The Joe Rogan Experience - #1836 - Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Ryan Holiday is a writer, media strategist, and author of multiple books, including "Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius," Stillness is the Key," and "Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator." He's the host of "The Daily Stoic" podcast. http://www.ryanholiday.net/ http://www.dailystoic.com/

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Alright, we're up. Sweet. Hello, Brian. Hi. Nice to meet you, man.

Yeah, good to meet you. Happy birthday. Thank you. How old are you? I'm 35. Wow, do you feel 35? I feel like after like late 20s, I just kind of like, well, I have to check in every year to be like, wait, how old am I again? You know?

So not really, I guess. It's a strange time, 35. Why? Because you're kind of middle-aged. Yes. But you're young. Well, I was, like, successful pretty early in my life. So, like, I was always, like, the kid.

You know, like, I dropped out of college at 19 and so and i worked in hollywood and so i was always like the the youngest person in the room by far and so like that's it's not been part of my identity but i like felt it you know what did you do in hollywood well i dropped out of college i worked uh at a desk in a talent agency and then uh and I started signing new media clients and then very quickly it didn't work out but you want to know I'd say sure so I I was working for one of the reasons that didn't work I didn't work out for cuz it was horrible life and I don't know why anyone would want to have it but I was working at this desk I was insistent and I was also a research assistant for

Robert Greene 40 all its power guy sure by the way I brought you a new one from him oh great sign it for you oh that's awesome yeah Robert's great guy he's my favorite human being the whole world all right let's see well no so I I was working for Robert and I had the 40 laws of power on my desk because i was working on it and one of the partners became like convinced that i was like up to shit what yeah yeah like uh he was like he just he got it in his head that i was like not a threat but i was like someone to be suspicious of and uh because you had the laws of power on your desk? Yeah, yeah.

It was the weirdest thing. You were too ambitious? Like, what was it? I guess, yeah. Wow. And I remember one time, the partner I worked for, he, like, never, like, he was always gone, and he never liked to be on calls. So he had me on some call for him, and I was supposed to, like, be, like, feeding him info,

you know, like, when you're on a conference call. I was supposed to like be like feeding him info you know like when you're on the on the conference call I was supposed to like type him stuff and uh you know like you log into the call and uh it's like you're the seventh caller but there's only supposed to be like six people on the call and uh so the partner's like someone else is on the call like who was on the call and I was like am I supposed to say something like, I'm not supposed to be on the call. And I kind of froze. I was only, like, 20. And I froze. And he kept, you know, who's on the call? Who's on the call? And it was, like, too late to say anything.

Right. It's funny. I'm, like, feeling it. Like, the nervousness. The nerves? Really? Well, no, because it was so stressful. This is, like, you know, this is, like, an Artie Gold type, right?

Right. And then all of a sudden I hear, like down the hall and it's like his assistant. And the assistant is like looking through the door and see. And I'm like, oh shit, I hang up the phone. Oh God. It makes the noise. And then I hear like stomping down the hall. And he like bursts into the thing.

He's like, what the fuck are you doing? I knew you were up to something. Like, I saw you reading that book, you know, and it's like this whole, he's just like screaming at me. And, uh,

and then like, he could tell that I was like not scared enough. And so he, I'll never forget. He grabbed the door and he slammed it and then opened it again and then slammed it and then opened it again. Like just pure, like physical intimidation, like a chimp banging sticks exactly and so I just got up and left and then I never

went back oh my god it was crazy I dated a girl when I was like 27 and she was an assistant for an agent and she would wake up in the middle of the night terrified that she fucked something up. She would just have these fearful moments. She worked 16, 17 hours a day for nothing. I mean, she got paid garbage money. And the whole idea was that you're kind of interning slash working there, and you were eventually going to get a career as an agent.

So she worked for this guy who was just a complete asshole, just a fucking asshole to everybody who worked under him it's the dumbest system in the entire world because like the person who is good at being an assistant and i was so bad at it and would put up with it for like five or six years is not the person that anyone would then want to be their age. It's like filtering out for like pencil pushers and like nerds and like, like, you know, it's the craziest system. And that's why most agents are horrible is because they, most people would get up and quit or just not be interested in it at all. It encourages abuse too, because then you abuse, if you ever get to that position where you're an

agent and you get an assistant, you're just going to abuse them because you were abused when you were an assistant. That's just it's a hazing ritual. Yes. And people who were hazed are very you'd think you'd be sympathetic to people who were vulnerable, but it actually hardens you because you're like, well, I went through it. You have to go through it. How weird. It's awful. You're like, well, I went through it.

You have to go through it. How weird. It's awful. Well, it's a weird abusive system, period, from top down, from producers and directors to Tarantino was on the podcast. He was telling me about this famous producer who kept a bedroom in his office where he would take the starlets and he would bang all the starlets. Power corrupts, man. Yeah.

But I think back then it was unchecked you know now it's like it's those same guys are like terrified now yes like all those stories are resurfacing like that would that was the way women got roles like you had to sleep your way to the top like you literally had to do that it doesn't seem that hard to not be a piece of shit though. But does it in a world where everyone's a piece of shit, like depending upon what, like there's different cultures of different, you know,

businesses. And when you have a business like that, where, you know, there's one of the weirdest things about Hollywood is that there's literally people that just decide to pick you. And if they pick you, your life becomes your wildest dreams. You're on the cover of Vogue magazine.

You're starring in an action movie right next to the fucking biggest A-list celebrities in the world. You fucking made it. You're at the Oscars accepting the award and thanking that person who points at you in the front row. If they chose, if they choose you. But if they don't choose you, you're fucked. This is not a meritocracy. It's just not.

You can see by someone like Amber Heard. She's not a good actress, but if you get into the right spot and you do the right thing and you fucking make the right noises, you can become famous and successful. Well, I think any industry that has gatekeepers is inherently susceptible to being corrupted because those people have a certain unearned power and they probably deep down know that they don't really do anything and that they're just like guessing you know and uh it's

probably there's probably something in that too where you're aware of the inherent bankruptcy like we don't make anything we don't do anything yeah uh and it probably goes to your head you need distractions and stuff well i think that's this is an interesting jump off point to talk about your work and your your fascination with stoicism because what you're talking about there is like a truth. You're talking about there's a reality to that job. It's that these people who are the gatekeepers, there's a lot of people that work in Hollywood, that work as executives that are really not talented people. I've known them forever and I've seen them fail upwards. Like I've known them since I've been there.

So it was like 20, 30 years ago and they're still around. And they were retarded then and they're stupid now. It's like they're the same person. It's like there's a reality to that. And one of the things that I think you're really, that you highlight very well is the importance of reality, of dealing with things and of finding positives in any sort of, you know, the title of your book, The Obstacles, The Way, it's a great title because obstacles are very important. And although they don't seem like they are when, you know, you're there, they don't seem

like they're beneficial. They seem like it's just like the end of the world and this is going to be horrible. But there's some great benefit in difficult times and difficult things. Well, yeah, even when I was in Hollywood, right? So I had to walk out on this job. I'm like, fuck, this is what I dropped out of college to do. Like, this is not good. My entire life would have been different had that not happened to me.

What did you want to do? I wanted to be a writer, but I got this really good advice from a writer, and he said writers live interesting lives, So you have to like go do stuff. You have to be around people or in a, you have to go get, you have to go earn having a point of view. You can't just like, you can't just get good at the craft of doing the thing. Obviously that's super important. And that's what I learned from Robert as a research assistant.

It's like, here's how books come together. Here's the art of doing the thing. But like, if you don't have anything to say, you know, and so I was just, I was like, okay, I had this thing to chance to do this. And then I went from there. I worked at, I was the director of marketing at American Apparel. So I did like weird shit and I was around crazy,

crazy people, but all of that ultimately informed, you know, what I talk about. But I knew I didn't want to be a person who's just like taking a percentage of what other people do. I wanted to make stuff. Like I wanted to actually produce and create things. So I knew I wanted to be a writer. And when I first read the Stoics, I was just like, shit, this is it. Like when I read Meditations for the first time, I was 19. I was sitting in my college apartment. And I was just like, not only have I never read anything like this,

I've never even heard of anything like this. Because you have the most powerful man in the world writing notes to himself that he never thinks are going to be published. Like pretty much every other book ever written was like a writer writing to an audience. And meditations was never intended to be published. He'd probably be mortified that we even have it. And so it was just a kind of philosophy and a way of thinking that I hadn't heard in any school, you know, in any class from any adult in my life. And I was like, I want to tell people about this. Marcus Aurelius,

one of the more interesting things about the stuff that he writes is how relevant it is today. Like when you read it, you wouldn't imagine that this is being written by a man. Like how many years ago was that? 1900, 2000 years ago. He's writing in like the mid 150s, 160s AD. It's very relevant. Like the way he writes, the language is incredibly familiar. It's the same. It's one of the things about, we would always make fun of the way people talked a long time ago. Where far art thou? There's a way of talking

that we don't communicate like today. But when Marcus Aurelius writes, and you read meditations, it seems very current. Well, it does depend on the translation, right? Because if you read meditations, it seems very current. Well, it does depend on the translation, right? Because like if you are reading, and people do this, and I'll recommend Marcus Aurelius, and they'll just get what's free on the internet or whatever.

If you're reading a translation from the 1850s or the 1600s, it's going to be in Shakespearean English. Wow, interesting. Right, because they're translating it into their parnacular. And so the right translation is key. Do you remember which one you read? I don't. There's a Gregory Hayes translation

for the Modern Library, which I think is the most lyrical and beautiful of all of them. That's the one that I randomly bought on Amazon and had no idea that it was going to be the one that would hit me so were the original ones in latin so this is what's crazy about marcus so marcus lives in rome the romans speak latin but the philosophical language at that time was greek so marcus was writing to himself in greek so it gives it like when you read those passages or you

listen to them and you're just like, that is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Like there's this one passage where he's like, he talks about like this, a stock of grain bending low under its own weight, the way all of, you know, falls to the ground. He talks about the way that when you put bread in the oven, it breaks open on top. And we don't know why that happens. It's just this like beautiful inadvertent act of nature. He's just like writing like a poet, like a great writer. And again, he's writing in his non-native tongue to himself, never expecting anyone would see it.

How fucking talent. It'd be like finding out that's like a comedian is like funny in their diary. You're just like, wow, you're just naturally that. You're not turning it on or off. Right. It's just like intuitively part of you. Yeah. But I think your point about how it feels timeless, that actually does feel like a thing I've heard comedians say, which is that like the specific is universal.

I don't think he was trying to talk to the audience i think he was trying he was so unflinchingly honest with himself that he was touching something universally human and that's why because like we should not be able to relate to his experience at all right i mean he's literally there is literally a cult of the emperor that worshipped the emperor and their spouse as living deities. And he controlled the largest army in the world. He had unlimited wealth. He could kill or murder or torture or exile anyone he wanted. People cheered him as he walked in the streets.

There's no way we should be able to be like, this passage was talking about struggling to get out of bed in the morning and you want to huddle under the warm covers. Like how? Because I guess people are people no matter where you get in life. People are people and not everyone gives in to the temptations of being in that position. everyone gives in to the temptations of being in that position. And in his case, I think it made him more apt to reflect upon his thoughts and find the source of why he believed what he believed

and why he thought what he thought. Yeah, he says in meditations, he says, be careful not to be Caesarified. Don't be dyed purple. Because the emperor wore a purple cloak. And purple, now we're just like the color purple. To get purple, it was this complicated process of different merchants. Actually, the founder of Stoicism was a merchant in Tyrian purple.

But like these slaves would smash up sea slugs or sea snails, dry them on rocks, and this dust would eventually become like the source of purple. So, and he's like, don't be stained purple. So he was acting, like when he becomes emperor, he's like, this will change you if you're not careful and you have to actively work

to make sure that doesn't happen. So he was aware of that. That was the character in Gladiator, right? Wasn't that Marcus Aurelius? Was it based on him roughly, loosely? Well, it's I think one of the great movies of all time. Great movie. Peter O'Toole?

Yes. He's the one that Joaquin Phoenix's character kills at the beginning. And then a lot of the sort of things that Maximus says are sort of very stoic, inspired.

The irony of that movie is that Joaquin Phoenix probably underplays how bad Marcus Aurelius' son was in real life. Really? He really did get killed by a gladiator.

He was a psychopath. Immediately destroys all of Marcus' work. It's one of the tragedies of Marcus that he has a POS son. I've always wondered, that seemed like it's Joffrey from Game of Thrones. That is a very common thing. Yeah. Why, why is that like, it's an archetype. It is.

There's another great Eastern emperor, Cyrus the Great, and he has a shitty son too. You know, it doesn't look like Queen Elizabeth's kids were that great. Yeah. You know, it doesn't look like Queen Elizabeth's kids were that great. But what's interesting about Marcus is like, it's weird that he's such this great man. And then most people know nothing about him. But like Marcus's father was not emperor. So there's what they call the five good emperors. So there's basically in all of Roman history, there's like five good emperors.

And they happen in a row. And they happen in a row because each one does not have a male heir. So they don't have sons. So in the Roman tradition, it was much more common to, if you didn't have a son, you would adopt a son. Um, and so the emperor Hadrian is old, the emperor Hadrian is old, probably gay, does not have any children. And he adopts, he sees something in Marcus that they're very, Marcus is young, but he sort of starts mentoring this boy. They actually go like hunting together. Like he sees something special in this kid. Marcus's nickname was Verismus or the truthful one. But he's like just a kid. And Hadrian realizes it's too young to name him emperor. So he selects a man named Antoninus Pius, who's the great politician of the time and makes him emperor on condition that he adopt Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus, and then

the thinking was Antoninus Pius would live for like five years and then Marcus would be king. And in fact, he lives for like 19 years. So Marcus has like a 20 year apprenticeship in being the emperor under a man who like could have killed him, who could have been corrupted by power, but is this incredible example. And that's why at the beginning of Meditations, Marcus has like a two-page thank you letter to Antoninus, his adopted stepfather. Oh, wow. It's fucking crazy. And his son, what was the deal with the wife?

Marcus's wife? Yes. deal with the wife? Marcus's wife? Yes. So Marcus's wife, Faustina, is, I guess it would be, Faustina is Antoninus's daughter. So they're not related, but they marry the family together. Marcus loves her. They're married a very long time. There are rumors that she's unfaithful, but as far as we know, Marcus pays no attention to this, does not believe them. But the tragedy of their marriage is Marcus loses like seven children before they reach adulthood. Can you imagine that? That was very common back then, though, wasn't it? Seven's a lot, though.

It is a lot, but isn't that one of the reasons why the general age that people lived to was so low back then? People think that people died your age of expected death. It wasn't that. It's just like you died in childbirth. You died when you were young. You died from infection. It wasn't that people didn't live as long. Yes.

There's lots of old people in rome it's just like getting getting over like if you made it to 40 maybe you can make it to 80 right but like chances are you weren't going to make it to 20 yeah that's makes sense i mean they're all sword fighting and shit that's also true i mean just imagine you could cut your hand and die of an infection yeah real and obviously they're shitting in the streets and this fucking horrible disease. Even rich people don't have toilets. Like they know nothing. So that's one of the sort of not rationalizations, but if you're like, how does it go so wrong that this great man leaves the empire to his son? Yeah. Well, he does have a male heir. That's a problem, unlike all his predecessors. But it's that every one of the sons that he wanted to succeed him died.

Oh. And there's some speculation that Marcus's plan... So this is the other crazy thing about Marcus. If I'm nerding out, you can... No, please go. So Marcus has a stepbrother. Through this crazy adoption process, he has a stepbrother. And so that he inherits through Hadrian.

It's a complicated thing, but he has a stepbrother. And so, like, we know what kings do to their rivals. Like, you have to kill them, right? The first emperor of Rome, Octavian, he's Julius Caesar's nephew. Julius Caesar has a half-son with Cleopatra, or he has a half-brother or whatever. He has a son with Cleopatra, a son out of wedlock. And Octavian has two Stoic teachers who instruct him to murder his rival, which he promptly does, to murder his rival, which he promptly does or have murdered. So the precedent was like you can't have too many Caesars. Like you can't have more than one viable heir.

And Marcus, when he's Antoninus' favorite, Antoninus preps him, he ascends to the throne. The first thing Marcus does is he names his brother Lucius Verus, co-emperor, which is not only never happened basically before Orsens, it is a nod to how the Republic was. is led by two consuls, like two elected presidents who serve together as a check against power. So Marcus, by naming, he can't put it back to a republic, which is the plot of Gladiator. He can name himself a co-emperor. And the thinking is that's what he was planning to do with his sons, but they all died. So in the movie, Joaquin Phoenix kind of kills the dad. It kills the dad because Marcus does not know in the movie, not in real life. Marcus Aurelius knows his son cannot be king. But in real life, he passes it to him.

So and how did Marcus Aurelius die? Of the plague. Oh, wow. So that's the other crazy thing. Again, timeless. Marcus was writing in what we now call the Antonine Plague. They named it after him. But it's like a global pandemic. It starts in the east.

It overwhelms Rome. Five, 10 million people die. They have no way of stopping it. So Marcus leads through all of that. And then the suspicion is that he catches it at the end, realizes he has it, has to send his son away so he doesn't give it to his son, sets in motion like a series of advisors who should lead his son. And then his son promptly gets rid of all of them and goes bad so how does a man like that who's so introspective and so thoughtful particularly for the times how does a man like that have a son that's such a piece of shit i don't know i don't know i mean

one argument is he's a psychopath and there's nothing you can do. Like no blame whatsoever. The other argument, the more likely one is like most great men. And we're talking about history, so it's mostly great men. But again, Queen Elizabeth has crappy kids. Most great men are shitty fathers. Gandhi was a bad father. Winston Churchill was not a good father. Why is that? I think they're busy. Wow. I mean, do you have a theory?

I think it's a power thing. I think growing up with that amount of wealth and that amount of power that your your mind develops in this privileged position where you never have to struggle you never have to develop character and you always feel entitled to everything you know if you're like imagine being a prince imagine being the son of an emperor you have have the most ultimate power. You could have people killed. He probably did. He probably killed people. If he got in an argument with a boy, you know, while they were playing, you would probably stab him. that you're superior to all mortals. Like you would think of yourself as a God King. You would think of yourself as someone who's not a normal human being. And I don't think you could ever get that out of a person. If you, if you grew up, it's like childhood stars are the most broken people that we have on exhibit.

If you want to really examine human beings in terms, if you want to do like a psychological study, like what, you know, what is the average architect like? What is the average singer like? You know, what is the average child star like? Well, they're almost all drug addicts. They're almost all completely wrecked. Their personalities never fully develop. They develop under this weird position where everyone loves them from the time they're little and they get exorbitant amounts of attention that are completely unearned. Then they never have to develop character under adversity. They never have to prove themselves. You cannot prove yourself. In fact, you never have the opportunity. And so what do

they do? they get their faces tattooed they get hooked on drugs they're fucked up man they're just falling apart and it's almost universal yes well there's the exceptions but the exceptions prove the rule the exceptions are so rare and even the exceptions usually are fucked up i heard this quote it was actually about uh mark ceruleus. No, no, it was about a different – it was in a book about Mark Ceruleus. Anyways, the guy said the worst thing that a son – or, again, male. But the worst thing a kid can say to their parents is, like, I was never a boy or I was never a girl.

Like, you never had a childhood. Right. So I imagine that's part of it, too, is, like, from – same with child stars, but also like the person who grows up knowing they're going to, you're never a normal, regular kid. Right. Where you're getting your ass kicked, where you're confused. Yeah. Where you're struggling to both fit in and like earn your place. You're just like, you know, from the moment you're born, you're special.

know from the moment you're born, you're special. And that's maybe why there's five good emperors in a row is that each one of those emperors did not grow up thinking that. That makes sense. Yeah. I don't know if it's possible for someone to, I mean, I think it's the same as being famous, right? I mean mean essentially he's the son of the emperor he is famous i think it's the same thing i've met dozens of people that were child stars and i've met some of them that were very nice like demi lovato is very nice miley cyrus is very nice uh i've met a bunch of them but they're all fucked they're all fucked in one way or another. They're all like, I'm sober now, or I'm going to do this now. I'm going to do that.

There's never like this sense of calm and discipline and being centered. And there's always like this state of change and improvement. They're always like in this weird place where they don't feel fully centered or they they're always like falling over to the left or falling over to the right the structure's not there yes yeah i mean do you think about that like how do you i've i tried to make decisions in my life like one of the reasons i live where i live is that like i wanted my kids to be normal like i want want, you know what I mean? Like to have us, obviously they can't be that,

like my life is never going to be super normal because I don't have a job that I go to every day. And, you know, I don't have to think about certain things that a quote unquote normal person would. But like there are definitely cities or neighborhoods or lifestyles you could live that are inherently less normal for your kids. And I would like to have normal kids.

Yeah. Normal is an interesting term, right? Because I've met people that grew up in L.A. and their parents are in show business and they're normal. Yeah. Yeah. It's possible. They probably had to create kind of a bubble, right?

I don't know. I mean, I think it's all about what kind of activities you get your child involved in. I get my kids involved. My kids are involved with a lot of athletics because I think people have this faulty position on athletics that don't participate in them. And they think of athletics being something that is for the body. It's not a smart pursuit. It's a dumb pursuit. It's like a physical thing. It's not a smart pursuit. It's a dumb pursuit. It's like a physical thing. It's not a mental thing, but they're not right. They're incorrect.

There's a giant amount of success in athletics that are about not just mental states, but about discipline, which is also... Discipline is a part of the mind, right? We all agree to that. But so is the ability to perform under pressure. So is the ability to deal with a loss and sort of reestablish yourself and come back feeling better. The feeling that you get of the shame of loss is very valuable, and that's a mental thing. And there's mental sort of challenges that you acquire from sports that I don't think are available in any other way. I think you get

different mental challenges, and there's different lessons that can be learned from academic pursuits. But there's mental challenges that you only get from athletic pursuits. You only get when you have to force your body to keep going even though your mind is exhausted, your body is exhausted, and your will is leaving you. And there's parts of you that are telling you to quit and you have to learn how to manage that. And that is a mental thing. But it's a mental thing in a different way than calculus is. It's a mental thing in a different way than learning languages. But it's equally as difficult.

I think one of the things I think a lot about and that I dislike, like if I was like describe philosopher he'd be like university professor turtleneck like tweed you know uh jacket with pads on it or whatever like you'd think of a weakling and in the ancient world like philosophers were people who did shit right like there were warriors they were warriors they were kings like Mark Surrealist Hunts uh there's an early St stoic who's a distance runner one who's a boxer like and what i love when you really read the stoic text is like that their metaphors are all sport it's wrestling and fighting and running and hunting because they did those things those things are difficult yes and difficult things are good for you and they're good for your mind that's what people don't understand that don't pursue them there's in america unfortunately there's this sort of um intellectual elitism there's this this mindset that some very smart people have because they're they're very good at certain

intellectual pursuits and they look down upon pursuits that are physical in nature because because of this sort of prejudice. They have this idea. And I think it's also like a fear of encountering something that you're not good at or something that's going to humiliate you and something that's going to make you feel bad. It's like it maybe came from gym class, maybe came from being forced to participate in sports when they were younger and they didn't enjoy it. So they have this thing in their head that there's no value there.

Yeah. Seneca says, we treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind. Ooh. I like that. That's good. That's good. Like when I crank the knob to cold in the shower or I push myself when I'm running or lifting weights or swimming or whatever, crank the knob to cold in the shower or I push myself when I'm running or lifting weights or swimming or whatever I I feel like part of what that is is an assertion about who's in charge

yes that's what my friend John Joseph says John Joseph is a lead singer of the Cro-Mags but he's also done like a shit ton of Ironmans he has got this great saying about doing an Ironman he goes he goes that's when your mind has to tell your body who the fuck's in charge. I love that. Yeah. It's like, and you hear it with his heavy New York accent. It's beautiful. But that's what it is. It's like you have to be able to endure. You have to be able to tell your body that this is what we do. And the more you do it, the easier it is, man. I made a video about it today when I was doing the cold plunge. Cause it's like, it's a,

it's so much easier than it used to be, but it's still hard, but it's just easy because I'm, I'm accustomed to the grind of it because I do it every day. So I just get in there or almost every day, but it's like, there's, there's something to that that's so valuable that doesn't get emphasized enough in our modern day conversations and it doesn't get emphasized in in media it doesn't get talked about it's like you have to search for that you have to search for this idea that struggle is difficult or you know like the like the title of your book, the obstacle is the way like getting through things is how you you build a stronger foundation. It's how you develop character. It's how the mind understands how to manage difficult situations. Well, I think it's a transferable skill.

So like, yeah, you're doing it in the cold plunge or running or fighting or whatever. And then when you're like, when I'm working on a book and books are hard, you know, and they're like halfway through, I'm like, this isn't coming together. This sucks. Should I stop? I'm like, I know this feeling very well. And I know that you don't listen to this feeling. So like, fuck off. Right. Like you have to build that familiar cause cause you're going to go through hard things in life and you want to have cultivated a sense of like not quitting. Yeah. Things are hard.

Yes. Um, I have a very good friend. His name's Cameron Haynes and he's a hunter. Yeah. He's also ultra marathon runner. And one of the reasons why he's such a good bow hunter, I believe, is because of all the exercise he does. endurance for the mountains. I think there is some of that too, but I think more than that it's his ability to maintain calmness because he's always torturing himself. So he's always running like 15 miles in the morning before he

goes to work. He's always torturing himself. So he has this ability to just stay in this like steady state. So when he's at the top of a mountain and there's a giant bugling bull that's like 50 yards away, he can center his pin right on that bull's vitals and release a perfect arrow every time because he's so good at managing uncomfortable states. He can stay relaxed under fire. The Stoic word for that is stillness

ataraxia is the greek word but it's sort of like freedom from disturbances like even if it's crazy outside or even if you're going through something internally like how do you how do you slow things down marx really talks about he says be like the rock or the cliff that the waves crash over and eventually fall still around. I think when you've been in crazy stuff or you've exposed yourself or you've endured things, you just realize that I got to slow this down. I got to center myself. And that being excited is not a positive contributor to this situation. and what I mean and it's also like trans it's a daily thing it's not as simple as like oh I used to do difficult things so now I can do this difficult things like I don't think so I think you you are better off than someone who has never encountered something difficult but I think there's

a reason why fighters take warm-up fights and fighters when they're active when they fight all the time they fight better when i was competing i would be at my best if i just fought like a week ago like if i fought a week ago i was like i know this experience i know this feeling i've been here before i was just there yeah but if i was like like i got injured once and i i couldn't compete for like four or five months it was weird coming back was weird It was a totally foreign experience. It felt very nerve wracking. And I think there's something to like forcing the brain, forcing the mind into these difficult positions, into these difficult situations so that the mind gets

accustomed to that feeling. And then you can maintain calm and then you could keep yourself in the midst of all the chaos, you can keep who you are. Yeah. Well, I try to design my life around, like, cultivating slash protecting that feeling. So, like, I know people that are, like, they get up and then the first thing they do in the morning is they're just, like, sucked into social media or the phone. Right? And then, like, they're already riled up from up from like before their feet have even touched the floor. They're like, can you believe so-and-so said this?

Or like, I heard this. Or like I was talking to a friend of mine and he was like, actually I was talking to Peter Attia and he was saying the problem is he scans his email in the morning to check for fires. Like not literal fires, but like stuff going on. And I'm like, so you're starting the day looking for things that are disturbing. Like, you're looking for the worst stuff.

But in his defense, he is a physician. Yeah, of course. And he's a man who has a bunch of clients. And if a client emails him, hey, my foot's numb and I can't see it in my left eye, there's this fucking, he's got to put out that fire. Yeah, Yeah. That's different than you and I. Yes, definitely. And there are obviously professions where you have to be more on call, but you can, and what we were talking about and he was like, he's happiest though, when he like gives himself 30 minutes to an hour in the morning, which means waking up early, right? That like you're not sucked into

that stuff. And so I tried, that's what my rule is. Like I don't use the phone for an hour in the morning. I broke my phone once on a trip in Hawaii. I was a bow hunting in Lanai and I dropped my phone. Yeah. And, um, I dropped my phone and it started just randomly calling people. It would just, it was wild. Like I would hold it up and it would call people and I'd my phone and it started just randomly calling people. It was wild. I would hold it up and it would call people and I'd hang up and it would just call somebody else. I showed my wife. I go, look at this. Watch this.

And it was just doing this wild thing where it just kept calling. I shut it off, turned it back on. It was doing the same thing. So I'm like, okay, I got to get a new phone. But there's no Apple store in Lanai. There's only 3,000 people on Lanai. Isn't it all owned by one person? Yeah, Larry Elson, the Oracle guy.

Ballin! Ballin out of control, son! Yeah, he owns a fucking island. It's a beautiful place, too. Anyway, I had to order a new phone. It took like three days to get there. In those three days, I didn't have any phone, and I felt wonderful.

It was weird, man. I had a weird relaxation come over me. Like an alleviation of stress and concern. And it wasn't even that anything was going on in my life where like people were mad at me or I was in trouble or anything like that. It was simply that I wasn't checking in on the opinions of so many people and I was allowing myself to just think about life. Clearly also I'm in paradise. So that helps a lot. And I'm just with my family. So there's no concern about other people. I'm with my family, the most important people. And I'm with two of my very best friends and we're having a great time together with no phone. But there was a

feeling that I had where I was like, wow, I feel lighter. I feel like there's an alleviation. But then as soon as I got that phone, I went right back into it. As soon as I got that phone, I'm going to check on my Instagram. Oh, my God, look at all these messages. I'm checking my email. Oh, God, I got to answer all this. And I fell right back into this bizarre, steady feeling of like a buzz of subtle anxiety everywhere.

It can't be good for you. Terrible for you. Yeah. Terrible. But is it, like all this other stuff we're talking about, like hard working out, like doing difficult things, like endurance work and sauna work and all that stuff. Is it also a resilience? Does it build up your ability to tolerate massive amounts of information coming your way? Because would you be worse at it if you hadn't experienced it? Because me personally, like I have something like 15 million instagram followers and nine million

twitter it's a lot of people and if i absorb all their opinions it's unmanageable yeah but i'm so accustomed to people talking shit about me i'm so accustomed to that i can read someone being really mean about me and i just go like it doesn't get me anymore but it could it used to get me like when like maybe like if you go back to like the beginning of social media if someone would say something mean to me i'd be like what is this this is awful because you thought it was a real person as opposed to like some thing on the screen well it's you thought it was a real person but it it's also, you cannot respond. There's no one there. So you feel helpless. It's like you're swinging at ghosts. It's like,

no one would say to your face, unless they were a really dangerous person, a lot of the things that people say on Twitter. I mean, someone to say that to your face, they're trying to instigate a literal physical violent encounter most people would never do that but they can say something and just throw it out there and it reaches you and it's like causes emotional pain to people and they know it does but they feel disconnected from it and so it takes a long time for someone to understand what that is and how this is a negative thing that you really probably shouldn't have in your life so don't go looking for it don't go reading that stuff because it's just not good for you but if you aren't accustomed to it when it does get through and slip into you it can fucking

really bother you and i know some people that never learn this skill and i will see something happen to them and then i'll see them two, three days later, and it looks like they haven't slept because they're just fucked from people being mad at them. And I think that there's a certain amount of resilience you can build from social media. It's just like snake venom. Take a little bit of it, you develop a tolerance,

but if you get too much of it, it's gonna fucking kill you. Yeah, it's like if this is the way of the world, and this is how things are, to totally step back from it, pretend it doesn't exist, live in a fantasy world, there's kind of a fragility to that, where you have to keep

it's like, you haven't been exposed to germs, so your immune system is now more vulnerable. I used to love New York. I lived there when I wrote Obstacle, actually. And then when I moved to Texas, and then when I moved to the country in Texas, now when I go to New York, I hate New York. It physically hurts me. It's too loud.

I can feel the noise. My heart is just like, because I'm not, the noise pollution is so radically different than my life. Right. It's, it's, it's not healthy. Like I think one, it tells me that the day-to-day life of a New Yorker is actually like much worse than they want to admit. They're just, they're just built up a tolerance to it. But like my withdrawal from that makes me vulnerable to it when I'm in it. And I like, I just can't handle it too much. Yeah.

I think that's exactly right. I think, uh, I think you're exactly right. My friends that love New York that I'm close with, they're the most unhealthy people I know. It's, and one of them who I love dearly, he's always saying it's the energy of the city. I love the energy of the city. I love the energy of this city. I'm like, don't you have your own fucking energy? I don't need to hear people yelling at each other and honking horns.

We were there at 3 o'clock in the morning getting falafels, and I heard gunshots. I was like, this is great. This is great. Bang, bang, bang. I'm like, what the fuck are we doing, man? Let's get out of here. I hear plenty of gunshots where I live. Someone decided to play with their AR at like 6 in the morning but or kill a pig yes yes the the one that i

dislike the most is like when the like a dump truck or something goes through an intersection in new york and the back kind of lifts up and then it boom yeah i can feel that like in my chest oh i scandal yeah it's just i don't think human beings are designed to be stacked up on top of each other either. There's this weird, like there's a lack of appreciation for other human beings because they're a burden instead of being a benefit, like a community, like a small village, everybody has a role and everybody's welcome and you need everybody. Everybody has a role and everybody's welcome and you need everybody. In New York City, there's too many people.

So the value of people diminishes to the point where people become a liability instead of being an asset. It turns down your ability to empathize because if you did empathize, you would be paralyzed. You'd have to think about how horrible it is to be like a Korean bike food delivery guy or to like- A homeless person or- Yeah, or to commute three hours from some borough to make $11 and that, like it would be horrible. But the city wouldn't function if you thought about it. And so you have to turn off that part of your brain. I think that's also a problem with social media. I've discussed this many times that I just don't think we're supposed to absorb the problems of 7 point whatever billion people. It's too much. And if you just set out every day looking for all the problems in the world, you will have a very distorted idea of what life is because that is not your life. That is all

the lives and we cannot manage all of the lives. It's just not possible. It's not remotely possible for you to take in all of the violent and sad moments that happen all throughout the day in the whole planet Earth. It's just too much. Well, you think like we as a normal person probably get more information than like a president got like even just a couple decades ago oh yeah even marcus rose is the emperor of a empire 50 million people he would knew nothing about them he didn't know what they looked like maybe he read someone wrote a letter and then he you know they would have been essentially non-existent to him yeah but we're flooded with more information than a human, than even the most connected humans on the planet just not that long ago, it can't possibly be healthy. No, it's not. And I think it's changing the way

our brain is mapped. I really do. I think this is a very recent thing, right? Social media has only existed for the last 13 or 14 years as we know it. And I think we're going to get to a point where the mind has to adapt to deal with the volume of information that comes in and the way we receive it. And I think along the way, there's going to be some sort of a technological intervention, and it's probably going to be something like Neuralink. And we're going to accept it because it makes the management of all this data more easy. Yeah, I don't know anything about that. Neuralink is an idea that Elon has that is initially going to be used for people that have spinal cord injuries,

and it's going to change the way your brain communicates with all your muscle tissue. So you're going to be able to move your body even with spinal cord issues. So people that have, it's going to be fantastic for people that have been paralyzed, they'll have, they'll regain use of their body because instead of the spine, the spinal cord being the conduit for all the information and all the signals that you're sending there's going to be an electronic interface and this electronic interface will I think it will initially initially mimic what the mind does with the the spinal column and then ultimately be far superior and then

one of his things that he said that always freaks me out he said we're gonna be able to talk without words oh I think there's going to be an information a transfer of information hopefully that surpasses language meaning that there'll be some way of universally expressing information where you don't have to like you you know, you don't have to write it in Greek. You don't have to write in Latin. It'll, it'll come out as intent. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder, I know having moved here, one of the really beneficial things was that like, I don't know, I know, but I don't see that regularly people who do what I do. So it turns off kind of like a competitive part of my brain where like, I just get to be me and do what I do. So it turns off kind of like a competitive part of my brain where like,

I just get to be me and do what I want to do and focus on like what I think is cool and what I want to create. There's not that like keeping up with the Joneses part of that can be a powerful driver of your career, but also a source of unhappiness. Did you feel that in New York? I felt it in New York. I felt it when I lived in LA. How did you feel it? In what way? Did you compare yourself to other people? Yeah. Just like, why are they doing better than me?

Did you see that person's house? That sort of comparison is the thief of joy is the expression. Yes. I didn't know that quote when I lived in LA when I first got there, but I was on this sitcom. We were on a sitcom, right? Incredible. Yeah. Oh my God, I'm on television. This is amazing. And the people that I was with who are great people, they were all reading the Hollywood Reporter and they would read this and they'd get upset. Oh, why is she getting this? Oh, why is this happening? Why are they on Thursday night at eight o'clock? Why? And I go, Hey, I go, that's the devil's rag. I go, what are you reading? That's

what I would call it. The devil's rag. And I go, guys, last time I checked, I'm on fucking TV. Yeah. Okay. I'm on television. You're on TV. We're on a TV show. And you're complaining that other people are on better TV shows or on TV shows that have better ratings. This is crazy. Yeah. Like you're looking for reasons why your life sucks when you're in one of the best positions that a person could ever be in in your line of work. You're literally on a successful television show. This is so crazy.

And they're reading Variety to find all the people that are doing better than them. Oh, look at this. Oh, they're in a movie now. I want to be in film. And it was wild to watch. Yeah. That's one of the things the Stoics say is like, you would be jealous if you didn't have what you had and someone else did, you would be jealous of that person. Oh yeah. But all you're doing is comparing what you have to what someone else has instead of the gratitude of, holy shit, look how lucky I am. A hundred percent. That is sucking your happiness. But I think it's also, if good work comes from being present,

it's preventing your ability from like actually being great on the television show that you're on. Because you're spending energy out in the world on stuff that doesn't matter instead of being like, I'm going to be the best that I can be in the thing that I am. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. If you are constantly dwelling on other people's opinions, if you're constantly dwelling on other people's success, it will 100% diminish your capability of doing good work. Yeah. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it because the mind has a certain amount of bandwidth. And the way I always express this when I talk to people about it, I go, look at it like a number. If you had a hundred bandwidth, like if your bandwidth was 100, and then someone said something mean to you on Twitter and you read that and responded and you're going back and forth. Now, how much do you have? I bet you got about 30 is gone. 30% is just dedicated to this thing.

It might be 40. You might have 40. And now what happens? Now whatever work you are actually trying to do is greatly diminished because you don't have the focus. Well, think of the arrogance, too, of being like, I am so good. I can be on this show. I can deliver this book in an environment where so many people would kill to be able to do what I'm doing. So many people are doing it and we're competing for a finite amount of whatever.

I can do it with only 60% of my capacity. It's horrendously arrogant and stupid. I don't think it's arrogant, though, because I think it's ignorant. I don't think people are really aware when they're doing this. I think it's just so instinctive. It's so instinctual. It's such a normal thing to do to, you know, read some mean quote that someone said about you or read an article that someone wrote that pisses you off. Or, you know, I know friends, I have friends that I'm not close with, but I'm close enough to them that I pay attention to them.

And they, their career is a disaster. But when I go onto their Twitter page, they're so deeply involved in politics. Like, massively, where they're quoting spending bills that I don't even know. And they're talking about what the problem these bills are. I'm like, if you spend a fraction of your life paying attention to your own career and doing what you actually love doing, instead of focusing on this, you're focusing on this because you feel like this is something that you can get involved with mentally, where the burden of performance is not on you. Yeah. Well, there's a Zen story. The Zen master was told he was criticized by another Zen master.

And he said, oh, how lucky for him to have arrived at perfection and to have the time to do such a thing. He's like, me, I'm not there yet. And so when I'm saying it's arrogant, I just, I don't, I think. I know what you're saying. The humble way is like, dude, I can spare zero. Yeah. I'm so holding, I'm so on the razor's edge of this. I cannot possibly afford to waste even one energy point on this thing that's not up to me. Which is what the Stoics say.

They said, Epictetus says the chief task in life is separating things that are in your control from what's outside your control. And all that stuff is outside of your control. And you're spending the energy points that could be on what is in your control on the stuff that's outside your control. So it makes you doubly worse. It does. But unfortunately, this is not taught. I mean, you're teaching it. There's Marcus Aurelio's books.

There's many books that are available if you want to go seek it. But this is not something that's being beaten into the head of people on a daily basis, and it should be. It should be something that television shows that are supposed to be these intellectual exercises and examining the world around us one of the most important things is how are you looking at the world around us how are you thinking about things and through what lens and have you done the work on your own self because if you have not you're going to look for these struggles in other places because you're uncomfortable dealing with your own personal struggles. And you're avoiding those.

So you'll find them in other places. You'll start fires because you haven't dealt with your own bullshit. Yeah. And this is also what they teach in like 12-step groups, right? It's like the acceptance of the higher powers to say like you're not the center of the universe, right? This is why they do the serenity prayer. You're realizing it's like the source of your unhappiness and self-destructive life is your focus on things you don't control. Is your, you know, you're handing over that power to this thing that you're hooked on.

And so 12 steps are really like a way to teach someone how to be a person again, like from rock bottom. And you're right, we don't do that. We just assume. Well, the problem is even people who study philosophy, they think about interesting but abstract questions, right? Like how do we know we're not living in a computer simulation? Which is fascinating, but like first we should probably focus on like what is in our control what is not in our control once you've mastered that think about all the big questions you want right and how does the mind handle adversity how does the mind handle difficult situations and the knowledge that if you force difficult situations into your life that you can

control like rigorous exercise like, like sauna and cold plunge. There's many different things you can do, like writing, like sitting down and forcing yourself to do work. That will free your mind in so many ways and allow you to have a philosophy or at least a philosophical perspective that's based on how you actually think, not based on overcompensating for deficits, not based on trying to pile dirt on the problems that you've created. Yeah, it forces you to wrestle with yourself and your shit. Yeah. First and foremost. First and foremost.

Which is, I mean, social media is designed to like focus on other people's shit. Yeah. What are you thinking about this? What's your opinion about this? As if the thing cares. You know, I'm going, I'm in the middle of another book. I think it's called Amused to Death. Oh, by Neil Postman?

Yes. Yeah, I was listening to that. Was it, Neil Brennan recommended it. Yes, he did. And that's Amusing Ourselves to Death. One of the greatest books ever written. It's great. And what's fascinating about it, Neil Brennan recommended it. Yes, he did. And that's amusing ourselves to death. One of the greatest books ever written. It's great. Incredible.

And what's fascinating about it, Neil Brennan recommended it, I think when he was on my podcast, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things that's fascinating about it is that it's from the 1980s. And they talk about television the same way we talk about social media today.

And he compares television to the way they talked about the printing press. Yeah when the printing press was first made available a Lot of people thought it was a disaster and that really the written word on On a piece of paper in a book like a written book was the way to go Yeah, and this printing press was some cheap, easy cop-out that was going to make people stupid. Isn't that fascinating? Well, I love Amusing Marcel Sadef. There's another book called The Image by Daniel Boorstin, which was written in the 60s. And he was talking about this thing called pseudo events, like a press conference is a pseudo event. He's like, it exists for no other reason, but to get media attention. That's why,

that's why they do a weigh in and a fight, right? Like, uh, so cameras will be there. Maybe something will happen and then we'll get more attention, right? Like how, so he's talking about how much of what we respond to even then was not real, but things that were made for the media to suck our attention away. And then you go back even further. There's another book called The Brass Check, which was written in, I don't know, 1910, 1912, 1930. Anyways, Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle, you know The Jungle? The expose of the meat industry in like the 1910s about how almost all the same things that were happening then or have like it this has always been a problem it's just different mediums uh

like what postman is saying is that when television is the dominant medium the world conforms around that medium and before that it, it was radio. And then before that, it was newspapers. And now it's social media and video and these other things. And so our world conforms around what the medium wants, right? What the medium is good at. Well, if we make it too easy, then people get soft and lazy. And I think that's what he's talking about when it comes to television and then he's comparing it to the way lincoln's debates were oh yeah they're

like seven hours people went home for lunch yeah they told people to go home for dinner and come back for four more hours and so they would make these agreements like this man would speak for an hour and a half and then then he would have a rebuttal for a half an hour and then he have his own speech for an hour and then the other guy would rebut and it's like they had these attention spans that it was based possibly on that there was no tick tock there was no distractions no no real like the kind of media that we have available, the touch of our fingertips just did not exist back then. It was not a thing. So you had to get all of your entertainment from literature. If you saw a live performance, that was it, or literature.

And that's it. There was no recordings. So you, and even you can go before that, before written word, everything was oral. It was all oral traditions. So you had to learn these oral traditions. They were passed on from generation to generation and you had to learn them. They were a very important part of your upbringing. So you had to have a grasp of language in a sense that you had to be able to communicate things in an eloquent and sophisticated way because it was part of being a fully formed grown adult? Well, the thing is we don't always

think of things as technology because when you think of technology, you think of tech, right? We don't think like a book is a piece of technology. It's a great piece of technology, right? And the incentives in it are pretty good. Like an author has to work on a book for a number of years. Then it's edited multiple times. Lots of people look at it. It takes a while to publish. So it has to be somewhat timeless. Then the the reader is paying for it. Right. You contrast that with like a blog post. The blog post could take an hour to do. It's designed to only be relevant today. It's designed to be shared a lot by other people. So it's focused on the valence of emotion that it provokes from the person when they see it. It's not supposed to challenge them. It's not supposed to be complicated. So it's good medium versus bad medium. And the only recent medium that I think is somewhat positive, it's not totally, but podcasting is a medium that I think generally extends out. Right. Like it's not short. Right. It's a conversation. Pieces of it don't really spread. It's like a whole thing you consume in a block. It's usually, you know, two people talking.

Like podcasting, I think, is better than most of the other sort of online tech-focused mediums. But I think what Postman's point is, is you have to think about the incentives or the language that a medium is built around. And then you have to ask yourself, does that make people smarter or dumber? And a lot of these mediums inherently make us dumber, or at least they make it harder to get to truth. And it's interesting with podcasting how one of the things that happens is that you take social media, which is inherently a short attention span platform, and then people will take out of context clips of podcasts and then insert them into their world of outrage farming yeah and they'll instead of like looking at a conversation in terms of the

entire three plus hour conversation they'll find a sentence from someone may have misspoken or a disagreement that someone might have had and they'll force it into their world and then attack it with also short attention span, non sequitur, short little 140, 280 word sentences or letter sentences. Well, I think Twitter broke a lot of people's brains. So you think about like what a journalist was like 20 years ago. They were someone who thought long form. So a couple thousand words, they thought like not the day's news cycle usually, but they might be working on an investigation or a piece over a sort of a somewhat long period of time. It would be edited. It would be fact checked, et cetera. It was supposed to be objective. so you had to consider multiple perspectives.

Now you contrast that with Twitter, which is driven primarily by journalists, right? And they're like, throw all that out and think about the world in 240 characters. The world is fucking complicated. 240 characters is nothing. But you could have like Twitter threads where you can have one thing and then you have a second comment on a third and fourth. And people do that and they do get coherent points out. But nothing is the most viral is a singular tweet. Right. Right. And and you're not like, hey, it's pretty complicated.

There's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You're like, screw this person or this is evil or this is the worst thing I've ever seen. It inherently, Postman, I think, talks about this really. It is inherently driven by the demands of that medium. Yes. Yeah, it is in many, many ways. And it's also so alien to the way we are designed to communicate. We're designed to communicate looking at each other eye to eye.

And I think that's one of the great benefits of podcasting is that podcasting is at its core, it's communication in its purest form. It's like that's how people are designed to communicate. Like what we're doing right now. And have been communicating for all of, other than the microphones. Yes. What this is, is one of the most basic human things that there are. And ironically enough, the microphones enhance it. Because what's going on is you wear headphones, I wear headphones. So I hear your voice in my ear at the same level I hear my own voice.

So everything is together. So any over talk is painful and clunky. Sure. Yeah. And that's why like if you ever heard a podcast where there's like five guys sitting around drinking and there's no headphones. I've done those before. They're fucking disasters because if you don't have headphones on everyone's just talking

over everybody. And I have friends who do podcasts that way and I'm telling them like you can't do this like this is this shit's unlistenable but one-on-one with headphones is actually better you like you don't hear the rest of the world that's right it enhances sensory deprivation yes yes yes well i wrote about this in my first book i wrote this book about media manipulation in 2012 which i was like if we don't get this out right now, it's going to be late. You know, and it was like 10 years ago. I was 25. You were a little baby and you wrote a book.

I know. People were not pleased with that book. They were very angry about it. Because I was talking about media manipulation and I was saying the primary manipulators of media are not just bad people like dictators or marketers or whatever. Journalists themselves are inherently manipulative, right? Think about it this way. You would never want a reporter to write a story about a company they own stock in, right? Because that would be a conflict of interest potentially. Or if they were shorting the stock, that would make them write negatively if they were long the stock and write positive. But what happens when the journalist is compensated or because it would they would pressure you into doing something that maybe you wouldn't actually want and you couldn't trust their uh their judgment yeah and that is the dry this and that was a

metric of journalism that was invented by gawker like in 2008 like not a long time ago like all journalism forever was not monetized in that fashion until like our lifetime well the convenience of digital news was so much more efficient than getting an actual newspaper and unfolding it and reading it and so people stop buying newspapers i would like to see let's see if we can find this the The difference, I don't know how you'd Google this. The difference between the circulation of printed newspapers pre-social media to now. I mean, it has to be a fucking massive hemorrhaging. Yeah, of course. And not just the subscriber base, but there were thousands of daily newspapers.

New York City at one point in the 20s or 30s had like 50 daily newspapers for one city. Wow. And so all that goes away. All that goes away and then you're incentivized with clickbait journalism. So people have deceptive headlines. They have salacious stories that they cover, even though it's not even interesting, not real. It's just bullshit. But that bullshit is going to get people to click on it. Total estimated circulation of US daily newspapers. There is a fucking giant drop off right at the invention of social media. And what if you had somehow charted population growth along that, right? You see how many, that would be crazy.

population growth along that, right? You see how many, that would be crazy. Look at that number. Like look where 2007 is. Go to 2007. It's right there. So it was dropping off before, I guess it was probably the internet that made it drop off even before social media. Cause I mean, generally wasn't 2007. Is that the creation of Twitter? I was in Austin at South by when they launched it and I was like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That won't be a thing. And I could not have been more incorrect. I feel that way about NFTs. I might be wrong.

So it seems like the drop-off started happening around like 94? Go to 94. It's the peak here. 91. That's weird. Well, one of the big things that people don't talk about, Craigslist just guts the newspaper industry because classifieds subsidized their Baghdad Bureau and all that stuff. Oh, that's right. That's right. I didn't even think about that.

Which is also a tech invention that destroys a thing. Yeah. And then there's also people advertised online. They started advertising for things online so they didn't need to take ads out in the newspaper, which was always a thing. Ads in the newspaper was a big thing. Yeah. And so that was where we got our objective information. If you go back and you read a New York Times story from like 1983, it's a different world. I mean, the way they wrote was different. The way they covered critical issues was very different. 1910s, whenever that was, he was saying that, okay, when the newsboys are selling the paper, like at the street corner, it's a similar competition, right? So when we think of yellow

journalism, it was, you know, extra, extra read all about it. So you had, let's say there's 50 newspapers in New York City, and you get off a train at Grand Central, and there's newsboys for all of them, they have to have the most salacious headline or breaking story that day to get you to buy it. But then as the 20s, as we got into the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, the newspapers stopped being sold one-off at newsstands for the most part. And most people subscribed or would say, I take the New York Times or I take the Washington Post. You would subscribe to a newspaper. And so like when you look at the breaking of the Pentagon Papers, it's the headline is beyond boring. It's like a long ass headline because the New York Times didn't need to sell you the paper. The New York

Times knew we are delivering this story to 20 million, 30 million homes today. And I think what a podcast does, you're not thinking, I want to have this guest on to grow the show, to get attention. You're thinking, how many subscribers do I have of the show? Am I honoring or disappointing them? I know you don't really think about the audience too much, but your point is you have a fan base that you are making stuff for as opposed to a thing you are trying to sell and shout over everyone else to dominate the news cycle that day. That's an interesting point because that was one of the things that actually came up when I first came over to Spotify. The first week of Spotify shows, they're like,

who's the guest going to be? Like, who are you going to have? I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I'm not doing that. I'm like, that's not what I do. I put on people that I think are interesting. I'm going to continue to do it only that way. And when I'm not doing it that way anymore, it won't be the same show and I'm going to quit. It's not going to be the same. Like I have to just have people on that I think are interesting. That's the only criteria I have. I look at all the requests that come in. I look at all the different people

that I'm interested in. Either I reach out to people I'm interested in, like you, like I reached out to you. I can't believe you do it yourself. I do it myself, yeah. Well, I have a guy too. I have my friend Matt. I have him contact people.

But it's all scheduled on my phone. Wow. Everything's on my phone. So I just say, like, I go through the requests. Like, I get emails. And there's, like, hundreds of them. So I'm like, no, no, no. Where did he go?

What? Like, Charlie Walker, who was on the other day. Like, what? Four years he bicycled through fucking Asia and Africa? Holy shit. Get that guy. He just got out of a Russian jail? Holy fuck.

He wound up in Russia because he was in the Arctic in Siberia during the time where Russia invaded Ukraine, just coincidentally. And then they thought he was a spy. So they arrested him and he's in jail in Russia for a month. Like crazy. I'm like, let me talk to that guy. So it's that kind of a deal. That's the, or, you know, Snoop Dogg wants to come on. Fuck yeah. I want to talk to Snoop. It's that kind of a deal. It's not like this is going to be huge.. I don't think that way at all. And that's the only reason why I think it works. I think if I stopped thinking that way, I don't think it would work. I think if there was a fucking hint of disingenuous behavior,

if there was a hint of bullshit, I think people wouldn't trust me anymore. If they thought that I was only doing this to get attention I mean, I'm sure some people that don't know me think that that's what I'm doing, but that's not I Only I don't have to I it works. I and I did it from the beginning Where I didn't think I was ever gonna make any money doing it So I only did it for fun and then once I started making money I said well I'm doing it this way anyway, and this is how I want to do it. So I'll just keep doing it this way. I never would have thought you could become the number one podcast in the world by just talking to people you want to talk

to. I thought you'd probably have to promote it everywhere. You'd have to go way out of your way and take ads out and pump a bunch of... I've done none of that. I've literally, I know, I don't even talk about it. I just do it. And through word of mouth, it's become what it is. It's really like the most organic thing I've ever done. Well, that's what I like. I like sub stacks that way. The idea that you're writing for an audience and ideally that audience is paying you. So you're not like doing this sort of virally thing I think the only downside the only risk can be it do you get in a place where I don't think you are but some people are where you're like if I tell these people what they don't want to hear that costs me money I think the big risk today is someone like Substack decides to disempower you and to take away your

platform and that's a real issue. Yeah. I mean, I know people that have been banned from PayPal. I know people that have, they can't use PayPal anymore. I know people that have been kicked off of YouTube. I know a lot of people that have, where things have happened, where someone has decided that they're going to censor this person's positions on things. Yeah. But they call this audience capture, though, like where you're – because these people are paying you, because that's your audience, you're not necessarily thinking about what's true. You're thinking about what they want to hear. Right.

Yes. I've seen that, too. That's dangerous. It's very dangerous for comedians. I've seen that too. That's dangerous. It's very dangerous for comedians. You see comedians, they find an audience, like maybe they get a certain amount of attention from attacking people.

That's a big one. And then they really lean into it and that becomes their thing. They just go after people because that's where they find success. And you find like they lose who they are. They lose who they are and they become captive. Yeah, like a caricature of yourself. Yes. Yeah. You also see that with people

that switch political affiliations. They get lured in to the other side and they get a lot of attention from this transition. And so they make this transition and everybody loves them. And so then they go all in. Generally speaking, I see it from people that used to be left wing and become right wing. And they go all in and it becomes an identity. Yeah. You want to be a free agent is what you want to be. This is what I think about this. This is what I think about this. And I don't really think about what other people think. Sometimes I'll write something that's political and people will get upset. And I go like, I didn't build an audience to not say what I think.

Like I want to own the audience, not the audience own me. Yeah. I mean, you don't even own the audience. You own yourself, right? And you're going to have an audience because your ideas are interesting. But if you decide that you're only going to speak from a right-wing perspective, there's a lot of people that do that. There's a lot of people that do that already. And they do that because there's a business in that. It's very valuable. You can talk from a pure left-wing progressive perspective and attack everyone as being far right or Nazis,

and you can get a lot of money that way. It's a good business model, but it's not smart. It's not good for you either. it's not smart it's not it's not good for you either it's not good for you intellectually because you're not going to be examining things from a purely objective perspective you're not going to look at your own flaws in your own thinking and the way you formulate ideas and go why do i think like that you're not going to do that if you're captured by you know the progressives or captured by the Republicans. The people that get locked into that, it's like, man, and when they transition, like if someone transitions, it's very similar. The word transition has been captured by transgender

today, but it's kind of similar because if you go male to female, you're most likely not going back. Sure. male to female you're most likely not going back sure right and so if you go left wing to right wing you're not going to come back to the progressives you're not going to go you know what i just decided the right wings are racist and they're evil and they they support white supremacy and fucking the military industrial complex i'm going back to the left like no one's going to take you they're not going to take you back isn't that kind of what happens it's always like one issue they talk about one issue and then that issue gets so much attention

and then it's like, like magic, they suddenly also have the same right wing opinion on all the other issues. And you're like, yeah, because you're not going to be the one guy who has one out of step opinion and then stay in this group. You stepped out in the middle into no man's

land and now these people don't want you anymore. So you're like, I might as well go over here. But it's only if you choose to align yourself with a very specific ideology. If you don't do that, you can have opinions. I mean, I have a lot of opinions that are on both sides, and I think most people do. I think most people do. I think most people have

conservative as well as like, I'm very socially liberal, like about as socially liberal as you get. But more and more as I get older, I start looking at things from a perspective of being a pragmatist. And I start looking at things and instead of looking at what do I hope people will do if you give them free money and if you you know give them free education if you give them free this and free that and take care of them I start going well what does that what does that do to the psyche and does does that force laziness like if everyone in this country, let's imagine a world where everyone in this country gets $50,000 a year, everyone, how much less productive would we be? It would probably be horrific. Now, I want to live in a world where- This is universal basic income. Yeah. I mean, I want to live in a world where no one has to worry about how to feed themselves.

No one has to worry about how to put a roof over their head. All you have to worry about is what do you want to do? What would best serve your interests? And also, how could you provide a service or whether it's art or something that other people are going to enjoy and appreciate, and that could elevate you past the middle class, past making $50,000 a year into becoming affluent. Wouldn't that be nice if you didn't have to struggle and spend your resources thinking about how am I going to feed myself? And instead, let me write the best book I can write. Instead, let me create the best film. Let me make- Can you get paid on top of the 50,000? Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's the idea, but I don't think it would work. I think we would lose a

lot of great people because I think there's a lot of people that are motivated by desperation. Because I think there's a lot of people that are motivated by desperation. They're motivated by this kick in the ass where you have, like, I have friends that had children. And once they had children, they became fucking hyper ambitious. Because they realized, oh, my God, I have to pay for this little baby. And then they realized, like. It does turn you into an adult. Yes.

Because you're like, these people are, I'm responsible for these people. Yes. It's a completely different kind of feeling. But I wonder, but I don't want people to live in poverty. Poverty sucks. It's a terrible place to be, to be desperate. And that causes a lot of crime. It causes a lot of violence. There's a lot that's attached to poverty that's horrific.

There's a lot that's attached to poverty that's horrific. However, it is an incredible motivator to get people to get moving and to do something. And desperation, much like loss and humiliation are great motivators to make you work harder, to be better at whatever thing you were attempting to do that failed. whatever thing you were attempting to do that failed. There's something about being poor that forces people into this feeling, this hunger that causes greatness in so many human beings, so many artists, so many great musicians, so many great comedians, and so many great people that have accomplished amazing things came out of nothing. And there's this inherent hunger and this desire to be someone, to be something that creates greatness, that gets recognized by so many people and enriches so many people's lives. If you think about how many

hip hop artists who are so poor became so rich and inspired so many people with their music. How many comedians did the same? How many people who wrote books have come out of utter poverty and through the struggle and pain of their existence, it gave life to their words in a way that you're just not going to get sleeping on silk sheets. Yeah. But are you sleeping on silk sheets making 50 grand a year? No. So there's probably a number, right? Yeah, there's like a subsistence number. But then again, it's like how much encourages people to just exist?

Like that subsistence number. How many people would just get that kickstart from poverty and leads them in to success? And this is just, this is not encouraging poverty. I don't think poverty is good. I was poor when I was a kid. I hated it. It's a horrible feeling. But that feeling, it is a motivator that is unlike anything else that the pain and this the the discomfort of poverty and of feeling like a failure or feeling like a nothing is is an insane vehicle for your your human potential like it can it can push you if you get on it and ride it. But it can also destroy your life. I mean, it causes so many people to become drug addicts

and so many people to become criminals because they're desperate and they're poor and they feel like the world has abandoned them. You know that quote, like, if you aren't liberal when you're young, you have no heart, and then if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no heart. And then if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no brain. Yeah. There's probably a truth to that, but I also really hate that expression because it sort of means like you're supposed to care less about

people or think less with your heart as you get older, which strikes me as kind of one of the problems in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, I don't think it's real I think people give in to that because it's so nuanced and complex The reality of human life and civilization is so nuanced and so complex You know, I was watching this horrible video the other day. It was really bad. It was these two guys in Brooklyn They robbed this kid they walked up to him and sucker punched him and he fell back and hit his head off the street and he died five days later and they stole $20 from him I mean that's all he had on him yeah they punched this guy in the head and took $20 out of his pocket now he's dead and I was thinking so many different things first of all I was

thinking like imagine being that kid's parents and finding out that that's how your child died. And then I was thinking imagine being those kids that did that to that guy and your life has gone so far off the rails that you're essentially a parasite on society. You can't find a better way to make $20. Your development is so fucked. Like your morals, your ethics, someone's failed you.

Society's failed you. And that's what I really feel like. I feel like one of the things that conservative thinking leaves out is that not everybody starts at the same position. You don't start at the same starting line. It's different. And if you don't accept that, if you don't look at that, then just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

They don't have boots, man. There's people out there that don't have anything. And I don't even think most of these people saying that, like you just got to put your nose to the grindstone and get to work, you don't even understand where these people are starting from. And if you're these kids living in brooklyn walk around sucker punching people in the street and stealing money from them like your morality is so fucked it would take so many mushrooms and so many psychedelic trips and so much therapy and so just to try to realign you with good and love yeah so this is like the liberal part of me

the the liberal part of me feels terrible for the guy who got killed but also feels terrible for these boys that sucker punched this guy because in my mind i think like if i lived their life i would be them if i was in that situation of dire poverty and probably a lot of emotional and physical abuse but if you're accustomed to just walking up to someone and punching them you've probably been punched you've probably been abused you've probably seen it all and you probably have like deep anger towards society and civilization and you've probably been conditioned to think that you you deserve this and that you got to go get what's yours it's a horrible failure on all of our parts so even

though like i might have some conservative ideas most of my ideas are very liberal and in that regard like my feeling is we need to pump insane amounts of money and time and effort into inner cities. We need to fix the imbalance. There's obviously an income inequality problem in this country, right? Sure. But there's also an effort inequality problem in this country. Both things are true. And poverty, like extreme poverty, has a gravity that is so difficult to escape. You're

like a 500 pound man is trying to do box jumps. Like it is so goddamn hard. And we got to teach that 500 pound man how to lose some weight. And that's how I look at the general state of the horrific poverty that exists in these inner cities. Its gravity is inescapable. So many people have been trapped in it for so long. And there's been decades upon decades of these places. There's multiple ones in this country that have been completely ignored by this country that supposedly wants everything to work out better. ignored by this country that supposedly wants everything to work out better. Well, if you want something to work out better, you got to look at the people that are in the very worst starting position that's available in the United States of America and change that, elevate that.

Did you watch the movie Nomadland? No. Or there's a really good book. And I read it not that long ago. And it's basically about people who like, because the financial crisis and other stuff, it's like old people who they lost their houses. And so now they live in vans or campers and they just drive around the country working at different like theme parks or Amazon seasonal warehouses. Like these companies recruit those people because they're like, old people work hard. They don't have anywhere to go. They pay them next to nothing. They get a couple hundred bucks a month in social security. These are people living right on the edge. They live in a van. And as I was reading it, there was this voice inside me that was trying to think, how bad do you have

to screw up? What choices do you make in your life where you end up this way? Like my first thought was like, basically like, how is it this person's fault? Right. And I realized that I was doing that because if it was their fault, then it wouldn't have to make me sad and I wouldn't have to do anything or change any of my habits or viewpoints. Do you know what I mean? And then you're like, no, the system failed these people. Like these, these, these people have worked their whole lives. Maybe they messed up once they got addicted to alcohol or they went through a divorce or, you know, they got fired from one. And this, the system failed them in some way because you shouldn't, if you work your whole life, you shouldn't end up in a van down by the river, right? Like these aren't, these aren't like people addicted to crack on the side of the

street. These are like, these are people who, if you saw on the street, you wouldn't know that they live in a camper, right? And it was, I think the idea that the system has failed huge amounts of people and that you can't individually hold someone responsible for something that is a collective failing. They're a symptom of a huge problem. And many of these people have not had access to anybody who thinks outside of the box. The access that they have to other people are the people that live in their small community that are also troubled by the same problems that they are. Yeah. And, you know, in many of these places in the country today, it's pills.

I mean, there's a great documentary that was put out by Mariana Van Zeller. Like, it was, we had her on talking about this. I want to say it was like eight or nine years ago and it was called the Oxycontin Express. Did you ever watch that? But it's all about the horrible situation that used to be in Florida where they had these pain management centers. Yeah. Yeah.

And you go to the pain management center. It's really just a pill fill, a pill mill rather. And so you would go into this place. They would have a doctor on one side, they would say, what's wrong, Ryan? Oh, my back hurts. Oh, well, you need OxyContin. And then you go right next door and they would give you the pills. And there was no database. So you could go to Jamie and Jamie could prescribe you the pills and then you can come to my office and I would prescribe you the pills. And people would do that and they would go to 10, 15 different doctors. And they had it set up that way specifically to make the maximum and you can come to my office and I would prescribe you the pills and people would do that and they would go to 10 15 different

Doctors and they had it set up that way Specifically to make the maximum amount of profit. Yeah, so they knew that they were doing this and then they these people would take these pills They'd have a trunk full of them and they drive them up through Kentucky and that's the Oxycontin Express. Yeah, and then we're like that person lives in a camper park because they were a drug addict as if they weren't exploited and basically like their humanity extracted out of them by these doctors and these multi-billion dollar conglomerates that they're doing fine.

Well, you know, the people that are running it just so it's a side effect. These fucking people, if they weren't hooked on drugs, they'd be hooked on something else. If it wasn't that, it'd be gambling. If it wasn't that, it would be cocaine. If it wasn't that, it's a side effect. These fucking people, if they weren't hooked on drugs, they'd be hooked on something else. If it wasn't that, it'd be gambling. If it wasn't that, it would be cocaine. If it wasn't that, it would be, you know, whatever, cigarettes.

They're going to find a way to ruin their lives because they're idiots. And these people can justify things like that, and you don't realize, like, some of these people are four, okay? And if you're four and you're living in that trailer and your mom's on Oxycontin, like, you're fucked. Yeah. But if that same four-year-old grew up with a really healthy person who lives in an upper middle class suburb and spends time going over the homework with the kids and takes them to practice and gets them involved in sports and maybe exposes them to some activity that will eventually be their career, that person could be a functioning, thriving member of society and be a benefit to everybody. It's really in where you fucking start from. And this is why the whole, if you are young and you're not a liberal, then you have no soul. But if you're old and you're not a conservative, you have no mind, doesn't work with me because

I'm forced to look at the reality of the situation. I didn't have the best childhood, but I had food. I had parents who cared about me. I had stuff. I didn't have a bad childhood. I went to high school in a pretty nice area. It was not bad. Like there's bad. It was enough bad to make me motivated, but it ain't shit compared to what someone who

lives in Appalachia, who lives in a fucking trailer park, whose whole family is a bunch of drug addicts and criminals. There's people in this world that are fucked. Their starting block is miles from yours, and it's all uphill to get to you. I think about that even with the student loan thing, which I'm a dropout, so I don't have any student debt, so I don't have super strong opinions on whether it should be forgiven or not. But you think about how exploitative and extractive that system is, where colleges were like, oh, you're 18. You can't even legally drink, but sign this contract to pay $70,000 a year for your, you know, insert obscure degree that has no viable job prospects.

Oh, you can't afford that? Just take out a loan. We won't, you don't, just don't even look at it. By the way, this is the only unforgivable debt in the entire world. And, you know, when you graduate, you'll be $400,000 in the hole and you'll figure it out. And so when I look at my friends and they're like, you know, they're my age in the hole and you'll figure it out. And so when I look at my friends and they're my age and they're just starting to get it together, the reason they didn't buy a house like I did when I was in my mid-20s is because they have a house that they're

carrying around on a bank balance. And it's getting bigger every year. And then we wonder why they don't become... like it totally changes the jobs. Why do they go get a job on Wall Street or whatever? It's because they have to pay back this obscene debt. Meanwhile, the college is just hiring more and more bureaucrats and administrators and putting in a fucking lazy river and all this nonsense. And this is coming off the backs of a generation of people who were misled or outright conned into a thing that is totally unjustifiable. Totally unjustifiable. And the way you know it is in the fact that what you said, it is the only debt that's not forgivable. It doesn't matter what happens. I read a story about the prevalence of people

who are getting their social security checks docked because they owe student loans. Can you imagine carrying that your whole life? And you have a piece of paper to show for it. And you're at the end of your life. And this is your subsistence income. Your subsistence income is reduced because of a debt that you can never get rid of that didn't serve you, obviously, because you don't have any money. If someone sells you a house that you paid too much for, it filled termites or whatever, you'll get a bad deal on a house. You can just walk away. You'll take a bath on it, but you can just walk away. If you got conned into some for-profit school or they over-promised that, hey, this is what you'll make if you become a physical therapist, you get your

master's in this or whatever, you have no recourse. And those people in their middle-class houses or bigger, the people that profited from that money. So people sometimes say this about me. They're like, oh, you're profiting from philosophy because I sell my books and stuff, that I'm profiting from it. And I go, you think this college professor who has job security for life paid for by the US government, subsidized by the US government,

meanwhile is charging students $50,000, $60,000 a year for the for the courses for this piece of paper. Like he's not he or she isn't also profiting from. I can sleep at night. I know I charged $17 for a book that took me two years to write. You made someone take out unforgivable debt to attend your university class at obscene amounts of – you know what I mean? That's true, but there's no need to have a what about with that. What about that guy? What about this guy? You're not getting paid for philosophy.

You're getting paid for your work. You're getting paid for work. And if you put together a good book, that is your effort. Sure. And you will profit from that because people enjoy it. It is a meritocracy. Selling books is a meritocracy because if people don't enjoy your books, you don't get money. Yeah.

It's really very simple. So anybody says, oh, you're getting paid for philosophy. No, no, no. Getting paid for work in philosophy. That's like getting paid for serving food. Are you getting paid for serving? You're getting paid for work. Sure. It's work. Yeah. serving food. You know, are you getting paid for serving? You're getting paid for work. Sure. It's work. Yeah. No, I don't feel bad about it. It's value. I'm just saying we don't think of the college professors or the university president,

we think of them as good people and I'm sure they mean well. Some of them do. But the system is inherently exploitative and extractive against people at their absolute, and not their most vulnerable, but vulnerable people who don't understand that they're signing away their financial freedom or the choices they can make as far as their careers goes for their entire life, because you'll never be able to get out of this. Yeah. And the thing is too, that information is available. It's like that scene in Good Will Hunting where he talks about going to the library. You could learn all this from the library.

You don't have to spend all this money on education. That didn't really used to be true, but it's true now. You can get a full-blown, 100% education without ever stepping into a classroom. You can have a varied, nuanced education about a myriad of subjects. And you can get that all from books. You can get it from online. There's online courses you can take for free. I mean, you can become incredibly well-educated. Now, would you be able to do an internship with some scientist that's working

on genetic engineering? No, you probably would have to have some sort of a degree to qualify you for something like that. But for just general education in terms of elevating your intelligence or elevating the information that you possess, that's readily available. When you think about probably what Harvard cost when that movie came out versus what it is now, I bet it's like doubled or tripled. I remember when my son was born, someone told us that there's a thing in Texas where if you want to send them to UT, you can prepay for their education now. But the bet there is that, let's say it's 200 grand, that 200 grand compounded in the stock market fored every year with their tuition increases for a state-run institution. Well, I think it depends on who's playing the stock market. Because if it's Nancy Pelosi, I'll give her the $200,000.

And I'm betting on Nancy. Because I think she knows shit. Harvard College tuition fees, room, and board. 2017 tuition was $43,000. Service fees, $1,000 plus. Student service fees, $2,000 plus. Room, $9,000. Board, $6,000. So the total is $63,000.

But that's 2017, so five years later. It's probably quite a bit higher. Oh, man. Yeah. It's pretty wild. But higher. Oh, man. Yeah. It's pretty wild. But if you go back to Good Will Hunting, which was, what was that? Like 96? Yeah.

So it was only 27,000. So it was half. Less than half. You talk to people and they're like, oh, yeah. That's wild. I went to Berkeley and it was $46 a semester. And then they judge people who are my age and they're like, these kids, you know, it's like, are you fucking kidding me? But then there's a thought, if education was free,

you would take it for granted and you wouldn't work hard at it. It's like the same perspective about hard work in poverty. You know, like if you're poor, it motivates you to work hard. I mean, there's a lot of examples of that. It's like fighters. Almost all the best fighters come from poverty. Almost all of them. It's very rare that a rich kid becomes a super successful fighter. Isn't that like the history of boxing is like whatever the most marginalized group was in that generation, that's who the boxers were?

Yep. It used to be Jews. It used to be Jews. Used to be like Slapsy, Maxi, Rosenblum. It was like a lot of Jewish boxers. And then it was Italians. It was Italians for a long time. It was African-Americans. It's still African-Americans predominantly, but it's a lot of Russian immigrants. Irish for a while, right? Yeah, a lot of Irish. It's like whoever the poor immigrants are that are scratching, clawing, yeah, those are the people that have the most hunger and the most anger. And unfortunately, they've probably experienced the most physical abuse, which is a significant factor in your ability to dish out punishment.

Yeah, because if they're your kids and you could choose, you want them to play lacrosse or something where they have the most upside but the least downside. Yeah. I would way more like my kids to fight than to play football. Football to me is the scariest one because I don know i don't follow football but i watch it occasionally and when i watch those giant super athletes just running full clip and slamming into each other that is just car accident after car accident and then you got to take into account all the ones that happen in high school all the ones that happen in college and then they all by the time they get to the nfl they probably are already severely mentally compromised. They probably... There's a number.

See if you can find this. They did a study on chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That's the thing you get. Yeah, CTE. And they did it from... They measured from children playing Pop Warner football all the way up into the NFL, and they found an astounding number of people at every step of the way exhibited symptoms of CTE.

Wow. It's a sport where you... I know fighters that don't have visible visible CTE and they're really good fighters. A journal of American Medical Association found CTE in 99% of brains obtained from the National Football League players, as well as 91% of college football players and 21% of high school football players. That is fucking crazy. The data suggests that there is very likely a relationship between exposure to football

and the risk of developing disease. Duh. 99%. What the fuck, man? And it's a degenerative brain disease. And it comes from repeated head trauma. It's a terrifying disease. And I, you know, look, in many ways I'm kind of morally compromised because I am a commentator for professional mixed martial arts.

It's a big part of what I do. I'm a giant fan of the sport. You you know I've been a martial artist my whole life I used to compete it's a it's a big part of who I am and I know it's bad for you it's not just bad for you it's bad for you in one of the worst ways possible and then it compromises your ability to think yeah which one of the reasons why I stopped and I stopped when I was young when I was like my early 20s because I possible and then it compromises your ability to think yeah which one of the reasons why i stopped and i stopped when i was young when i was like my early 20s because i knew that i was compromising my ability to think i knew that what was coming i saw it in other people and i'm like i got to get

out of this and when i see it now in friends and i see it in people that i care about and i've seen all they've gone through and i know what's ahead of them I get terrified for them and I try to sound the alarms and when anybody's thinking like man I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be able to do this get out now yeah like get out now pretend you can't do it think of your next fight as a death sentence get out just get out if you're thinking you don't want to do this anymore don't do it because somewhere out there there's a guy's not thinking about that at all and he's just trying to be a destroyer that's mike tyson when he was 21 and he wants to separate you from your consciousness

and you got to get away from that guy don't do that anymore stop doing it because you don't get those brain cells back you don't get them back you CTE doesn't reverse itself. I mean, there might be some therapies that come along in the future, but right now, from what I'm aware of, I don't know of anything that makes me comfortable saying, like, you're going to be fine. It's going to heal up. You're going to be fine. So how do you separate those feelings from your enjoyment of the thing? Because I love football, and it's been cool. My books have sort of made their way through the NFL. I love it. I love watching it. I love talking to the players. But yeah, how do you square that? to spend a good portion of your life living the wildest most dangerous and extreme way outside of war and law enforcement firefighting and you know being an emt or something like that

like being a professional fighter is one of the craziest fucking things you could do with your brain and your body yeah you're literally playing a game of i'm trying to steal your health like you're trying to steal health yeah you kick someone in the liver you're stealing their health you're you're shutting their body down and you can only do that so many times to a person before their body deteriorates. And it's a choice. As long as you're aware of what that choice is and the exhilaration of victory is worth it to you, and you can go through the pain and the horrible feelings of loss and the punishment of training, if you're willing to do that, and that is exciting to you because ultimately you know that the end product is so entertaining.

If you watch an incredible, incredible fight, it is so entertaining that the joy that you bring to people, when those guys, like if Michael Chandler sitting on top of the octagon cage with his arms up in the air and the whole arena is like, yeah. And then millions of people around the world are watching that and they're feeling the same way like, wow, you're providing a drug. You're literally providing an endorphin rush to millions of people. And you're doing so at the cost of your own health. You're doing so where you're compromising your lifestyle to dedicate yourself to the Spartan existence where all you're doing is training and eating clean and resting right and going through all of the recovery modalities. You could choose to do that. And I am all about people choosing.

I'm all about people. If you want to fucking flip dirt bikes over the grand canyon i'm not gonna stop you i don't want my kids to do it i wouldn't want anybody i love to do it but the argument about the argument the structural argument or the your point about like universal basic income is like did they actually have a choice like it was it was between that and what for a fighter yeah well it depends you that and what? For a fighter? Yeah. Well, it depends. You know, like I use the example of Michael Chandler. I don't really know about Michael's background in terms of like how he grew up, but I knew he was a very high level wrestler in college.

And generally that means he's got an education and he chose, he's a competitor. So he chose to fight. Sure. A lot of people just come from like Conor McGregor. Conor McGregor, he's a competitor so he chose to fight sure um a lot of people just come from like conor mcgregor conor mcgregor who's a great fighter came from poverty um you know there's there's other guys that have come from you know various levels of struggle but ultimately were compelled by the challenge of this insanely difficult pursuit and the glory of victory. And so in that sense, yeah, they have a choice. Like a lot of these guys went to college. No, no, there's definitely ones that have a choice.

But I'm just saying when you look at some of these athletes or fighters or whatever where they were like the alternative was like jail, drugs, like nobody. So they chose chose it but they didn't have a lot of choices to choose from and so is there something inherently exploitative then in like being like well they it's horrible but they chose it but they didn't really choose it because nobody actually gave them any op like life did not give them options i don't buy that i don't buy that for most mixed martial arts fighters and that's most i do buy that for some boxers there's there's some boxers that didn't go to college and grew up in abject poverty and that was the only way out boxing

at an early age and like groomed into it right like mike tyson right you know doesn't seek out even muhammad ali is like yeah someone's like you're gonna be a boxer there's something to that sure but at a certain point in time mike tyson could have retired yeah the amount of money that he generated by the time he was 20 years old he could have probably lived off if he lived well for the rest of his life if he decided to it's just the glory of it and the excitement of it and the thrill of victory. You know, it's the old sports thing, ABC Wild Wild Sports, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. Remember that? Yeah. That's what it is. You know, you certainly can make an argument that

is exploitive because you exploit people's desire for victory and their desire to conquer and their desire for wealth beyond what they can imagine. You know, if you're the average fighter that becomes a world champion, you're going to make millions of dollars. The average person doesn't make millions of dollars. Like you're, you're, you have a path that is an incredibly lucrative path if you can get to the tippy top. But how many people get there? How many people become a Kamaru Usman? You know, how many people become a Charles Oliveira?

How many people? There's not that many people. It's really hard to become a champion. And those are the ones that make the money. The regular folks, you know, it's just a hardscrabble existence. Well, I've heard similar arguments for, like, women who become prostitutes or women who enter porn it's like these are consenting adults but it's like it's more complicated than that because there's other factors you know weighing on this person yeah and you can't just be like uh you chose this sorry i think competitive athleticism it, there's a difference. See, the thing about porn and prostitution is there's probably sexual abuse involved there. Not always, but there's a large percentage that have been abused by relatives.

It's horrific shit. And then there's a lot of fighters that were beaten up when they were young They were bullied or they're abused by someone close to them and they they got good at lashing out And they got good at dishing out punishment on other people because they know how horrible it feels When it's dished out on them with a positive argument and they might also make this about porn Is that this is an empowering way to recover from that trauma to take this? thing where you were small and little and vulnerable and turn it into a strength of yours that you can channel that energy and that rage into something positive, you know, that you're really good at. Like, clearly, I think when I think about, like, why did I become a writer?

Clearly, there was some desire to be seen or heard that went fundamentally unfulfilled as a kid because why would you develop the skill to sit at your computer and just you know if i just get it perfect they'll understand me and it'll be it'll match you know there's maybe in a non-fiction context but in a fiction contest don't context don't you think there's a lot of people that just have ideas? And it's kind of very satisfying to write out those ideas and have other people enjoy them. Like, ooh, this is a good story. But it could be the same thing. Maybe their circumstances were dire and awful and unpleasant.

And it drove them to pursue a world that they could control and make and explore and have agency over. You know what I mean? You could imagine the fantasy author being drawn to fantasy for a reason. Yes. Well, you know the story of Robert E. Howard? No. Robert E. Howard is the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian.

And what is that guy? Vincent D'Onofrio played him in a film a few years back that I never watched, which is really odd because I'm a giant Robert E. Howard fan. Can I have one of those? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you want? A mint?

Yeah, here you go. Neuromints for the win. Dude, I actually really like those. I love them. Yeah, I love the gum more than anything. But Robert E. Howard was like a really fucked up, depressed guy who lived with his mom, you know, and his life was kind of a disaster. And he wrote the greatest fantasy novels the world has ever known.

I mean, his character to this day is like, I don't know how many millions of copies of the Conan books, but I read them all when I was a kid. And they're fucking good, man. And it's about this character that is the opposite of who Robert E. Howard was. Robert E. Howard wound up taking his own life. I think he was like 30 something years old. He shot himself. But before he did that, he wrote about this unstoppable, unconquerable man who was a giant amongst men who slayed everyone before him and fought demons and dragons and he carried you through this these incredible adventures that conan would go through with like it was so impassioned it was so the the words were

so vibrant and exciting meanwhile this guy's life was dog shit yeah it was terrible but he wrote about someone who he wishes he would be. I think also if your life sucks or you're struggling with something or you don't feel good or you don't feel your parents are proud of you or whatever, there's something inherently satisfying and rewarding about just mastering something because you have power over it. It operates the way that you want it. So whether you're mastering writing fantasy or archery or fighting or trading stocks, there's something you know, any of the, or trading stocks, there's something about like, I go into this place and in that place, it doesn't feel quite like real life feels like you're a superhero or, you know what I mean? There's something

inherently human and wonderful though, about mastery and mastering something. human and wonderful though about mastery and mastering something well i think it's we have a desire that is probably genetic it's probably the result of thousands and thousands of years of evolution where figuring things out is very rewarding figuring out how to flint map and make stone tools fingering figuring out how to play the wind and sneak up on a deer when you need food for your family. Like all of those things, they're incredibly rewarding for us because that's how you survived. Yeah. And figuring out how to conquer your enemies, figuring out how to convince this woman to mate with you. All those different things. The puzzles of life. Yes, the puzzles of life. And they transfer to chess, right?

And the feeling of winning at chess. I'm a big fan of pool. I play a lot of pool. It's a stupid game. Who gives a fuck if that ball goes in the hole? It means nothing, but it's hard to make that ball go in the hole. And you have to concentrate. And in that concentration of getting that ball to go in and getting position on the next ball and all those things, the reward when you knock that final ball in is like, wow. You get this exciting feeling. And when you miss, you're like, oh. It's the same feeling as like missing an animal.

Your family's not going to eat. Or not figuring out how to make a tool that's vital for your survival or not figuring out a way to start fire. If you're a person in the village and you were the guy who knew how to start fire, go to Ryan. He knows how to start a fire. And Ryan could teach you. There's a value in figuring these things out. And I think that is inside of our minds and we activate those human reward systems and we activate them, whether it's through creating literature or whether it's through music or whether it's through getting better at things. There's like this pathway that's ingrained into us

that's incredibly human that we get rewarded for getting better at things. Yeah. You go back to the first cave paintings. Like, what's motivating a person to do that? And then you look at, like, where they were and where we are now and this sort of unbroken passing of torches from, like, these rudimentary buffalo or horses or whatever to, like, the Sistine Chapel. You're like, wow, that is a chain of masters.

Yes, yeah, that's a perfect example too. That is a great analogy. The difference between the cave paintings and St. Peter's Basilica, which when I went to when I was in Rome a few years back, I couldn't believe how big it was. Yeah. When you look at that and you're like, how long did this take? Because you see it in a photograph and it's it's pretty beautiful and it's it's gorgeous.

But when you're there in person and you're walking around, you're just like, holy fuck, this is insane. The amount of effort is so undeniable. Yeah. Or like some of these like cathedrals where it's like they don't even know the person who did it because it wasn't one person. It took 200 years. Yeah. And they're just like collectively. That is such a human thing. We're just like we're coming together to build this burial mound. We're coming together to build this. Yeah. This cathedral. And it's just a process. And we all just plug into the process. There's something that the Stoics kind of believe that we're all this like giant organism that's working together.

And there is just something crazy about that. That just happened. That's what humans do. Like in the way you look at like ants, they just do stuff. Yeah. Weed or beavers. They just that's what I'm a beaver is what I do. That's what humans do.

Homo Faber is one of the names for the human species. Like man, the maker. We make stuff. We make stuff. We do stuff, yeah. I've always said that if you were something from another planet and you came to observe us, you'd be like, what's going on here? Oh, there's this one creature that can manipulate its environment in a very sophisticated way,

and all it does is make better and better stuff. Yeah. And that's what we do. We just do it collectively. You might think you're just working on your poetry, but you're basically plugging into this human need to improve upon things. You might think that you're just practicing the saxophone, but by do-do-do-do-do, you're practicing getting better at it.

That's what you're doing, because everybody gets a reward out of getting better at things. But ultimately, the collective reward is better and better technology. Well, and then maybe randomly you are a saxophone player who moves the ball forward. Yeah. Right? And it's funny, though. The Marx Reel talks about this. It's kind of weird.

Only recently could you get up and look down on human beings. Right? You can maybe climb a mountain, but you couldn't get in a hot air balloon. You couldn't get in an airplane. We only saw the Earth from space in 1970-something. You know the blue marble photo, the famous photo? That was just 50 years ago.

But that's what bees do. That's what beavers do. That's what ants do. There are other things that do. We just think we're special because we're us. But like empires are that and whole civilizations and whole eras. Like we're just all part of this giant collective thing that's just going on. And we all think we're so important one part of a process that randomly produces progress for the most part, sometimes produces the opposite of progress, but randomly produces these sort of evolutionary improvements. And then that's how you go from there to here. But it's this timeless, enormous thing that you're just a minuscule part of. And there's certain instincts that we have that we think are detrimental, like the instincts and inclination towards materialism. Why does that exist?

Well, that ensures that you keep buying the latest and greatest stuff, which ensures that we keep making the latest and greatest stuff, so innovation keeps pushing forward. If everybody was wise and didn't need anything and was pragmatic and was relaxed and wanted to just live in a log cabin, we would stay static and nothing would improve. But there's these – and then when something comes along, like some horrible situation, like where things go badly, like war, like the Nazis, like Hitler, well, what happens? Well, the reaction to that is so intense that it forces people into action and it forces them to go out and stop that. And then you look at the innovation that happens after World War II and it changes culture all around the world. It's just horrible event takes place.

And through this horrible event, we realize, oh, my God, this can happen. oh my God, this can happen. And now we got through that and there's V-Day where they're kissing in the street and everybody's celebrating and then civilization moves forward in this beautiful way for a while. Well, there's a beautiful kind of symmetry to it. It's like horrible thing, reaction to the horrible thing.

And like, so, you know, if you look at world events up close, right? You're like Russia invades Ukraine. It's this horrendous, violent, awful thing. It's also, though you zoom out, you look at it on a 100-year timeline, a 200-year timeline. It's humanity staggering towards some sort of global balance of power. Then it gets out of balance, then it has to rebalance. And so we take these things personally, when in fact, they just are what they are and it's always been happening just like waves have always been crashing on the beach and trees have been growing and

falling down this is what it is and it's always been that way it always will be that way until eventually it's not that way but it just and that's why i think so fascinating about meditations is like marcus is the most powerful man in the world. And he's like, who remembers the emperor six emperors ago? You know, he's like, he'll go like the name Vespasian, you know, like how odd that feels now. And that was like just a couple before him. And he's like, think about all the people that worked in Vespasian's court. They were so powerful. Where are they now? And and he's like the same thing's going to be happening to you and that this is this thing that just happens and there's a beauty and a horror to it but you got to choose the view you're going to take i think it's interesting because the elite

minds of the day for lack of a better term like marcus aurelius like there's no other form of there's no other form of discourse there's no other form of, there's no other form of discourse. There's no other form of entertainment. There's no other form of distraction. You have life and you have writing. You have literature. You have reading other people's writing and you have making your own writing. And then you have this comprehension and understanding of the world around you where you're trying to express it, and in his case, to himself and the valuable lessons that he learned.

One of the things that was really fascinating was the value that he placed on forgiveness. Yeah. Well, so he famously is betrayed by his best friend who declared – he thinks Marcus is sick and near death. And so this guy named Avidius Cassius goes like, I'm the emperor now. But Marcus wasn't dead. And so it puts him in this horrible position of like, obviously, you can't allow this. But he doesn't want to fight a war. And he basically says, this is the final chapter in The Obstacle is Away, the idea that like even this is an opportunity.

And he says like, I want to show history how civil strife can be dealt with. I want to show history how civil strife can be dealt with. And so he tries to give Cassius a chance to come to his senses, eventually has to take the Roman army out in battle. He deal with it. And then he weeps when someone kills Cassius because it deprives him of the opportunity of forgiving him, of like giving him clemency. Wow. And he orders the Senate, he says, do not execute a single person for this. He says, do not let my name be stained in blood, which is maybe impractical, maybe too philosophical, but there is a beauty to that,

that he talks about forgiveness in meditations, but then he has to actually apply it in his life at the highest level. Well, that happens in history, right? When there's truces and people have to deal with whatever just happened. That was a real issue with the Civil War in the United States. For a long time, there was a lot of murder that happened where people were punishing people for their participation in one side or the other, and they would go back and forth and kill people. There's a long history, it went on for decades and decades, of people murdering people who were responsible for killing their relatives in the Civil War.

Yeah. I mean, the horrible part of the Civil War, the genius of Lincoln is he said, both Lincoln and Grant are like, just let them go home, right? Just let them go home. He says, turn their swords into plowshares, according to the Bible. And they think it's going to work. And there's a genius element to it, sort of almost a Christ-likeness to it. But then the horror is that the South doesn't – like they're not like immediately like, yeah, slavery is bad.

Why did we fight this war over it? They go home and they're like, we still hate black people. We still don't want them here. And now that we can't own them, now they're a problem for us. And some of the worst massacres in American history are basically Confederate sort of paramilitary soldiers. This is what the US really struggles with how do you pacify after a war like that? The argument is we kind of learn this lesson in the Second World War. We go and there's a process of denazification in Germany, which we don't manage to do after the US Civil War because Lincoln is assassinated, which you could argue is why he was assassinated. do after the US Civil War because Lincoln is assassinated, which you could argue is why he was assassinated. But we never fully sort of get rid, not get rid of, but change the hearts and minds

of the people who went to war for like the worst possible cause you can think of for going to war for next to the Nazis. And so like there's a Confederate statue in the little town that I'm in. And like why is that there? That's there as a giant middle finger to the federal government. Many of them were actually put up during the civil rights era. This one is – here's a crazy thing. This one went up in 1910, right? And so that's 50, 60 years after the Civil War.

I met a guy when I lived in East Austin down the street, this guy, his name was Richard Overton. And when he died, he was the oldest man in the world. He died at 112. He was born before the statue went up. Wow. And he's black. He lived in the segregated part of what is now East Austin. But we think these things are so old, but they were put up for very specific reasons to send a very specific message.

It's not that long ago. That's what's really terrifying about it and when I was a child, when I was 11 years old, my family moved from San Francisco to Florida and that was the first time I'd heard the expression Yankee. I got called a Yankee

and I mean this doesn't happen in florida anymore this is what's interesting it's like what happened from the civil war to 2022 is like it takes generations to escape the hatred of the past yeah but when i was a kid so this was like this was the 1970s um because i was 14 in high school, which was 81. That was my first year of high school. So this is before that. So it was like 79-ish, somewhere around there. And they were calling people Yankees.

Yeah. Like, it was a thing. Like, you're a fucking Yankee. I was like, what am I? Yeah. I'm a what? Yeah. Like, are you in a cartoon?

I'm a Yankee? Like, this is real like this So he had to have heard that from his family Yes, he probably heard it from his parents or his grandparents So they had an attitude about people from the north like they didn't think of us as all being one population I Don't think people experience maybe in some pockets of the world they experience, some pockets of the country, rather, they experience that today. But I think for the most part, people think of America as America.

They think of red and blue, like the red states and the blue states, and we're separated in that regard. But those almost conveniently line up with the same states as how it broke in the Civil War. Like the Mason-Dixon line is there. Is that, for red and blue, though, aren't there a lot of red states that are northern states? There are, of course. But I'm just saying all the red states were Confederate states. Sorry, all the Confederate states are now red states.

Almost entirely. I see what you're saying. You see what I mean? Yes, yes, yes. So the states that used to be Confederate are now red. But there's also some red states that were not Confederate. I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's true. It takes generations. We're fucking dumb and slow to learn. It takes a long time for people to figure that out. I discussed ad nauseum, the lack of attention to the worst spots in this country. Like I've always said that if you want to make the world a better place, make less losers. How do you make less losers? Give people a better starting position. Give people more support. I don't

think you should hand things to people necessarily, but I think there's a real value in making communities safer and more conducive to people advancing and getting ahead and showing people more examples of it. Then you have a better, more robust civilization because you have more competition. You have it filled with more people that are doing exciting things and doing things that are fulfilling. And I think you probably have less finger pointing because you'd have a better perspective of what our society actually is.

Our society is a society that lifts people up. Our America, America is a great place because we treat people not just equally, but we look at people who don't have an equal shot, and we want to give them a head start and give them a hand up. And I think some people have criticisms of that in terms of aspects of it. Some people have criticisms of that in terms of like aspects of it like some people have criticisms of affirmative action because they think that affirmative action rewards people that are less qualified simply because they came from another place I think there's a way to do

that where we don't feel like that we're get them young and train them better and educate them better and also protect them give them environments give them community centers educate them better and also protect them. Give them environments, give them community centers, give them places where they feel like they're a part of a great group of other human beings that are also striving. So the environment that they're around is an environment of information, education, they're learning how to think and behave and rewarded for progress, rewarded for improvement, rewarded for succeeding and overcoming bad situations, and also rewarding themselves for discipline. And then also learning that loss and learning that failure and humiliation are valuable teachers. And you don't have to be defined by your worst moments.

And you don't have to be defined by your worst moments. Those worst moments can actually enable you to produce a better result in the future and show other people that have done that and help them lead the way. This is all possible, man. This all can be done. It would have a radical effect on the way this country behaves. But I think a lot of people want to pretend that this is all a really long time ago, right? It's going on right now. No, no.

But I mean like Ruby Bridges, you know, from the famous photo, she integrates that school. She's the little girl. All the parents are yelling horrible things at her. Right? She's like 63. Wow. You know, you want to think she's like 90 or. 190.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, it's not that long ago. Not that long ago. And like, think about the effect that that, think about what her parents went through and the effect that that had on her. And think about like the age of her children now. Yeah. Like they're, they're like maybe my age.

Right. Yeah. Cause she's like, she, I remember, yeah, she's like a year older than my mother-in-law. And you're just like, wow. Okay. So this could – like my grandmother went to Little Rock High School, the famous one that was integrated, like two years before it was integrated. and so you think about the environment that she grew up in in the privilege you know the privilege of the fact that like a good chunk of the population was not allowed to go to school with her yeah and then what what those people the school they had to go to and like it's not any

part of like my family's history that we benefited from this you know we think it's a long time ago like but it obviously shaped my dad it shaped the the the life that, we think it's a long time ago, like, but it obviously shaped my dad. It shaped the life that we live. Like there's a legacy of that and you have to figure out how to address it. But we not, the reason we haven't figured out how to address it is I think a good chunk of us just don't want to think that it's true. I think there's that it's inconvenient for people to concentrate on things that have happened in the past when they can say, well, hey, I had nothing to do with that. I'm just living my life. I'm doing the best that I can. But I also think that it's like you were talking about before with the negative things that happen. And then through those, there's this kind of yin and yang

effect, right? I think one of the things that we're going through today is just that. It's just like we're in the middle of it. So we can't recognize that progress is being done. It's just there's so much work to do. And it's one of the reasons why greedy politicians are so disgusting. When we find out that politicians are making hundreds of millions of dollars off illegal insider stock, well, I guess it is legal, insider stock trades. And that's really what they're concentrating on. They're not really concentrating on their constituents. They don't give a fuck if people get ahead.

That's nonsense. It's all lip service. When you hear the White House press secretary talk about the economy's in a better place than it's ever been before, you know that's horseshit. And it makes everyone angry. And that anger is there to encourage people to act. It's encouraged people to take steps to do better, to force politicians to be more upfront, to force honesty, and also to get people that are maybe qualified to be better leaders but are reluctant to get involved in that. It may motivate them to get going. I even think, like, I'm very critical of, like, woke ideology because I think it's essentially a religion. But I think the overwhelming thing about woke ideology that gives me comfort is that all of it is encouraging people to be more inclusive, kinder, more accepting, even if it's wrong. Even if you're in doing so, enforcing this ideology,

you're really victimizing other people, which is possibly the case in some ways, the overwhelming direction that things are going is to make it so that everything's okay. Sometimes when they make everything okay, they make people that are not guilty, guilty, and they make victims out of people that were innocent. But the direction that it's going is supposedly in kindness.

Now, they're being vicious and mean and enforcing their kindness, but this is sort of a natural aspect of human ideology anyway. Like when people have an ideology that's rigid, they enforce it, and they enforce it the same way they enforce a religion. Now that's a good way to think about it. At least virtue signaling is pointed towards virtue as opposed to open cynicism or nihilism. Or evil.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you were growing up in Nazi Germany, and you were openly a Nazi, that's an ideology that's an ideology that you you signal to all the other Nazis that you are on board and your cruelty to Jews and your decision to enforce genocide you're you're signaling to your tribe that you're doing so that that's humanity in a terrible direction this is is humanity in a good direction, but it's been hijacked by terrible people. Yeah. And generally by people that are failures, that don't have good character or will,

and don't have the ability to objectively assess their own thoughts and their own actions and try to figure out why they're motivated to do what they do. Instead, they just do what gets them attention because this is part of what people do. They try and strive to rise to the top. They try and strive. The economics of the internet are pulling them in that direction also. Yes. Which is why Twitter is essentially a mental health compromised market. Have you seen the We Are the Baddies sketch? Yes.

That's like my favorite like wait the people we have the skulls and you know like are we the bad guys? Who made that? I don't know

some UK thing? Yeah. Because I mean we don't say baddies. Right, right. It's definitely a UK thing. Yeah, we should find that. We should find that

because I haven't seen that in a while. That Mitchell and Webb. Can you put it up? Yeah. How long is it? Three minutes. Yeah, let's play it.

I think this is the whole thing. Give him some props. You got it? Yeah. Here we go. Very well. They're coming. Now we'll see how these Russians deal with a crack SS division.

Hands. Have courage, my friend. So these guys are wearing Nazi costumes, folks. They're just listening. Hands, I've just noticed something. These communists are all cowards. Have you looked at our caps recently? Our caps? The badges on our caps. Have you looked at our caps recently? Our caps?

The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What? No. A bit. They've got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don't... Hands. Are we the baddies?

All right, let's see. We should be able to hold them at this point here, at least for a few hours. Then why skulls, then? Why skulls? Well, maybe they're the skulls of our enemies. Maybe. But is that how it comes across? I mean, it doesn't say next to the skull, you know,

Yeah, we killed him, but trust us, this guy was horrid. Well, no, but... I mean, what do skulls make you think of? Death, cannibals, beheading, um, pirates. Pirates are fun! I didn't say we weren't fun, but fun or not, pirates are still the baddies. I just can't think of anything good about a skull. What about pure Aryan skull shape?

Even that is more usually depicted with the skin still on. Where's the ally? Oh, you haven't been listening to ally propaganda. Of course they're going to say we're the bad guys. But they didn't get to design our uniforms. And their symbols are all, you know, quite nice. Stars, stripes, lions,

sickles. What's so good about a sickle? Well, nothing. And obviously, if there's one thing we've learned in the last thousand miles of retreat is that Russian agriculture is in dire need of mechanisation. Tell me about it. But you've got to say, it's better than a skull. I mean, I really can't think of anything worse as a symbol than a skull.

A rat's anus? Yeah, and if we were fighting an army marching under the banner of a rat's anus, I'd probably be a lot less worried Hans he's got a skull ashtray Okay. So. That's funny. Very funny. That's the best. It's a great sketch.

Yeah, nobody ever has that realization, though. Yeah. They're in the middle of it, and they just keep doing what they're doing. And I think it's also the culture that they're involved. People imitate their atmosphere, right? Also, the culture that they're involved, people imitate their atmosphere, right? I think if going back to politicians, one of the things that got revealed when this whole Nancy Pelosi thing happened, when they started looking at the insane amount of money that she's made from insider trading, they started looking at all of Congress. And it's across the board.

I mean, Republican, Democrat, they are all dipping their toes into those waters. A bunch of them sold stocks like right before the pandemic. Yeah. And they know. Yeah, they know. They knew a lot of what was going on, like in terms of like the adoption of electric vehicles by the entire United States. You know, the government, they were adopting EVs. And so before that bill gets into play, they dump a shitload of money into Tesla

stock. And then we look how much money we made. Like they knew these bills are going to be passed. There's a lot of that going on, but that's the culture that these people are involved in. That's are we the baddies? Well, or to go back to the Hollywood thing, it's like, it's not that hard to not be a piece of shit, but if everyone's doing it, you're like, why not? Yeah. They, there's people that i knew that were agents that thought they had to act like that they thought they had to be like get my fucking cup of coffee let's go here they they wanted to be ari gold like ari gold is a that's a real human yeah i mean there really are people like that yeah yeah there's a there's this great

book called what makes sammy run and it's about this like Jewish agent, like Hollywood agent in like the 20s or 30s, like endlessly ambitious. And we're talking about boxers, like because he's from the disenfranchised group. Then he comes from the sl that, it doesn't age that well because you read it now and you're like, yeah, that's what you do to get successful. You stab people in the back. Right? Like Ari Gold

is the hero of Entourage. Right. Not a garbage, horrible boss. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, he's also like

what people aspire to be. Yeah. That's the baller. That's the guy with the expensive watch who drives a Mercedes. He's killing it. Yeah. He's out there killing it. You got to crack eggs to make an omelet. Yeah. I mean, that obviously, we have to look to that when we look at horrific moments in history

like World War II or like Genghis Khan or like, like any of these horrific moments where things are so hard to imagine years later. Like when we're looking back, uh, on, uh, the inquisition and looking back on the horrific methods of torture that they used on people that were infidels, like who the fuck are these people and how could they have done this? Like I was was someone sent me this i'm gonna send you this jamie because this is really fascinating this is from i forget what year this is but um yeah i'll send you this jamie um this was a uh he was a judge that took a bribe in court.

His name is Sissimness. Oh, I saw this on Reddit. Yeah, look at this. It was from Reddit. Yeah, Reddit, today I learned. He was a judge that took a bribe in court and passed an unfair sentence. He was skinned alive and his leather was used to make a chair that his son had to sit in as his son was appointed the next judge. There was a later painting made depicting

him being skinned alive. And then there's the painting that shows they're just stripping his skin off while he's alive. Look how stoic he looks. They just cut me open. We don't give ourselves enough credit for the progress that we've made collectively as a society away from cruelty. Yeah. Right? Like at the founding, obviously the founders were horrible hypocrites, you know, owning slaves. But the idea that like cruel and unusual punishment should not be a thing. Yeah.

That that was an advancement like not that long ago. Not that long ago. And even the ones they they said were not cruel were still super cruel that we've made a lot of like i mean they in world war ii they still executed shoulders by firing squad and just like how horrendous or heinous that you would just make a bunch of your troops just murder another one of your members for doing something wrong. Do you know what I mean? And that the progress away from cruelty is a huge improvement. And so when we watch something like George Floyd or the video of Armand Aubrey, and you're just like,

that's the worst thing I've ever seen. That does say something about the progress we've made as a society because not that long ago, people would have seen that many, many times. Yeah. And even though horrific things still do exist, it doesn't minimize them by recognizing that the trend is towards people being kinder and better to each other. If you like what you pay attention, like Steven Pinker is a great example. Pinker is a great example. His work has been roundly criticized by woke people because they're saying you're spending too much time concentrating on how much better things are instead of how much better we need to get. But he's like, I study trends. I'm studying the progress of the human race. And over time, things have gotten far safer and people are far kinder and they're far more educated than ever before well the problem is if you just look at

the trend you're like this is just happening you're missing the point yeah like you know there's that quote like the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice mmm that's because people are pulling it that way yes like Martin Luther King pulls it that way Frederick Douglass pulls it that way. Yes. Like Martin Luther King pulls it that way. Frederick Douglass pulls it that way. Abraham Lincoln pulls it that way. The Harvey milk, right? Like the activists that were,

by the way, widely hated in their own time, criticized, often assassinated, et cetera. Like they, they were pulling it that way. It could have just kept going in the horrible direction that it was.

Things also can get worse. but the, you have to accept that you as the individual or we collectively at a moment in time have the ability to change the direction of things. Yes. Yeah. And we collectively have an ability to communicate these ideas that is unprecedented. There's never been a time in history where we could communicate these ideas better, and there's going to get a lot of fog and a lot of noise and a lot of background noise and a lot of people trying to take advantage of this opportunity

because of the fact that there's unprecedented models of communication. But overall, the ability to change things for the better has never been, it's, we've never had a situation that is this positive. That we have, I mean, yeah, the economy sucks. Yeah, gas is too high. Yeah, there's potential for a nuclear war with Russia, but just our understanding of the inequalities of life, our understanding of what could be possible, understanding of the positive aspects of being a good person, they've never been more highlighted. Well, yeah. And it's kind of weird, like we so focus on misinformation, like all this bad information is spreading out in the world.

And it's true, like there is misinformation. But it's also equally true that these same tools, the tools are neutral. Yeah. Or let's equally true that these same tools the tools are neutral yeah all right let's say they have biases but the tools are are the tools well you know what a great example that is the early books the early books were mostly about witchcraft and how to spot witches i didn't know that until like a few years ago like not even a few months ago i should say somebody was explaining to me that the early books that were first printed, the vast majority of them, it wasn't like, you know, how to learn French. It was like, how to spot a witch.

The first self-help book was published in the 1870s. Really? Like, just think about how many, so it's like the printing presses of the 1400s, right? 14, 1500. So let's say 500 years-ish. Or wait, no, 400 years. And someone was like, what if we use this book to help people get better as a person?

And it doesn't have to be because God said so. I wonder how many charlatans that were out there back then. How many fake help guys, fake self-help guys. Napoleon Hill, who wrote that book Think and Grow Rich, he was a literal con man.

Really? Yeah, it's crazy. No kidding. There's a huge Daily Beast article about it. It's nuts. Wow. Once you read it, you're like, whoa. Because I have a friend of mine who's a jujitsu black belt who reads that shit before he does

anything. It's a lot of people's favorite book. I mean, and I'm not saying the book doesn't have value if it made you better as a person, by all means, but there's a dark story there. So who wrote the article about him being a con man? it's the daily beast or it might have been it was a different site what was his deal uh you pull it up i don't have it memorized but it's like when you read it you're just like like whenever someone's like that's my favorite book i'm like read this piece but maybe people would say that about me i mean my first book was about media

manipulation but uh you know people change well write them out but you're a young man you know it's uh the the self-help genre is a very troubled genre you know because there's a lot of people engaged in self-help that really haven't done shit that's true and also it's like do you want to tell people what they need to hear or what they want to hear they want to hear you just have to manifest it into reality. Just think about it. Right, the secret. Think and grow rich, right? Yes. I think that's his genius is he's like, I'll just tell people.

It's just a matter of your thinking. Yeah, I've had to explain that to many people that want to talk about the secret. They want to talk about the law of attraction. Like, hey, hey, hey, you're only hearing from the people that are successful. There's a lot involved. If you want to talk to a successful person, how did you make it? Well, I visualized it and I kept working. Okay, yes.

The second part is the most important. Yeah, they kept working. But it's also the visualization is an aspect of success. You can't just succeed and make it to the point where you're running some gigantic business without some sort of a vision. But it doesn't mean the vision created it. There's so many people out there that try to manifest something, and it never takes place. Yeah, well, I know you quoted this once,

but Marcus really says this thing about how your life is dyed by the color of your thoughts. It's true. If you think it's impossible, it's impossible for you. Yes. Right? If you think you're not capable of it, if you think it's unfair, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense. But it doesn't mean that if you think it's possible,

it's going to happen. Like if you visualize yourself beating Mike Tyson, he's still going to fuck you up. Yeah. Yes. But if you visualize that you're capable of making a better life for yourself and then you fucking work at it every day, chances are,

barring some insane, unfore day, chances are, barring some insane, unforeseen, unfair circumstances, you will likely get there. You will likely get there. And it is a thing that other people have done and you can model yourself based on what they've accomplished. And if you put in the kind of effort that they've done and the kind of thinking that they've put in, you can accomplish great things. It is possible for almost everyone to achieve something beyond your imagination.

You can get there in incremental steps, and each incremental step will open and broaden your possibilities. Well, and also if you allow a long enough timeline, it becomes a near certainty. Yeah. Right? So like when The Obstacle is Away came out, it did okay. It didn't hit any bestseller lists. The publisher was sort of like, you know, and they'd offered me like half what I'd gotten for my first book. And because I didn't think an obscure school of ancient philosophy, like that's not going to work.

But, you know, six years later, number one, you know, now it's sold like, you know, almost a million and a half copies like now. But that's because, you know, that's like a hundred thousand copies a year, a half copies. Wow. Now, but that's because, you know, that's like 100,000 copies a year, a little more. You know what I mean? Like over time, steadily it works, you know. Well, it works because it's effective. Yeah. Like if you read the book,

what's interesting to me about the book is it's clearly you have absorbed yourself into the writing of the Stoics and you relay it in a manner that's very absorbable and applicable and that's why it's so effective and when i put it up on instagram my god i got so many messages from friends i'd say i fucking love that book that book's incredible it's helped me so much so you know through this fascination that you have with this philosophy i mean you've generated a lot of really positive

thoughts for people and you've really got people moving and generally a good direction because you give them these quotes in this book, you know, all these, the different philosophers that you quote and all the different scenarios and where you apply these, these thoughts, those things, they, they stay with you and they're like little sparks that you have in your head that you can blow on those embers and start a fire with. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. The funny thing, so I got offered to write a book about Stoic philosophy because I had

written an article about it that was popular online in like 2008, 2009. And I went to Robert and I was like, this is my dream. This is what I want to do. Should I do it? And he was like, I don't think you're ready yet. And that was like the hardest thing in the world to hear. But he was totally right. I turned it down and I waited like almost five more years. And then I think, I mean, if I wrote it today, I'd be more ready. But like, there's always a point of over-preparation. What did Robert want you to do? What was his... I think he was like,

look, you're getting better every day as a writer. So you're going to only write this book one time. So you should – every day that you wait, you'll be more prepared. You'll be better for it. And he was like also like – he was like the difference between like 21 and 27 is a transformative amount of life experience. It's still pretty young to have written that book. But like I went through some shit in that period. Right. And so that the book is more relatable because of my experience. You know what I mean? Like if I just was, I would have just been speculating about the ideas if I

wrote it when I was 21, I think. Well, luckily we're talking about stoicism and you literally are preaching the philosophy in your books that any sort of negative happenstance or any, you know, anything that sets you back will probably ultimately be to your benefit. So you had to practice what you preached. Totally. Totally. And then, you know, when it came out and it sold enough copies to hit the list and it wasn't there, you're like, oh, wait, is this something I control or not? Like, am I proud of the book or not? Do I think it's going to work or not? And then you shrug it off and you get back to work. What do you mean it wasn't there? What do you mean? Oh, it happens all the time. Like you can sell enough copies objectively to qualify for like the New York Times list and then you're just not there. It's an editorial list.

Really? Yeah, of course. But wait a minute. So when they say New York Times bestseller, so that's not necessarily the bestsellers? Definitely not. They can eliminate you from the list if they don't like what we're talking about?

For sure. Wow. One, to eliminate outright fraud. What if a billionaire just bought 100,000 copies of their own book? Like no one would think that should be included. I actually know a guy who did that. There's a company that helps you do it.

But like if you look at the fine print in the New York Times list, and I know this now because I have a bookstore and so we report to the list, right? You have to send a report each week and you have to flag like whether there's bulk copies or other things. But like the list every week would be like in advice how to miscellaneous.

The Bible would be the best selling book every every week. Right. So they or Harry Potter would be the top of the fiction. Like they decide they decide to filter stuff out. They even explicitly I wrote a book about this a couple years ago, but they explicitly filter out what they call perennial sellers, which are books that sell every year a shit ton of copies because schools buy them.

So there's a certain amount of filtering. But the big one for the bestseller list is how many of your copies were sold on Amazon? How many of your copies were sold in independent bookstores? Was it all in New York and L.A. and San Francisco? Or did you sell a lot of books in Cincinnati?

Right? Like they're trying to – it's not that they're putting their thumb on the scale. But they are trying – well, they are putting their thumb on the scale. There are certain books that don't appear for suspicious reasons, people allege. appear for suspicious reasons, people allege. But they are trying to create a more robust definition of what bestseller is, not just objectively who sold the most, because that could be unfair. Well, it's okay because of those reasonable examples that you use, but not because of the ones where they just decide that your subject matter is problematic. So do you think that they decided that stoicism

is problematic? No, I just think like, I think it was like maybe borderline or they just weren't even thinking about it. They weren't tracking it. Or, you know, because my first book was about media and the corruption of media, I imagine there was some reticence to recognize me. Did it ever make it onto the list? I don't know if it's ever made the New York Times. It's hit number one on Wall Street Journal, which is a different set of criteria. The first time I did 10 books before I hit the New York Times list, and it was at number one. So that's unlikely that I never qualified for any other spot for any of my books until

suddenly in 2019. Which book? Stillness is the Key. So that one hit number one. That one debuted at number one. So they decided, eh, fuck it. I think it was an overwhelming, like the number of copies was overwhelming that it would have been like egregious to not be included.

Interesting. That's interesting's interesting yeah how gross well and the decision of what list you're on so are you advice how-to miscellaneous or are you non-fiction general non-fiction like the general non-fiction list like maybe the 10 spot is like 5 000 books but the 10 spot on the advice how-to miscellaneous, because you're competing against the Guinness Book of World Records and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is, you know, could be 15,000 copies. Like Malcolm Gladwell, because he's sort of part who I love, is a super awesome guy.

And I think one of the greatest in the world at what he does. His books are considered nonfiction. But that's, I think, because he's a New Yorker writer. Right. And he's part of that establishment. Yes. And so that's an incredible gift to him in the sense that he's ranked in a category that is less competitive. A good example of that is Cameron Haynes.

Yeah, he didn't— His book Endure should have been in nonfiction. It would have been number one. But instead, they put it in how-to. And it was highly ranked, but would have been number one. But instead they put it in how-to. And it was highly ranked, but it wasn't number one. Yeah. Basically anything that isn't sort of a fancy, like New York-y style thing

is going to be relegated to advice how-to miscellaneous. Well, the crazy thing is for advice how-to, that's not what he's doing. He's telling his life story. It's not how-to at all. It Well, the crazy thing is for advice how-to, like that's not what he's doing. He's telling his life story. It's not how-to at all. It is a nonfiction book about his life story. Yeah. I mean, I did a book called Lives of the Stoics,

which is like a set of biographies of all of the main Stoics. There's not any how-to or advice in it. And it was put on that list instead of the nonfiction list. God, that's so weird. But you can't care, it's like all the games are rigged. Do you know what I mean?

The Nobel Prize is fucking bullshit. Like all of these organizations, these gatekeeping organizations are inherently about keeping some people out and keeping some people in. And so Marcus says in meditations that ambition is tying your wellbeing to what other people say or do. And sanity is tying it to your own actions. So you have to get to a place where you're like, I'm good. And any of the recognition or respect

or ranking is extra. Yeah. I think that has to be the case when it comes to selling books, right? Because the most important thing you have achieved is that your books resonate with the people who read them and they enrich people's lives. And that's what you set out to do. You didn't set out to, I don't know how many people are involved in curating the New York Times bestseller list, but you didn't set out to please those people. You don't even know who those fucks are. But some people, that is all they care about. Yeah, but well, that's on them. No no no and it's it's just it's the wrong thing to do it's the wrong thing it's the wrong game to play yeah yeah for sure but you're like seeking recognition is always the wrong thing yeah it's just especially when it comes to awards you know like those are you know, this podcast has won a gang of awards. And I just leave them places.

Like my kid found the iHeartRadio award. And she's like, you fucking won this? She didn't say fucking because she was 10. And I go, yeah, yeah, just put that over there. Like I don't, it doesn't mean anything to me. It's just what means things to me is did the podcast provide enjoyment to the people that listen to it that's all i'm trying to do right and if people an award doesn't mean anything it's just that's a small group of people there's people people that decide it's the worst podcast that's ever existed

that does that mean it is no it just means some people don't like it there's people that don't like things i like i don't I can't take into consideration what other people like. I can take into consideration, did I do my best and put something out there that resonated with a certain amount of people? That's all I'm trying to do. There's a story about Jimmy Carter, who was not the best president, obviously, but he was being interviewed by Admiral Rickover, who was the head of America's nuclear navy. And Jimmy Carter, people don't see him this way because maybe we think about him as this old man. But he was like, he went to the Naval Academy. He was ambitious, successful. Like he

was driven to be like great from a very early age. And so he's being interviewed. He just graduated from the Naval Academy. It's like 48, 49. And he wants to get on a nuclear sub. But the way to do it is this guy, Admiral Rickover, decides, who's one of the unsung heroes of American history that very few people know about. Immigrant, went through Ellis Island, Jewish guy, his family flees persecution, helps us win the Second World War and then the Cold War. But he's he's interviewing jimmy carter it's like a three-hour interview like this they were kind of these like big long discussions and you know jimmy carter's like going on and on about all his accomplishments you know

like here's what i did i got this grade this grade and then um rickover goes like how'd you finish in your class at the naval academy and he like, I was 56 out of 800. And Carter thought he'd be like, oh, wow, that's great. Like, he was beaming bright about it. And Rickover just looks at him and goes, did you always do your best? And then Jimmy Carter was going to be like, of course, you know, that's what you say. And then he thought about it. He's like, you know, I kind of coasted through this class.

Like, I didn't always study this. And he was like, I'm going to be honest. He's like, no, I didn't always do my best. And then Rickover looked at him and he said, why not? And then he got up and left the room. And what you control is whether you did your best. You don't control how you rank in the class. You don't control whether you won this award or this scholarship or bestseller.

You don't control any of that. You don't even really control if people like what you do. Right. You only control if you did your best and if you were proud of it. That's a great metric. Yeah. Did you leave anything on the table? On the table.

Yeah. Hold anything back. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing that haunts athletes right when they they examine their legacy because that's the one thing unless you're involved in organized practice like certain sports where you you're and even then there's off season yeah what are you doing during the off season yeah yeah you know certain athletes are

notorious for working incredibly hard during the offseason and coming back better than ever. Whereas other guys get fat and people think it's funny that they're laying around waiting to come back. Isn't that life though? Yes. For sports, you have let's say 10 years in your professional prime. But we think we're so different like because we have a longer amount of time yeah but you don't like and it's only in the light of the cancer scare or you know the covid only the thing that shakes you out of that entitlement do you go like oh no it could end at

any moment and to take it for granted or to waste it or leave something on the table is the rejection of a credible gift and opportunity yeah absolutely that's a great way to end this all right i brought you some books by the way fantastic thank you very much these are all yours uh no no no these are books different i know because i know you love uh empire the summer moon yes so i tried to pick some books that I think, I went through my story this morning and I was like, these are books I don't think, I haven't heard you talk about that I think you will fucking love. Okay. All right. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

I know you don't like him very much, but I think it's a different view. I don't like him. No, I think you will see him in a different way. Okay. The Tiger. This book will rip your fucking face off. What's this about? This book is about a guy in Siberia sent to hunt down a man-eating tiger. different way okay the tiger this book will rip your fucking face off this book

is about a guy in Siberia sent to hunt down a man-eating tiger oh and it's literally I know it's one of the best nonfiction books ever in because I've heard from so many people like you and then if you read shadow divers no it's about these guys diving he's like Christmas this is this is my life man they're diving a sunk German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey that they discover and it's like all about the thrill of like diving and discovering something and the mastery of this thing that could kill you at any moment hmm have you read the black count

no okay this is you know the you know the Count of Monte Cristo? Yes. The famous story? Okay, Alexander Dumas. His father was one of Napoleon's generals, but he's black. Oh, wow. And his real life story is fucking incredible. It's won the Pulitzer Prize. Speaking of prizes, it definitely deserved to. It's amazing. Wow.

All right. River of Doubt, you read this? No. I can't believe how many books you brought. I figure you're going to get them all on audio, but I'll give them to you. Okay. So after Theodore Roosevelt is president, he goes to Africa. He kills a bunch of animals.

The greatest hunting trip of all time. But this book is about he explores like a 500-mile river in the Amazon. The first time a human being has ever done this. And he almost dies. He takes his son with him. He almost dies. Actually, if you look up Theodore Roosevelt Epictetus, he brings a copy of Epictetus with him on this journey. Did you ever go to his birthplace in New York City? No. Next time you go, you can go to the house that he grew up in. They maintain it?

Yeah, it's still there. How big is it? It's just like a townhouse in New York City. Oh, wow. And you can see the gym where he worked out his asthma and became like the dude that he became. But if you look up, he took a copy of Epictetus with him that he wrote as he was near death. He's one of the main reasons why we have public land in this country. Yeah.

We have our wildlife preservation system that we have in place. He also saves professional football. He gets them to wear helmets. People would die playing football at Harvard, and he loved sports. And he comes together, forms the NCAA, and institutes safety. Wow. This is a book about, yeah, so if you click on, see the word sign? This is like the engraved copy that he takes with him.

Oh, wow. But that book's amazing. What happened there, Jim? Zoom's just automatic. Wicked River, the Mississippi when it last ran wild. The Mississippi is fucking crazy. I have more. I have even more.

Can I keep going? Okay. All right. I know your daughters are into sports. So this is a book I give to every college coach that I talk to. It's about this. She's one of the great cross-country runners of her generation. She commits suicide.

She runs off a parking garage. She's one of the great cross-country runners of her generation. She commits suicide. She runs off a parking garage. And so it's about mental health and pressure and the—I think it's any person who has a kid who is good at sports and wants to make something of it. And Kate Fagan is an incredible writer. Should read that book. It's like a cautionary sort of warning and about what social media does to kids.

Actually, I did this book with Chris Bosh. He lives here. You might like that. And then, last, I have two more. This is

The Best History of Texas. It's fucking epic. The Best History of Texas. You have, if you, if you, I would listen to it. You could listen to that one. But seriously, it is also incredible, if you, I would listen to it. You can listen to that one,

but seriously, it is also incredible. Okay. And then, all right, last one. This is my favorite translation of meditations. I don't know if this is the one you read,

but I would read this. And then I know you like, uh, Steven Pressfield. This is the first edition of the war of art that he signed. Wow. All right. That I read that book every time I start a project. It's a great book, dude. It's edition of the War of Art that he signed. Wow. All right.

I read that book every time I start a project. It's a great book. Dude, it's one of the great—the Resistance, it's— It's so perfectly outlined. That's what it is. That's what you're at war with in everything. Thank you very much, Ryan. Of course, man. Great to meet you.

Really appreciate your work. Appreciate everything. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. All right your work. Appreciate everything. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. All right. Bye, everybody.