Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Ryan Holiday | Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave! @Daily Stoic (#190)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Ryan Holiday, incomparable Ryan Holiday, the proprietor of the painted porch, perennial seller, a podcast galore that will get into. Another plosive sounds that I can make to make my engineer crazy. Ryan, how are you doing from all the way at Bastrop? Is it Batstrap or Bastrop, Texas? Bastrop is how I say it, but I don't think it matters that much. Things are good here.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Great. It's great to be in touch with you again. We last chatted three or four years ago, and I was creating my first book. And your company, Braschek, was invaluable, providing help and support that the traditional publishers are either unwilling or unknowing to share. And I want to get into that. But I have many of your books here with me. Some I only have in digital form. So I've got perennial seller, which is marked up. annotated properly. I've got the Daily Stoic. I've got, which I filled out today, very meta, Ryan, because I only use the morning, so there's a morning and evening portion. Sure. But I only use the morning portion for the answer to the question, the homework assignment, and being a professor, I have to modify and do my own thing. So in the evening, quote-unquote, section, I fill out what I'm looking forward to doing today. And today I said, I look forward to speaking to the author of this book on The Into the Impossible. Very meta. Wonderful. All right. I'm excited. And then this book, which I remove from my bedroom,

Starting point is 00:01:35 it's a sexual guide, growth hacking, that I keep in the bedroom and many, many other books, Ego is the enemy. And we're going to get into all those. But first, I want to commend you on courage is calling your latest contribution to your uvra. And I want to just commend you on it. It's such a delightful book. And I think in writing it, I was worried up until the very end, And when in the audiobook, you read the audiobook, I was scared, fearful, if you will, that there wouldn't be any self-examples. There wouldn't be any work examples. How we actually do that? And thankfully, you did that at the very end.

Starting point is 00:02:10 But I want to start, as I often do, with what you're told never to do, which is judging books by their cover. So, Ryan, walk us through the cover, the title. Why did you start with this of all the cardinal virtues? And what is that lion doing on the cover? Well, of course you should judge a book by the cover. That's why they have covers. That is what the job of the cover is to do. It's to catch people's attention and to symbolize or frame or invoke the themes or the ideas that the book is supposed to be about. So when people say that, I find that it's either just sort of a reflexive thing they don't really understand or when I hear authors say it, That sounds like an author who's going to have a real crappy book with a real bad cover that's not going to sell copies. So what was interesting about this one is, so ego is the enemy, obstacles away, and stillness is the key. We're sort of a trilogy.

Starting point is 00:03:10 They're in our boxes of trilogy. This book is roughly the same. I think it's the same size. I think we use the same trim size. Can you hold it up, Brian, to the camera? Yeah, sorry. There was same trim size, same style. actually let me see.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Yes, exact same size. That's what I wrote. But I wanted to symbolize that this was a similar book in a similar, with a similar approach, but thematically distinct and different. And so that was sort of the needle to thread there, was how do you make it feel part of a theme, but also make it stand out? So, yeah, this is sort of what we settled on. Originally, it was just the lion.

Starting point is 00:04:00 The lion is typically what the ancients used to symbolize courage as far as, like, an animal, spirit animal, if you will. But I felt like it didn't, the other, like, stillness and obstacle and ego, they feel very modern. and I wanted something in it that evoked the classical origins of it or that evoked the history. So that's where the Roman mosaic going around the edges came from. Trying to think what else. One of the tricky things that happens as books really start to work and sort of a tension between artistic and marketing concerns is like, what should be bigger, the title or the name, right, of the author? Because, like, you know, I would think you would want the title to be biggest because that's what it's about.

Starting point is 00:04:58 But if you think about it, more people have heard of me at this point than have heard of the title of the book that I just made up. So it was sort of a tension between how big should one be and then how much other text can you get on there, whether it's a subtitle, which I originally didn't want to do. but my UK publisher made a strong argument for doing. I also had to say that this is part of a series and then evoked. There was just a lot to get on this cover, which you can tell. There's blurb, cover, or title, subtitle, image, name, number one New York Times bestseller, and then what book of my past books was I going to mention?

Starting point is 00:05:42 So there was a lot to get on this that wasn't on like, The obstacles away has almost nothing on it, I guess is what I would say. And I think, you know, one thing I get from this book, you know, we talk about the cardinal virtues. And here in UC San Diego, we have a building with the cardinal sins, the seven cardinal sins, and their antidotes. So what should you do if you suffer from gluttony? Not that that afflicts you. You're totally jacked, ripped, and hench. But I want to know if courage is the first of these carpenters.

Starting point is 00:06:17 cardinal virtues. And I agree with your assertion that without courage, none of the others are possible. But what are the anti, you know, anti-direction, antipodes on the cardinal compass? So, yeah, I started with courage for a couple reasons. Number one, it typically tends to be listed first. It's courage and then temperance, justice, wisdom. That's how I tend to find it rendered. Sometimes justice and temperance are flipped. Sometimes wisdom is first, but in my experience, courage is almost always listed first. I don't know if that's an alphabetical thing or what, but courage tends to be listed first.

Starting point is 00:06:56 And I think it's the most timely of the virtues. And I would argue the least divisive slash polarizing of the virtues. Every society that has ever existed has held up courage as a primary virtue. justice, we can have different opinions about what justice is. You know, wisdom is important to people like you and I, but perhaps not, you know, immediately sought after by the entirety of the population. And I couldn't think of a worse book to start a four-book series with then temperance. So that was sort of the debate there.

Starting point is 00:07:37 If I'm thinking about what the opposites are, I don't know what I would say emphatically is the opposite of each virtue. But, as you know, Aristotle says that all the virtues exist on a spectrum and that they don't have one opposite, but two opposites. So courage, the opposite of courage is not cowardice. The opposite of courage is cowardice and recklessness. Courage is the midpoint between those two extremes. And so, you know, temperance is the midpoint between too much and not enough. Right? And, you know, justice, there is, let's say, generosity. It might be, you know, a virtue of justice. Or let's say honesty. Too much honesty and not enough honesty. You know, a lie of omission is a lie. But also, you know, radical candor might itself be a kind of a vice. So when I think about the virtues, I don't just think about them as in terms of what's their opposite, but so much as, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:42 what is the right amount of this trait and how does one apply it effectively in the right situations? And along those lines, you know, I kind of felt, and kudos to you for citing one of the few things Aristotle was right about. Almost everything he said about physics was completely wrong. You know, there are not four elements in nature and heavier things don't fall faster than lighter ones. But I agree completely with that. And you make the case also in the book that love is sort of concomitant with courage. But it came to me as I listened to it that the, you know, kind of there's a paradox at work because to be courageous, you can't be courageous if you're not risking anything.

Starting point is 00:09:21 Like it takes no courage, you know, for somebody to write a book that slams President Trump. I'm sorry, that doesn't take any courage right now. On the other hand, you know, it takes great courage, you know, during it to defend, I mean, I know how you feel about Trump. We're not going to talk politics. We never talk politics. Sure. But you, so you can't have courage without risk.

Starting point is 00:09:39 And yet you can't have risk without there being a possibility of loss of control. And I wonder how does that mesh with this philosophy of amorphati, I think. I read that as fat eye. But tell me, how do you mesh this ability to relinquish control, manage risk, and then also risk perhaps much greater things than just keeping your mouth shut? So the way I think about courage is that there has to be danger. there has to be a certain amount of uncertainty, or it's not courage. That's not to say it's not valuable.

Starting point is 00:10:16 But if I said, hey, if you quit your job and pursue this other thing, some private venture, it will 100% be successful. And along the way, no one will doubt you. And you will be universally beloved for it from start to finish. Of course, you should say yes to this, right? Like, why would you say no? I've just, I've just offered you a guarantee. But no one would describe that as a courageous decision, right? Because there was no, the outcome was preordained. It was known. So to me, courage is when you're putting yourself out there, when you're stepping out under the limb, when you're throwing yourself the leap into the dark, right, as they said. And so courage to me is predicated on the fact that, you are afraid of it. Now, I guess we could, we could, we could really get semantic about it and go, maybe the outcome is known to everyone but you, but you find it personally scary for the

Starting point is 00:11:19 following reasons. Now, we could get into that. But the point is, you have to be scared of it or courage is not required or possible. So I think that's step one. It's knowing that it's, when we're talking about courage, we're talking about some risk, some level of uncertainty. I think where it gets tricky is just because it's risky and you do it doesn't mean that it's courageous. So I don't just mean, I don't just mean in the sense that we're talking about outcomes. I'm saying, was it the right thing to do? Right. So at least in regards to the virtue of courage or courage as,

Starting point is 00:12:03 a virtue, right? Taking the contrarian view on something or the opposite view of something might be courageous if, in fact, the majority is wrong, right? But to simply, let's say, courageously put your career on the line to argue that the world is flat or that vaccines don't work or, you know, or by favor of conspiracy theory is this one that birds don't exist? Have you seen this one? No, I only had traffic in flat earth. Yeah. So it's that all birds were destroyed and now they're like fake.

Starting point is 00:12:39 It's a fascinating thing. But the point is, just because you're believing in a conspiracy theory that puts you at odds with polite society and then you are, there is real career risk to doing so. That doesn't make it courageous. It just me. I get these emails all the time. Professor Keating, Einstein was thought to be a quack crackpot. I have this theory people are calling me a crackpot by the transposition prince of transitive property. Therefore, I am.

Starting point is 00:13:06 It's ridiculous. But if you'll help me, I'll share my Nobel Prize with you, right? Right. So courage is ultimately predicated, at least to the Stoics, on the pursuit of the right. Now, this is hard to do. We have to take a long historical view and it gets complicated. I guess the point is a lot of brave Confederate soldiers. there is something ultimately hollow and empty about this courage,

Starting point is 00:13:32 just as there is emptiness in the courage of someone in the Japanese or the German army in the Second World War, because it was ultimately in pursuit of not just the wrong cause, but one of the worst causes of all time. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the best. the next grill four-burner gas grill on special buy for only $199 and entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot.

Starting point is 00:14:12 While supplies last, price invalid May 14th or May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply. See homedipo.com slash price match for details. Right. Yeah, and I look at that and I combine this kind of risk, you know, element to courageous as a predicate to courage. And then I see, you know, humans as, you know, so bad at assessing risk, you know, compared to like a garter snake, you know, like we sit there and, and like I see my students, I always joke about this, you know, going to my class, they're on their skateboards. Of course, they're wearing a mask. Right. And they're going downhill. They're scrolling Instagram

Starting point is 00:14:43 and they're not wearing a helmet. And I'm like, you know, one of these things is like much more risky than some of the other possibilities. So I love that. Yeah. And I wondered, you know, could we form like a rubric. And I started to think about this concept of entropy, which is like the number of states. Like, Ryan, the number of ways I could make your life twice as good as it is now is pretty limited. Like, yeah, this book is a bestseller. You're going to be number one bestseller of the rest of your career. You've got such great content that you put out around the world. I could double your YouTube subscribers on the Daily Stoic channel, a link in the description below. And that would make you happier. But how many ways could I make you a thousand times less happy?

Starting point is 00:15:21 There's so many more states, as physicists would call it, in the phase space of available, you know, kind of outcomes. And I think about, like, yeah, I mean, how many ways could Churchill, you describe a great length in this book? Who's called every single person, except Florence Nightingale, does she have any, like, skeletons in her closet? Because they almost all, even Gandhi, I'm going to get to Gandhi later, because he has a mixed record in my book as well as Churchill, et cetera. Just Nightingale, does she have any, like, skeletons in her closet that no one is? A few, but yes, go ahead. Okay, fine. Yeah, and it's not important because I think, you know, you should pick and choose. People say, like, oh, don't pick and choose like it's bad. Like, okay, fine. So you're just going to eat

Starting point is 00:15:58 everything on the menu, even though you're allergic to gluten. But thinking about, like, how many ways could something, could you use this concept of entropy? Like, the number of ways that my life could be worse, as our mutual friend, James Altucher says, he never publishes something unless he feels scared to do so. And I've kind of adopted that. And you have other things in there in the book as well among the same thing. Can you use, fear as a compass instead of courage. Well, it's funny how your mind works that you're instantly going to like, how do I have a theory about this or a system, which makes total sense. One of the things that I have thought about with this is that you make a good point, right?

Starting point is 00:16:40 The upside downside ratio is really hard for people. And this is a big thing we get wrong. So we go, I'm just a little guy right now. I'm just starting out of my career. I'm newly hired. I'm not tenured. Whatever. You know, I'm, I'm, uh, just put out my first book.

Starting point is 00:16:55 You know, I'm on my first year contract in the NFL. And we say, I will be courageous later when I'm more secure, right? When I have tenure, then I will speak out. When I, when I, when I have a long term contract, when I have, you know, hit the best seller list for the first time after I have my kids or buy my first house or, whatever it is. After I get reelected, you know, whatever. And then this is what life does to us. We never actually do that because now we actually, we think that when we have those things, we'll feel secure and that will be a base that allows us to be courageous. In fact,

Starting point is 00:17:36 it's something that chains us because now we're afraid of losing that thing. And you might think, well, why is a billionaire, you know, worried about losing money, you know, they, could afford to lose it, but it's precisely because they know how hard it was to get to a billion dollars. They don't want to risk the capital that they just earn. And I found this to be particularly true with the politicians that I've met. It's like, you're a senator. You're one of a hundred most powerful people in the world effectively. And you're like expecting somebody else to do something about this because all you're thinking about is like it was so hard to become a senator, I just got here.

Starting point is 00:18:17 Why doesn't somebody else put their ass on the line? I have re-election in five years or whatever. And so it's really tricky, and we never end up doing it. And so that's the challenge that we're all on. The upside of courage can seem relatively low, and then the downsides can seem very high. We have to step back and go, this is a collective action. problem, right? If everyone looked at the self-preservation as the rubric for whether you should do it or not, we'd, of course, never move forward as a society. Somebody has to do it. And I think part of courage

Starting point is 00:19:02 is kind of the answer to that question from Hillel, if not me, then who. If not now, than when. Yeah. And I look at that and you make this case in the, as I call it, the homework problem at the end of the book where you go through a worked example in your own life of when you let yourself down, your future self down. We'll get to that in a bit. But in reality, I think there is so much kind of gamification, like we're worried about losing followers or losing subscribers or losing voters, as you said in politicians, or not losing money, but you look at losing the Nobel Prize. You look at Bill Gates. So one of the reasons that Bill Gates allegedly, held off on his divorce announcement

Starting point is 00:19:41 was so that he could be nominated for the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize. And he didn't want to compromise that because this is reported in many other places. So you look at that and it's like nobody gets into the promised land. You combine that with, you talk a lot about Moses in here and the most

Starting point is 00:19:57 common phrase in the Torah in the Old Testament as we call it is do not be afraid. But I wonder the second half of that, Ryan, and I know I believe you're agnostic to atheist. I know you write a lot about Christianity. I'm a practicing Jew, but I learn tremendous amounts from atheists, from I read your book every day, the Daily Stoic. Right? So I believe we have much to learn

Starting point is 00:20:18 from all different traditions, including none. But the second half of that sentence, which I don't think you mentioned in the book, the second half of do not be afraid, it's always accompanied with because I am your God. In other words, it's always a transcendent connected to it. Just like some of the commandments that are, seem obvious like don't put a stumbling block in front of the blind. That's a mitzvah, a commandment. Now, who would do that? Maybe someone in Texas might do that.

Starting point is 00:20:44 But we would never do that, right? No, but the second half of that commandment is because I am God. Meaning that you could get away with that. You could hate your brother in your heart. You could put a stumbling block in front of your blind friend. You could not help a donkey with its burden. No one would know because it's just you're the blindment. But the thing is, can you have courage?

Starting point is 00:21:04 can you not fear if you don't believe in God? I mean, a lot of my listeners are science, you know, they're not, they don't believe in anything. So is God a predicate for having courage? Or if not, how do you transcend this, the transcendental? I mean, you might argue that it takes more courage to do it without the belief in a God than it does to do it with the belief in a God, right? I sort of make the argument that the Christians and the Stoics essentially hold very similar tenets, right? the same cardinal virtues.

Starting point is 00:21:35 The Christians are saying, follow these virtues or you will go to hell, right? Or follow these virtues or you will incur God's wrath, right? And I feel like the Stoics are saying, follow these virtues or you will live in hell, right? Or you will experience the wrath of a bad life of wasted potential. You will, I think the Stoics are making an inherently more logical argument, but it's also demanding more of the person to think about Pascal's wager, the uncertainty of it is the scary part, right? If you can believe without evidence, if you believe that in the end, none of it matters because that you have the afterlife. I'm not saying that you're cowardly. That's not what I'm

Starting point is 00:22:24 saying. I'm just saying that to wrestle with the ambiguity and the uncertainty of it is, does strike me as a scarier proposition. And yet in the book, you portray the stoic ability to use the Cardinals as a principle. And it reminds me, you know, when I take my kids to the supermarket, you have little kids now. I have little kids. And you go to the supermarket, the checkout line are all the impulse purchases. Well, they have no impulse control, right? So they'll go through it. And I'll say, no, you can't have that. If I say, oh, it's high in calories and saturated sugar, whatever, I'm not a dietitian, as you can probably tell. despite my physique.

Starting point is 00:23:01 But if you do that, it doesn't work. But if I say, no, that's not kosher, then they stop. In other words, which ultimately involves this one choice, this one free will decision of like, do you believe in God? And I think that's kind of superficial. Like Jordan Peterson says, like, how hubristic is it to say, do I believe in God? You know, versus what I always say is like, does God believe in me? But I think it is fascinating to look at systems.

Starting point is 00:23:26 And you've interviewed, you've spoken in the military, you have a quote from, is it the crystal on the cover? Mattis. Maddust? Maddug Mattis. You're in the football locker rooms, your consultant. So you're in the throes of battle, although you admit you never went to war, but so it's a different type of courage. But when you see that, that's a commitment to something greater, right? One nation under God are like people,

Starting point is 00:23:48 but there's a reason we sing the National Anthemans as God. So yeah, so I think this is an interesting alternative to not have God, but it's not anti-God. In other words, you can believe in God, and these virtues are in, sympathy. And it made me think, Ryan, what would Seneca or, you know, what would epitetus say, you know, if they were alive today? Would they be verified on Twitter? In other words, if they could see what Martin Luther King's courage look like as you portray or what Florence Nightingale or what Frederick Douglass did as you lovingly and accurately portray, what would they make of the people that came after them that are sort of imbueing some of their intellectual DNA or their stoic DNA? How would they react to what? what has come after them?

Starting point is 00:24:32 I mean, we don't know, but I would hope that they would see, in the way that's like, you sort of understand your grandparents, saw the world a certain way, have a certain set of beliefs, and then, you know, flash forward to the present, you're like, ah, I really hope, I really hope they can transcend the limitations of their time and not be awful, right? Like, to get past this.

Starting point is 00:24:54 And so I think with the stoics, it's like with Thomas Jefferson, the beauty of, and the paradox of Thomas, Jefferson is, he writes down this beautiful idea that all men are created equal, but he clearly doesn't mean it, right? Or he struggles to actually make good on those words. And then, both to his credit and his shame, every subsequent generation has moved us a tiny bit closer to the literal truth of those words. Abraham Lincoln does a great job. Frederick Douglass does a great job. Martin Luther King does a spectacular job of moving us a little bit closer to that.

Starting point is 00:25:34 Now, one would hope Thomas Jefferson, when shown the evidence, would be encouraged and inspired by the extension of the logic, but we don't know, right? We don't know. So I would hope that, you know, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca, who were very much products of their time, but also progressive and forward thinking for their time would be able to appreciate the extrapolation and the extension of the rules that they laid down. But I think we have to be in a place where we're fine if they don't. Like Seneca talking about Epicurus, who he disagrees with on essentially everything, says, I will quote a bad author if the line is good.

Starting point is 00:26:23 So even if you could give me incontrovers, prove that Marcus Aurelius was worse of a hypocrite than Thomas Jefferson. And certainly, there's a lot of evidence that Seneca sucked, right? I mean, Seneca is Nero's tutor and right-hand. You would still not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? You might be disgusted by it, but you don't have to discard everything. To me, though, I would just say what I love about the Stokes is it does feel like they were largely consistent with the ideas under pretty real pressure. They had real skin in the game.

Starting point is 00:27:00 But I guess it would be painful, but I'd like to think I could separate the two. Yeah, and I think you do. And it's always dangerous doing counterfactual history, of course. But you mentioned Thomas Jefferson and also in your conversation with Tom Bill you about this book a couple of weeks ago. And it made me think, you know, Thomas Jefferson was deeply influenced by Euclid, in ancient Greeks. In fact, the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Those lines come directly from Euclid,

Starting point is 00:27:30 where he would say, two parallel lines never meet, and we don't even have to prove it. It's self-evident. Of course, they don't meet on a curved space time like we might live in, or on the Earth's surface, or on a Pringle universe, if we lived in a Pringle chip. So some things that seem self-evident aren't necessarily so, but I think it is complicated,

Starting point is 00:27:48 and you do go through in very, I would say tender almost and very thorough. These great people, great men, great women have great flaws. They often have great flaws. And to require that they be perfect or we don't follow them, I think it's ludicrous. And for that reason, I want to go to not the worked example that you use in the book, which is where you talk about your time at American Apparel and this real crisis of conscience that you faced.

Starting point is 00:28:16 And you handled it as you recount, and maybe you can quickly summarize a story, but I don't like to give away the book for free. So you feel free not. But I was, I was curious because you were, if I recall, you were in the University of California system for a while. Yes. Our sister camp to the north, yep, in Riverside. And yet you dropped out. And I want to talk about that. Was there an element to that as a worked example? A lot of my audience are academics. And we face this kind of academic hunger games where you have to get a good grades in high school to go to good college, a college, go to grad school, grad school, get a postdoc, postdoc, professor, tenure, it's the whole hunger games. It's all the gamification.

Starting point is 00:28:55 What courage did that? Because you were much younger than you were at 23 at American Apparel. I was wondering some of that, you know, kind of the courage muscle that you built up in that decision, did that lead to further down the line on American Apparel, which wasn't perfect, but who is? And then, you know, and then later on into what you did later as you talk about the New York Observer, etc. So take us back to that decision to drop out of college. Not that I'm encouraging every my students here. Me neither. No, so at 19, when I dropped out or 20 when I dropped out, I forget exactly.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Because I came from a stable, normal sort of middle-class home, that was unquestionably the scariest thing that I had ever done in my life. I was on a scholarship. I was in the honors program. I was on track to graduate in three years, and I'd already finished, too. right? So like college, I wasn't failing out of college the way that some people does. And it also wasn't like a Mark Zuckerberg or a Bill Gates situation where I was like, I'd already started a successful company and this was like holding me back. This was the opportunity to go study under

Starting point is 00:30:03 a writer and have like a real nine to five job or stay in college, stay in the bubble, get the resume sort of safety net or not, right? And two things made. it, one thing made it a lot harder and another thing made it a lot easier. Actually, a couple, one, my girlfriend at the time, my now wife was incredibly supportive and said, of course you should do it. This is a once in a lifetime thing. And I had some mentors who said the same thing. Now, my parents on the other hand said, you cannot do this. You will, not just you cannot do this. We don't want you to do it. But like, we think you will fail. You have let us down. And by the way, we're shutting off your cell phone, you know, you owe us this amount of money for your tuition

Starting point is 00:30:51 and your car and all these things, right? So it was like, it wasn't just like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing. There's no, no, no, no, you have to pay the consequences up front, right? So that all made it much, much scarier. And again, as a 19-year-old, you're like a leaf. You know, you can get blown in either direction. But I ended up sort of deciding. to do it. It was terrifying. And I remember I walked into the registrar's office and I was like, I'm here to drop out of college. I think it was Hinder Haker Hall or whatever. There's like one of those on every UC campus, right? So I walked in and I was like, I'm here to drop out. You know, I said this to the little lady at the booth. And she was like, that's not a thing. Right. She's like,

Starting point is 00:31:39 there's no form for that. She was like, you can take a semester off, right? Like you can disenroll from the upcoming semester. But that's like as far as this, like, she was like, now look, by doing this, you give up your scholarship, right? Like the scholarship is, so that was an irrevocable part of it. But she was like, you're taking, you're disenrolling for this semester, and then you have 10 years to reenroll at any time. And so it was funny because I just spent like a week tearing my, my hair out.

Starting point is 00:32:13 I was terrified. I was convinced that I was, if this didn't work, I would live under a bridge somewhere, you know, that I've been disowned and brought shame to my family. And then you sort of get there in the moment and they're like, no, this is like a paperwork issue. You know, like you can come back at any time. And so that was a big breakthrough for me because you just realize a lot of the things that you assume are permanent, that you assume are life-changing. and incredibly risky are, in fact, much smaller and much more of a paperwork issue than

Starting point is 00:32:52 you might have been informed of. Yeah. And, you know, the famous quote, you know, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. But if you normalize them, you know, to the size or the age of the person, like, your five-year-old or whatever, getting bullied at school is like you getting, you know, facing your parents, cutting off your cell phone bill or are you getting far. Now, I think it's ironic because I do see you as an educator. I mean, if I had to say, you're not just a writer, you're a teacher.

Starting point is 00:33:17 And, you know, of course, in the gamified world of academia, you know, it's pretty hard to become a professor without that. But is there anything about the academic life that you miss or that you could see coming back to not to go back to finish your degree? It's like, yeah, Mark Zuckerberg could have been something if he got that Harvard degree, right? It's a joke. No, I love that. And I do think about that because it was funny. as soon as I left and then I decided I started like working on my first book I started going back because I lived in Los Angeles at the time. I would go back to the Riverside Library on campus and that's where I did most of the research for my first book.

Starting point is 00:33:57 And then I wrote my second book or my first book at the Tulane Library in New Orleans. So there's something very sort of special and nostalgic for me about like college campuses and college life. I wrote a good chunk of egos the enemy at the University of Texas Library. As my books became more successful, I sort of was able to cultivate a space of my own that was easier and just involved less sort of commute. But there's something about the space that was really important to me and the vibe and the mood. So very much so.

Starting point is 00:34:32 And look, if you told me, hey, you know, this university wants to have you as a visiting professor of X, Y, or Z. I think it's almost the thing that you spurn in life becomes sort of disproportionately valuable to you. So like in a weird way, that would probably mean as much or more to me as some of the stuff I've been able to do on my own. So I have like, and when kids come to me and they're like, hey, I'm thinking about dropping out of college. I'm like, you know what? Like I don't want any part of this. Like that was, I went through that once.

Starting point is 00:35:05 And it was the scariest thing I ever did. like I'm not going to convince you one way or another. You've got to figure this out on your own because I really don't have like a grudge against higher education the way I think some dropouts do because it did work for me in the sense that it got me to where I took an off ramp. But like I don't think that would have been possible without there. And had I not had that opportunity, I just would have continued. Yeah, I want to talk about that in the comment.

Starting point is 00:35:37 context of another advocate, although he didn't employ this, but subject of your book, Peter Teal, who I've met on occasion through our mutual friend, Eric Weinstein. And Peter, of course, is an advocate for kind of the, not the debunking, but maybe a non-traditional approach to college, even coming up with scholarships against it. But the reason I want to talk about Peter is because he makes an appearance in this book, again, as he did in conspiracy, which is just a wonderful, a wonderful read. It's like, it's, it's, it's like it's, it's like it is a true crime story, I guess. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:11 And it's at such high stakes. But the reason I want to talk about it is not necessarily, to talk about Peter specifically, but just this, this, that Peter appears in a book about a stoic, a virtue series. Sure. And, and, and that you have this stoic brand. And yet I, I also know that you have many other ability skills, your podcast or you do. And it's not all stoic. But I wonder, do you ever work.

Starting point is 00:36:33 Do you ever worry, and this is said with completely another respect and fascination, but, I mean, do you worry about getting typecast as like only like stoic? And, you know, you do think you did conspiracy specifically, and that's not a stoic virtue book. But sure. Do you ever worry about that, Ryan, like enough with the stoicism as, you know, as Jerry Costanzo might say? I mean, I don't think so much about being typecast, but I do, I do sometimes worry that the, cumulative impact or value of the philosophy gets sort of disproportionately credited to me, which is uncomfortable. I see myself as someone who's a student of and writing about the philosophy, not in any way,

Starting point is 00:37:21 like a master of it, but also a creator of it. So it's maybe like, I don't know, like somebody who's really associated. with a certain subject because they've spent a long time as their biographer, you're sort of basking in the reflexive glory of that, even though you're, you have much more of a workman-like relationship with it. So that's kind of a weird thing. And I mean, I appreciate the benefits of it. I'm just also aware of sort of the, like I have a little piece of paper here that I wrote down. that I just said, am I being a good steward of stoicism? Meaning that it's not mine.

Starting point is 00:38:10 I didn't make it up. I have no right to it. But for whatever reason, I'm in a position of sort of leadership or identified as a leader in a specific space. And I feel like that comes with a certain set of obligations and responsibilities that I do try to be cognizant of that perhaps I wouldn't if I wrote about, you know, something else. If I just wrote political thrillers or something, I wouldn't feel like I was a steward of American democracy. That would be strange.

Starting point is 00:38:41 And also I've seen on your channel, you've done like a home tour, a bookshop tour. And you have these almost obsessive amounts of reminders of death, Memento Mori. You've got coins. You've got paintings of, you know, someone shooting an arrow at you. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. You inspired me to brand. I want to make my own meteorite.

Starting point is 00:39:03 cosmic dust coins. That's a great idea. Yeah. But, you know, these guys lived in a time. You talked about this a little bit on your podcast with a woman, a professor from Duke today on Daily Stoic, I think, or yesterday. You know, they lived in a time when death was a real. I mean, most women died in childbirth. It took great courage to, like, go out in the streets.

Starting point is 00:39:23 There was no police, you know, presence. And they lived with constant fear of it. Are we just kind of, you know, like substituting the dopamine hit that you might feel? or the adrenaline hit that you might feel by this constant specter of death. And I felt like you'd be careful what you wish for, like, you know, the obsession with death. Sure. Is that something? Anything taken too far can become unhealthy.

Starting point is 00:39:47 But it does strike me as like, okay, in the middle ages, one of the most dangerous times to ever be alive, they're still having to practice memento more. So, like, death is literally ever present. You're walking down the street and there's just putrid. dead bodies in the gutter. And they're like, don't forget death, you could die. So to me, that says something about how insidious our mind is as far as pushing things that are uncomfortable or unpleasant out of the forefront. So it's like if they had to practice the art of Momentumory, and the whole genre of Momentumori, Dantamacob, Vonitas, the reminder of the ephemerality of life, I mean, this is like thousands of years old and pervasive throughout, you know, the, the, the ancient world.

Starting point is 00:40:39 If they had to do it then, we definitely have to do it now when life expectancy is 80, infant mortality is low. And even when you do die, you die in a hospital bed removed from, you know, witnesses or, you know, like, I've maybe seen. I know I have. But like, I would say your average person in the U.S. has probably never seen a dead body before. And if they have, it was almost certainly at a funeral, right? Like just the, you just think about how, I mean, not only were like people dying of, of, of, like, you know, executions and murders and stuff in, let's say Rome, but then they would, like, display the bodies, like, as, like, deterrence or, you know, political state. I mean, you would have, it might have been a strange day that you didn't see a dead body, right? And so if they had to still then, right, as Seneca does over and over again about, you know, keeping death in mind, I suspect we have to do it even more now, not not to an unhealthy degree, but to some degree that we're not in denial about it.

Starting point is 00:41:52 Yeah, and one of your videos is tours, you know, you kind of talk about this myth that you, like, you just got to get through as many books as possible. and how many books have you read on your bookshelf? And obviously, you've read all these books, in many cases, 100 times each. But I wonder, you know, you often say, like, it's not like how many books you move off your list, but how the books move you. But I wonder, you know, should there be a memento vivie or something? Like, because we do live better than the neuro did. You know, the poorest person in America in the third world, in the first world, lives better.

Starting point is 00:42:24 And you've been around the world, you've traveled around the world. We live so well. Is it that we need to be reminded that? we're going to die or that we're not really living? Because it seems to me the purpose of life is not just to live it. And that goes back to the risk discussion we had earlier. Yeah, I think that that might be the same way of saying what I'm saying, or they might be trying to get you to the same place, which is, first of all, some people just tremble at the thought of death, and this makes them very conservative and reluctant to live. Other people are in denial, and so they act as if they

Starting point is 00:42:58 have unlimited time, right? Yeah, the Becker, Ernest Becker book. Yeah, we act as if, Seneca says, we act as mortals in all that we fear and immortals in all that we desire, right? So we want and want and want as if we can take the money with us forever, as if we get to experience our fame or renowned or pleasure forever. So to me, Momentumory is really just about present. I'll give you an example.

Starting point is 00:43:29 So this, Marcus Aurelius, quoting Epictetus, and I thought about this a lot during the pandemic. He says, as you tuck your child into bed at night, say to yourself, they may not survive until morning. I do that now, thanks to you. My wife cannot do it, though. My wife cannot do it. I mean, it goes against every instinct you have as a parent. I would say probably as a mother even more so. But the purpose of that is not detachment.

Starting point is 00:43:58 It's not like, now if I wake up and something horrible has happened overnight, I'm like, cool, right? It's the opposite of that. Marcus Aurelius not only loses some children in infancy, but there's a few haunting lines in meditations where you get the sense that he is deeply pained and mourning this fact. He talks about, he says, like, it's foolishness to expect bad people not to do bad things. And then he says, and to reach for children who are no longer there, right? He's got this sense of like he's mourning these children that he lost, that he loved. To me, the purpose of your child might not make it till the morning is to go, sure, I'll read you one more book. Like, you know, sure, you need me to go get you water or like, sure, you don't want me to leave or, you know, what, like, it's to say, I don't need to go check my email.

Starting point is 00:44:52 Like, forget Netflix. You know, yeah, I wanted to go for a bike ride before the sun went down. But that's not how it's shaken out tonight. So what? Like, this is also great. You know what I mean? And so to me, Momentumori is a reminder to live. It's not Memento Mori.

Starting point is 00:45:12 Life is meaningless. Memento Mori be afraid. It is Memento Mori, don't waste this. Wow, that's very lovely. lovely way to characterize it. Okay, I want to take a little break from the seriousness of it and step back a little bit if you will indulge me with your forbearance, which is probably the fifth virtue that we'll add on. We'll start if we can construct a four-dimensional cardinal that would be pretty cool. I would say forbearance is in, so this is actually something I've been

Starting point is 00:45:45 thinking about because originally in the galley I had endurance as part of courage, which is where the Stoics typically put it. I moved it to temperance, which I am repositioning slightly as self-discipline. So forbearance to me is a virtue of self-discipline because you want not to have to put up with it, but you force yourself to. So on the vein, I want to talk about something that doesn't get enough forbearance, and that is, you know, kind of this double-edged sword of platforms of of blue check marks, of the social media, of the YouTube channels. You've got a massive following that you've earned. You're completely self-made person, which is very rare, by the way.

Starting point is 00:46:29 And I look at that, and I say, well, you know, there's a famous story you should probably know from Animal Farm, George Orwell's famous book. And there's a conversation between the pig and Benjamin the donkey. And the pig says to Benjamin, my, what a fine tail you have. I just have this little tiny curly thing. But you have this wonderful tail. And Benjamin says, yeah, the good Lord gave me the tail to swat away the flies, but I'd rather not have the flies and not need the tail. Sure.

Starting point is 00:46:57 What does that mean you? I mean, your platform has grown exponentially. I may continue to do so if that's up your alley. What do you make of this kind of gilded, you know, the jail cell or garden that were in handcuffed, velvet handcuffs? You know, we're kind of beholden to these algorithms and set of. Sure. Do you, do you, in some sense, is the stoic way. I mean, can you imagine, you know, Rufus or, you know, Marcus are really really caring about how many followers or if they get a blue checkmark or not?

Starting point is 00:47:24 Or if they hit the bestseller ones, God forbid. I mean, do they care? Well, Marcus really has hit the bestseller list a couple years ago when his meditations was re-translated. And it is funny to think about what he would think about. He finally had a good career. So to correct you slightly, I would not say that I am self-made. I think I would very much disagree with that. I would say that I am independent, right? So, like, my platform is not dependent on a brand, like, say, the New York Times or a university

Starting point is 00:47:55 or whatever. But I am both not self-made in the sense that, you know, I had certain advantages in life, but also not self-made in that, like, even as isn't an independent creator, I am still, as you said, subjected to the whims of the various algorithms. I try to be as independent as possible as go direct as possible. even for this launch. As you know, when you put out a book, you try to sell as many copies as possible through the various retailers because this is what the bestseller list count.

Starting point is 00:48:25 I decided not to do that. I decided to sell the copies, a good chunk of the copies directly. And so for this launch, I was the number one retailer of my books. So more copies direct than to Amazon, which is great from a financial standpoint. It's great from a relationship standpoint. it means that I do not appear this week on the Wall Street journalist, so mysteriously appeared on the New York Times. That makes two of us.

Starting point is 00:48:53 I'd written off the idea that I'd hit any of the list. The New York Times was sort of a nice surprise. But the point is, we are all sort of at the whims of these different things, and people decide, you use the word gamification, you decide what game you're going to play. And I think the Stoics would like that expression, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If you are chasing these sort of silly external things,

Starting point is 00:49:18 whether it's the checkmark or followers or the New York Times list, perhaps you will get them, and then you immediately realize that they are not worth that much. Ultimately, I use the platforms to spread the ideas, but I understand that the ownership of the things are tenuous at best. not only like from a legal perspective like Facebook owns the fans then kick you out the platform anytime they want but you while you have access to them I feel like you try to use that as much as possible I have I have found it interesting especially during the pandemic and then this

Starting point is 00:49:57 sort of civil rights moment we're in I have found it both interesting and somewhat depressing to see the number of people that I know with very large platforms who are just reluctant to get involved or say what they really think. And these might be the very same people who would look at a politician and go, why aren't they doing something? Why are they so cowardly? Why aren't, you know? And then it's like you have a million Instagram followers and you don't want to touch

Starting point is 00:50:33 X, Y, or Z because you know 22% of your audience is X, Y, or Z, and you don't want to lose them. So my philosophy has been not to think about it just to say what I think is important or say what I think needs to be heard. And then the only way I protect myself from that is I don't check the numbers so I can rest comfortably in the ignorance of what it has cost me. Right. Yes. And it can also, you know, just again be this is velvet, velvet gilded, a burly cage. That's a great way to describe it.

Starting point is 00:51:08 You have a beautiful line. It's also a treadmill. I would say the other thing is it's a treadmill, right? Because you have to feed this beast, right? You're like, you want it always to be growing. You want things to be going viral. And suddenly, like with money or whatever else, you're not comparing yourself to where you were or to the average person.

Starting point is 00:51:28 You're comparing yourself to so-and-so. I was just on Instagram and I saw a friend sold their apartment for like millions of dollars. And I was like, fuck. You know, like, I didn't know that's the level that that was happening, right? And then you can see how quickly your mind is like, well, should I have that? You know, am I not doing enough? Am I not good enough? You know, am I less than this person?

Starting point is 00:51:54 And so I think all these platforms exploit that in us. It's peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now, that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore Google Fi Wireless plans today.

Starting point is 00:52:21 Plus taxes and government fees. Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Yeah, and you talked about in an interview, I think, with, maybe it was Tom. but you mentioned, you know, that you tell people, oh, I have a bookstore now. And it's like every book nerds dream, you know, and like, here he is, he's doing it. And guess what? It was super freaking hard and it almost didn't happen. And it cost you probably more than you planned.

Starting point is 00:52:49 And there was a pandemic and the pipes burst and everything awful that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong. And yet you're, now you're sitting. Now you have made it. And so, yeah, again, I don't want to push back and you saying that you're not a self-made man. And I always say I'm a self-made man, and I also worship my own creator. Okay, so Ryan, again, I don't ask too much of your time. I beg you for your forbearance. So the last thing I want to say, just maybe it's a little frivolous, but if you could take away courage from certain people, if you had that power, who would you take away it from?

Starting point is 00:53:22 It seems to me, you know, ISIS had a lot of courage, you know. Sure. A lot of bad people have courage. Like, what would you do with that power, that non-existent power? but would you use it to, or maybe say it like this, would you rather use it to give more people, more courage, or take courage away from people that don't deserve it? Yeah, that's a really interesting way to think about it. I've never thought about it. Yeah, like, it would be wonderful if Vladimir Putin was a tad more timid, right?

Starting point is 00:53:47 It would be wonderful if the strong men of history were a little less brave. That would be great. I think so taking away some courage there might be great I'd love to give I feel like there are certainly I was just reading about the I'm and I'm so I instead of mispronouncing it I'll just say who she was I was fascinated by this Hungarian woman who immigrated to the United States who is sort of the backbone

Starting point is 00:54:15 of the for many many unrecognized years of MRNA research basically is it Catalan something But anyways, she's the professor whose research is essentially the backbone of the COVID vaccine. And as you said, about the prizes, get snubbed for a Nobel this year. You know, only saves like a billion or so lives. But, you know, why should that be recognized? But, you know, there was a New York Times piece about her.

Starting point is 00:54:50 And there was someone, like the author or a quote or whatever at the end goes like, you know, she's not the only one like this. She basically soldiers on in the basement of the ivory tower for years and years and years, always fighting for funding. Her bosses would get promoted or poached and then she'd have to fight for a job, fight to keep, you know, her husband manages an apartment complex for a living. She never makes more than $60,000 a year. But after 30 years, that research changes the world, right? And she knew. She knew every day. You know, she was like, her husband was like, don't feel too sorry for her.

Starting point is 00:55:29 She was excited to go to work every day. Right. And so I know there are lots of people out there doing that kind of work that don't have that courage or confidence. It would be wonderful. And I think the world would be profoundly changed if those people, you know, if you could sprinkle some of that fairy dust onto them. All right. Ryan, we have reached the end of the normal segment. And now if you will indulge me, I will take you into the impossible.

Starting point is 00:56:00 So these are three questions I ask all my guests from billionaires to Brainiacs. And Ryan, you're both of those now. And 10 Nobel Prize winners to date on this podcast that have honored me by coming up. First one has to do with your near-term legacy. And it's a concept in Hebrew we call the ethical will or Zava-A. The first one came from Jacob when he gathers his sons, and it's for non-Jews, and it's for non-sons, it's for anybody, right? So it's what kind of wisdom or teaching or ideology, not just stoicism, obviously, we play a role in it, but what component would you put in an ideological will, not a material will for your ideological errors, of which I count myself as one? That's a great question.

Starting point is 00:56:45 I mean, I think the four virtues are sort of would be at the top of that list. when people ask me this question, what would you put on a billboard, it sometimes reminds me, it humbles me in the sense that, like, I am not an original thinker so much as I am a communicator or a popularizer. And so I would invariably use something like this to popularize something that someone else said. So it might seem weird that I would want my legacy to be something that's already, you know, very well established in the material, or sorry, in the, in the, in the, uh,

Starting point is 00:57:19 in the Christian and the philosophical worlds. But there's a Marxist quote. He says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. And I feel like that is a really good imperative for like what we should be striving for as human beings. Yeah, there's a YouTuber in the UK named Ali Abdal who worships you. He's a writer. He always talks about you. And he talks exactly from that phrase, which I'm sure he got from you.

Starting point is 00:57:47 you know, what is the meaning of life? Basically to do as much good as possible in whatever time you have. So I think that's beautiful. Next question goes a little bit deeper into the future, not to the biblical age of 120 when you spring forth this mortal coil as Moses did. But I want to ask you, you might know the book by Arthur C. Clark, The Sentinel, which became the 2001 Space Odyssey script, essentially. And there are these monoliths.

Starting point is 00:58:13 There are these like kind of ominous, a little bit frightening, but maybe, harmless. We don't know what they're. They're kind of like time capsules, perhaps planted by an alien civilization for us to discover when we're ready. In the beginning, they appear on the Serengeti planes, some hominids hitting it with a bone, and then later they're on the moon. I want to ask you, Ryan, if you had a billion-year-lasting time capsule, what would you put on it or in it? Don't make it like a USB key, because who knows it will be able to read that? It'll be like Beta Max. But what would you put to last, to caps and capsulate? What greatness, human and accomplishment has rock.

Starting point is 00:58:50 That's really great. I don't know. Someone once described Marcus Aurelius' Meditations as the highest ethical product of the ancient mind. And I think there's something, you know, all books, including my books, are written for an audience, right? So almost all philosophy was written with an audience in mind. Even Epictetus, even Nicomanchian ethics, these are like lecture notes from a professor speaking to an audience. So inherently a public-facing philosophy. And what I think is so profoundly amazing and irreplicable about meditations is that it is a work of philosophy intended for the self.

Starting point is 00:59:40 He would be mortified, you know, that we're reading it today, probably, I would make up. Because it's clearly not written for that. There's notes to the self. There's weird allusions that no one would possibly understand. There's a lot of repetition. But the specificity of it becomes its universality. And I think it would be pretty magical to know that that piece of work survived another thousand years. I mean, that it stood up for 2000 is a pretty good run. But if you were like, hey,

Starting point is 01:00:16 you know, if you did X, you could add a thousand years to that, although to the Lindy effect, maybe that's already happening. But it would be something like that. Yeah, it's funny because I remember one of the first things you said to me when we met four years ago virtually, you said, you know, you know what your book's competing against? And I was like, all these science popularizations and Nobel Prize takedowns? You said, no, every freaking cat, video on YouTube. Every other way that people have to not read your freaking book. And that really hit home with me. And I do try to keep that in mind. Nobody has to read our books, but they do. Maybe I'll take a 2A question and ask you, would you rather have millions of readers a year from

Starting point is 01:00:56 now or now or like one reader 100 years from that? That's a good question. I mean, I guess it depend on what you're optimizing for. The Stoics sort of talk about how you're not around to enjoy your posthumous fame, so it's not worth that much. I think maybe I would pivot and go, is that reading popularity? Like, is it, are you telling me, I guess I would, if you're out, to me, the more interesting question is, is, would you trade it profoundly changing one person or being popular with, but having relatively little impact with lots of people? And I would probably choose the profound impact. Be a bad financial choice, but probably the philosophical choice.

Starting point is 01:01:45 It's funny, about half the authors I've asked, have said either one. In other words, so they half want the money now, and then there's there to be commended for that. The Stoics weren't averse to wealth, as you talk about, and maybe one day you'll do the, you know, Stoics guide to investing. But the other half want to have an impact, right? And some of the impact is just if it affects the one person, which you should never, as you say. Okay, last question goes,

Starting point is 01:02:07 back in time. The first, the only question we have that goes back in time. And it's related to the namesake of this podcast, Sir Arthur C. Clark, whose first law was any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. And I open the show with that phrase every week. And the second law is for every expert. There's an equal and opposite expert. But the third law is the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. So that's the name of this podcast, into the impossible. I want to ask you, going backwards in time, advice to your former self, essentially. What piece of advice would you give yourself?

Starting point is 01:02:40 And I always ask this of every author, not just those who have the word courage in their book title, but I said, what would you give advice to give yourself to give you the courage to go into the impossible? I would tell myself to relax. I took everything way too seriously, so I was wound very tight. And I think that made it harder to do what was like in the story that I tell at the end of the book. I just overthought it. I had Alexander Vindman on the podcast recently, the whistleblower, and he has this great line in the book where he talks about self-deturing.

Starting point is 01:03:17 You know, he says we self-detur, right? We do this from foreign policy. It's not that that we're actually intimidated by the enemy. We just overthink it and we get too much in our own heads about it. Like, I should have just done what I thought was right. You know, I should have just said, I don't, or just all the things that I've said, to in my life that I didn't need to do. I should have just said, uh, no. You know, I think, I think if I could have relaxed a little bit more than a tad less concerned about the future

Starting point is 01:03:46 and just trusted myself a bit more, had a bit more confidence, I feel like some of my decisions in the past would have aged better. Very well. Well, Ryan, I speak on behalf of the vast audience of apostles of Ryan Holiday, celebrate the Ryan Holiday. I want to thank you. much for doing all that you've done to benefit me personally, professionally, and I speak for millions of people around the world. Ryan Holiday, thank you so much for going into the impossible. Awesome. You're the best man.

Starting point is 01:04:17 I appreciate it. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Support the show by rating, commenting, sharing, and leaving reviews. We appreciate hearing from you, and it really helps keep our universe expanding. Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating. That's DR. Brian Keating. Join our premieres Tuesdays in 8.m. Pacific Time. Follow Brian on Twitter and Medium

Starting point is 01:04:46 and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. For exclusive content, visit Brian Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at Brian Keating.com. Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Ryan Holiday | Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave! @Daily Stoic ​(#190)

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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Ryan Holiday | Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave! @Daily Stoic (#190)