This is Gavin Newsom - And, This Is The Stoic's Survival Guide With Ryan Holiday

00:00:00.000 That line between genius and madness is very fluid.

00:00:03.920 You can sort of introduce alternative facts, as they say, and people believe them.

00:00:08.500 Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a better sociopath.

00:00:12.660 This is Gavin Newsom.

00:00:15.180 And this is Ryan Holiday.

00:00:19.600 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:22.500 Guaranteed human. 0.90

00:00:24.600 When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, 1.00

00:00:30.000 They take matters into their own hands.

00:00:33.060 I vowed I will be his last target.

00:00:35.620 He is not going to get away with this.

00:00:37.740 He's going to get what he deserves.

00:00:39.680 We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

00:00:43.940 Listen to the girlfriends, trust me, babe,

00:00:46.700 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:00:49.100 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:00:56.520 I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human,

00:00:58.700 a tech podcast through a human lens.

00:01:01.100 This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

00:01:04.640 I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products

00:01:07.820 bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.

00:01:11.660 An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.

00:01:15.280 My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.

00:01:18.300 Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:01:21.440 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

00:01:23.200 hey it's norah jones and my podcast playing along is back with more of my favorite musicians

00:01:31.880 check out my newest episode with josh groban you related to the phantom at that point yeah

00:01:38.360 i was definitely the phantom in that that's so funny

00:01:40.980 listen to norah jones is playing along on the iheart radio app

00:01:52.560 apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what's up everyone I'm Ako Wodum my next guest

00:02:00.220 it's Will Ferrell my dad gave me the best advice ever he goes just give it a shot but if you ever

00:02:08.800 reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore

00:02:13.680 it's okay to quit if you saw it written down it would not be an inspiration it would not be on

00:02:18.420 a calendar of you know the cat just hang in there yeah it would not be right it wouldn't be that

00:02:27.580 there's a lot of luck yeah listen to thanks dad on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever

00:02:33.180 you get your podcasts uh ryan thanks for being here man of course sacramento california you know

00:02:41.260 this area well don't you not this area because i like i think people don't understand that sacramento

00:02:46.560 is a bit like los angeles where to people who don't live there it's one place yeah but if you

00:02:51.980 live there it's a bunch of other like i probably came downtown like 10 times in my life interesting

00:02:56.320 until later because i lived in the suburbs of sacramento i mean uh so this was a big city

00:03:01.860 sacramento back when you're young but it's like this is the town we would pass on the way to arco

00:03:06.140 arena to watch the sacramento kings yeah or or we would go down here to see sutters ford or the

00:03:13.400 railroad museum as a kid but you wouldn't actually do sacramento one because it wasn't

00:03:18.820 i mean it's done so much amazing works or bring it back to life but also like

00:03:23.940 california is like these self-contained suburbs and you live in your yeah in your suburb but you

00:03:30.300 went you must have when you were a kid you must have gone to the capital right you have to part

00:03:34.040 of the obligation of childhood here in california everyone does a fourth grade they do a little tour

00:03:38.480 yeah yeah how about the governor's mansion where we are right now i've never been i've never been

00:03:42.740 here interesting i don't even think i've seen it you've never seen it i don't i don't know i don't

00:03:46.860 you're even driven by ronald reagan's old here's when i would have seen it uh they made you do your

00:03:52.220 driver's test and your driver's training in downtown because it was the only place that

00:03:56.860 would have like four-way stops right like anyways i remember driving downtown to get my drivers

00:04:02.380 that's it but you're fair oaks kid fair oaks california the suburb here yeah i was born in

00:04:06.560 gold river yeah and then and then we moved to fair oaks and uh yeah i was there for till uh

00:04:12.680 till high school till high school and then you went what you went down south you went to it sure

00:04:16.980 no i we went to i went to granite bay high school so you're granite bay high school yes yes you know

00:04:22.440 and you were you know we're an excellent student were you that kid that was always raising your

00:04:27.720 hand or were you in the back what was give me your profile well my parents wanted me to go to

00:04:31.820 Jesuit and I didn't go to Jesuit. So I was not that student. No, I think I was like, I was like

00:04:41.340 hit or miss. Sometimes it was a fit and when it was a fit, it was good. And then a lot of times

00:04:46.860 it wasn't. It wasn't until I went to college that anything really started to happen for me.

00:04:54.140 But in high school, were you just, I mean, you must have had some, it wouldn't be a vision board,

00:04:59.000 but you must have had some vision of your future what was it what were you thinking you'd become

00:05:02.320 oh i wanted to be in a heavy metal band so that was it yeah just you were certain about that yes

00:05:07.440 yes i i mean i think i want i want i loved music but i've said this before but like i

00:05:14.940 i don't think i sacramento is a lovely place but it was not then uh much the territory of

00:05:24.460 entrepreneurs or artists or like i don't i i don't know if i ever met anyone growing up who

00:05:31.720 didn't have a job like just a regular like regular job like teachers doctors uh civil servants love

00:05:39.360 that you know real estate agents it was it was just very conventional right and i think that's

00:05:44.600 why people love sacramento is that you could have a conventional life here that version of the

00:05:50.560 american dream was very accessible um but the idea that like i loved books but i didn't meet anyone

00:05:58.600 that wrote books and you know it wasn't like oh this neighbor their kid you know there wasn't any

00:06:03.720 of that so um it was uh i i just don't i just didn't have a sense of what was possible i mean

00:06:11.100 it wasn't until i uh i was probably in my 20s that i even learned joan didion was from california

00:06:16.920 Like, it wasn't like, hey, this is a place where people who do that come from.

00:06:22.680 What were your parents?

00:06:23.620 What were your parents doing?

00:06:24.620 What kind of?

00:06:25.040 My dad was a police detective and my mom was a school principal.

00:06:27.780 I love it.

00:06:28.400 So just, you know, like your classic sort of American job.

00:06:33.400 And a school principal?

00:06:34.480 I mean, what kind of mindset do you have with a mom who's a school principal?

00:06:37.780 Well, my mom was a school principal in the San Juan School District. 0.86

00:06:41.480 But she did like continuing adult education.

00:06:44.040 so she did uh she didn't have like kids as her students it was got it it was like you know

00:06:49.900 plumbers going back to get their ged and stuff so it was um i mean it was all

00:06:55.260 was all really interesting but just not what i wanted to do and were you surrounded by books

00:07:00.840 as a kid were the your parents pushing books you know yeah 10th grade you know here's honey here's

00:07:07.060 three books you need to read i i mean we i read a lot as a kid but i read you know like

00:07:12.660 like westerns and action i i didn't know about this thing called philosophy i didn't know like

00:07:19.080 i didn't know there was all these amazing history books i i was just i don't know it was a it was a

00:07:24.460 bubble in a good way yeah um and uh and then i mean that's why you go away to college is to to

00:07:31.760 expand what you're exposed to so you were in college and uh what were you studying what did

00:07:37.680 you decide to study i was uh political science and creative writing and creative writing yeah

00:07:42.280 were you always a writer i think i wanted to be a writer and um i remember my first seminar we had

00:07:49.220 to go down in the summer and uh we had this seminar i was taught by susan straight who's

00:07:54.060 one of the great sort of california novelists and and she had assigned they'd assigned us her book

00:07:59.400 and it was like it was a real book like a you know like a like a book you would see in a bookstore

00:08:04.520 right and i was like oh people do this like this is a this is a job you could have this is a thing

00:08:10.480 people do and i think you know like you talk about like nepo babies and stuff and and um i think one

00:08:17.740 of the things people don't understand about that is that a big part of what it does is it demystifies

00:08:25.060 the possibility of going in certain directions you know oh hey like my mom's friend does that

00:08:31.040 or hey i've seen my dad practice you know his lines for an audition like you i got to imagine

00:08:36.560 for steph curry being in an nba arena is like this is where my dad works yeah and so it becomes

00:08:43.420 possible in a way that obviously there's the genetics and the privilege and all that but i

00:08:48.420 think a huge part of it is just like no no this is a thing you can do because you saw other people

00:08:53.080 do it for the same reason that it was probably likely that i'd be a police officer or a school

00:08:57.200 teacher because you know you saw your parents do that yeah i think about you know all that is once

00:09:01.480 a mind is stretched it never goes back to its original form or even the more simple frame which

00:09:06.120 just probably overstated but you can't be what you can't see once you see something yes it's now

00:09:10.920 more tangible and that's like they talk about this like with representation like if you don't

00:09:15.520 see people like you on tv or in art or you know uh in the movies or you know on the headlines you

00:09:22.100 just don't think someone like you can do it and and representation matters not obviously just in

00:09:27.800 terms of gender or class or nationality but also just like hey people like you from this small

00:09:34.340 town can that's why that's why towns celebrate like who came from here yeah that like there is

00:09:39.920 a way to to do that this is my favorite part of american idol when they come back home and the

00:09:44.660 entire town's out there on main street and just so proud their native sons so you you know you

00:09:49.800 were out there but meanwhile you're just so you're doing a little creative writing but you've got a

00:09:53.920 rock band on the side what are you doing i mean you're sitting there in the driving your parents

00:09:57.360 crazy in the garage uh-huh that's exactly what i was doing i'm sure it was horrible and uh they

00:10:03.720 were pretty they were pretty patient and uh and yeah just didn't go anywhere and as as is to be

00:10:11.900 expected but but you lasted how many years in college you were two just two two so what happened

00:10:17.660 uh i got a chance to be a writer i i so i i was writing for the college newspaper which again

00:10:24.360 you you sort of get a chance to do a thing oh this is a this is it's like a job um so i was

00:10:30.680 writing for the college newspaper in riverside and um and i um i started working for this person

00:10:37.420 that i'd written about this guy named robert green who wrote the 48 laws of power and how'd you get

00:10:41.160 i mean i mean robert a legend yeah doesn't begin to describe him um and and i mean you don't have

00:10:48.080 to introduce 40 laws power he's the goat i mean he's like one of the greatest non-fiction writers

00:10:52.340 of so how did you even get a chance to even i mean you're writing about him did you and that

00:10:56.500 all of a sudden then he attached this yeah then i started doing little things for him here there

00:11:00.720 and and uh it kind of became this whole he needed a research assistant and and i was like that's

00:11:07.240 i remember thinking like hey if this is what i this was my first job out of college college 0.74

00:11:14.380 would be a success you know did your parents agree with it's whore no no they of course didn't right 0.69

00:11:20.000 yeah because my i think my entire family was horrified they're all teachers and and you know 0.99

00:11:26.080 also for that era that was the thing is you your kids go to college so they don't end up living

00:11:32.380 under a bridge somewhere yeah and so they they did not uh they did not handle it well uh and

00:11:39.000 it was i mean it's funny too because i thought i was at the time i thought it was this enormous

00:11:48.020 risk you know like crazy thing that i was doing um because i never done anything you're still a

00:11:54.660 teenager at the time yeah 19 or something yeah maybe um but i i do i do think we

00:12:01.080 we put so much pressure on kids that like if you don't go to college between the ages of 18 and 22

00:12:10.040 it's over for you like you're you're just done um and obviously that's that's not really true i

00:12:17.920 could have always gone back and and i think the the silicon valley model of dropping out to go

00:12:23.560 do something actually it was very helpful to me because i could be like oh all these other people

00:12:28.800 had had done it in other ways and it doesn't it doesn't ruin your life and what and robert was

00:12:34.160 not you know so you're doing research but he's also just an outsized mentor yes in every way

00:12:38.900 it was like an apprentice i mean in retrospect you would call it an apprenticeship yeah um i think

00:12:43.440 sometimes people think these things are very official like this person you know you sign a

00:12:48.440 contract and then you're they're your mentor for the next experience it's it's a it's an informal

00:12:54.180 thing that develops over time and you learn a lot and then also um i think people only claim the

00:13:02.280 relationship if you go on to do things yeah good point right like the mentorship is is sealed by

00:13:08.020 you by you by you uh validating the investment that they put in you and so but but yeah i learned

00:13:15.520 everything i could possibly learn about how to do the thing that i wanted to do and you were and you

00:13:22.020 had a very definitive intentional thing you wanted to do i mean writing's a construct but there's so

00:13:29.480 many different disciplines i mean were you did did you did you start to follow his path or were you

00:13:34.960 trying to follow your own path and sort of you know and all of a sudden you deviated back what

00:13:38.620 i i knew i wanted to write about sort of history and uh and stuff like that and and he is an

00:13:47.220 interesting model because you know he's not a university professor um or anything like that

00:13:51.960 he just writes these books that are enormously popular and influential and have been for a

00:13:56.400 really long time kind of outside the system like the 40 laws of power is is uh consistently one

00:14:02.100 of the most shoplifted books in the country wow it's also banned in in most prisons yeah trust

00:14:07.920 me i know this yeah it's a big issue we were just reviewing our banned books at our california

00:14:12.780 department of corrections it's yeah and like the innocence project will tell people like hey do not

00:14:17.540 have this book in yourself it will be used against you in sentencing oh jesus wow so so he's just

00:14:23.420 written these really interesting books that that you know have this sort of outsized reputation but

00:14:27.400 but um they're also just like meticulously crafted and and really kind of transgressive in how they're

00:14:36.120 laid out and organized it it i just didn't know you again i didn't know you could do something

00:14:40.520 like that and and uh so that's i i wanted to do something like that and i i do i think if you're

00:14:48.260 like a young person you're trying to figure out what you want to do the best thing you can do is

00:14:52.860 find someone who's done something similar like something just in the ballpark and find some

00:14:58.820 means of being in the orbit you know it's like how do you go sweep floors in their record studio

00:15:04.840 How do you stock shelves in the store?

00:15:07.920 How do you drive them?

00:15:10.140 How can you do anything where you're just in the orbit?

00:15:13.080 And was that something you had a concept of at the time or over time you started to wake up to that appreciation?

00:15:21.820 You started to realize, wait a second, I need to really take this in more fully.

00:15:27.100 And I need to really appreciate what I'm learning and what I'm absorbing.

00:15:31.340 or is that your relationship to that the idea you know success leaves clues that you can pick

00:15:36.500 up on other people's did that come in hindsight i think more in hindsight yeah there's a lyndon

00:15:41.840 johnson thing where he's like you go to the people who are at the center of things nice and you just

00:15:46.940 need to be in proximity to power influence expertise so i think i had some sense that you

00:15:52.800 you just want to go where the action is yeah um it i think i was very just it would be like you

00:16:01.720 know robert would assign me to transcribe a bunch of interviews and um and then he'd be like bring

00:16:08.140 them by the house you know and i'd cut and to me that was where i was getting paid is that i would

00:16:13.660 get to go and then you know he'd be okay so what's in here and we'd review it and then i'd maybe get

00:16:19.220 to sneak in like one or two questions nice and and that to me that was that was how i was getting

00:16:24.400 paid i mean he was actually very generous and he did pay me but like i i i was getting paid

00:16:31.240 in something that i understood was much more valuable than you know would show up on a on a

00:16:37.140 on a pay stub or whatever which is like how do you how do you get advice from the people who have

00:16:43.140 done done the thing yeah and that's i think where you want to go it's funny because later he writes

00:16:49.680 this i think his best book that it's probably the book that i would give most young people

00:16:53.460 he wrote this book called mastery and and it's all about how you become great at something and

00:16:58.440 there's this whole the whole i think the second uh step is is about this sort of apprenticeship

00:17:04.760 you have to the first thing is you find the thing that you're meant to do and when and when you're

00:17:09.800 lucky enough to be like oh this is the thing that lights me up this is what i want to do

00:17:13.600 the next step is you find that person who is who has done it and you just have to you know you have

00:17:19.100 to attach yourself to them and and um that that was the that phase for a good chunk of my 20s

00:17:25.360 love it how many so you were you were there for how many years then with robert

00:17:29.000 uh 20 19 to 26 27 yeah was a i mean and and and like i these things are fluid and they overlap

00:17:42.300 you know you get your you get your first shot you know i i wrote a book and he was helping me with

00:17:48.360 it it's not like this one day it ends and you graduate it's this it's this thing i mean i was

00:17:52.840 just talking to him a couple of days ago asking him for some advice and so it's a it's kind of

00:17:57.280 fluid thing but he ended up getting me a job at this company called american apparel and that was

00:18:01.960 kind of the next sort of part of that education and you were doing marketing work there how'd that

00:18:07.900 go for you ryan well it was uh it was interesting some people may not know a little bit of the

00:18:16.240 story we give you what we don't have to dwell on this but it's a it's a hell of an interesting

00:18:20.920 story what's a sad you know it's a sad story too in that you if you had told me at 23 that

00:18:27.740 no that now i would say that name and people would stare at you blankly yeah it's kind it's

00:18:32.540 a cautionary i mean i wrote i wrote a book called ego is the enemy that i wrote as the company was

00:18:38.340 imploding because i sort of had a ringside seat to you know this one point the largest garment

00:18:43.640 manufacturer in the northern hemisphere uh is this success story it was this incredible thing

00:18:49.940 uh one of the coolest brands in the world and it just it it destroyed itself um destroyed itself

00:18:58.340 and and the the genius that created it was also the the demonic energy that destroyed it and and

00:19:06.840 that's a very common thing where like the that line between genius and madness is very fluid

00:19:14.900 and uh and yeah it was it was a it was a surreal experience i learned a ton obviously uh and then

00:19:23.820 a lot a lot of things that took a while to unlearn as well did you i mean there's you know

00:19:30.300 the old frame you put a mask on you know i think orwell and shooting the elephant talked about i

00:19:34.800 put a mask on his face grew into it did you see that happening to you in terms of trying to sort

00:19:40.320 of defend or sort of, you know, the PR push, uh, you know, sort of, you know, mask the deviancy

00:19:47.560 there. You, you experience only in looking back, especially as you get older, you go,

00:19:55.000 I had no business being there. Like, like why did, why was a 22 year old running marketing at

00:20:00.640 a publicly traded company? Um, it, you know, if you'd asked me at 22, I would have said,

00:20:05.860 because i'm that good and then and then uh now i go oh i was probably good but i also didn't know

00:20:15.140 how fucking insane any of this was and so that i think it's helped me understand some of some of 0.69

00:20:20.580 what's happening in the world some of the me too stuff where you're like oh part of the reason 0.96

00:20:24.440 that everyone there was was in their 20s uh working for someone who was not in their 20s

00:20:31.220 was that there was a certain amount of control and a certain amount of naivete about what was

00:20:36.800 happening that allowed, allowed that sort of system to, uh, go on as it did. So, you know,

00:20:44.940 like, um, yeah, just, I just realized like, oh, I, I just shouldn't have been in any of these

00:20:50.340 situations is wildly inappropriate and insane. Um, but I didn't know because I'm a kid from

00:20:56.120 sacramento and this all seems very exciting and interesting i uh you know i'm i it's not strict

00:21:03.040 it's not it's not striking me as insane that this you know single 45 year old multi-millionaire uh

00:21:12.140 wants me to live in his house you know like uh that that that seemed exciting and interesting

00:21:17.820 thankfully i did not live in said house but uh but you know you just you just don't realize

00:21:23.100 what's crazy until you're out of the thing and so i am somewhat sympathetic to people who kind

00:21:28.660 of get in over their heads on stuff because i was that was certainly me i just didn't

00:21:32.320 i was i was um i was just really caught up in the energy and the excitement and the sort of

00:21:39.120 canvas that it was to to you know uh do what i was doing but the the

00:21:46.140 the fact that it was all nuts you know was a was a was a debriefing process and then the funny

00:21:55.100 thing is you know i've my wife and i've been together since we met in college and so she

00:22:00.180 was there through all of it and she was like you know i was telling you every day that this is insane

00:22:04.200 like i told you so like so i'll just be in you know i'll be on the middle of a run somewhere

00:22:10.680 and something will hit me and i'll come back and i'll tell him she's like i i told you that like

00:22:15.160 800 times you know and and so that you were just you know you're you're uh what's that

00:22:21.520 that Upton Sinclair thing about it's very hard to understand something when your salary depends

00:22:26.140 on you not understanding well said and uh there was a lot of that there was a lot of that as well

00:22:32.260 so you I mean how long was that it was over two years oh no I was there

00:22:36.340 2007 2014 or 15 something like that so it was a huge a big chunk of my yeah it was a big chunk

00:22:49.480 and meanwhile though you started you said ego is the enemy you're starting to i mean perfect book

00:22:54.980 to sort of the genesis of that experience and understanding it and so i mean it was that the

00:23:00.040 first i mean for you you had written a number of things but was that you know because that sort of

00:23:05.520 starts to move you in the direction that you ultimately are today or what did that book

00:23:10.780 represent i did a book on media first and then i did my first book on stoicism which is called

00:23:16.040 the obstacles away and then and then yeah ego was sort of at the ego was was me kind of leaving

00:23:23.700 a good chunk of that behind yeah watching that sort of uh explode uh so it was it was um you

00:23:33.780 know i in retrospect you look back i'm sure you experience this writing your book you think of

00:23:38.560 these things as these kind of clean periods or that you had this like you had this insight like

00:23:43.980 this is when i knew i was going to do this and then like i i um they're one of the great california

00:23:50.340 writers this guy bud bud schulberg yeah if you know who that is he wrote what makes sammy run

00:23:54.360 on the waterfront nice anyways he wrote this book called uh uh the harder they fall which is about

00:24:00.580 this sort of corrupt pr agent um who's working for the mob as they fix uh boxing fights and

00:24:07.080 and i i read this book and if you asked me when i knew i wanted to leave american apparel and

00:24:13.480 get out of this life i would tell you it was the day i read that book and and i would i would say

00:24:18.780 like like and i know it because the like the last not the last page is this kind of big

00:24:24.640 he has this big insight he goes you know i'm realizing now you cannot deal in filth without

00:24:30.800 becoming the thing you touch yeah yeah this is sort of my truck moment and so i i was like okay

00:24:36.020 so i read that and i can i i still i i've gone back and looked at it you know this i can see

00:24:41.760 the markings that i'm like holy shit what is this um like it felt like you know when you read

00:24:46.820 something like i feel so attacked you know this is about me specifically so anyways that would

00:24:51.160 have been when i thought i i um i my breakthrough happened and then i was talking to someone about

00:24:56.740 it i was actually talking to tim miller about this because he and i had similar sort of arcs

00:25:00.140 on our journey nice and and i was like as i was prepping for that conversation i was like oh you

00:25:05.240 know what i bought this book on amazon i can see the day that i bought it i can you know and i went

00:25:10.080 on amazon and um so i left i left america apparel in 2014 or 15 and and my amazon receipt for the

00:25:20.020 harder they fall is like 2009 well it was like way closer to the beginning than the end yeah right

00:25:26.300 and so you you can often have you you get the insight or the idea that the the thing you you

00:25:33.720 understand it but it can be a very long time until you you understand it and then more importantly

00:25:39.340 you have any of the sort of courage or clarity to act on it and so it was that whole period is much

00:25:48.660 more sort of contradictory and and uh overlappy than than it feels like and it is important um

00:25:57.820 if you're a young person you're like looking at someone's life story that you realize that when

00:26:03.660 they lay it all out it's all that gets smooth all it gets laid out narratively yeah and it gets

00:26:08.800 smoothed out as well and they it can feel like it was this plan or can feel like one thing was

00:26:15.720 leading to the next. And that's all, that's all made up in retrospect. It's not like that in the

00:26:21.940 moment. And by the way, history is not like that in the moment either. Nobody knows how the story

00:26:26.700 is going to end. And so you have to kind of deal on that ambiguity more than you would like.

00:26:34.520 You wrote a lot about sort of ambiguity, wrote a lot about your own experience and wrote a book

00:26:41.320 that you know we intentionally have not even with you being around have on the on the shelf there

00:26:48.500 trust me i'm lying i'm actually doing uh i'm supposed to do the 15 year anniversary edition

00:26:53.980 of that book uh you have to yeah it was uh you were decades ahead yeah it was funny when i was

00:26:59.920 writing trust me i'm lying i remember saying to the publisher they were like we're thinking you

00:27:03.060 know like a summer 2012 release and i go i don't i can't wait that long i was like it's like i was

00:27:09.380 like this all this stuff is like no it needs to come out right now and um i remember being rushed

00:27:14.780 and i was probably 10 years early yeah 15 but 15 it's it's uh yeah it's a strange it's a strange

00:27:22.280 just for folks that don't know much about this book i mean and back to you know the time stamp

00:27:27.180 2012 yeah and you were talking about citizen journalism you were talking about legacy media

00:27:32.740 you were talking about truth and trust you were talking about manipulation you were talking about

00:27:37.620 you know, the validation and how you're able to spread stories and validate that story and sources

00:27:45.220 and I mean, tell us. Yeah, I was trying to write sort of an expose of how the media system really

00:27:52.320 worked, not how people thought it worked, which was objectivity and fact checkers. And, and I was

00:28:00.560 looking at how the economics sort of shape, shape it. And I was trying to show you like how the

00:28:05.800 sausage gets made like how how stories that you're reading in the news where they actually came from

00:28:12.060 and uh how easy it is to just sort of inject things into that kind of slipstream and obviously

00:28:23.020 in 2016 we saw a sort of russia add a whole element of that and you know i was writing before

00:28:29.660 tick tock i was writing before instagram even really so so it's obviously become like hyper

00:28:35.840 hyper drive of a lot of the stuff i was talking about in that book i mean i i wish i could sit

00:28:42.200 back here and go 15 years later like i was totally totally proven wrong and everything's awesome

00:28:47.220 but it's sort of like beyond my worst nightmare of of all the things i was talking about in that book

00:28:52.920 which is funny because when i wrote it although a lot of people read it the media reaction was

00:28:59.640 mostly like shoot the messenger like he's he's the bad guy um and and what i was trying to say

00:29:07.600 is like look this is what i do to sell t-shirts or books or you know the this is how i can i can

00:29:14.180 you know introduce something funny or ridiculous into the media cycle but like if if media is where

00:29:23.240 public opinion is formed it this this vulnerability is just too too valuable to too many powerful

00:29:32.100 important or deranged people for them not to sort of take advantage of it and and i think we're

00:29:37.840 seeing now a world where um yeah you can you can sort of uh introduce alternative facts as they say

00:29:47.420 into into this and people believe them um what what kind of vulnerabilities that exposes to us

00:29:53.820 and they believe them and you've you've talked about this they believe them even after they're

00:29:58.280 debunked sometimes even more yeah after the quote-unquote correction well i think i mean

00:30:03.960 Again, this is always a complicated thing to talk about. But January 6th is a fascinating example of like everyone with eyes saw a thing happen. And then there was an investigation, right, that sort of laid out exactly what happened.

00:30:19.860 But because one guy with a lot of followers, you saw him sort of, you saw Trump in the early days after January 6th, where he was complicit and responsible for an unthinkable and inexcusable thing, scramble around for how is he going to explain this?

00:30:39.580 And then sort of settles on, it was Antifa.

00:30:44.660 And also these people were patriots.

00:30:47.840 And which, by the way, are just two contradictory explanations just off the top of his head.

00:30:54.260 But then if he says it enough times and if there is a financial and ideological and just cognitive reason to want that to be true, eventually a sizable percentage of the population will coalesce around that thing.

00:31:13.620 Because to not do it would mean you have to face the tragedy and the horror and the violence and the, you know, the the implications of that thing.

00:31:26.560 And so in a way, it just kind of lays bare our media system.

00:31:33.380 I mean, yeah, it's like it's laid out in these different lawsuits.

00:31:37.060 It's laid out in these like we know what happened and we know the role that people played in it happening.

00:31:42.460 and yet afterwards he was able to kind of with this media jujitsu just make it not have happened

00:31:50.460 all right well i want to unpack all of that uh and we we i mean you were writing this back i mean

00:31:56.920 when you wrote trust me i'm lying you mentioned dick tuck you know it didn't exist i mean facebook

00:32:02.840 probably it was in its orphan phase the cloud was in the sky 4g was a probably a parking space

00:32:08.520 back then and linked in a prison but you know you were the algorithms weren't necessarily you were

00:32:14.340 talking blogs mostly back then right yeah blogs and and twitter and and and how much traditional

00:32:20.160 media was sort of the final step in that system and now it doesn't need to be final step after

00:32:26.140 you seed yeah the extreme then you have a source you say one sort now you have two sources and all

00:32:31.640 of a sudden now the main now it moves itself up the ladder when i see that by the way i live this

00:32:36.680 yes daily mail says something the california post says something now the new york post says two

00:32:42.140 sources yes have confirmed something all of a sudden i'm watching jesse waters on fox and then

00:32:47.440 the next night hannity and all the rest of the lineup and then you have to respond to and i'm 0.91

00:32:50.980 responding then i'm chasing something i'm playing defense they're already on to the next damn thing

00:32:54.920 yeah and and i mean again trump is sort of intuitively understanding all this he's really

00:32:59.080 good at going a lot of people are saying a lot of people are saying everyone's everyone knows

00:33:03.920 and so it's this way that things that are not true become true by you bump into them enough

00:33:10.360 times but you're i mean you're the point you're making is this is not this is bad but it's it's

00:33:17.360 it's been i mean it's uh yeah wake up everybody it's the way it's been done yeah it's hardly

00:33:22.740 novel no no i mean it's it this is this has been the the way that the sausage has been made for

00:33:28.340 a decade and a half basically right so your new book is going to figure out and tell us what to

00:33:32.920 do about it no i mean at first it's it's mortifying of course to have to go back and read something

00:33:37.580 that you wrote when you were 23 and you thought you understood how the world worked even though

00:33:41.700 i was right about a lot of ways like you know you i think you mostly uh i the cringe is mostly in

00:33:47.840 the certainty and the the arrogance you know so so that that's why i've been procrastinating it 0.80

00:33:53.900 but but that that's that's what i plus you've mined out about 50 other damn books in the in

00:33:58.480 the interim so it's not like you're not busy so i want to sort of circle by so the you know 0.78

00:34:03.700 hell of a hell of a time american peril and uh and then you you know you're you're hardly an old man

00:34:10.360 uh your wife's saying i told you so i told you so i told you so mom and dad are like jesus

00:34:15.520 you know how did we raise you young man yeah uh or not they probably are more generous yeah

00:34:21.100 there's two golden rules that any man should live by rule one never mess with a country girl 0.99

00:34:30.820 you play stupid games you get stupid prizes and rule two never mess with her friends either 0.99

00:34:37.160 we always say that trust your girlfriends i'm anna sinfield and in this new season of the 1.00

00:34:44.260 girlfriends oh my god this is the same man a group of women discover they've all dated the

00:34:49.980 same prolific con artist.

00:34:52.080 I felt like I got hit by a truck.

00:34:54.040 I thought, how could this happen to me?

00:34:55.780 The cops didn't seem to care,

00:34:57.700 so they take matters into their own hands.

00:35:00.740 They said, oh, hell no.

00:35:02.360 I vowed I will be his last target.

00:35:04.800 He's going to get what he deserves. 0.97

00:35:09.160 Listen to The Girlfriends.

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00:35:11.740 On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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00:35:19.980 Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.

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00:36:21.800 What's up, everyone? I'm Ako Wodum.

00:36:23.640 My next guest, you know from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Ferrell.

00:36:34.560 My dad gave me the best advice ever.

00:36:38.240 I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.

00:36:43.060 I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.

00:36:45.820 I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up-and-coming talent.

00:36:49.840 He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.

00:36:54.780 Yeah.

00:36:55.140 He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

00:36:57.700 And he's like, just give it a shot.

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00:37:04.400 and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.

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00:37:19.520 Right, it wouldn't be that.

00:37:20.540 There's a lot of luck.

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00:37:30.340 In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd

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00:38:36.960 You know, so where are you now in terms of just you go on a walkabout?

00:38:41.920 Is that when you picked up meditations?

00:38:44.040 No, I found, the irony is I found stoicism before.

00:38:48.580 When?

00:38:49.300 In college, I was in, it was, would have been,

00:38:53.240 I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day,

00:38:55.160 October 2006, so it's going on 20 years.

00:38:57.560 And what was the motive?

00:38:58.680 You remember the motivation

00:39:00.060 for even making the purchase? 0.89

00:39:01.740 Yeah, you want to know who told me about the stoics?

00:39:04.800 Yeah.

00:39:06.340 There's no way you could guess.

00:39:08.680 There's no way you could guess.

00:39:10.140 i mean robert green would be the safe bet no it was dr drew okay

00:39:15.420 why not yeah i was i was writing for the college newspaper and i went to this uh they i got invited

00:39:23.640 to this conference uh in west hollywood which was sponsored by trojan condoms okay and and he was

00:39:30.680 he was giving a talk and after the talk uh i was just i was like you know a young kid i was just

00:39:35.560 hungry for advice and direction and all these things and i just said hey um what what you got

00:39:41.700 any book recommendations and he turned me on to the stoics and changed the course of my life

00:39:46.560 and which which which stoic and which book he told me first about epictetus about epictetus and

00:39:51.560 mark surelius and uh you know obviously took a while for them to seep in but but you know sitting

00:39:58.160 in in riverside california reading mark surelius's meditations and what was that the first but was

00:40:03.220 that the book that was the first one yeah um and i just i was like what is this you know and it

00:40:09.840 really was that immediate yeah yeah a hundred percent i didn't know there was writing like

00:40:15.160 this i didn't know there was advice like this i didn't know it was what i was looking for but it

00:40:19.560 was exactly what i was and did you know i mean there was about stoicism that he was about stoicism

00:40:25.420 or was it just the most powerful man in the world and that intrigued you i mean in its life lessons

00:40:30.780 We're only a few years out from the movie Gladiator at this time. So I think I was a little bit primed. But there was something about, I think at the core, young men are looking for direction, right? And they're looking for direction, particularly now in a world where a lot of the old sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that regard are gone.

00:40:54.500 And so there's this just kind of existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't know how to be a person. And it's not like there are these rituals or these groups or this kind of process by which you become a man. That just doesn't exist.

00:41:13.240 And so to sort of pick up the private thoughts of the emperor of Rome, and he's talking to himself about how to not just be a productive person and a strong person, but also a wise person and a good person and how to deal with everything from his temper to his anxiety to his sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people.

00:41:40.660 I just I didn't. If you had asked me to define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said, I don't know, it's like, you know, it's it's those people in togas or it's people on college campuses, you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there are no answers.

00:42:01.260 there you go you know it like that it's first thing it's for people smarter than me right yeah

00:42:05.820 and and then to read the stoics you go oh no no this is for people trying to be human beings like

00:42:13.480 and trying to just deal with the difficulties of life and uh that is what i think struck me so much

00:42:25.160 about meditation because even compared to the other stoics you know whether you're reading

00:42:29.140 Seneca or Epictetus, there they're at least talking to an audience. And there's something

00:42:34.360 so personal and disarming about meditations, because here it's not meant for publication.

00:42:42.640 It's just a guy. It's like a guy's inner monologue. It's like the angel on his shoulder,

00:42:49.880 you know, trying to be like, you're better than this. You should do this. Try to do that. What

00:42:54.040 about this and and so i think i was just i was blown away and then particularly that he is such

00:43:01.200 a good writer that even his notes to himself are some of the best philosophy ever written i think

00:43:07.840 that that that all is what struck me so was that so you sort of you know all of a sudden this book

00:43:13.880 speaks to you and your time of life your state of mind um tetis similarly you mentioned the big

00:43:21.340 three of Stoics, but these aren't the OGs of Stoicism. I mean, what the broader Stoic construct

00:43:27.520 for you, when did that click versus more of a contemporary version of Stoicism that they

00:43:33.760 represented? Well, the OGs of Stoicism, you go back to, you get Zeno and you get Cleanthes and

00:43:38.060 Chrysippes, Cato being maybe another one that maybe some people have heard of. You know, that

00:43:44.820 was the process of kind of tracing it backwards. You kind of, I think most people should start with

00:43:50.840 the the big three of the of the stoics um and then and work their way back there's a reason

00:43:56.560 that they're the ones that are most well known and that is a a really cool thing it just blows

00:44:01.120 your mind about history where you're like okay to marcus aurelius stoicism was ancient philosophy

00:44:07.440 ancient philosophy like five like uh zeno is to marcus aurelius what shakespeare is to us

00:44:16.620 I was quoting Plutarch the other day. The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. It says it, you know, I don't know, 50, 70 AD.

00:44:27.260 Yes.

00:44:27.840 The oldest and most fatal ailment.

00:44:29.800 it's but and that's so and and you take plutarch right again yeah probably the great one of the

00:44:34.760 great biographers truman would talk about how whenever he had a problem as president he could

00:44:39.280 take he could pull out he said i pull up my my old friend plutarch my old friend my old friend

00:44:44.480 plutarch and he would have the solution to my problems but plutarch is writing about you know

00:44:50.040 caesar and cicero and um demosthenes and and and all these greek and roman figures who were to him

00:44:58.860 what he is to us you know not quite that far but but but we think about ancient greece and rome as

00:45:06.380 this kind of like brief moment as opposed to a civilization that lasted hundreds and hundreds

00:45:11.300 and hundreds of years even the decline and fall of rome is like 900 years you know um maybe a

00:45:18.520 little bit less than that depending on where you want to date it to but the point is that should

00:45:21.980 give us comfort in the u.s a little bit uh but it gives you you just realize that that they were

00:45:29.000 like when they were going through stuff when when when marx realis is living through a civil war

00:45:35.780 or cato is living through a civil war or seneca is in exile or enduring the reign of nero what are

00:45:43.000 they turning to they're turning to the ancients who we are also turning to and then what we have

00:45:49.120 is generations. This is why they call philosophy the great conversation, because it's these core

00:45:55.180 ideas that were sort of brought into existence at some point. But the genius of them is the

00:46:03.580 layering on top of each subsequent generation, trying and riffing. And just as the founders,

00:46:09.360 I gave you Jeffrey Rosen's The Pursuit of Happiness. The founders were turning to the

00:46:15.580 Stokes. My nine-year-old is obsessed with Hamilton, the play Hamilton. The most famous play

00:46:23.600 in the Western world in the 18th century was a play about Cato. And it was as famous as Hamilton

00:46:30.760 is now. And in the way that, you know, like if you go immigrants, they get the job done. People 0.99

00:46:36.160 know what you're talking about. When George Washington would talk about, you know, looking

00:46:43.280 at events through the calm light of mild philosophy or when they say i have regret i have but one life

00:46:50.240 to give for my country these are lines from that play and so it's this great tradition of these

00:46:55.680 ideas being just so perfectly expressed and the example being so powerful that people have been

00:47:00.680 turning to it over and over again and um that's the that's the really powerful thing stoicism

00:47:06.480 wasn't marcus realized it was 600 years of of of of it in greece and rome and then you know i mean

00:47:15.260 it continues on up it's it's not like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it

00:47:20.120 in the 1800 years since they absolutely have and so it's it's just this this energy i think you tap

00:47:25.760 into and you go oh these are ideas that have really been tested in the crucible of human

00:47:31.800 experience was the word stoic i mean was i mean when zeno but it was 300 bc or something yeah

00:47:38.180 uh said i am i declare myself a stoic uh it was or was he declared a stoic well that's that it i

00:47:47.000 think it's to zeno's credit that this the philosophy is not called zenoism right there's a little bit

00:47:51.540 right at the beginning there's a some humility so stoic so so the founding story of stoicism is

00:47:57.720 zeno's a merchant uh and he deals in this rare purple dye um and uh that that dye being a commodity

00:48:06.680 in those days a dying purple yeah we we uh we we think of like it's funny where the strait of

00:48:13.460 hormuz is shut down global trade that's the modern thing it's like no the purple dye was this

00:48:19.140 commodity that that was made across multiple islands in the mediterranean and it would get

00:48:25.080 traded and moved around like the same the same navigational issues we're having right now people

00:48:31.940 were talking about then um but but but he suffers this shipwreck he washes up in athens and uh ends

00:48:39.260 up there discovering philosophy and that's where stoicism starts but he just begins lecturing about

00:48:44.940 these ideas on the stoa pokila which is the painted porch in athens and that's where that's

00:48:52.020 what stoic means it just stoa means porch it doesn't mean anything these are just the guys

00:48:57.420 from the porch bullshitting and talking and and sharing um it is funny then that he would talk

00:49:03.320 about that that's this merchant of purple dye his philosophy would become the philosophy you

00:49:10.480 associate with marcus realis because i could tell you mouthing the words there one of the powerful

00:49:15.980 lines in meditations is marcus realis says uh this is a reference to being emperors is be careful

00:49:21.120 that you are not dyed purple um and he's he's saying that that make sure that power doesn't

00:49:27.540 corrupt you god bless because the the roman emperor was one of the few that could wear

00:49:31.280 the color purple so you're reading all of this uh your portal to this beginning with meditations 0.73

00:49:41.140 which has had an outsized influence and on everybody that's ever picked up did you when 0.91

00:49:46.360 did you pick it up uh picked up all the wrong versions yeah couldn't understand a damn thing

00:49:50.880 interesting i look back it's interesting i must have 15 or 20 different copies wow and it took me 0.92

00:49:56.560 listening to you on damn youtube to go here's the one i recommend i'd like to start reading i'm like

00:50:01.320 wait then this makes some sense because the translations are you know time of back to 0.98

00:50:05.820 decades and decades ago so i think my father someone you know was around and then here my

00:50:10.480 uncle says here's a book you should read i'm like jesus you know last thing so they just sort of

00:50:14.460 collected dust but there were a few efforts yes and they just didn't go anywhere because it didn't

00:50:19.800 speak to me with the kind of language that I understand today.

00:50:22.960 I do.

00:50:23.740 I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon and I just bought a random copy that

00:50:27.540 I got.

00:50:28.200 The first one, I got the copy that changed my life and I've now recommended it to so

00:50:34.120 many people.

00:50:35.160 That just, that's the first, the algorithm blessed me.

00:50:38.140 For someone who's so critical of algorithms, in that one case, the algorithm blessed me.

00:50:42.180 By the way, one of the things I love that you do is you'll go back to the same, you'll

00:50:46.140 go to different translations.

00:50:47.320 Yeah.

00:50:47.440 and you're able to sort of lay them out and i mean it shows i mean you know how language is

00:50:52.720 radically changed well that and how important the translation is yes i mean i so i don't speak

00:50:58.540 greek or latin so i i don't uh i don't know exactly but it is interesting when you read

00:51:04.760 all these different translations you go oh like this is the same idea 15 different cuts on it and

00:51:10.780 what a big role the translator plays and and also um what a big role um the moment in time

00:51:18.020 that you're in so play so how we like how you interpret it in the context of of something

00:51:23.440 contemporary so i i've been reading meditation for 15 years and then uh 2020 pandemic hits

00:51:31.560 and i'm reading meditations and all of a sudden there's all these references to the plague and

00:51:37.800 to pestilence and and you realize oh this is a plague book this guy wrote in the middle of the

00:51:43.880 antonine plague yeah uh this 15 year pandemic that killed millions of people and you never picked up

00:51:49.160 on that i mean necessarily i guess i just i you don't you you think he's being metaphorical yeah

00:51:54.640 and then and then you realize he's being literal like one of the passages i thought the most about

00:51:59.120 during the pandemic is this one where he goes um there's there's two types of plagues there's the

00:52:04.820 one that can destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character and i and then then

00:52:10.780 you watch over the next two years people get radicalized people turn off their hearts and

00:52:18.120 their um their neighborliness to other people and and you and in other cases lose their mind

00:52:25.440 come uh you know uh do and say things they they would have been shocked by just a few years

00:52:32.280 earlier and you go oh that he must have seen that you know he must he must have seen that

00:52:38.500 and and i think there's a there's a famous story about marcus aurelius um he's presiding over some

00:52:45.740 court and one of the lawyers uh makes this reference to the victims of the plague and he

00:52:52.440 just bursts into tears and so you think number one i thought this the stoics don't have emotions

00:52:58.720 they don't care about people yes and then and and here he is just sort of weeping over these

00:53:03.180 untold uh thousands of people who have died you know in some cases people we would have uh

00:53:08.240 um cared deeply about and been very close to and you go oh um that's not what stoicism isn't this 0.98

00:53:16.920 uh uh fuck you i got mine yeah or like i got a strong immune system did you think it was when 0.99

00:53:24.120 you first heard about it? Because so many people see it as just, yeah, I'm just, I will have no 1.00

00:53:28.940 emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, sort of rigid, robotic. I think what I was, I was

00:53:35.660 attracted to stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted to stoicism for centuries, 0.98

00:53:39.760 which is, it's about getting your shit together, getting it on lock, you know, 0.57

00:53:46.160 just, just that sort of ownership and control of the self, which I think if anyone needs 0.99

00:53:53.900 help in its young men. So I think that was my initial attraction to it. And then, and I think

00:54:00.260 I was attracted to it, trappings of power and all the things that make it interesting and unique

00:54:06.920 compared to, I don't know, existentialism or some other school of philosophy. But over the years,

00:54:15.040 you realize, oh, this is actually a profoundly ethical philosophy. This is about our connections

00:54:21.600 to other people this is about our responsibilities to other people this is about being uh like when

00:54:29.180 when they're talking about excellence they don't simply mean professional excellence and that

00:54:33.760 actually professional excellence is is pretty common but professional and personal excellence

00:54:41.040 like sort of rounding that package out is actually the the sort of thing to be more ambitious about

00:54:46.740 So I think my initial attraction to it was one thing and then what it works on you.

00:54:52.320 And I think it's interesting to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping it over the years.

00:54:57.060 It's important that people understand stoicism is a philosophy you should be reading, not a philosophy you have read.

00:55:06.840 You say that.

00:55:07.800 I love that you say that.

00:55:08.760 And also you make the point, and I don't remember exactly who said it, but you never swim in the same river twice.

00:55:14.420 Yes.

00:55:14.660 This notion that the river's changed or step in the same river.

00:55:17.940 I'll swim in it too.

00:55:18.980 I like that too. 1.00

00:55:19.660 American, just up the block where you were growing up.

00:55:22.420 But we change as well.

00:55:23.860 Yes.

00:55:24.300 And back to this, you know, you're reading it again and now we're in a plague.

00:55:28.620 And all of a sudden you're reading it as, I mean, almost as a new visitor to the same old.

00:55:35.140 Well, I think it's so fascinating that, yeah, you picked up a book when you were one age,

00:55:40.100 you picked it up again, another, it continually wasn't working.

00:55:42.780 And then at some point, and I bet if you actually laid those translations out side by side, they're not that different.

00:55:50.040 They're not that different.

00:55:50.420 I think you were profoundly different.

00:55:53.180 Well, I was trying to find language, period.

00:55:55.520 I wrote a book about my own learning disability.

00:55:57.840 So just, I mean, literally the words, just above my pay grade, that needs to be explained to me.

00:56:02.420 I remember it's Shakespeare class in college.

00:56:04.480 I mean, you're toast as a dyslexic.

00:56:06.440 You're like, wow, me do thoth.

00:56:08.640 I mean, Jesus.

00:56:09.320 So you're like immediately trying to find a cliff note version or something on TV that you could claim that I read or understood.

00:56:16.440 Yeah.

00:56:16.680 So no, it's so you did all that, you know, so you're reading this, but you weren't necessarily going, wait a second.

00:56:22.740 This is my new path, my career that I'm going to become, you know, I'm going to translate this to a whole different audience that I'm going to be able to express this with new media.

00:56:33.160 I'm going to be able to get a whole new generation to understand and bring to life these extraordinary figures.

00:56:39.740 No, I mean, I was introduced to the Stoics in 2006, and my first book on Stoic philosophy came out in summer of 2014.

00:56:47.980 14, yeah.

00:56:48.680 And what was the inspiration?

00:56:50.380 What said, you know, I have to do my version of this?

00:56:53.920 Been plenty written about Stoicism.

00:56:55.160 Yeah, I don't know.

00:56:55.820 i i i was i wrote my first book because i wanted to be a writer and i knew that that book had to

00:57:02.860 come first you couldn't write the stoic books and then the media book so i knew how to get the media

00:57:06.460 book out of the way so i did the media book first and then what i really wanted to write about was

00:57:10.200 was the stoics um but uh no i i i thought i had this idea for one stoic book about this one passage

00:57:17.320 that was it um and and uh again obstacles what stands in the way becomes the way yes i love it

00:57:24.500 come on i know i heard you say this somewhere i mean i just i just it's too good it's the best

00:57:29.060 it's the best someone what some impediment to action becomes the action yes stands away becomes

00:57:35.760 away but you want to know something uh funny about that quote again you you evolve your

00:57:40.140 understanding of these things as you can so i wrote the book the obstacles away mostly about

00:57:45.360 how we deal with like professional obstacles right like how you're trying to like do something

00:57:51.980 and something gets in the way which is obviously what he's partly talking about there but the

00:57:55.820 fuller quote which obviously i knew is i i edited it to put some ellipses in there but mostly what

00:58:01.160 he's talking about is is is annoying people and obnoxious people he's he's saying people can cause

00:58:07.720 problems for us they can get in our way um but you know um we all he says we always have the

00:58:14.720 ability to accommodate and adapt he says we can convert this to our own you know our own

00:58:19.900 potential acting. And then he says, you know, the impediment to action advances action,

00:58:23.620 what stands in the way becomes the way. And then you go, oh, okay. So when he's saying

00:58:27.680 some person comes up and says something horrible to you or some person screws something up for you

00:58:34.880 or some person, you know, is just constantly stressing you out or abusing you or whatever

00:58:43.160 it is, what he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you to be the better person,

00:58:48.740 the bigger person, to grow as a person in wrestling with and handling what this person

00:58:56.640 is doing to you. And so you go, oh, okay, like when the Stoics are saying the obstacles away,

00:59:03.620 they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to, you know, hey, this huge recession that we

00:59:09.900 just got plunged into is actually a chance for you to retrench in the business and tighten things

00:59:15.740 up and come back smarter and leaner and, you know, more organized. It may be. But he's saying,

00:59:23.600 actually, you know, this person who just broke your heart or this person who just lied to you

00:59:29.820 or stole from you or this person who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance for

00:59:35.680 you to grow as a human being in how you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading of the

00:59:42.860 passage when i'm 19 but it's it's how i understand it 20 years later and you understand it it's sort

00:59:48.020 of the core part of what you said is sort of for you if you were going to distill the essence

00:59:52.700 of stoicism this notion that we have agency yeah that you know it's not what happens to us how we

00:59:58.980 respond to what happens to us yeah i yeah i would i'd be curious like in in politics isn't that

01:00:05.100 i'd be curious to find some line of work in which that's not the case the case right like you wake

01:00:12.480 up and somebody gives you the news and then you figure out your job is to say here's what we're

01:00:18.160 going to do yeah but so much of our life is this sort of victim mentality that you know that it's

01:00:24.180 fate and we can't control our own fate yeah uh you know the system's rigged against me there's

01:00:30.380 nothing i can do nothing one person can do yes who this is whose fault it is this is how why it

01:00:37.200 should have gone the other way um just a lot of a lot of dwelling on why it happened as opposed to

01:00:44.400 what you're gonna do about it yeah so it's interesting to me just you know i i write a

01:00:49.480 little bit and uh some of my my friends like why are you writing about tony robbins and but it's

01:00:55.260 interesting i i i write about it because i was you know around your age and all of a sudden

01:00:59.340 And my contemporary version, dare I say, was this guy who self-described with big teeth on infomercials selling me cassette tapes.

01:01:11.600 And I listened to those today and I'm like, so much is, you know.

01:01:18.680 Well, I do think that there's a little bit there that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a whole these days.

01:01:25.300 Right. Like like that, that that is. That's what Socrates is doing. That's what that's what Aristotle was doing. They were they were trying. I mean, Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say teaching the young boys what they need to know about life that their parents didn't want them to know.

01:01:47.800 right? Or challenging convention or, you know, teaching them a new way of thinking. And I guess

01:01:55.400 it just says something that philosophy does not speak to people in a way that it's supposed to.

01:02:04.040 It is supposed to be the guide to the good life, which, you know, to me, the American dream is

01:02:09.260 both a financial dream, but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual dream of a better life.

01:02:17.000 And philosophy is supposed to be part of that. And it's just not. And I think we're in extra trouble when, you know, organized religion has not just fallen away, but also, you know, alienated huge swaths of the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew up in, or you're looking at the sort of political radicalization of sort of evangelical faith.

01:02:46.140 And so if you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals, you're also not going to have religion, where are people supposed to learn this stuff?

01:03:04.100 And it's, I think, created a huge vacuum that certain bad actors have stepped in to fill.

01:03:12.980 And you haven't become a bad actor.

01:03:15.440 thanks uh you talk about you know because you you talked to you we can go back to sort of march

01:03:20.520 2020 and sort of the beginning and we could talk about that pandemic people you know i mean i

01:03:26.460 explains more things in more ways on more days of of everything sure our relationships back to

01:03:31.840 truth and trust is certainly our politics i didn't fully absorb it appreciate it at the time and what

01:03:38.720 we've become on the other side and what people became people i don't they were unrecognizable

01:03:43.140 to this day that went through that process we can get delon musk in a minute but i knew him well

01:03:48.760 before that's my favorite part of your book uh you talked about how you came of age as all

01:03:56.620 you came of age at the same time as all those silicon valley people i was with larry and

01:04:02.820 sergey at google and when steve jobs taps us on the shoulder and says hey he wasn't interested

01:04:07.640 in me he was interested in larry and sergey to show us pulled out of his back pocket uh the

01:04:11.560 first iphone and we're like you know it was like a joyride we're going with our fingers like oh we

01:04:16.400 and they're all by you know they were just in there was sense of optimism back to you when you

01:04:20.460 were writing this book so what happened like i i i think that that quote where elon musk is on rogan

01:04:26.180 and he says you know empathy is going to be the death of western civilization that to me was was

01:04:30.500 one and then when i watched mark andreason talk about how he has zero introspection and and he's

01:04:36.060 like i never look back he goes i never look backwards it's like by the way that's not what

01:04:40.420 introspection is just to be like, you clearly don't even know what it is. Like introspection

01:04:44.840 is looking inwards, just to be clear. It's not looking backwards. But he goes, you know,

01:04:50.340 the great men of history, they didn't look around. It's like the bad ones, you know,

01:04:56.280 the ones who were responsible for genocides and pointless wars and ecological disasters and

01:05:03.140 economic calamities. Yes, they had no sense of introspection or history or perspective,

01:05:10.660 but the great ones, whether you're talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt,

01:05:15.960 Washington or Lincoln. The best of the best. All the greats. And I just named a bunch of

01:05:22.720 white dudes, so I'm sorry. We could talk about that too and where women are in the stoic history.

01:05:28.720 But the point is, the great historical figures are, by definition, profoundly considerate and conscientious people.

01:05:39.740 And when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings.

01:05:47.140 So what's happened?

01:05:49.220 What the hell happened?

01:05:50.640 Yeah, what happened?

01:05:51.240 And what happened to you that you didn't fall prey to all that?

01:05:53.600 I mean, your rise has just gone.

01:05:56.940 I mean, it's, you can, you were wildly successful before the pandemic, but, you know, I mean,

01:06:03.660 now the ubiquity and your success, it's just exploded, but it's, but it suggests that people

01:06:10.600 are, they're not, they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either, that

01:06:15.460 they're looking for something different.

01:06:16.540 I mean, look, I've, I've definitely experienced some success at small potatoes compared to

01:06:20.560 being, you know, one of the richest or most powerful people in the world.

01:06:23.080 So I don't want to judge people whose experience is something I can't even comprehend.

01:06:32.060 But it does seem weird that these people, many of whom I also knew or met over the years

01:06:37.760 and thought were one thing and sort of revealed themselves to be another.

01:06:41.860 What's your explanation?

01:06:44.320 I'm struggling with it.

01:06:45.540 And I've been struggling.

01:06:46.260 I mean, I struggle with it a little bit in the book.

01:06:48.760 Even who I was becoming.

01:06:50.420 I mean, I was, you know, and, you know, God bless.

01:06:53.320 I was reading one of your books a few years ago

01:06:55.080 and took a little indirect shot at me,

01:06:57.420 and I thought it was completely legit.

01:06:58.720 What did I say?

01:06:59.140 You just say, you know, back, I don't want anyone to get back.

01:07:02.500 One of the most important stories you always say is what,

01:07:05.980 during the plague, what Marcus really just did. 0.99

01:07:08.440 He sold all the things, and here I was going to a damn restaurant. 0.99

01:07:11.580 Oh, did I make a picture? 0.99

01:07:12.140 And you made it, and I'm like, you know what?

01:07:14.520 And it was legit.

01:07:15.500 It hurt.

01:07:16.340 It hurt because it was right.

01:07:18.360 And of course, I knew I was no greater critic of me than me.

01:07:21.320 And so I appreciate it.

01:07:22.340 But so, you know, but in a lot of what I write about in this book, I mean, talk about ego.

01:07:27.580 Yeah.

01:07:27.940 No, there's some words in there.

01:07:29.080 I mean, the whole thing.

01:07:31.400 I mean, I just, I laid it all out.

01:07:32.840 I laid myself out in this sort of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery and

01:07:38.280 discovering myself and my own, you know, and my own, you know, this, there's so many, but

01:07:44.620 you know expectations and how i was living in other people's expectations yeah i was kind of

01:07:50.200 losing myself and how now and i think it's why i sort of really dove deep into your work it's just

01:07:56.200 so sort of all coincided i'm like oh you know just literally just breathe again and have perspective

01:08:03.300 and grace and humility you're saying introspection introspection like the thing they are running

01:08:09.440 away from running away from it and the coarseness yeah that's why i've got forgive me i didn't mean

01:08:15.700 to put you behind these knee pads and i think about with trump i mean the obstacles away to me

01:08:20.480 it's so profound in the context of how i'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle it stands in

01:08:26.120 the way yeah of decent from my perspective decency lack of character all those those cardinal virtues

01:08:32.220 that you write so beautifully about this notion of justice and there's no sort of what courage

01:08:36.500 really is, and temperance, all these found what discipline looks like. It's an anathema to what

01:08:41.140 we have today. But I think about, all right, obstacle is the way. It stands the way, becomes

01:08:46.460 the way. So how we can sort of with agency manifest and take responsibility and have the

01:08:54.880 discipline and the character to not just identify the problems, but begin to march strategies and

01:09:01.020 iteration uh to address these problems and and to move in a more enlightened uh direction and

01:09:06.340 again you've been a huge part of that for millions of us it's uh but but certainly for the guy sitting

01:09:12.960 here as the current occupant of the governor's mansion that's uh unbelievable to me i think

01:09:19.040 you know there's this passage of meditations where mark swillows talks about fighting to be

01:09:23.040 the person that philosophy tried to make you love it and i think about that that's what he's doing

01:09:27.640 in meditations is he's trying he's trying to be better than whatever he could get away with

01:09:32.280 or whatever you know he would he might just be on his own um he's sort of aspiring to

01:09:39.520 be some greater self and it does feel like in the sort of silicon valley kind of like

01:09:46.840 leadership class there is this and and trump i think obviously hastened it but it's this kind

01:09:55.440 of like why why should you try to be better why just do what you want yeah you know get yours

01:10:00.080 when when you're famous they let you do it you know and and it's like the embracing of of that

01:10:06.920 and the idea of like why one of my favorite headlines of all time there's this huffington

01:10:12.520 post headline from 15 years ago and it says that i don't know how to explain to you that you're

01:10:19.080 supposed to care about other people and that that and and it really does feel like like there was

01:10:25.880 this concerted effort in a small group of people to just let themselves off the hook for being

01:10:33.020 responsible for or to anyone despite the incredible power and privilege that they enjoy there you go

01:10:41.220 there you go and we're i mean it's and we're living with the consequences of that i mean we

01:10:46.620 you know we've hit on you know young men but you you know subtly made the point i'll make it more

01:10:52.820 expressed young men are in crisis yeah and it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals

01:10:58.440 and you know now i mean we're seeing a little bit now with religion people are finding religion a

01:11:03.200 little bit again but we've lost those institutions that connection to each other i am because you are

01:11:08.720 this notion of ubuntu this commonwealth you know and this uh and and of course with algorithms and

01:11:15.840 now this manosphere broadly defined and you know hustlers university and bugatti bugatti get mine

01:11:23.780 and you know and and all the just patriarchy that comes in there i mean and these guys sometimes

01:11:29.340 trying to attach these damn i know i know it's it's uh i try to say it's not stoicism is not 0.71

01:11:37.400 a formula for you to be a better sociopath god bless it's supposed to do the opposite it's supposed 0.98

01:11:42.460 to it's supposed to help you because look we're all inherently selfish um we are all uh self

01:11:50.240 interested um and the stoics talk about this like you come out of the womb being like uh inherently 0.99

01:11:57.480 not just dependent on others but you will you will suck your parents dry literally and figuratively 0.51

01:12:05.180 so you can survive that's what your genes are designed for you to do that's right and and that 0.93

01:12:10.520 maturation or growth the stoics would say is the like the the the overcoming of that realizing that

01:12:18.180 you have these obligations and duties to to not just these people immediately around you but

01:12:25.100 everyone else like um there's this there's this stoic named hierocles and he talked about the

01:12:31.680 circles of concern yeah and and that the he said the purpose of the philosophy is pulling these

01:12:37.220 outer rings inwards and to me that like when i heard that i was like oh that's that's what they

01:12:43.800 were talking about in church as a kid that's also what jesus was talking about and so there is there

01:12:50.060 is actually a if catholicism especially because it has those cardinal virtues um that i think

01:12:57.580 you sort of you immediately recognize it in the stoics that oh well this was the tradition before

01:13:05.020 that tradition yeah there's a lot of overlap there yeah well i love me just even when we're

01:13:09.680 celebrating the 250th anniversary of the declaration best of roman republic best of greek democracy i

01:13:15.140 mean back to your point in terms even the books you just thank you for the books but just reminding

01:13:19.600 me the founding fathers the direct inspiration from these greats yeah washington's the only one

01:13:26.800 of the founders who who doesn't read the stoics in greek or latin like he only reads them in english

01:13:35.200 uh because every they were they were so familiar like jefferson has jefferson has seneca in french

01:13:43.040 on his nightstand when he dies and so like these were these were incredibly literate philosophical

01:13:49.500 figures. And, you know, the primary influence on the founders was not, you know, those English

01:13:57.860 legal thinkers. It was the, it was the, when they're writing the Federalist papers and they're

01:14:06.440 masquerading as these Roman characters, they're thinking about Cato, they're thinking about

01:14:10.760 Seneca, they're thinking about Marcus Aurelius. Those are the people who are influencing them

01:14:15.860 the most. And, you know, that does go back to, I think, the founding of America, which we've

01:14:21.760 fundamentally misunderstood. This idea that, yes, on the one hand, this is a country about freedom,

01:14:28.720 where the state can't tell you how to be or how to live. Your individual behavior is not legally

01:14:39.460 prescribed the way that it would be in another society. But they were very much of the mind that

01:14:49.140 all that freedom was to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people. And John Adams

01:14:58.160 said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked. Like, the Constitution cannot, is not strong enough. 0.99

01:15:04.000 uh he says uh it will go like a whale through a net like a whale through i love that um

01:15:11.040 actually this is my this is my uh i wrote a piece about this for the economist a couple years ago

01:15:16.340 and maybe maybe now that you're leaving office this could be your next project okay so so victor

01:15:21.500 frankl talked about how there's a statue of liberty in new york harbor and he believed that

01:15:27.100 it should be counterbalanced by a statue of responsibility in san francisco harbor that's

01:15:31.700 And I think the idea that we're going to spend federal money to make Alcatraz a prison again,

01:15:41.700 what we desperately need as a society is not to lock poor people up.

01:15:46.560 We need a monument, I think, to responsibility and our obligations to each other.

01:15:53.220 Ryan, I was just talking to Senator Padilla about this.

01:15:55.660 Really?

01:15:55.800 Literally, this is a real conversation.

01:15:57.940 No way.

01:15:58.360 Yeah, so I'm not waiting until I'm out of office, all right?

01:16:01.140 Amazing.

01:16:01.380 No, I love this idea.

01:16:03.560 Well, this notion of responsibility, I don't want to get too political, but it's kind of missing in my party at the kind of level that I think it needs to be.

01:16:12.320 We talk about opportunity.

01:16:14.020 We talk in terms of community sometimes, but not responsibility.

01:16:18.820 It's about service and civics and all these.

01:16:21.740 I mean, it's really critical.

01:16:24.160 And back to, I don't know, it's part of that three-legged stool.

01:16:27.940 And I think often we're talking two legs, not that third leg.

01:16:31.380 Well, and also the responsibility and agency are related to each other, right?

01:16:35.420 Because there is this thing in our society where I think most people are like, hey, this

01:16:40.680 shouldn't be happening.

01:16:41.580 This isn't good.

01:16:43.000 I don't like this.

01:16:44.080 This is wrong.

01:16:45.300 And then everyone is waiting for somebody else to do something about it.

01:16:49.120 I mean, Brandeis said in democracy, the most important office is office of citizen.

01:16:53.620 Yeah.

01:16:54.140 Active, not inert citizenship.

01:16:56.880 But you mentioned the Democratic Party.

01:16:58.120 I think even like your thing on redistricting, right?

01:17:00.720 Like, everyone is like, hey, what they're doing in Texas, which is where I live, is wrong.

01:17:04.980 It's rigging the system, whatever.

01:17:07.040 And then, like, the typical Democratic Party response would be, well, why don't they stop doing that?

01:17:14.020 Exactly.

01:17:14.700 Write an op-ed.

01:17:15.600 Yeah. 0.98

01:17:15.920 So shame on them. 0.99

01:17:17.320 Shame on them.

01:17:18.240 Meanwhile, they're consolidating power.

01:17:19.900 Yeah.

01:17:20.780 Yeah.

01:17:21.320 I mean, it's hard, though, right?

01:17:22.620 Because you don't want to, you know, when they, I mean, Michelle Obama, when they go low, we want to go high.

01:17:27.580 And, you know, we have a higher sense of self in that respect.

01:17:30.720 Um, but you know, we'll lose this Republic. Yeah. That's the way I feel. Right. I mean,

01:17:36.140 this is, this is, this is code red. Yes. This is serious. And so this notion of having agency

01:17:41.600 stands in the way becomes, sorry, I'm going to keep coming back. You wrote the damn book, 1.00

01:17:46.500 you know, you rewired my brain. And, uh, and, uh, this notion of being, it's, it literally 0.99

01:17:52.200 that became the foundation, the inspiration and the responsibility to be held to a higher level

01:17:58.860 accountability particularly when you have this gift for me it's a gift of public service and

01:18:04.320 to be in this position i don't want to dream regretting well and because it also it could

01:18:08.780 have not worked yeah it could have been uh it could have failed it could have been embarrassing

01:18:13.140 it could have been the end of your oh 100 and all the above but there is this there is this

01:18:18.800 sort of sense of like well i gotta keep my powder dry for the moment that there i there is this

01:18:27.260 thing where people tell themselves hey like later i'll be more secure yeah or later that's when i'll

01:18:33.620 do it and the result is is nobody's doing anything thank you that's what it feels like i mean come on

01:18:40.040 i mean what you you look you write a lot about this you talk a lot about this it just it's the

01:18:45.140 do yeah yeah stop talking stop thinking about just start doing it you gotta it's action you know and

01:18:51.340 it's i mean this notion yeah when i'm 30 then or when i'm a millionaire then or when i have like

01:18:56.060 Then I'll be, you know, or, you know, this notion even you have to be something to do

01:19:00.400 something that I have to be a city council or governor or mayor before I can meet, move

01:19:04.960 there.

01:19:05.420 I don't think Gandhi waited around for elected office.

01:19:07.900 I don't recall.

01:19:08.860 Seriously.

01:19:09.580 Was it president King, Dr. King?

01:19:11.940 It wasn't.

01:19:12.800 All right.

01:19:13.060 I mean, you know, even, even the guys that served in office like Havel or even Mandela,

01:19:18.260 I don't remember, you know, four years of Mandela's presidency were interesting.

01:19:22.080 The new concept, I don't want to disregard it, but that's not why I think of Mandela.

01:19:26.060 His peak of his power was when he was in jail.

01:19:28.360 Yeah.

01:19:29.180 There's moral authority.

01:19:30.300 And one of the things that you miss, too, is like all the—we're naming the named guys.

01:19:38.240 And most of those were men.

01:19:39.740 But you're naming mostly the people that we've heard of as if they also weren't part of enormous organizations of a bunch of ordinary people who are also participating.

01:19:50.000 And so, like, it may fall on you to be one of those people.

01:19:54.780 but uh it may also just fall on like like Rosa Parks was a secretary at at you know the NAACP

01:20:02.720 and and and eventually yes she also has her moment in the thing but if if that had been the only

01:20:08.820 thing she'd done if she'd only been answering phones there you've got it that would have

01:20:13.180 enabled whoever ultimately was the person who doesn't go to the back of the bus right and and

01:20:18.260 of course you know she was echo of Vida B. Wells and so many others that that that inspired along

01:20:23.540 the way there's this other book i should have brought you do you know what the highlander

01:20:26.660 school was no okay so so again we think of rosa parks as like this lady that just gets tired one

01:20:33.580 day and you know sets in motion there was this thing in tennessee in the mountains of tennessee

01:20:38.400 called the highlander school which is run by this this sort of folksy family of activists

01:20:43.560 and it was a school where they trained activists in non-violence and political activism and almost

01:20:52.420 all the major figures of the civil rights movement including john lewis uh including uh rosa parks

01:20:59.300 they all go to this school and it's not only i'm going to deny that i didn't know about it

01:21:03.840 it's not only humiliated not only do they they they learn the things like they would practice

01:21:08.600 you know having racial slurs shouted at them and how how do you how do you roll on the ground and

01:21:13.420 and cover yourself as you're getting beaten how do you you know how do you talk to people

01:21:17.540 but it's also where like the relationships that they then took back all over the country

01:21:21.780 but it's like nobody knows the name of this school or not enough people do but those people their

01:21:27.420 coaching tree yeah i'm free i'm right now forgetting the names of the founders of the

01:21:31.640 highlander school septima clark was one of the graduates that their coaching tree leads to the

01:21:37.160 civil rights movement just as by the way gandhi's coaching tree leads to the people that came back

01:21:41.820 to to found the highlander school and so yeah again you're gonna you what one of the things

01:21:47.480 the stokes talk about is that like we're all assigned these like parts these roles love it

01:21:53.340 and we don't know what it is it could be a big one it could be a little one but your job is to

01:21:57.460 just play the hell out of that role and um i i you but chances are your role is not sit on the

01:22:06.400 sidelines and complain oh god i can't take it i mean oh i i just can't take i can't take the

01:22:13.340 And I don't mean to disregard people

01:22:15.940 that truly do feel like they're victims

01:22:17.880 and have plenty of receipts to back that up.

01:22:22.200 I can't take it.

01:22:23.680 Do something.

01:22:24.960 Seriously, it's exhausting.

01:22:26.780 You know, I love what you're saying about just,

01:22:29.000 you know, we all have this role.

01:22:30.080 I mean, it's the Whitman, right?

01:22:31.640 O'Neill life, you know, the powerful play goes on

01:22:34.380 and we all must contribute our verse.

01:22:36.580 And this notion that we have to contribute our verse.

01:22:39.200 Again, back to agency.

01:22:39.880 And you know what Whitman was doing in the Civil War?

01:22:40.980 He was volunteering in hospitals,

01:22:42.520 taking care of soldiers.

01:22:43.340 Like, there's always something you can do.

01:22:46.060 Yes.

01:22:46.420 And the problem is, I think, our political leaders are not willing to risk their political careers.

01:22:55.820 Well, they had no problem in risking their political reputation by trying to get rid of Rosa Parks' race in the social studies books because it was woke.

01:23:04.680 Right. 0.87

01:23:05.360 As if race had anything to do with her story.

01:23:09.460 They finally were called out on that.

01:23:11.460 By the way, as you were called out of the Naval Academy.

01:23:14.620 Yeah, that was fun.

01:23:16.200 What the hell was that?

01:23:17.660 It was surreal, yeah.

01:23:19.140 I was supposed to be talking.

01:23:20.160 Some of your great speeches and lectures are there.

01:23:23.240 It was an honor of my life to be able to talk there.

01:23:25.820 And the reception you get there is off the charts.

01:23:28.680 One of the few things that gives me hope about our society

01:23:31.440 is if you spend any time with people who are in the armed services right now.

01:23:35.580 The West Point guy, I was with a dozen of these kids.

01:23:39.480 It blew me away.

01:23:40.680 especially because like that was the opposite of who i was at 17 18 you're just like yeah

01:23:46.720 you just you meet like you have it you have it together at this level it's incredible and there

01:23:51.600 i mean they could they could be at harvard they could be working at some wall street firm they

01:23:56.420 could be anywhere other than what they're doing and they're choosing to be there um and then you

01:24:01.660 watch even even as as they are being mismanaged as as they objectively are right now just the

01:24:07.600 what they are able to do the problems they are able to solve oh come on it's incredible

01:24:12.480 uh uh so anyways yeah so i was supposed to give a talk at the like the naval academy and i was

01:24:19.620 canceled the last minute right yeah about about an hour before i was supposed to go on um because

01:24:24.680 because i because uh i was gonna make the political statement that i think removing

01:24:29.100 books from the library which is a bad idea yeah you know i think there was two years ago four

01:24:35.260 3,340 books, if I recall, the exact number that were banned in libraries or schools across this

01:24:40.700 country. This banning, binge, rewriting history, censoring historical facts, as if that makes us

01:24:45.620 stronger and wiser. Yeah, it's like, hey, this person is going to be, you know, in charge of

01:24:51.880 nuclear weapons or flying a fighter jet, but Maya Angelou's memoir is too low for them to handle.

01:25:00.500 Yeah, of course. Yeah, they can't handle it. Yeah, they won't be able to handle it. They're way too

01:25:04.220 sensitive for that yeah exactly um but you gave the lecture nonetheless yeah well i gave it online

01:25:09.960 put this stuff into practice you know i was like oh actually you know it's it's an it was an

01:25:16.000 interesting insight into it too because i remember talking to the person giving you know the messenger

01:25:20.400 who had to pass along that i was you know being and who i really felt for because it's like hey

01:25:24.480 this this dude has a pension um yeah anyways i i he goes look we just don't want to we just don't

01:25:31.440 want to draw any attention to ourselves you know and i said i think i i don't think that's how this

01:25:37.100 works i think i think canceling a lecture an hour before i'm supposed to go on is going to

01:25:41.240 add a lot more attention a few dozen headlines and and yeah and and so yeah i gave i gave the

01:25:46.780 talk online and it was obviously seen by a lot more people than than would have uh there but

01:25:50.880 and you had the audacity to talk about i don't know uh these uh you know these uh extreme

01:25:56.260 progressive liberal woke uh you know admirals like stockdale yes yeah yes among many others by

01:26:02.180 the way um a great california story there he the navy sends him to stanford in 1961 and he gets an

01:26:11.940 advanced degree and in and as part of his studies there he's he he takes classes in comparative

01:26:18.680 marxism that's what i forgot uh and and and then and then is introduced to to epictetus and and

01:26:26.260 it's those two things that allow him to survive uh the pow experience and i was like seven years

01:26:33.180 or something i was fascinated to my grandfather grandfather yeah just like what get what he didn't

01:26:38.380 read epictetus well he came back just when you are exposed to an experience that's designed to

01:26:44.480 break you as a human being and they strip you down and then just fling you back into the world

01:26:50.940 like very few people could can can manage that and the reason that stockdale doesn't break is that

01:26:56.660 he is introduced to these things at a woke liberal institution run by you know california hippies

01:27:05.520 and uh and it's interesting and i don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole with stockdale but

01:27:11.520 this notion of optimism, that wasn't his go-to default to just remain optimistic. He just

01:27:21.160 remained clear and confident with the end goal. The optimist didn't tend to do as well.

01:27:28.980 The stoic version of optimism is not, oh, this is going to go amazingly. I'm going to get lucky

01:27:34.660 breaks. The stoic version of optimism is, I'm going to be better for this, however horrible

01:27:40.840 it is. And ultimately, his view was he was going to comport himself in such a way that if he

01:27:50.160 survived, he would not just be proud of how he acted. That's the idea of returning with honor,

01:27:55.860 which they now teach all POWs. But that he was going to turn it into something he said that in

01:28:01.380 retrospect, he would not trade away. And I think that's how we have to see this moment. Like, look,

01:28:05.740 I would love to have a normal president. I'd love to have normal politics. I'd love to have not

01:28:10.280 lived through a pandemic. I'd love, I would love all the, if you had given me my choice of how I

01:28:16.000 would like the last 10 years to go, I would have picked very differently. But number one, you don't

01:28:21.580 get a choice. Number two, you think you know how you want it to go, but you actually don't. And

01:28:28.120 three, the only thing you have a say over is how do you look back and go, that was my moment. That

01:28:35.900 was the thing that i rose up to meet and and that's going to be different for all of us but

01:28:40.580 that's to me what the stoic is trying to say is that hey i want to be able to look back on this

01:28:45.460 period and say i was what i was capable of being and that i i grew and was changed by that experience

01:28:55.360 for for the better that that is to me actually a profoundly optimistic and hopeful yeah thing to

01:29:01.000 say it's also realistic what i mean you look back at stoicism anything they from your perspective

01:29:09.740 got wrong well like basically everyone for the last 2 000 years they get the whole slavery thing

01:29:15.660 wrong there was a little of that i mean marcus realist slavery you know you had seneca working

01:29:20.400 for a guy named you know good boss named narrow yes so so wealthy guy there there's the kind of

01:29:25.720 just basic, you know, personal decisions. And you can't study history and not go, hey, this person

01:29:31.960 was flawed and made mistakes. We're all products of our time. So there's certainly a lot of things

01:29:39.220 like that. How about in their teachings? Well, look, they believed, I think, much more in

01:29:44.400 predetermination and predestination than we do um they they they had obviously uh

01:29:53.180 to go to the idea of an agency right like there were all these things that they thought couldn't

01:30:02.160 be changed that they that they thought was just a fact of life and in a way this explains the

01:30:07.140 political stuff right like even epictetus the slave doesn't question the institution of slavery

01:30:12.740 And so, you know, when you look back at history, you can't help but be grateful to the sort of revolutionary, radical, progressive people who imagined that the world could be something different than it currently is.

01:30:27.180 Yeah, I love that.

01:30:28.060 And if there's anything that the Stoics get wrong, it's just that they were resigned to the world being the way that it had always been.

01:30:38.160 Yeah. And and we are lucky that Gandhi was like, hey, what if there's a way to solve problems that doesn't involve terrorism or insurrection or overthrowing a government, you know, and Martin Luther King picks that up from him and the the gay rights activists pick that up from them. 0.80

01:31:02.800 And, you know, we're obviously lucky that all these different innovations happened where people were like, you know, we're in the dead of Thomas Clarkson, who in the 1700s writes an essay at Oxford about whether people should own slaves or not. 0.57

01:31:22.880 And then says, well, what if I'm right and they shouldn't?

01:31:26.900 And then maybe someone should do something about it.

01:31:29.920 And then he says, maybe that person could be me.

01:31:32.200 And that's where the abolitionist movement comes from.

01:31:34.760 And you go back and back and back.

01:31:37.620 We are the beneficiaries of the people who imagine the world being better than it is.

01:31:43.960 I love that.

01:31:45.000 And stoicism cannot simply be a tool for accepting the status quo.

01:31:51.100 You just finished a book on wisdom.

01:31:54.380 You talk about these cardinal virtues.

01:31:57.120 You end on wisdom.

01:32:00.160 You don't begin with wisdom, even though you said none of the other virtues are possible without wisdom.

01:32:05.840 So why the hell did you end the series?

01:32:08.540 I saved the hardest one for last.

01:32:10.920 I felt weird starting with wisdom, just on a practical writing standpoint.

01:32:16.820 But I don't know.

01:32:18.840 I felt like the last, alphabetically, it's last.

01:32:23.760 There's no good reason. 0.99

01:32:24.900 they're all the zeno said that the cardinal virtues courage discipline temperance or courage

01:32:30.860 discipline justice wisdom they were independent yet inseparable from each other yeah and and it

01:32:37.420 really doesn't matter what order you think about them whatever you read about them whatever you

01:32:41.620 write them about them they all you can't have one without the other i mean courage in pursuit of

01:32:47.800 injustice is no impressive thing. Um, and, and then, you know, how do you know what the right

01:32:55.840 thing is without wisdom? You know, um, how, how do you, how do you bring good into the world without

01:33:02.740 savvy incompetence? I think that's one of our big problems right now is like,

01:33:06.300 we just think that being right is sufficient. Uh, yeah. Uh, you know, you have to have,

01:33:14.380 you have to be a savvy political operator you have to be a savvy business like just because you

01:33:19.060 you're in the broad strokes correct i don't that'll get you what

01:33:23.880 so what are you working on next i'm doing a biography of stockdale oh good okay yeah there

01:33:30.820 you go yeah i mean uh you talk about him enough i he's one of my time you and he's you know and

01:33:37.460 forgive me because he's just it's impossible to talk about stockdale except he's better known

01:33:43.300 and this is why you need to write the book because he deserves not to be better known

01:33:47.960 for one simple line in a vice presidential debate. What, sir, was that line?

01:33:54.020 Who am I? Why am I here?

01:33:55.960 Which, as a Stoic...

01:33:58.940 Philosophically, it's actually a great line.

01:34:02.240 For debate prep, you may want to use different language.

01:34:04.880 Yes. I'll save it for writing, but apparently it's a big story as to how he found himself on

01:34:10.740 that stage um and ross perot's running nominee yeah um but but uh dennis miller has a great bit

01:34:21.360 about stockdale where he says you know this was the first guy in last guy out of vietnam hero like

01:34:27.860 seven years right yeah prisoner war serves honorably wins the medal of honor does all this

01:34:32.700 and he says he he committed the one unpardonable sin in our society do you know what it is what i 0.84

01:34:38.440 mean it's he was bad on television he was bad on tv there you go it's pathetic what's happened to 0.96

01:34:43.480 us huh yeah sincerely this is rather pathetic yeah you you imagine that incredibly as as a 0.95

01:34:51.200 as a uh charismatic good-looking man there there there there's i i imagine there are many many 0.92

01:34:58.560 more qualified people that could not just can't cut it politically because they look bad in an ad

01:35:04.980 or any speech or that, you know, 80 years ago,

01:35:10.500 you only would have heard about from a newspaper column

01:35:13.680 and they could have, could Taft be president now?

01:35:17.780 Good question, right?

01:35:19.420 Yeah, not on the basis of what he's been described.

01:35:22.580 And I mean, even FDR has to hide that he has a disability. 0.89

01:35:26.380 I mean, even Kennedy, there's a reason they're rocking chair.

01:35:29.040 I mean, you know, and he was, you know,

01:35:30.680 and he was plenty of, you know,

01:35:32.880 External things that were injected to get them through the day.

01:35:36.100 I mean, yeah.

01:35:37.520 And an Instagram 24-7.

01:35:40.040 Yeah, probably would not have made it.

01:35:42.980 I don't know.

01:35:43.800 Yeah. 0.98

01:35:44.100 Well, and of course, the infamous there.

01:35:46.080 I mean, the first TV president.

01:35:47.880 Yes.

01:35:48.480 Yeah, the Nixon-Kennedy debates.

01:35:50.780 Yeah.

01:35:51.260 Radio, Nixon crushes them. 0.93

01:35:54.000 TV, Kennedy.

01:35:55.440 Yeah.

01:35:56.340 No, look, I appreciate it.

01:35:58.200 I'm glad you...

01:35:58.740 So it's good for you on the Stockdale thing. 0.95

01:36:00.220 So what is, I mean, you got every morning, if you haven't got, by the way, everyone listening, watching needs to subscribe to the damn morning email. 0.83

01:36:09.640 Oh, the Day of Stoke email? 0.93

01:36:10.760 Which is next level.

01:36:11.940 And what I love about it too, it's, you know, repetition's a mother skill too.

01:36:15.620 What I like is it's not one and done.

01:36:17.660 You'll come back to old themes.

01:36:19.480 Yeah.

01:36:19.760 And I'll see that as a critique.

01:36:20.860 There's not that many themes.

01:36:21.540 No, but it's important, right?

01:36:23.040 So it's just, it's reps.

01:36:24.220 and you know you're sort of in so it's it's it remarkably and it's a quick read every morning

01:36:30.140 great way to wake up uh sort of recalibrate your brain and it's contemporary you put things i love

01:36:35.560 it if you're feeling all these things you're like yes and yes so clearly someone whoever's writing

01:36:40.200 those things you or others what do you mean whatever it's uh it's uh it's it's it's i mean

01:36:47.660 it's free what more can i say but it's uh it's it's profoundly impactful and and something 0.98

01:36:54.500 everyone should sign up for you've got you did what i did again your damn january oh you did 0.98

01:37:00.680 yeah i sat there in lake tahoe in you know one degrees uh jumping in the damn river uh with 0.97

01:37:08.220 icicles by the way it should have gone on my instagram but i didn't look pretty i need to

01:37:12.960 get a little better shape i didn't look good without the shirt on plus i had underwear so

01:37:16.480 it's another conversation uh so i was out there um and you know it was day one the polar plunge

01:37:21.140 well then again i had to burn away my intent whatever the other thing yes um but you give

01:37:25.260 doing that you got 26 for 26 you had the thing you've got all the stuff on youtube got all the

01:37:29.700 i mean come on man this is crazy what's you know what's when's enough enough are you are you a

01:37:36.660 stoic is this what stoic this is what i like to do i'd be doing it this is what i do this is what

01:37:42.760 i do uh well it's uh i appreciate you coming back home of course coming back to california

01:37:50.180 yeah uh off your ranch in texas which ain't so bad uh and your credible kids and i'm going to

01:37:57.060 close on this um the best thing you do as a father of four the daily dad and dispensing advice as a

01:38:08.420 father yeah thank you what was the inspiration of that besides i little ones my life was made

01:38:14.220 better by writing about stoicism every day the forced practice of having to do the meditation

01:38:18.960 and so when i when i when we had our first i was like you know what i'll do a parent i'll take the

01:38:23.880 best parenting advice not not my advice i don't know shit uh but like what are the best smartest

01:38:29.720 people the wisest people say about this and i'll riff on it each morning and so the daily dad uh 0.53

01:38:36.200 yeah he's almost eight eight years old now um nine years old uh and it's it's made me a better

01:38:42.500 because i'm i'm writing about this i'm like you know when your kids are having trouble you know

01:38:48.180 getting out of bed in the morning and you want to get you know i'm not saying that i didn't just

01:38:52.500 yell at my kids for not getting in the car in time i'm saying i'm writing having just done that

01:38:58.180 trying to not do it tomorrow you know it's it's uh you're constantly you know how you're you know

01:39:05.880 what you know the parent you want to be and you're never being that parent but so it helps to remind

01:39:10.340 yourself over and over and over again not of where you're falling short but what the ideal that

01:39:13.880 you're aspiring towards i love it and that's what that is the most important job ryan great to be

01:39:19.360 with you thank you very much this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human

This is Gavin Newsom - April 17, 2026

And, This Is The Stoic's Survival Guide With Ryan Holiday

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