be like, I could be Gerard Butler in 300? There is something about that idea of like.

• 11:27Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, the Roman Empire for most dudes is the Roman Empire.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  But Ryan, now it's Michael Jordan, last shot, Marcus Aurelius quote. Kobe Bryant, final game, Marcus Aurelius quote. Like, this is now cottage industry. But it's something you talk about in the new book. And I'd love to ask you, what is the main difference between Stoicism and broicism, in your opinion?

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  There seems to be this tendency to look at the cardinal virtues of Stoicism, which are courage, discipline, justice and wisdom, and be like, I don't have to bother with the third one, right? Like, I like courage, that's cool. I like self-discipline. I like moderation. I like resilience. And then obviously, you know, reading and learning and being smart, that's all cool. But you're telling me that I have to ascribe to a certain, you know, list of ethics that I have to give a shit about other human beings? I don't, I don't like that. And I get it. I mean, my primary and initial interest in Stoicism is like, what can it do for me? Right? Like, how can it make me better, stronger, faster, smarter? I get it. That's, that's when you're

• 12:30Ryan Holiday?

  19, that's what's going to be interesting to you. But like. The thing Marcus Aurelius talks about most in Meditations, like the phrase that appears the most is not, you know, like destroying your enemies or, you know, mastering your emotions or, you know, being super productive. It's, he uses the Greek phrase, he's writing in Greek, but the phrase for the common good, which he refers to 80 times in meditation. So it was inherently a philosophy about our obligations and our responsibilities to and with other people. And so, Broicism to me is Stoicism when you remove any of the moral elements. So it's this recipe for being a better sociopath.

• 13:14Ryan Holiday?

  And in some cases, I think, being a better psychopath. And that's, you know, whatever Pete Hegseth thinks Stoicism is, is not what I'm.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Sure. I don't know if you've seen Bobby Kennedy Jr., he was banging out pull-ups with Mr. Duffy, just like, hey, this is how we're gonna fix infrastructure in this country.

• 13:31Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  This is how we make people healthy again.

• 13:33Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And you'd bang out 20 pull-ups right now.

• 13:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of people that go, you know what, Marcus Aurelius was a dictator, though.

• 13:39Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  At night, he writes in his journal, "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be, be one." But the next morning, he's just out here butchering people and I'm sure denying them basic human rights and/or democratic rights.

• 13:53Ryan Holiday?

  This is the, this is where, you know, studying the past requires putting on your sort of big boy pants, you know. There's a Jeffersonian element to it.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:02Ryan Holiday?

  Like, "All men are created equal" is a beautiful sentence that he didn't fully believe.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  But we can take it literally and we can sort of try to get a little bit closer to it. Like, there, there's a passage in the beginning of Meditations where Marcus Aurelius thanks one of his friends for introducing him to Stoicism. And he says, you know, he's like, for introducing me to Hervitus and Cassius and all these different Stoics. And he says, "Because the Stoics conceived of, you know, a world of equal rights and personal liberty, where rulers respect the rights of their subjects." And he's describing a beautiful world which the Roman Empire was not remotely like. But that idea, again, it's Jeffersonian in another way.

• 14:49Ryan Holiday?

  That is the world that inspires the founders 2,000 years later to take a big step towards getting to the ideals of the Roman Republic and the sort of classical virtue. So they're certainly not perfect, and we could list the innumerable flaws of the Stoics. And I have no problem, I have no problem holding Seneca both up as an inspiring heroic figure and a tragic, disgusting hypocrite. And I think that's perfectly acceptable to do.

• 15:29Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say thank you.