The Peter Attia Drive - #90 - Ryan Holiday: Stillness, stoicism, and suffering less

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

In this episode, Ryan Holiday, author of Stillness is the Key, shares the profound impact that stoic philosophy has had on his personal life and his career as a successful writer. Ryan stresses the importance of stillness in a modern world set up to encourage the opposite and lays out the best strategies to develop stillness in your life. He also explains the destructive nature of being driven by ego, as well as the perils of jealousy and anger, and provides practical steps you can take to avoid those harmful states. We discuss: Has a more connected world improved or worsened our lives? [2:15]; Consequences of an overly secure life, living in the present, & the misconception of unlimited time [5:45]; Stoicism 101: The definition and origins of stoic philosophy [15:45]; Ryan’s career transition into writing, and his take on what makes a book or business successful [26:45]; Storytelling—The upside and downside of telling stories and self-narrative [36:15]; Does achieving success have to come from a place of craving and proving others wrong? And what are the costs of building a legacy? [38:45]; Ego—confusing ego with confidence, signs your ego is showing, & antidotes to the negative effects of ego [52:45]; Ryan’s advice to Peter about writing (and finishing) his book [1:06:30]; Stillness—what it is, how it compares to meditation, & the obstacles to achieving stillness [1:10:30]; Ryan’s morning routine, relationship with his smartphone, and how he avoids falling victim to the trappings of technology and a hyperconnected world [1:17:40]; The perils of jealousy and envy [1:24:15]; How to live in the moment in a modern world not designed for stillness [1:32:15]; How the idea of “dying well” can help you live better [1:36:00]; How has fatherhood impacted Ryan’s philosophies on stillness and living in the moment? [1:39:45]; How to make your favorite day your every day [1:42:00]; The most reliable strategies for developing stillness [1:47:30]; Anger—what the stoics say about anger, outrage in politics, & why more anger isn’t the solution [2:02:00]; How to follow Ryan’s work [2:12:00]; and More. Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/ Show notes page for this episode: https://peterattiamd.com/ryanholiday Subscribe to receive exclusive subscriber-only content: https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/ Sign up to receive Peter's email newsletter: https://peterattiamd.com/newsletter/ Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter, all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn

more now, head over to peteratia MD dot com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. I guess this week is Ryan Holiday. Ryan is the best-selling author of many books, including Obstacle is the way Ego is the enemy. His first book Trust Me I'm Lying, which basically predicted the rise of fake news. The conspiracy and a number of other books about marketing, culture, the human condition. As most recent book Stillness is the key, came out recently, and while we talk about it quite a bit,

it's actually not even the focus of our discussion. Instead, I think we talk more broadly about Ryan's influence, his work, the influence that stoic philosophy has had in his thinking, and obviously, as it permeates into this book, we talk about anger, we talk about just a number of things that I think factor into the way I try to think about longevity more broadly than just living longer, but also this idea of suffering less. And if there's anything I've learned from mine, and I've learned a lot from Ryan, because as I mentioned in the podcast, then I'll say it again. Now, his daily newsletter, The Daily Stoic, is one of the most important things that I look

for in my inbox every morning. Being able to go into a little bit more detail on that for me was great. I've been wanting to talk with Ryan for probably about a year and maybe six months ago when we realized the book was going to be coming out. We decided this would be as good time as any to do. The book is fantastic. without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Ryan Holiday. Ryan, thanks so much for making time and for coming out here today. Of course. Like I was saying to you a minute ago, I'm kind of bummed, I didn't get to come to the farm. Yeah, so the problem with the farm is it's very wonderful except we've got like a weird animal balance going right now,

so it's like what'll happen is like a cow will come and then the dogs will bark and then that will make another bark dog bark and then it can be this whole cycle that takes many minutes to settle back down. So it's great for writing, it's great for Louis, it's not great for podcasts or interviews of any kind. Also, the internet's no good. Well, I guess we're not doing this live to anything, but that's the other big problem. Talk to me about the joy of having Lousy Internet.

Yeah, it's great. Weirdly, the crappier it is, the more expensive it is. Like, I've fiber at my place in town, and it's like $50 a month for the fastest internet you can possibly imagine. And then in the country, it's like $150 or $200 a month for like barely Netflix streamable speeds. And it goes out, you know, if it rains or it goes out all the time. But it's nice because that's not what you're there for. And we have, I've said this before, but we have T-Mobile,

and it works great in Austin for cell phones, but out there it sucks. And AT&T and Sprint both work pretty good, but we purposely haven't switched, just because you get less phone calls. Look, I have it at the house, because you pick it up off the Wi-Fi, but if you walk too far from the house,

you basically lose cell service, which is good 99.9% of the time. I'm sure there will be some time when I cut off my leg with a chainsaw and I desperately need a call for help and I can't. But otherwise, it creates a sort of an artificial silence, which is great. Yeah, it's hard to believe that 20 years ago, the maybe a bit longer, but, but directionally 20 years ago, the idea that we would have had cell phones with us 24-7 seemed kind of foreign. Certainly 30 years ago, completely a foreign idea.

So from a relative standpoint of our existence on this planet, this notion of being tethered to that type of device is basically unbeknownst to our DNA. Yeah, we're 20, 30 years ago. Maybe you would have a cell phone, but you weren't getting called on it all the time. So it was like, like, I remember when I got my first, I got a blackberry, when I got my first job in Hollywood. And it was great because now I didn't feel like I had to rush home because there might be emails waiting for me. It gave me some more freedom. And then increasingly, that freedom turned into, now I, you know, you know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah. So, and I think about

that with Twitter, I remember when Twitter first came out and Facebook first came out, and all these things, when I was using them on the desktop, they were wonderful. But then when I was carrying them around in my pocket, and I could always access them, they're always there, that's when it became much worse. So I think I think we're trying to figure out how do we like just something we want these things to go away. Like when I hear someone they're like, I don't even have a smartphone. I go, well, what if you get lost? Like how do you use directions? You know, there's a lot of benefits to it. But how can you, how can we find the way to just turn back the clock a little bit? Because it was like, we almost had the right amount. Now

we have too much. That's right, yeah, it's a min max problem that just missed its optimization point, I think. At least if you were optimizing for our lack of misery. Yeah, yes. We still have more to gain on the max if the objective is making money for the companies that producing, it's like that.

Now, I've read something that you wrote, and I got it, I've been following you for so long, Ryan, I've read so much of your stuff that, at this point, I can no longer remember, was this in a daily stoic one day, was this in this newsletter, was this in this book? So I apologize in advance that I'm not even gonna try to reference for the listener where this came up,

but you talked about the sort of harsh realities of living on a farm, and we don't live on a farm, but you know, we've got our chickens, we've got our garden, we've got all that kind of stuff. And I remember the first time one of our chickens got killed by what turned out to be a Bobcat at the time. We took it took me a while to figure out if I assumed it was a raccoon or a coyote. Man, it was super upsetting. And more upsetting than you'd think you'd be upset about where a chicken, right? Like you're like, come on, they're chickens, they're, you know, how can you, you know.

It's not like it's one of your kids or something. Someone asked me, not that long ago, they were like, what is, strangers are most surprising thing about a form. And I was like, there's a lot of death. Like just overall a lot of death. Chickens die, chickens are, I, weirdly, I think chickens are the hardest animal to have

because they're the most defenseless and evolutionarily like the most pointless and Pretty much everything is a predator to chickens like including other chickens We had chickens when we were more on the east side here in Austin And I remember I met my neighbor because I had to go over and say hey raccoon, grabs one of my chickens, ripped its head off, and then left its carcass on your roof. You know, I need to go get this, right? So it just familiarizes you with death in a way that I think human beings used to be

a lot more familiar with because like your grandparents would die in your house, you know, or your wife would die of childbirth in your house, or you would die being killed by Native Americans in your house, you know. Like, we were much more familiar with death. Life was more brutal and violent, but it was also more present, you know. When we first got our farm, we bought this goose, and we had this goose that was super sweet and nice and it would fall everywhere. We played with it. And I remember I was sitting in my office watching it, and I watched it get attacked by something

in a lake, either a snake, or I think maybe a snapping turtle or something in it. So it waddled back up onto the thing, and it was like gutted. And we hadn't lived that long. And so we rushed to an emergency vet. We paid like $300 to get this goose, you know, that cost, you know, eight bucks or whatever, that had no purpose for the farm whatsoever. But this is what you do with pets.

And so we had it all stitched up. And then, and then we had some other goose, our geese, I guess, but, nursed it back to health. And then, you know, a couple months later, like a dog killed it, some one of the neighbors dogs just like that gone. You're like, okay, one,

I was pretty ridiculous that we paid $300 to have this thing stitched back up, but I thought it was also interesting, the other geese, like this team and care. Like it was just like, we're, what is that, gaggle, we're a gaggle, and there were five of us, and now there's four of us. Do you know what I mean?

And like, it wasn't this like elaborate morning thing. Well, my daughter asked about this, right? After, because all our chickens have names, and I forget the first one that bit the dust, but we've lost a couple of them. But whatever the first one was, I think it was go-go, was the first one. And, I mean, and it was really sort of tender to watch this,

but you could tell like she was devastated, but she was also very sad for the other ones. She was like, well, what do you think Sarah and Ginger and so and so think? Like, do you think they're afraid at night now? And I was like, I mean, those are great questions, sweetie. I don't know, but I don't think their brains are the same as ours. I'm not, I don't know, you know. No, that's what's interesting. It's like, well, they're probably are afraid at night, but they've always been afraid at night. That's why it's no fun to be a chicken. There's a DH Lawrence poem where he says, you know, like, I've never seen an animal feeling sorry for itself.

A bird will drop dead of the cold before it feels sorry for itself or something like that. That's sort of one of the lessons I've taken from living in a farm is that like the animals are much more present and focused and not worried the way that humans are worried. And ironically they have way more to be worried about. Like a mountain lion isn't going to come and attack me. But if I'm a goat, like, there's a pretty reasonable chance that could happen. So you can take some interesting lessons from it for sure. What do you think that that's Rob Desov? What do you think are sterile environment of not having the concerns you've described? Now, that's not true, of course, for our species across

the whole, or, you know, planet, interviewed an amazing doctor who is the only doctor that serves a million people in South Sudan. And they get bombed by their government every couple of weeks or months, and every time it happens, people are getting killed, and he has to, you know, put bodies back together. But if you're living here in the United States for the most part, you've become insulated from that. There's lots of good that has come from that. What do you think is the most part, you've become insulated from that. There's lots of good that has come from that. What do you think is the most negative aspect of that? You begin to assume that you have unlimited amounts of time or that you're in control of your existence, right? So you look at the actuary tables and it's like, oh, we're living longer on

average, but we forget that we're individuals, right? So the average means nothing to you, right? And even if it did, even if you were given the genetics and you've taken care of yourself in such a way that you're likely to, let's say like it's all preordained in the biological sense that I'm gonna be 78, you're gonna be 112 or whatever it is. But like, I appreciate your time. Of course, I could still get hit by a bus.

A war could break out tomorrow. I could, you know, I could still have an allergic reaction to something. So, I think we have this sense of unlimited time that we take from it. We just believe we're much more in control of our existences than we already are. So there's like a form of arrogance there. That's the biggest one. You know, Santa Catox, a lot about how we're really tight-fisted over the things that don't matter, which would be like money, property, stuff, things you can get more of. And then

time, we're the most generous with. And I think that is rooted in the sense that all we think about our old people, we don't even think about the people that died because they're not around. So you just assume, like I even think about this with like war. I think when we think about wars, we don't think about the people, like my grandfather fought in World War II. So when I think about World War II, I think about it being really bad and horrible, but you come out the other side. Right? I don't think about the people who got shot before the boats, as soon as they put down the door on the landing craft. I don't think about that guy.

There's this weird survivorship bias that I think our lack of familiarity with death exposes us to. That's why we're so shocked when it does happen. Do you think it's even deeper than that, which is in addition to everything you've said, let's assume that not only do you have the biologic track to get you to 78, but let's assume you are guaranteed to get to 78. So somehow we've built a cocoon around you that no bus can hit you, no, you know, no peanut can get lodged in your throat or give you an allergy. No, you know, no peanut can get lodged in your throat or give you an allergy.

Isn't the other issue potentially that we are not in the moment that we're in anyway because we have this view of infinite time. And so in other words, there's sort of a lack of quality in our life beyond just quantity. Is that possible? Yeah, so there's two really good insights from the stocksokes I love. So one, Mark, let's go. Are you afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore? He's like, you should ask yourself that question all the time. So much, we want to live forever. We want to think about death.

We don't want anything bad to happen. But we don't really actually judge the quality of the existence that we have very much. I think there's a lot of people who are alive who are basically dead anyway, right? Or sleep walking through life. So I think that's one part of it. The other interesting way, and let's say, because I do think a lot of people go through, they go, oh, the average person is 78,

though it lives to be 70 or whatever, that's when, so they go like, okay, I'll start thinking about death at 60, right? They're like, I'm so far from that, it's way off in the future. I'm not going to think about that. Just like when you're in elementary school, you're not thinking about graduating from college. You're like, I got to get through all this other crap first. The big flip for me, Sennaka talks about, we think that death is something that lays

off in the future, but actually death is something that's happening right now. He's saying, so you don't think about it, in my case, I'm gonna live to be 78, so that means I have 40 years left, and you should think about it instead that I've already died 30 odd years, right? So he's like, the time that, he's like most of our time already belongs to death,

the time that has passed is dead. And I think that's a much more active, empowering, adaptive way to think about it. It's like, oh, I'm dying all the time. And I'm every second that passes you don't get back. And then that allows you to decide how you're going to spend that time. Or at least think about that you're, you are spending it. You were given a finite amount of time. Are you gonna spend it on whatever you're gonna spend it on? And then I think the other part where this gets tricky

is people, people, I have to do this, I have to do that or this happens, this happens to a degree. But are you gonna spend time on top of that being mad that that happened? Or resenting that it happened that way? Or regretting that it, so people go, oh, I spent this, I'm mad that I just spent an hour unnecessarily in traffic.

Sure, but now you're spending an extra minute and a half complaining about it, and which part of that do you control? So I think the death conversation gives you some perspective and some urgency, and I think some prioritization and perspective on the day-to-day reality that's really valuable. Now I suspect the number of people listening here are not going to be as familiar with stoic philosophy as you are, probably very few are, but at least I've had the luxury of I read your newsletter every single day or Monday through Friday and then there's a weekend summary of the daily stoic.

I can't plug it enough. So thank you very much for, I mean it literally is the single most important thing I subscribe to an email. So thank you. Can we give people a little bit of stoic 101 here? Can we explain who Marcus Rillius was, who Seneca was, who Nero was, at least enough to give people a context of the world in which these people came from, how it shaped a philosophical field or bent, and more importantly, why should anyone care about this today? Yeah, so it comes to be in Athens, the founder of Stoicism is a guy named Zeno. He was a Greek merchant who sort of suffers this terrible ship wreck.

He loses everything and he gets exposed to philosophy. Probably like a lot of people expected that philosophy was abstract. That was academic, was not things you use in real life. And he gets introduced to Socrates and cynicism and ends up becoming instead a student of his own school, which becomes stoicism. And then stoicism worms its way from these sort of interesting Greek figures into Rome, as Rome takes over the world. And so this is Cicero and Julius Caesar and Cato.

It sort of follows the rise of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Roman Republic. And then it's so integral into Roman life that it becomes not just philosophy of ordinary people and senators even, but Marcus Relius becomes the emperor of Rome. And he's this avid student of philosophy. So, it's fascinating. Basically, in two generations, so Epictetus is this former slave, philosophy

is banned from Rome, so he's like sort of sent in exile. But this slave is writing about philosophy, writing about how to achieve freedom when you're literally in chains, all of this, and then a generation later, Marcus really is the most powerful man in the world, is a student of the same philosophy. So it's this really sort of open-ended, flexible philosophy for people in the real world doing real things, and sort of built around, depending on who I'm explaining to, I sort of go one of two tracks, depending on who I'm explaining to, I sort of go one of two tracks, so I'll do both. So I would say the sort of central precept of stoicism is basically this idea that we don't control

the world around us, but we control how we respond. That's like, that's the main, if I had to give you one thing, it'd just be like, you don't control other people, you control yourself, you don't control what happens, you control your reactions. So that's like the core of it. If I was going to get a little bit more nuance, I'd say, so stoicism is built around four virtues. And the virtuous life is what they're aiming towards.

And today when we hear virtue, we think like purity, chastity, some sort of religious component to the stoics, the four virtues were courage, justice, temperance, some moderation, and then in wisdom. So it's sort of truth, self-control, doing the right thing, having the stones to stand up for those things, right? Then that's sort of the,

that to me is the essence of this philosophy. Tim Ferriss sort of refers to as an operating system. I think that's an interesting way to do it, although that might be a bit reductive, I think it's more of a way of life than an operating system. We've learned a lot from the Stoics, and I always find, I think one of the things I appreciate about the way you write about them is they're still humans and they still make mistakes. I think a couple of days ago, you were talking about, I mean, Seneca is a great example, right, on the one hand. This remarkable example of stoic

philosophy, and yet in the end, probably a little bit of his desire to be, you know, approved by Nero, his desire to be, and his good grace is effectively cost him his life. Well, not just cost him his life, but it may well have forced him to contradict all the things he believed in, and for people who have no idea. Yeah, let's talk about the story about that transition. Seneca is this fascinating figure in that he's a Roman senator, he's a philosopher, he's a playwright, he's probably the smartest man in Rome at this time, and he's sent into exile

by an emperor, Claudius, who sort of doesn't like him, he sends him an exile. And so there, Sennaka is, he's sort of on this rock in the Millenoware, and he's writing this philosophy, and it's sort of like, for a philosophy all about adversity and perseverance, it's like this sort of perfect opportunity. And then he gets this call, you know, a letter from Sheros messenger, but he basically gets

summoned back to Rome, they said, look, you can come back, but your job is, you have to be the tutor to this young boy. And that young boy turned out to be Nero. And so, Seneca has this complex, like Nero was this very promising student, but was about to be dictator, essentially. At the same time, you know, just a couple generations before, the stokes were the ones who were fighting to preserve the Roman Republic And here is this guy as a sort of emperor's Guy behind the throne and so there's a little contradiction there

But really this promising student also has a dark side. It's almost like the plot of breaking bad, right? Like he starts good and towards the end He's writing speeches that help good and towards the end, he's writing speeches that help Nero justify why he murdered his mother. It gets very dark, very quickly. Senaqa becomes extraordinarily wealthy for his association with Nero. Ultimately, it's sort of like, there's

some analogies, I think, to the Trump administration where you're like, I don't like the guy, but I feel called to serve. How can I mitigate the impulses? But it's a tough balance, right? And you're suddenly morally compromised in a bunch of ways that if you had your choice, you wouldn't be, but you also have the choice

to leave it any time. And so ultimately, Santa could decide to leave towards the end. And Nero's like, no, you don't get to leave. I decide when you leave. And so it's sort of this, he basically is caught up and this thing you can't get out of ultimately sort of goes into a second exile,

but he knows he traded his life for whatever he got, you know? And at a certain, eventually, you know, in sort of a Nero sense, his goons to call in the chit. And that's the end of Seneca. And it's interesting because Seneca, of course, is ordered to kill himself rather than being killed, which was the way that the time. You can't help but wonder what would Seneca go back

and tell himself on the day that he was called to come and be the tutor for this boy, knowing what he knew at the end of his life? Yeah, it's endlessly complicated and complex because maybe he said yes because he thought he could prevent this from happening or Maybe he thought like I was again, I'm not being political I think we just want to look at analogies But like John Kelly Trump's former chief of staff just gave these interesting comments where he was like

Look when I left I I told Trump like you're gonna be in trouble because there are other people who are not gonna be able to tell you know the way that I can tell you know. And it's gonna be worse. He's like, you'll be impeached if I leave. And, you know, he ended up leaving or Trump had him leave. But I think what Senna could probably told himself is like, I don't think he was in any denial

about who Nero was, right? But I think he told himself who will do a better job than me. It's interesting. It's a slippery slope. It's very complicated. It begs broader questions, right? Which is what are our obligations? Do we have a greater obligation to our own principles and our own personal beliefs? Do we have a greater obligation to society to maximize the impact we can have on others. Again, through the lens you just described, you could argue that Seneca did the best he could of, which was if, I mean, Nero was obviously a complete dictator,

were lives saved as a result of Seneca's association with him. Yeah, and there's another few still, he's not the only one. There's other still folks who did actively conspire to assassinate Nero, right? And- Which is ultimately what Nero accused Seneca of, right? Yeah, this is what this is the pretext that he uses. And I would say, you sort of go back and forth

on the evidence, the evidence is not conclusive that he did. In some ways it would be redeeming if he had, but I'm actually writing about this right now for a set of biographies I'm doing, but you only have to go back at a generation or two with Julius Caesar to find that it's never as clear cut as you think, right? Like, Cato is the sort of stoic

philosopher, resistance leader at the time. He was so led by his principles that one read on it is that he drives Caesar to do what he did. Like, like, Cato's inability to compromise, his insistence on principle and perfect solutions, essentially grind the Rome and political machine to a halt. And there's always, like, there's this interesting story where so Pompey returns from his conquests, this is before Julius Caesar and Pompey and, oh, the lepidus have joined together in the triumvirate. But what happens is

Pompey seeing Cato largely agreeing with Cato says, well, we should come together and in the way that one did back then, he proposed that he would marry Cato's nieces, a one of Cato's nieces. And Kato says, you know, how dare you try to bribe me? He's like, I will not have my politics corrupted through sort of female influence. But even, I'm not going to create this alliance. So Pompey is surprised by this. But he looks at his options and he ends up allying with Julius Caesar instead. Even at the time the historians noted this, they were like,

because of his purity, his inability to sort of make things work in a less than perfect scenario. Cato ends up bringing about exactly the thing that he was trying to prevent, right? He instead of allying with the lesser of two evils, the two evils teamed up and destroyed the thing that ultimately Kato gives his life for. And what I think is really interesting is that then, not long after, another sort of inspired stoke character takes up to assassinate Julius Caesar, thinking that this will be the end of it. And it's not the end of it. It sends Rome into a second civil war

in which hundreds of thousands of people die and more people are destroyed. And ultimately, insurers that another emperor takes Caesar's place. So I think one of the things you end up taking as you study philosophy and history is just some humility about how complex these things are and how rarely they are as black and white as they seem and that I think what stoicism

is really about is a sort of a personal code that lets you try to figure out what you should do in your individual situations and not be so concerned about what other people did or why or how or whether they were perfect. I wasn't planning to ask you about this because there's so many things I want to ask you about, but I can't resist a slight detour in going down sort of your past and how you got here. I mean, you grew up in Sacramento, you go to college in LA. I remember the first time I heard about you was somehow after your time in American apparel

and how you'd done all this amazing stuff there. Can you pick up the story there? Like, what are you doing and how, at this point in time, have you already acquired a taste for stoic philosophy? Yeah, I think I got introduced to philosophy early on in college, I'd read Epic Titus, I read Marcus Aurelius. So, sort of interested in it, it was definitely life changing for me when I was exposed to it, but how much you're really getting at that age, you know, it's hard to tell. So this is a detour from the conversation. It was a detour in my life. I basically went and I was a research assistant for a really great writer. I did marketing for a couple of other writers. And then through sort of all those experiences, somehow ended up as

the director of marketing in American Apparel, which was a, you know, a crazy, dysfunctional, chaotic, but ultimately really fascinating place to work for about six or seven years. What year did you start there? Oh, seven maybe, oh eight, something like that. So the company was already doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, but was still early on in what its next phase was, which was a retailer and a publicly-trained company. And it turns out a lot of the same dynamics that have always been true and sort of upstart

ascendant sort of movements or businesses. It was just a lot of money, a lot of temptations, a lot of conflict, a lot of politics, a lot of this human condition out on display. But there was also just, it was a really interesting creative learning opportunity, and then I, you know, I got to do all sorts of cool stuff from a marketing perspective that got seen by millions and millions of people, and so I sort of learned how

this might be how you write stuff, but this is where the rubber meets the road where you sell it to people. What was the most, or a set of insights that surprised you most as you made that transition? I mean, obviously, you're an excellent writer, but I have no delusions that people are born excellent writers. You've worked very hard at your craft. But how did you make that transition from being able to write to being able to market? Because they're not really one in the same.

No, I mean, they're both in the ideas business, but they're very different ways of communicating ideas. One of the things Dove was fond of talking about that I liked and it's from- Dove was the CEO. Yeah, this is actually from Robert Green who wrote the 40-Laws of Power and was on the Board of Directors and how I ended up working there. But there's a thing in the 40-Laws of Power, he says, you know, like, never appeal to mercy or gratitude always appeal to self-interest. His premise was like, look, I want to build a company that's ethical,

I want to build a company that pays its workers fairly, that, you know, doesn't destroy the environment, but he's like, no one will buy clothes for those reasons. Like, they ultimately buy clothes because they look good in them, or they feel comfortable in them or they're the right price or whatever and That it's this sort of tension between this sort of pure expression and The realities of the market and I think I what one of the things I definitely took from that as a writer is like First off, it's not just what you want to say. It's where that overlaps with the market, right? Like the the perfect book idea is like what you can't stop thinking about and what people can't stop saying they need a book about, right?

When those overlap, you get something really powerful. But more, it's that if the figure out where people are, like people are not thinking, I really care about those workers' slave and away in sweatshops, they're thinking, I need a t-shirt for tonight. So you can deliver them a t-shirt that solves that first problem. But if all you're solving is the first problem, you're not going to be successful. And so it's funny, people, because of my marketing career,

they'll be like, oh, you know, he's like a mercenary. He's just in this for money. Or, you know, he's just in this to get rich. And it's like, dude, of all the things that I could apply my marketing skills to, it seems kind of preposterous that I would have chosen an obscure school of ancient philosophy as like my, where I was going to cash in, right? So it's more like, I'm really interested in this stuff. This is what I find endlessly fascinating.

I can nerd out with you about stoves this whole day. We're having dinner tomorrow night, so we're gonna do just that. Yeah, that's good. But it's how can I find a way to channel that passion I have for the obscure, boring, complicated thing, and give it to people who are busy, tired, overwhelmed, don't like books, don't like big ideas, can't pronounce any of the names.

Do you know what I mean? How do you, so it's about finding a way to take your idea and delivering it to people who are not interested in your idea? I see this often, it's like, oh, you know, this is just pop philosophy or you know, oh, this is, he's simplifying, oh, why don't you read the originals? And it's like, I would love for people to read the originals. But guess what, they're not. They were not doing it.

The 1% of people who are are reading the originals, sure, don't read my books. That's not who I'm writing these for. I'm trying to reach people who wake up in the morning and think philosophy, I don't have time for that. And I think you learn that if you get out of the artistic side of your profession a little bit. At the outset of that, you explain sort of that Venn diagram of things that are in your sweet spot, meaning you as the creator of the author

are thinking about this constantly. And if you're not doing that, you probably shouldn't be writing about it. And then secondly, the market says I want this. Those things rarely line up. Sometimes it's, you're thinking about this a lot, but you almost have to make a market. You almost have to create something that can be a bit more timeless. And again, you've either spoken about or written about this idea, which is you generally try to think about things that have a little bit, I don't want to say they're timeless, because maybe nothing is purely timeless, but they just have a longer tail to them. Was that a conscious decision, or is that some,

meaning, was that a conscious decision at the outset, or is that something that looking back now nine books into your career, you can say, no, that's actually, I got lucky and that I was always doing the right thing that was sort of creating content that was going to be relevant after a year after the book came out.

Yeah, in publishing, like, there's the front list and the back list. And all anyone cares about is the front list. Even though the back list is not only where all the money is, is the only reason the industry can afford to buy front list titles. Right? Because the vast majority of books never end up selling. They buy a celebrity cookbook for $2 million and it sells 20 copies, right? Or this big book flops, the reason this works is that the great Gatsby is selling all

these copies and good to great is selling all these copies and the four hour work we could sell all these copies and to Killamockingbird. It's the back list, right? And so it was certainly both convenient but also cultivated that I write about a philosophy that has endured about 2,500 years of diverse human experiences. I think if you're sitting down and you're writing something that you just made up, the chances of it being relevant 2,500 years from now are much slimmer. Like, I mean, it can happen. Maybe you're such a genius that you nailed it, but I'm not so convinced I have that ability. So I do think about that.

I would say almost every single one of my books is rooted in or inspired or in some way, almost a ripoff of some very brilliant, sometimes obscure, sometimes popular title from the past. So even my first book was this book called Trust Me On Mine, which is sort of an expose of how the media works. And it was... Which many people, by the way, have said in retrospect, was sort of the canary in the coal mine talking about what would become fake news and this idea that you sort of called a shot on that one.

Yeah, I mean, I wish subsequent events had proven me terribly wrong that there would probably be a better world to live in, but yeah, I think I got some things right with that book. But ironically, that book was as much as I'm talking about blogs and social media and tech and all these sort of things that were even more new then, my main model for that book was a book that up in Sinclair published in 1913 called The Brass Check.

And that book sold well when it came out, it's still in print today, it sold quite well. And so the point is I'm less interested in doing, although I do wanna do things that haven't been done before, I'm still kinda thinking like how can I take some risk off the table by modeling it on something that has some proven staying power? That's a really interesting way to think about it actually. I'd never considered that the idea that you can at least

de-risk the market appetite for something. Again, you still have to do a good job, but that's one fewer risk. Well, you think about Star Wars. Like, on the one hand, you still have to do a good job, but that's one fewer risk. Well, you think about Star Wars. Like on the one hand, you can see Star Wars as this cutting edge, sci-fi movie, sort of inventing a new genre, it's using all these expensive technologies, it's breaking, you know, it's introducing like robots and all this sort of stuff and what it was. Or you can see it as a timeless story based on the hero's journey. Right?

I mean, 40 years later, people are still watching the movie. I'm not sure it's because of the cutting edge special effects. It's the story, right? And so I think when you root things in some arc or story or deeper truth, you are taking some of that risk off the table. I just think that's a strategy not employed enough. When did you first become aware of this idea that we all tell ourselves a story? Well, I mean, I think narrative is one of the things that makes us human.

We've been telling stories in writing for 5,000 years. We've been telling, we have an oral epic poem, tradition that's probably 10,000 years old. So it goes to the core of who we are. And I go back and forth. Sometimes I think it's very powerful. Sometimes I think it's very dangerous. I sort of written about it both ways. But at the end of the day, the core premise of my writing also ripped off from someone.

This is what I got from Robert Green, which is like, you can tell people facts, or you can tell them stories that leave them with the conclusions that are the same as the facts that you would have told them, right? And so what I decided to do with obstacle you go and now still in this was not write a book that tells people what the stills say, but give people books that illustrate what the stills said or believed through story.

And ironically, this is also often how the Stoics told stories that sort of made their points themselves. But it's just, I think, a far more compelling medium. It's far more memorable. It's far more enjoyable. And it's less preachy and kind of sending as well, I think. What do you think is the downside of the story? The story we tell ourselves.

Like, how does, again, you've written about both sides of that, or both ends of that book. What are the negative parts of this? So I think stories are a great way to learn lessons about other people. Stories are a bad way to think about your own life. So I just see lots of people who are very clearly believing that they live in a movie or a novel.

And they are going through life as if they are performing for an imaginary audience. And I think this is a very dangerous, ecotistical and often misleading sort of tendency. So I think this is honestly why social media has exploded in terms of why it's such a valuable lucrative, addictive business. It's that people want to... We all used to have an imaginary audience.

We thought people cared about us a lot more than they did. And what Twitter allows you to do or Instagram allows you to do is actually believe that your life is a movie. So we get caught up in this sort of performance and this sort of comes at the expense of actually living in that moment. I want to come back to talking about stillness and being present, but I know that once we start there, we're not leaving. So there are a few other things that we thought about first. You alluded to it just briefly at the outside of what you said there. This idea of having enough. You tell a story, again, I can't

even recall where I know it's not in, well, I shouldn't say it. Again, your worlds are all one to me now. But you tell the story about Kurt Vonnegut at a party. Yeah, that's in Stolus. Is that in Stolus? I guess I had such an early copy of it because the book only actually came out in about a month ago, right?

Yeah, exactly a month ago. But I think I got a copy like six months ago. Maybe that's why I don't realize it. Tell the story about the party that Kurt Vonnegut was at and in the discussion that ensued. So Kurt Vonnegut was at a party with Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slotterhouse 5, two of the sort of writers of generation.

And they're at the party of this billionaire. And I'm sure you've been in events like this where you're sort of the candy. You know, you're like the status symbol. Like, look who I got to come to my party. I'm never that guy, but I can picture it. I know that you've been that guy, because you're like, why am I here? I have no business being here, right? And so there's sort of standing in this enormous mansion and Vonnegut is teasing Heller and he says,

how does it feel to know that he made more money this week than your book will probably ever make in its life? And Heller said, well, I have something he doesn't have. And he said, well, look at that possibly be. And he said, I have enough. You know, I have a sense of what enough is. And I just, that's a very powerful word. I think a lot of people see enough as the enemy, right? Like, if I have enough, I won't be good at what I do.

My lack of satisfaction is what propelled me to greatness. And this is certainly true, I guess, with athletes, especially where it's like you're designed to always improve, always get better, to never be satisfied with your last performance, is what compels you to keep going. And it can be responsible for a lot of victories. It can also be responsible for why you fail to appreciate or enjoy any of those victories. So when I talk about the book when I'm interested and when I'm exploring myself having you know Experience some success and certainly accomplish more things

I thought I would relatively early in my life is this idea of like and I think this is what Helen met Can you do what you're doing? And I think this is what Helen meant. Can you do what you're doing well, you've got an elite level even, from a place of fullness? What does it have to come from a place of craving? Do you know what I mean? Like is it, does it have to come from the,

I'm gonna prove them all wrong? I am going to be anyone that doubts me, I'm gonna earn my father's approval. You know, whatever that motivation is, it has to be from there that's never good enough or can it come from a place of passion and appreciation and gratitude and, you know, what they call the sort of the love of a game. Like, is it possible to do it the other way? Could you at least have a balance of the two? That's what I think about it. I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this because it's a

topic I've been interested in since I was a teenager. But what does your take on that now? Do you think those states can coexist? Do you think one can achieve the highest levels without levels without call it a certain fire that is coming from a place of more rather than enough. Well, you know, it's hard to know because you're only speculating about other people and then there's sort of awkward to think about it with yourself. But I suspect you've spoken with a lot of these people as well. Yeah, yeah. I would say my opinion is probably the minority view, right?

Like I think you can do it from a place of fullness. But you know, most coaches are like, oh, you got to, you guys got to have that hunger. You've got to have the, you know, my goal in my life is to be great at what I do, but somehow be a normal person. Like that's for whatever reason that's important to me, not to not to have some semblance of a normal life, to not be so lopsided, to not be miserable, to actually like what I'm doing. And I would like to think that I sort of know objectively in one sense, like I'm performing at an elite level. Like there's the results, and there's the impact

the work has had, and there's the sales, and there's the financial success. So I go, oh, it's working, right? Like you can, but then I also, sometimes, you know, the doubts come and you go, oh, but what have I left? Like you can, but then I also, sometimes the doubts come in and go, oh, but what have I left on the tape? Like could I have sold more copies? Could the books have more impact?

Could my speaking fee be higher? You know, blah, blah, blah. If maybe I was a little hungrier. So again, I think these are complicated questions and I don't pretend to have the definitive answer, but I do generally think fullness is better than craving. And it's more sustainable, right? Like how long can you exist in the,

I'm gonna shove it all in their faces. That's what's driving me. How long can you operate on that fuel? Or does it eventually corrode the engine? Especially with writing, I think about it as like a, I'm not in this to win in the short term, I'm interested in to do this for a long time. And so you've got to come up with a sustainable process and a sustainable motivation because maybe it works in football or basketball because your career, even if it's a great one,

is like 20 years max, but probably closer to two years. I don't have a good answer, but I'd be curious to hear what you think. Well, I don't think my thoughts are nearly as well, thought out as yours, frankly, but I think the way I look at it is, it all comes down to these optimization problems and what you're optimizing for.

So if you're optimizing to have the most trophies or the most dollars or the most whatever metric it is by which we measure things. And by the way, those things generally have to be external and quantifiable for this game to work, right? You have to be able to display it. It can't be ambiguous, right? And again, lots of things in our life do fit that criteria.

If you are playing the pure max game, so you're looking for the absolute maximum, the low, not versus the local maximum, my view is it's probably difficult to achieve that without being myopically focused on that. But I also think, like when you talk about multivariate calculus, every time you go to a absolute maxima, you're achieving local minima elsewhere, or if you're going to be more accurate, you're very likely not achieving local maxima in other areas. So if one of those other areas is some measure of suffering, or the inverse of suffering, I just think the likelihood, so again, it's all stochastic.

The likelihood you're going to hit an absolute maxima, not the local, the absolute maxima of your quantifiable metric, money, likes, accept it, you know, whatever, trophies, whatever, and that you could actually hit a local maxima of the inverse of suffering. I think that's incredibly rare. I just don't see how that would happen. I think that would be that's like getting hit by lightning three times in terms of probabilistic.

I think more likely if you choose to select a local maxima around some measure of the inverse of suffering, you probably aren't gonna hit an absolute maximum on those other things, but as we were talking about even before we started the podcast, who cares? Like, what game are we playing? And I just think, if I'm only speaking for myself, if I'm not thinking about, or speculating on anybody else, and only viewing this through the lens of my own life.

I think sometimes we suffer and we don't even know we're suffering. We've been suffering so long. Yeah, it's like you eat carbs. You grew up not knowing anything about gluten or carbohydrates. You know, you had sandwich for lunch, then you had pizza for dinner, then you had cereal for breakfast. You cut all that out and you're like, well, I didn't even know I felt like shit,

but I felt like shit every day of my life. I was fascinated, so I wrote a lot about him, and I'm fascinated with him now, someone like Tiger Woods, where, you know, that's what he said. He was like, I don't play it because I love golf. He's like, I play for the hardware. He's like, he didn't care about the money.

He's like, I care about the trophies. And he even said this, like, after, even after all the shit happened, he said, winning is great, but beating someone is always better. And there's no question that made him the greatest golfer of all time. Maybe the greatest run in the history sports. I mean, he was the number one ranked golfer in the world.

So the number one ranked person in his sport with a lot of really good people in it for like 252 consecutive weeks. It was like, that's unprecedented. And he did it all on his own. It's not like, you know, Tom Brady also has the benefit of Bill Belichick, right? Like, and an entire team of other people. He did this all on his own. And yet, as you said, he's not just not achieving good results in other areas, those other areas are actually ticking time bombs that when

they go off, those charges take down the entire edifice that he'd spent so much time building and doing. And I don't know, I've never met him. I don't really even know anyone that knows him, but I would imagine these last two victories, the US open and then the tournament that he just won. From what I can see, maybe I'm projecting, but like I bet those victories feel profoundly different and I bet they are coming from a different place because there's no if all he was motivated by was beating other people,

he would not have survived that 10-year drought. You know that would have been inhumanly difficult. He must have come to actually like golf and some like to love the process of it in some way because why wouldn't you just walk away? I mean, it has unlimited amounts of money is you know he hates the public side of things. So even playing an internment that he wins has some cost to him, right? And yet he doesn't. I don't know. I also go like look you look at some of these sort of tortured artists and actors and then you go Tom Hanks looks like he's

Having a good time, you know what I mean and doing great work So I'd like I'd like to think that there is some balance where you can be world class at what you do Not be a shitty human being my friend Austin Cleon who was an Austin He said that he calls them art monsters, you know like the writer who's been married six times There was just a baseball player who got arrested for beating the show as daughter. It's like, there's got to be a way you can be world class at what you do and you don't have to trade that.

And I think the reason for that balance is like, and this is where we get back into the stokes, like Tiger Woods will be remembered for many, many years after his death, right? Like maybe in 100 years we'll still be talking about Tiger Woods. But what good will that do Tiger Woods, right? And that markets really is because like people who long for posthumous fame forget first off that the people in the future are just as dumb as the people who are alive right now.

And second, you're not going to be around to appreciate it. So what are you trading now, like happiness now, for the fact that, you know, Alexandria is still named after Alexander the Great? Like, doesn't do him any good. It, I mean, this is why I think stoic philosophy is unbelievable to me, not being a person who ever studied philosophy.

So I'm exactly the person that the philosophy snobs hate, right, because I just wasn't smart enough to study philosophy. I mean, I just, I'd like to make the excuse and say it was because I was taking all those math and engineering classes. But the reality of it is, I wasn't smart enough. If I showed up to philosophy classes, I would have done, I would have been a very mediocre student.

So now I'm just a poser who gets to go back as an adult and do it, but to a point you made earlier, I wasn't ready to hear it then. I'd love to believe I could have been caught sooner, but I don't know if I would have. I think it's very difficult for humans to change without hitting a local minima. You have to have pain to change. And you know what, even if that's not true, it's true of me. Even if it's not true broadly, it's absolutely true of Peter Othia. He must hurt to change. This idea that it used to matter to me that I did something that was going to be bigger than me. You could look at that at the first layer and say, oh, that's nice. That's altruistic. Like, you want to serve something that's larger than you.

But I actually don't think it was altruistic at all. I think it was really this sense of insecurity. Like, I want to do something that will be remembered after I go away. I want to advance thinking in a way around a discipline of science or medicine or something like that, but as Marcus really points out, who cares? You're not going to be there anyway. And furthermore, even though this is to me the subtext of what he says, what does it cost you while you are alive? Yes, and I think maybe this is evidence of my point that you can do important meaningful things and not need to do it from that place of craving, which is what's interesting about

more and because the real thing is that we are talking about him right now, 2000 years. So unless he was lying or really didn't mean what he was saying and he really did just crave and care about his legacy and surviving for thousands of years Which it seems like he would have taken more active steps But somehow the journal that he wrote to himself privately for his own self-betterment and never wanted to be published somehow that that the purity of that experience and the lack of intentionality in it, and the true egolessness inside of it is what actually allowed him to create something that has survived for thousands of years and trying to be a good person as an emperor

rather than trying to expand the empire or build enormous buildings in his own honor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, somehow managed to create an example or a sort of a different story that's actually proved more enduring than I mean more people know who Mark is really says the Nero, right? And one of them was trying and one of them wasn't. And so I think it's really interesting. What role do you think ego plays in this? You've written about this idea that there are just certain things where the harder you

try and the more you want them, the further you get from them. Yeah. I mean, I make a big distinction. I didn't do it as well. And it goes the enemy is I should have in retrospect, but now I'm able to be a bit more explosive at it. But a big distinction between ego and confidence. Confidence is important, right? You've got to know what you're capable of.

You've got to have some evidence of it. You've got to have some knowledge of strength and weakness. I think the problem with ego is that it's not any of that. Ego comes from some third place, right? And I think at the core of EGO is an association of our identity with results or with external things. And so in some senses it can be helpful in terms of driving external results, but we see just as often that EGO undermines those results once we get them. Yeah, I think you said that, again, it's a long tail game here, but in the long run, you're probably coming out below, then above, if you're driven exclusively from this place.

How would you explain that to the 15-year-old version of you? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like historically, it's like, are there any super-egotistical people who died with their boots off, surrounded by people who loved them? Do you know what I mean? Or does the dictator tend to die like Saddam Hussein or Julius Caesar?

Or what, you know what I mean? Like, it very rarely ends well. Over a long enough timeline, the ego eventually comes back to get you. So, I think the problem for young people, and I think this is also true, for people who are more sheltered, right, who have less sort of life experiences or more sort of outsiders. It's very easy to confuse ego and confidence because you don't, you don't actually know, right?

Like, I think there's people who go, we need a president. I was getting trouble talking to politics, but we need someone like Donald Trump, you know, he knows what he's doing. He's someone like Putin is like, I can't wait to get in a room with this person. I'm going to fucking break this guy in half. Do you know what I mean? Because he knows that Trump's simplified version of reality. He can see all the weaknesses in that ego and bluster.

Do you know what I mean? I think the problem with your 15 is you see Kanye West, where you see, you read a book about Steve Jobs or you see these athletes doing XY or Z and you think that's what confidence looks like because you're not, you haven't experienced it enough to know what profound insecurities and weaknesses these strategies are compensating for and how vulnerable these guys are to slumps or mistakes or how often they get in their own way. I think that's the other interesting thing we don't calculate when we think about ego.

We look at super successful people who have egos and we go, oh, look at what they've done. The graveyard is something we don't get to examine. We have no idea what the denominator looks like for that field of observation. That's true, but look at Steve Jobs. He comes back. He's the most successful CEO of probably the 21st century. But what about that lost period?

Was that necessary? Did he actually have to get fired from Apple? So the graveyard is we don't think about all the people who got fired from the company they started because of you ego and never came back, right? Like the Adam Newman's of WeWork or whatever. We don't see how many of them never even got that far. But let's say Travis Kalinick comes back and is the CEO of Uber again and he leads it to stratospheric success. He learned what did he lose? The thing about the time that he lost, the mistakes that he made, and yes, of course,

we learned my experiences, sometimes it's a touch the stove, but the point is we're really bad at calculating how much more successful a person could be if their ego wasn't getting in the way. Anyone who's ever worked with or for or around other powerful people, like everyone knows. Do you know what I mean?

I bet if you took every presidential candidate right now and you talked to the people on their staff, they could give you a list of five ways that person's ego was hurting them in the campaign. Right? So one of them is going to win, but that doesn't mean those traits were good. Yeah, that's right. You can be successful despite ego and that's different from saying you can be successful because of ego. Yes.

We're really bad at calculating that cost, and I think maybe you just have to see it enough times to know. Like, I mean, Dove ended up getting fired from the company. The company goes bankrupt twice. He lost everything. He not only did he lose everything. He lost shares. He shares were worth about $500 million.

He now owes, which he will never be able to pay, about $20 million to the hedge fund that effectively destroyed the company in his plan to save it. And 10, 12,000 people lost their jobs. Like, it's not until you really see just how toxic and dysfunctional ego is at the sort of malignant level That you walk away and go I don't want any of that in my life So what's our checklist if we weren't sitting here on this podcast and we're just sitting here talking about this And I'm saying Ryan I want to make sure that I have an internal audit I want to catch my ego when it is creeping up. What are the things, what are the

some of the things you would teach me? Yeah, I wish I had a magical checklist, but it's more just sort of ideas. And I think why we look at stories from history as we go, oh, it's a pattern recognition of being a little bit like this person here, I mean, a little bit like this person here. I think when you feel like it all rests and falls on you, you know what I mean? Like when you're atlas with rests and falls on you, you know what I mean? When you're atlas with the world on your shoulders, you have profoundly inflated your importance in whatever situation you're in.

So that, it's like when I feel, when you feel that like, herchulean, I'm the one, that is you go, right? The other one is like, when you feel paranoid, like people are out to get me, they're fucking me, they're screwing me over. I mean, held back, I usually find that's ego. Colin Powell talks about like, you know,

making sure your ego is not associated with your position. Right? And so it's like, when your identity and worth as a human being is tied up in what you have or what you've done, and this is where the story you're telling yourself can be so dangerous, when you have really started to identify with what you've done. And this is where the story you're telling yourself can be so dangerous.

When you have really started to identify with what you've accomplished, when you're like, you know, I've hit this best, so this, my podcast has this many downloads, you know, I'm the best in the world at X. When you have really locked in these sort of arbitrary ratings or rankings or status, to me that's ego, because now you're not present, you're thinking about how do you maintain and control and get these things. The last one I would probably say is,

when you are comparing yourself to other people. So like, if you're comparing yourself against other people versus comparing yourself against your intention or your own standards, also probably a decent sign that you go. Those are actually really great. One I might add to it that I find myself having to check is when I'm more interested in being right than knowing what the truth is, which I find can happen in the stupidest example,

like literally an argument with my wife could easily, if I'm going to be brutally honest, turn into, wait, stop for a second, Peter, there's an internal dialogue. You're arguing with her, and because you're a better arguer, you can probably look like you are right here. There are five other ways that this could be viewed. If you're really being brutally honest, you should be stepping out of yourself and seeing them all of these other ways that this could be viewed. If you're really being brutally honest, you should be stepping out of yourself and seeing them all of these other ways.

That's a loving example, because it's with a person you care about. Where you really see it, I think, is when you're having a debate with someone, like, you don't care about. Like someone on Twitter, right? Like some random person on Twitter attacks you. For me at least, that's very powerful.

And that's certainly where I catch my ego the most. Right, because what you're doing means you're associating your identity with a totally meaningless encounter or situation. And you're like, I can't let this person be better than me. Where my identity is that I'm the best I win, I'm right. Not, I just want to know what is true or real or I wanna have a conversation with this person.

So yeah, I think that's ultimately what you go is so dangerous is that it just sucks us into bullshit that we don't need to be doing, whether there are competitions or there are arguments or there, you know, I think the sort of rise in fall of rework is such a great example of someone who's just like, what happens when you go is just utterly unchecked and how it served him well up until the point it all came,

you know, there's a joke about gangsters that like everything is wonderful until the last 15 minutes, and then it's brutal and violent and pathetic, you know, and I think that tends to be, it goes, and it often goes much longer than anyone thought, and then when it crumbles, it crumbles very quickly. Not only there's nothing left, but there's not a lot of mercy from other people. Again, I always think about things in terms of math, so to me, like that's just an amazing example of non-linearity. In everything, non-linearity in time and nonlinearity in response. So that's an interesting thing.

You can think of ego is an amplifier of those curves. Yeah. Zero-connelly is on is that ego sucks us down like the law of gravity. And so I think the way you think about it is like, look, if you're not ever getting up off the couch, gravity is not a big problem for you. But if you're jumping between buildings or you're doing something really hard, really high up there, the falls will be real painful. What do you think are the antidotes to the negative effects of ego?

Well, it's very hard to be egotistical while you're learning something. Ego can prevent you from learning something. But I think the philosophers mindset, the martial art mindset of like, I am a student in a thing in which you never truly master, is sort of humility embodied. So, Epictetus is like, as you can't learn that,

which you think you already know. John Wheeler, the physicist, he says, as your island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. And so if you think about it that way, it's like, oh, as I'm getting smarter, I'm actually getting more aware of my, what I don't know. And to me, that's a much better way to get through the world. There's people who, as they get more successful, there's less and less you can teach them,

and there's less and less that they want to hear. And then there are people who, as they get better, become more curious, more interested, more open, less rigid. I think that's where you want to go. Bob Kaplan, who's my head of research, he says this eloquently and I'm sure he's paraphrasing it from somebody else, but the further and further you get from the shore, the deeper and deeper the water gets. I mean, sometimes Bob and I, we talk almost every day. And a lot of times I'm just lamenting how little we know. I'm like, God, Bob, does it ever just bug the shit out of you that we spend so much time,

we've got seven analysts, like we eat, sleep, and breathe this literature. And I think I know less than I knew three years ago. On a relative basis, that's absolutely true. On an absolute basis, it might not be true. But on a relative basis, which is, we perceive relative changes, not absolute changes, that is unquestionably correct. It's also sort of like the second valley of the Dunning Kruger curve, right? It's like, once you, you know, you, oh, I think I know what's going on here. Nope. Actually, I have no clue what's going on here.

I've written about this before where it's like, okay, when you, let's say the civil war, this before where it's like, okay, when you, let's say the civil war, you learn about it in elementary school, whether you live in the north of the south, it's very simple. It's like, we went to war to free the slaves, it was a war of northern aggression, right? Like you learn one of two things, it's very simple. Then you read about it a little bit more and it's really complicated. Now it's not so clear. It's like, hey, Lincoln said over and over again, he didn't really want to free the slaves.

And how can we say it's just a war and more than a regression when the states wrote all these constitutions that basically all they talk about is slavery. It becomes complicated. And then there's really no good guys. There's really no bad guys. And then blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all of a sudden you're in this morass. And this is like, you heard it from a teacher at Simple. You've read one book, it's complex. You've read 10 books, it's complex. You can't, then you read 20 books. You really study it. And then all of a sudden it's very simple again, right? And like, you go, oh, Civil War was a hundred percent

about slavery. It was only about slavery. And it's very simple. Even was 100% about slavery. It was only about slavery, and it's very simple. Even though you've come to the same conclusion that you had before, you're understanding it in a profoundly different way. One is sort of eucantistical. One is, is humility because you're aware of all the threads that go into it. Do you know what I mean?

When I look at this trilogy, now I just finished it. Like when I look at obstacle, in some ways it's the tightest of the books and it's sold, it sells great. I hear from people how it's resident, but I don't know if I could write it again. I couldn't write it that way again because I wouldn't, having done two other books, having read more studying, more experienced more, I don't think I would allow myself to be as simple as I was. Does that make sense? It makes so much sense, Ryan, because I'm, which I wanted to ask you this tomorrow night over dinner, but I think I'm going to ask you now, apologies to the listener if you don't care about the nuts and bolts of writing a book. As I'm getting closer to that first submission, which is probably a month away, in fact,

the time people listen to this, I will have already submitted it and it'll be, you know, going through the editing process for so long, because I've been working on this book for three years. All I wanted to do was get here. And now I'm like, oh, no, no, I don't want to hand it in because I'm still learning. And I know things things today I didn't know three years ago and that means that on the day this book comes out there's going to be things I know that aren't in the book and there's probably going to be things in this book I don't fully think are the most accurate representation of knowledge and I just now that I've had this profound empathy for authors now which is how the hell do you do this? How do you take your hands off something, knowing that knowledge isn't static?

Yeah, it's really tough. Winston Churchill, who most people don't think of as a writer, probably wrote more books than just about anyone in the 20th century, he says at some point you have to like kill the book and fling it to the public. And I think it's right, you do. You have to stop at some point. That's why the book has to be what you are capable of in that moment and has to be a closed thing. Like, the game is four quarters and then it's over. You don't really play the same game. You play again the next night or the next season. Do you know what I mean? But my point was more like, I look at the book and it's just, I didn't know what I didn't know. So there's a certainty to some of the things that in retrospect I see of, I see with more nuance now.

And so in a way each of the books is a balance, right? Because you want the books to be tight, you want them to be straightforward, you want them to be compelling, but also you have to be intellectually honest. So each one of the books has gotten a little bit longer because not because I feel like I'm droning on, but because what I was comfortable saying in one short sentence before I now have to qualify. You know what I mean? So it becomes complicated, but at a certain point you have to go, this is the best I was capable of up through November 2019. capable of up through November 2019. And that's where I'm, when I look at it in the future, I can't be comparing it to who I am now. I have to be asking, did I leave anything on the table

in November 2019? Did you learn that from Robert? Yeah, a little bit. You just learned it from the process. I had a weird experience because, so trust me, I'm like, how did you meet Robert Green? Through another author who I was working for and we had lunch and then Robert was looking for a research assistant. Yeah, it was just transformative. You described him as one of the most important mentors you've had with respect to writing and maybe

beyond? Of course. Yeah, as a person, as a writer, as a professional, he's just fantastic. So with my first book, I wrote it in 2011, came out in 2012. I did the paperback, which is an expanded edition, some extra stuff, so there were changes in 2013, and then I wrote an updated edition after the 2016 election. So it's like, I've had this weird interaction with the text where I had to go back and edit and change it. This is where the ego thing comes in. Mostly what I take from that

and what I try to think about on a regular basis is that certainty is the enemy. Because certainty is what you regret when you look back. It's not that you took a stand or you thought this or you said this, it's the tone with which you did it, that you can come to regret. It was the pretension that, of course, I'm right, when in retrospect, it's like, how could you've thought

that you knew this? You'd only thought about it for 10 minutes. I'd like to think that as I go on as a writer, that it's softer and more balanced and more nuanced, because if that's not the direction you're going in, I think you're going in the wrong direction. Stillness to me seems like a lonely thing, but you say just the opposite, right? Yeah, well, I think that we confuse stillness.

We think stillness is synonymous with meditation, or we think it's like stillness is what the Dalai Lama has, or some person on a 30-day Silent meditation and treat. Now even outside of that there still is this connotation of solitude, right? Like we we practice stillness by ourselves with our thoughts with it being present, etc. Well that's the easiest way to get there, right? You know what I mean? Like if you are busy and overwhelmed and stressed and having trouble coming up with your thoughts, like you're finishing this book, the easiest way to break through that would be to travel to a place you don't live, like go to a cabin in the woods and just work on it.

And I'm not saying there's not a place for that in life, but that's not sustainable. Like, you can't do that every day if you want to be what we're, if you want to maximize for these other things we're talking about. So I'm interested in how do you have stillness in the course of normal real life? I think solitude and silence are a big part of it, but I'm thinking, you know, just the stillness of reducing the expectations, you know, reducing or extracting the unnecessary, locking into what you're doing, whatever it is, even if it's a minor thing. So I'm interested in Kennedy and the Missile Crisis and Frank and her sitting in front of her diary

or I'm thinking of the opposite of whatever tiger for what this life was like. I'm thinking about stillness for actual people in the real world. Stillness for Marcus Realis is the emperor, you know. So actually I wanna talk about meditation because you specifically don't talk about it And I think that was a deliberate decision, right? Yeah, what was the basis of that decision?

Well again, we were talking about you know, how do you find people where they are? I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that people don't meditate don't really want to meditate the evidence is equally overwhelming that it works Right and then it's great But we have trouble getting there. And so when I'm talking about stillness, I didn't want to talk about, first of all, I think it's problem-backed. People live chaotic, dysfunctional, disorganized lives,

and then they think going on a seven-day silent meditation retreat is magically going to solve all of that. When they're just coming back to their same life right afterwards. So it's like going on a juice cleanse or something. You know what I mean? It's not really doing anything. And so the idea was there's lots of great stuff about meditation out there. It's not really what I do anyway. So I'm not going to pretend I'm the expert on it.

But what I can talk about is a more comprehensive sort of philosophical approach to stillness. And let's see if we can't start there. And then at the end of it, I think you're in a better place to try some of those things. Let's start with journaling. Yeah. Stoics journaled. Yeah, we wouldn't have any stokes.

We wouldn't have Marcus Reelius if the stoke stood in journal. And what I think so interesting about Marcus Reelius having now started to really study some of the more obscure earlier stokes is you realize even a lot of the stuff like a good chunk of meditations is like quotes like from other people, but even a chunk of the stuff that's not quotes he didn't make up. Like that he's almost running through like flashcards in this journal. He's like running through exercises or thoughts or things that he's paraphrasing things that he was taught by his teachers. And you realize that philosophy is actually an active, word-based writing process,

not a book that you read one time and then you've magically absorbed the insights. Let's talk about this process because I think the way you describe meditation, the way I sort of explain it to patients is sort of similar, right, which is, it's not about meditation. Meditation is a tool, it's a training platform, if you will,

that teaches you a skill that for me, and I think people more sophisticated than me, will be able to talk about much more nuance around this. Like, they listen to Sam Harris talk about this, of course, it's infinitely more enlightening. For me, it's simply gap awareness. That's literally all I care about is the gap between stimulus and response. I want a bigger gap. And I do this goofy thing every day, most days, this practice where I sit there and I focus on my breath and I catch myself thinking and I come back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Because as Jeff Warren, who's a great meditation teacher describes it, that's just a bicep curl.

I might go into the gym and I'm doing curls or squats or whatever exercise I want to do, so that when I leave the gym and I go and pick up my bag of groceries or I go pick up my kid, I have some muscle to do that. And with physical muscles, it's so easy. We're so wired to see that. I think with some of these cognitive, emotional muscles, we don't have quite the same. So, how do you think about the exercise of bringing stillness in? I mean, you've talked a lot about it, and I think we should talk about these in detail. What are the enemies of stillness, right?

You know, jealousy and things like that. Maybe we start there, actually, and then we'll, it was sort of, unless you think it's better to talk about it in the, yeah, whichever. Let's start with, what are the obstacles to stileness? I mean, overactivity, certainly, sort of committing to more than you can conceivably handle. We talked about sort of enough, like an insatiable demand or need, certainly one of them. I think noise is the enemy of stileness, like unnecessary noise, and that can be internal noise or exterior noise. Bad habits, bad routines, certainly.

I think people can get to, you know, they can go on a wonderful vacation. And every day they go to this coffee shop and they sit around and they hang out, it's wonderful. And then they go back to their sort of life where they wake up five minutes before they're supposed to go to work and then they're sprinting around. You know what I mean?

Or they have a couple days without their phone and then they're supposed to go to work and then they're sprinting around. You know what I mean? Or they have a couple of days without their phone and then they get addicted to some new app. So it's sort of routine structure limits. The lack thereof is to me a huge obstacle to stillness. I think a deficiency in terms of like hobbies or practices and the way. So I think meditation is not just the practice of doing it,

it's the having a practice period. So if you're like, my practice is that I cook dinner every night, that could be your thing. Like having a thing that you do that you control that you can access on demand is hugely important. So for me, it's running or swimming. You know, just having this place I can go to when I'm stressed or overwhelmed

or when I'm struggling with some big decision is a huge source of relief and reflection for me. How long does it take you to finally look at your phone in the morning? My thing now is I, like, so this morning it was about two and a half hours. So what's your morning routine? So wake up early. With or without an alarm?

I mean, I got a three year old, so, and a four month old, so usually it doesn't even matter if I have an alarm. If I am using an alarm, it's by phone, but it's in the other room. Like, it's not near the bed. That's a huge minor thing, but kind of a major impact. It's like, do not sleep with your phone in the room. But so I wake up, you know, let's say six or seven, don't touch the phone. Have you used SPAR?

The app SPAR? No. Basically, you do these challenges. So it's like, you know, let's do 50 push-ups a day. You do the 50 push-ups a day, but you have to like video yourself doing the thing on the app. And so people can verify whether you did it or not. And then if you miss, it charges you like five bucks or ten bucks. I'm sure it can be a hundred dollars, but it charges you each day that you miss, and this goes into a pot, and then

at the end of the challenge, the people who didn't miss split the pot, which is awesome. I use that to start to have it, which is I'm not going to check my phone for the first 10 minutes, then we worked our way up to 30 minutes, then an hour. How do you videotape that? You only do it if you made it. So, like, I woke up at 6, 730 right now, it's an hour and a half awesome. And people go, oh, great job. You know, it's like, there's a community thing.

But, so I started, I worked my way up to about an hour, but now it's just like how long can I go? And it really, it's very helpful for me in terms of just starting the day, not from my back foot. So what did you do with that two and a half hours you had that weren't cursed with a phone? Yeah, so this morning I took my son for a bike ride, like in a bike trailer So that was you know 45 minutes Then we had breakfast and then I worked like I went I went sat with a journal and then I went straight into the writing for the day And I forget why I had to get a photo off my phone for something I was doing so it wasn't even like Oh now, you know now I'm gonna go respond to text messages It was just like the phone is a value. I mean, like, you know, yesterday it was probably two,

two and a half hours, but then I needed directions to somewhere I was going. So it's not that I don't want to ever use the phone. It's just like, I want to be using the phone rather than be used by the phone, which is what I think most of the time are use of these devices. It's we're being used by the technology.

Now, I'm guessing many people listening to this will think, what the hell is this guy talking about? I don't have that luxury, right? And there's gonna be a, and whether that's true or not, I don't know. Like I, of course, I'm just thinking about it through my lens, like how long could I realistically go without the phone?

You know, like you, I sort of have the privilege of working for myself. I probably have more things that are pinging me that may be time sensitive, you know, vis-a-vis a patient or something like that or some of my teammates get a hold of me, but in the end, I still live a pretty privileged existence relative to someone who's at the bottom of their pyramid, whatever their organization is, and they're at the, you know, they're beholden to somebody else. Yeah, and I went through that phase in my life, and you're trading things to get where you want to get.

So I'm totally not saying that this is for everyone for right now. But if what usually people go, oh, this is, I'm early in this phase, what actually tends to happen though is that you actually get less freedom the more successful you get, right? Which is precisely the wrong way for it to go.

So I'm thinking, I don't know though, it's weird. I think people actively, like, when you hear someone's like, oh, I don't even have a smartphone, they go, oh, I have a meditate for an hour each day. I do this. People immediately try to make up some story about why that's their sort of privileged existence and that could never work for me,

rather than thinking about how can I have my version of that? It's like I am probably busier than most of the people who are saying, oh, how did you have two and a half hours without your phone? Do you know what I mean? I've got people who work for me, I've got projects that are going on, I've got deadlines I have to meet,

but it's precisely because I have all of that going on, I'm not fucking sending Snapchat DMs. So you know what I mean? It's not that I wasn't working, I was at my computer, I was connected, but what I wasn't doing is using a device that's main purposes to make me use the device. When you're on the computer, what is your relationship with that?

Obviously, email, people who is in this podcast, I feel like I must be spending way too much time railing on email because I'm at the point now where the first time somebody meets me, they usually say, I know how much you hate email. I'm sorry for emailing you or whatever So for me, I like emails my preferred medium in the sense that like I want it all funneling towards there So that I can have control over it. So like that's one of my things is like You're not also DMing me on Twitter. You're not also, you know sending me Facebook messages You're not also sending me Facebook messages, you're not also chatting. LinkedIn emails like a pretty good medium for me

because it's asynchronous. That's what I like about it. What I hate are fucking phone calls. That's what I want to have the least amount of in my life. Or God bless WhatsApp with the little timestamp of when you actually saw the message versus, for some, I can't stand what's up. Yeah, yeah.

Or the, hey, let's get together for coffee. And we'll, you know, like these sort of things where it's like, a thing that could have been a phone call that could have been an email. Do you know what I mean? That could have been nothing, because you could have just Googled this, right? Email is good for me.

So I think people should figure out what's good for them, but email is good for me. But I'm not writing and simultaneously checking my email every time that, you know, it doesn't do you have things around how often you check email? Not really. My thing is like, since it's my main thing of like how people get a hold of me, it's like I'm sort of peripherally checking it throughout the day so I can see if things are happening.

But what I'm the way my morning is set up and the way my life is is it's like I'm getting everything in the right head space so I can go right into whatever the main writing or the main task that I have to do for the day is before I get sucked into the email, like reactive response stuff for the day. So yesterday I had some articles right and then I had a presentation I had to make. That probably took me through towards, you know, 12, 30 or one. And then so it was like after lunch. Now I got to respond to all these things people want for me. So how does jealousy factor into stillness?

When we've talked about the relationship of jealousy and ego, are these things synonymous? I mean, when you find something that is anti-stileness, is it pro ego or not necessarily? Well, I find there's very find something that is anti-stileness, is it pro-ego or not necessarily? Well, I find there's very few egotistical people who I think we would define as still. Take the five or six most egotistical people that you can think of historically or that you know personally,

I would say you'd probably trade places with very few of them. Even if they are extraordinarily successful, right? I do find ego and stillness are pretty mutually exclusive. Why do you think that is? Let's pick an example of somebody, let's use someone other than the president to throw at it somebody else. I mean, was Bill Clinton a still guy? Bill and Hillary's ego has caused them a lot of problems, but it's in a less sort of day-to-day

misery sense of the word, I would think, who's a good example? I mean, you look at a Kanye West, right, or you look at an Elizabeth Holmes, or you look at the guy that did Fire Fest, you know, that's not, you don't wanna be that person, and look at the Fire Fest guy, I think it was a great example.

Weirdly, he called me before he went to jail, He wanted to talk. We never ended up connecting, but let's cause he called you. You should have emailed him. Yes. What I found so compelling about the documentary. So, okay, he commits this massive fraud. Yeah, tell folks what fire fest is. And, yeah, so it was a concert organ. It was basically a scam artist who put together this thing called fire fest was supposed to be this enormous concert on this island in the Caribbean and it ended up sort of blowing up all over his face. They made this fascinating documentary about just like what happened. But the point, what I love, have you seen the documentary?

I have not. I'm familiar with the story of it. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. There's something, one's on Netflix and one is on Hulu. You wouldn't think this would be worth two documentaries, but totally is.

Really? Yeah, it's fascinating. Okay. But so in one of the documentaries, I forget which one. He commits this massive fraud. It's kind of intentionally, kind of unintentionally. It blows up in his face, he's humiliated,

it costs him all his money, it gets investigated. When he gets back, instead of looking in the mirror and going, how did this happen? What change am I going to make in my life? You know, he ends up starting this other scam. Like he starts trying to sell these concert tickets. They doesn't have, the point is like he couldn't stop himself. It becomes like a compulsion, right?

And I think I keep doing Trump, but when you look at Trump, people are like, why can't he just not tweet? Because it's like, that would make sense. He could be a pretty good president, I think, in some ways without doing it. But he can't. It's not, he's not in control.

The ego is in control. And so you just see that time and time again, it prevents one from being able to stop. And it goes so far beyond self-interest, right? Like it becomes actively self-destructive. So I think what you were saying is, well, you asked me a specific question about stillness, how it pertains to stillness. Well, and jealousy. And you go, yeah. Theodore Roosevelt line was comparison is the thief of joy. I like Joseph Epstein's line. He said, of all I like Joseph Epstein's line. He said of all the seven deadly sins

Envy is the only one that's no fun And he's totally right, you know, let me think about that for a second Yeah, and at least in the moment gluttony is pretty fun. Right sloth can feel okay in the moment It's the only one that primarily punishes the person When you are envious it it is always a negative feeling. You're only feeling bad about what you don't have and you are angry or resent know, it's a zero-sum way to go through the world. It's a negative way to go through the world. It's a, it prevents you. I think that the irony of envy is often we are envious of people who are envious of other people.

In some cases, there, we don't know it, but secretly they're envious of us, right? Like, you know, it's like, think of all the people right now who are giving up everything and working incredibly hard because they want to become famous. And then you think of all the famous people who complain about being famous and would, in some ways, give everything to have their privacy back. This is why the stokes are saying we sort of question these things, and we think about them because under examination, they make a lot stokes are saying we're sort of questioning these things, and we think about them because under examination they make a lot less sense

that they do just sort of in the sway of whatever that feeling is. You wrote that the call to stillness comes quietly, but the modern world does not, and that creates a pretty negative pressure against stillness. Yeah, no one's beating on your door, begging you to be still. All the incentives are lined up for the opposite. How much of that do you think has sort of been a monotonically increasing function?

In other words, if we could transport you back to just before the Civil War, it's whatever that would be 150 years ago, 140 years ago, it's 150 years ago now. How still was the world then? I think it's in pockets, right? Rome is a super noisy place. I mean, I opened the book with just the incredible noise of the city that Seneca is trying to tune out

as he's writing. But one of my favorite quotes in the book, Blaze Pascal, I'm like, you know, mid 1500s, because all of humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone. What do you think Pascal was getting at there? How much of that is about comfort within our own skin versus the ability to silence our monkey mind versus the ability to distance yourself from all of these other forms of suffering. I mean, Pascal has said some brilliant things

about suffering. Yeah, I think he means all of those. I think he means that also in the sense that all of our suffering stems from the things we go out and do to try to alleviate that suffering that ultimately create new things. I think it was Pascal who actually said the distraction is the greatest thing that we pursue

to combat our misery of course, I'm paraphrhrasing yet it is in and of itself our greatest form of misery. Yeah, yeah, so you know there's this famous story that's now like a viral email but it actually dates to around the same time of Pascal and he may reference it but there's that story you know it's like the rich CEOs on vacation and he sees like a Vietnamese fisherman and he says this is so beautiful what's your plan the guys like oh, you know I fish a couple hours a day and the guy goes oh what you got to do is you know buy another fishing boat and Then you buy it like he talks about this whole scale of like how to expand and grow the business and then and then

Fisherman says well then what do I do is like well then you sell it and you retire and and says, well then what do I do? He's like, well then you sell it and you retire. And basically the point is it brings you right back to research. But this story actually dates back like 600 plus years. It's a story of a minister speaking to a king and the king is saying, well, we have to invade pressure. And then after pressure we have to invade Vienna, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, and then we can live in peace,

which is where they were, right? And so that, I think that's part of what Pascal is saying is that like, if we could sit quietly in a room alone, we wouldn't go do these things that then are prevent us from sitting quietly in a room alone. They've actually done some studies, maybe you know more about it than I do,

but the study where they'll sit someone in a room and they will say, I'm gonna come back in 15 minutes, you have to wait here. Or you can press this button, which will give you an electrical shock, and then you can leave right now. And people will take a painful electrical shock then to sit quietly with themselves. So Pascal was more right than he knew.

You know, it's funny. I always interpret those studies as, is the pain of the shock worth more than my time, you know, to leave, but I see that, that's sort of interesting. I thought about that too, yeah, what is 15 minutes of your life worth? But, is that person gonna,

what are you gonna do at home? Like, you're gonna sit there for 15 minutes, right? So, I don't remember, maybe there's some reward in the study also, but the point is, sometimes you feel this is a father, you're like, I gotta't remember, maybe there's some reward in the study also, but the point is like sometimes you feel this is a father You're like I got a rush home. I got a drive dangerous. I got to get I got to see my kids And you see your kids and like two minutes later You're like I'm gonna go the other room and do my thing now

You know like like we have this good urge to do the right thing to be there with people But then are we actually doing it when we're there? That resonates a lot because I find, and my wife was recently away for four days, so I was, that's the longest I'd been with all three kids, for that period of time, it was awesome. I actually enjoyed virtually every second of it infinitely harder than one can imagine if you're me who's not used to being there for throughout all of the interstitial parts of existence and you sort of realize like how many times was I tempted to just get up and go do something that I couldn't go and do in that moment because in the if my wife's

there I can just go and get out of it. You're handing them off between each other. Yeah, totally. I don't know, I just wonder like how did we get here and I guess it's tempting to want to blame our electronic environment but there was no electronics in Rome. So it's not like electronics or the cause of this, there's simply a convenient outlet for it. What is the cause of this? Well, I don't know, but I was thinking about this actually this morning because on Sunday I have to fly to Europe. And so there were two flight options and they were both, I'm not paying for either of them. They were both miles or something like that. But it was like, okay, there's a business class flight at 10 or there is a coach flight at 2. It's a long flight, you know, it's like eight hours.

But it was like, obviously it'd rather be comfortable, but am I gonna, I've been gone so much I've been on the road for this book. Four hours is a lot, four hours on the Sunday, it's a lot of family time, right? You know, it's also like, you know, leaving at 10 is profoundly different than leaving at two because you have the home, you know,

how much are they awake? What are you doing in the morning, whatever? So I chose the coach flight. Again, this is a very privileged dilemma, but I took the coach flight. And I was sort of proud of myself as I did the right thing, whatever. But then if there was something I wanted to do in town this week, I might be gone for four hours and not think anything of it. There's the subtlety with which that creeps in versus the distinct and stark contrast of the big decision. Yes.

When it's a big black and white decision, we kind of know what the right thing is, but the drifting towards this or that, where it's a little more gradual, it's harder. And so again, this is where that memento-mori stuff comes in, which is like, don't think about it as you have an unlimited amount of this to choose from. You've got to always be coming back to, it actually kind of is a black and white decision, because you'll never get the time back. And so was it actually more important that you went and did X, Y, and Z? Maybe not. That's a great story, because I see that example in my life all the time. I'm generally better at drawing boundaries

when the asks are enormous. I'm really bad at drawing boundaries when the asks are subtle and tender and slight and barely noticeable. But the integral of those, the area under the curve of that ladder category often eclipses the former. Yeah, well, there's just way more of them and they probably add up to be, so it's like, yeah, if you went away for two days, you'd feel like, oh, that's a huge deal. But if you went away for two days, but you were present 100% of the time you were home, it would be nothing. The problem is, when you're home, you're also running around and doing this and that, you're not actually there.

Yeah, it's tough. This is about living well, but you also say this is about dying well. What does dying well mean? Well, I don't have a ton of experience with dying naturally, but it is the theme of momentum, or the theme about death. This is where we're all going, right?

So Cicero and then through Montagne, they say to philosophize this to learn how to die. It's maybe something we've lost, but that sort of death as your last gesture as the final thing, the most important thing you do in life is maybe something that the ancients were much bigger believers in, than we are today down, you know, in some cases it's these dramatic suicides. In other cases, it's just sort of what are you gonna do in these final moments where the last things you're gonna say, but I just, I like the idea that you're training for that

or that you're moving towards that as a reminder that this stuff matters. These ideas, these things, you're training for something important. Expand on that a little bit because I think for many people that's counterintuitive, right? Which is, wait a minute, how could focusing on my death make my life any better? One of the things I left from Senka is talking about, he's talking about these sort of old people that you see who can't let go.

He's like, you should look with pity on the aged lawyer who continues to plead in court for his clients. He's talking about the guy who can't accept that his moment has passed and he has to pass the baton to the next generation, right? That's a person for whom, despite all their success, all their fame, all their money, there's not enough. It's like they're gonna be pleading in court

until they drop dead on the spot. Now what about the argument that says, but if that is their greatest source of joy, don't we want them doing that rather than sitting in a rocking chair, is using the proverbial counter example? Yeah, I guess the question is, is this actually fun, or is this a compulsion? There's this fascinating video you can watch of Joan Rivers, where they're asking her, so like, why are you still performing? You know, why are you doing this?

Not in a like a judgmental way, but she brings out our calendar. She flash forwards a couple months and she goes, like, see these blank pages? She's like, if these pages stay blank, it means that I'm nothing, that I'm falling off, that my career was pointless. She basically goes in in she reveals that Sometimes you get those glimpses of people's internal monologue and you get a glimpse of her internal monologue And in the one hand it it gives you a sense of how she managed to accomplish this crap She built this incredible career. She's one of the first sort of huge female comics how she persevered through all the bullshit

She would have had to put up with. But I think it's impossible to watch that video not feel very sad also, right? That's craving versus fullness. It wasn't, see this blank calendar? What am I going to do? I'm going to sit around at home. I love being on the road. I love working.

I love being with an audience. This is what I was put on the planet to do. That's a very different answer than these blank pages mean that I'm worthless as a human being right and so The idea of aging gracefully of going out well is It's not this separate thing. It is the culmination of these principles that we're talking about It is the culmination of these principles that we're talking about. Death isn't this separate random other thing. It is a process that we're already engaged in, whether we know it or not, right? Like you're dying now, and that you've already died, however many years you've been alive,

and you're just doing it every day until you finally get to the last time that you do it. And maybe that's more of a, I find it clarifying. You're a father now twice. How has that changed your thinking about this? Because obviously, you're a father as your, your first child was already born by the time you were writing this book, your second child came along after you finished the book. How did the influence of them in your lives? I mean, you've written about the impact of being a father, but how does that help you think about this runway? One of the interesting things you experienced, it was a shock for me.

When you bring your kids home from the hospital for the first time, maybe people prepared it wrong, but I was prepared for like complete chaos, right? Like the sort of sleep deprived craziness. And that's certainly there. But actually it's like those like first couple weeks, you're not doing anything. Oh, especially as the dad.

Especially as that. But you and your wife or whatever your arrangement is, it was this rude but also wonderful awakening that like that's what being a parent is. Like being a parent is not like running around and taking them places and doing things. Like being a parent, it's just what your life is. The stillness of that period,

I still think of quite often because you're not supposed to be anywhere, right? You're not supposed to be doing anything. You don't have the ability or the energy to do anything. It's just like what we're doing is being very quiet while this person sleeps. That's what we're doing. You're not also mowing the lawn, right?

Or renovating your bathrooms. You're not doing anything. You can't do anything. That's an energy I try to access quite often as well, which is like, Saturday doesn't have to be this complicated, orchestrated event. It's not a choreographed dance. It's a, oh, we just sit down in the yard and, you know, didn't hold for the next three hours. Is that what we're doing? And being okay with that. I think parenting and presence are very related because

what is fascinating and entertaining and stimulating for them to an adult is usually a credibly boring thing. And so you almost are forced to adopt that child like existence. And I find it very refreshing. How do you feel about Saturdays in general? You've talked about this idea of what is your Saturday look like and the paradox of those days that are hyper scheduled aren't necessarily very productive days when it comes to doing important work.

When I talk to people about success, I sort of go, not like, what do you want to accomplish, what do you want to have, what do you want to have done, but like, how do you want that to manifest itself into your life? Like, what do you want your life to look like? So if you're a basketball player, you want, you know, probably game days, you're dream life. You got the routine to go and then you're in the crowd you're a basketball player, you want, you know, probably game days, you're, you know, your dream life You know, you got the routine you go and then you're in the crowd you're playing for me It's like I like a day with almost no interruptions Exterior interruptions. I like a little time to write. I like not feeling pressure

I like time with family like being outside, you know like and so when I think about what that dream day is You know, it's like when you you visit somewhere on vacation and then you're like, what'd it be wonderful to live here? You know, it's like, I think when you have one of those perfect days, you should go like, how can my whole life be like this? And you have a lot of power over that, but then we go back to green shit we don't want to do. How much power do we have over that?

I mean, again, the skeptic would say, well, Ryan, you're successful. Of course, you have control over that, but I have a nine to five job, or I'm a single parent, or, you know, how much control do I have over my ability to make every day my Saturday? Yeah, again, using Saturday as this sort of analogy.

Yeah, yeah, and I think Saturday is hard for people because they think like, I don't work Saturdays, right? Like, my Saturday involves me doing what I do, right? But it wasn't free for me to set up this life. There were real costs to it. I could live in New York and beyond television more. You know, I could live in LA and have a bunch of different writing opportunities that I don't have.

I'd like to spend more time in town and it would be better. But it's all relative because we do different things, we have different wants and needs and different sort of expectations for life. But the point is like, this life that I set up was not gifted to me. This required a bunch of different compromises and a bunch of different wellises and a bunch of different well thought out intentional decisions. You know, it was buying a house that was less than I could afford so that I didn't, I could actually enjoy it and not have to go be away from said house to

pay for that house. It means saying no to things that would be awesome to do or cool to do are great stories to tell someday but don't want to how do you navigate that well i try to go you know is this getting me closer to that day or further from that day so this month i had maybe one of those days two of those days so it's like look it's wonderful the book is done well the tour has been awesome you know the experience has been great, but I've got to figure out how to make this not happen as often. And how do you know how to juggle that? I've heard you, I think I read it in one of your blog posts. It's actually an old post you wrote a long time ago I think about, so you want to be an author. How long did you write that?

Oh, that would have been 2013, maybe 2012, a while ago, yeah. And I'm glad I read it because it also, it gave me a great sort of warm up for what's to come because there's a part of me that's sort of thinking, well look once I write this book, I'm done, I never want to have to talk about it, I don't want to have to go on any podcasts, I, God forbid don't want to have to go and do book tours or any of that stuff. And reading that post was a real kick in the groin and a wake up call. It's like, no dude, like, you got to work. Yeah, I mean, I finished this book in December.

So that's how long this process has been going on. The administrative like it's a nine month lead from the time you are fully done with this thing until been going on. The administrative like- Right, right. It's a nine month lead from the time you are fully done with this thing until it comes out. And there's lots to do. I guess my question really is, how do you know you're not just on a slippery slope where you're saying, well, it's because of the book that I'm going to only have one of those days for this month and this month.

And how do you know that that doesn't ultimately just become the new norm? I don't know. I mean, I was just talking to my wife about this. It's like you tell yourself it'll go back to normal after a certain point, but it doesn't go back to normal. You have to put it back to normal, right? Like you have to stop. It's a draw line. Bringing this out of the world of just you and to the average person that's going to be listening to this, it's really easy to rationalize. This is the season when I have to work extra hard. Yeah, people say it's going to be two years while I start this company,

and then, and it's like, no, that's not how this works, right? And so that's why I'm much more interested in creating sustainable ways of doing, I'm not like for a launch there is a little bit of a sprint element to it. It's a month I think is a manageable amount of time, but I think when you start to get into these like the next 10 years are going to be really hard, but then after that it's going to be like when that period starts to get more than a couple weeks or a couple months, like I think you're probably doing it wrong. You want to be thinking about how do you build something more sustainable and indurable?

What do you think is with meditation, again, one of the things that makes meditation nice is you're talking about the practice, not the state. In other words, meditation by itself is not particularly interesting. It's not even enjoyable half the time, but it's a practice. And once a person understands what that practice is, it allows them to function better outside

of their meditative practice. Conversely, you're writing about stillness, which is the desired outcome. And I've always found that to be a harder way to explain things. I mean, it's a beautifully important way to do it, which is, this is the state you want versus this is the practice you do to get a state. So how do you think about the journey there and the tangible skills that one puts in place? Well, you know what, it's interesting to say that

because when I think about ego and when I think about this book, I think the title or the premise of the introduction is, okay, here are the costs of ego. Here's maybe what a better place to be in would be like, and this book, it's like, here's how busy and chaotic the world is, okay, here are the costs of you go, here's maybe what a better place to be in would be like, and this book, it's like, here's how busy and chaotic the world is, here's maybe a better way to do it. But then when you actually look at the chapters, the chapters of both of those books are either examples or counter examples of processes or practices that allow that state

to ensue. Because the problem with what you get from meditation or what you get from stillness or whatever the opposite of ego is, is that there's an inaffability to it. Like, you can't really describe what it is because it's fleeting and ephemeral and also deeply unique to each person and each time you have it. So what I'm trying to do in the books is just give you a bunch of slices of approaches or ideas that if followed, if thought about, if sort of integrated into who you are, will hopefully inch you to that place. So I'm mostly only thinking about practice and I can't

even give you a definition of what stillness in this is let alone like a magical recipe But I can give you some tools or strategies that tend to be correlated with Achieving that outcome. What do you think are three of those that are I don't actually want to say the easiest to enact but I'd rather frame it as Let's say the most reliable, at the most potent, activators. I think walking is a huge one. Every day I walk. Not only do I try to go on walks just like to be outside and do nothing, usually I take

my son and for not doing the bike thing, but just some sort of low impact physical exercise, but doing the exercise for the mental benefits, right? Just being outside, and you don't get this from your running and your swimming. I do, but doing the exercise for the mental benefits, right? Just being outside. And you don't get this from your running and your swimming. I do, but it's separate. The running or swimming I'm doing for the physical benefits, primarily. The walking is just for the walking. It's where you think it's where you're outside. It's where you're looking around. When I'm running, I'm not like, oh, look how wonderful this is.

Do you run with music? I do, yeah. Swimming, I used to swim a bit. And one of the things people you always ask me was, doesn't it drive you crazy that you don't have your phone with your ever? And yeah, and of course nowadays they do have, and I was like, are you kidding? Like that's the greatest part of swimming

is the sound of the water going against your ears. You know, what are the fact that it's, it's almost like a sensory deprivation tank. You're so many of the parts that are normally alive or turned off, and I think this is why the mind becomes more perceptive. And obviously you're walking without your phone, without music, without interruption. Are you being deliberate about anything? For example, I don't mean to bring this back to meditation all the time, but one of the things I do enjoy is a walking meditation, where you focus on the sensory experience of walking, both in terms of sound, feel, you feel, air-moving past you.

Are you doing anything deliberately in that way? The only thing I'd be doing is if I find I'm getting caught up in something mentally, to just be like, come back to the experience. So that is kind of a meditation, then. Walking would be a big one. I think journaling would be a meditation there. Yeah. Okay. Walking would be a big one. I mean, I think journaling would be a huge one. We could talk about the exercise thing. I mean, to me, Austin is the most underrated swimming town

in America. Like Barton Springs is incredible. Deep Eddie is incredible. Just like the nature you can get here is fantastic. Maybe the other one I would talk about is like a hobby of some kind. What do you do that's not work? I define some of these hobbies as hobbies

where pure effort and anger or rage can make you accomplish a little bit more, like running or lifting weights. And hobbies like golf and archery, where that's the opposite. And more effort does not, do you think it's the ladder that are unambiased because I love archery?

Yeah, no, ideally it's not something you can win at. It's something. You know, not hobbies where effort equals outcome. Yeah, and willful will. It's not a willpower related endeavor, I think is painting. If you're an athlete, maybe writing is a hobby, right? For me, I can't also write as a hobby because it's my profession, but I could is painting, if you're an athlete, maybe writing is a hobby, right? For me, I can't also write as a hobby because it's my profession, but I could play sports, right?

So having some sort of practice or activity that you do on a regular basis, for me, it's the farm, like people go, it was in a lot of work, and it is a lot of work, but it's the opposite of my work. So it's restorative. And I think you find people that they're just, they've basically sort of my work. So it's restorative. And I think you find people that they're just, they basically sort of become monks in what they do. And that's a very unbalanced, I think, way to live. It's really easy to do this. And I feel like I could be the worst offender of this.

It's tempting to optimize our life so much that there is no downtime. It's tempting to say, you know, all play is highly structured. There is no just doing nothing. And I guess that's really one of the beauties of kids that you alluded to is like my middle son who's five, he loves gardening so much and he loves Home Depot. It's his favorite place in the world. So really, if you ask him, like, what is his perfect day, it's getting up, going to Home Depot, getting paint, getting buckets, getting flowers, coming back, planting them, fixing the hose, painting the fence, all of these things that, one, don't even seem like they're fun things to do, but they turn out to be pretty fun when you're doing them through that lens, and it would be easy to outsource a lot of that stuff.

Well, come on, we're going to paint the fence, we can hire somebody to paint the fence, and they'll do a better job by the way important. I'm really bad at painting fences. It's funny, because you alluded to this idea that we expect them to bring a tornado to our lives. And yet, ironically, they can bring stillness despite their movement. Yeah, totally. Myself loves to get his hair cut. So we go and get haircuts. It's a thing. But me getting a haircut by myself is in no way a pleasurable, meditative experience. But when I'm getting with him, it's not the haircut that's the thing. It's the that we're doing this thing together.

Or he wants to go get the mail. Like, you know, there's these little things that you end up doing and you realize that's all that you have to be doing. And then you're fully present in that thing. You know, like, oh, going and getting the mail is an activity for him. I think Alexander Horowitz, she wrote that book inside of a dog about the Oom Welter, the dog experience. It's really great. But she wrote another book called, I think, Ways of Seeing or Onlooking or something like that. I've told the story before,

but it's obviously in her books, I'm not making it up, but she went on like seven walks with seven different people in different areas. So she went on a walk with like a geologist in New York City, and he was like showing her all the different things you could learn about that. And she went, you know, walked through a field with a biologist and different walks of different kinds of people, you know, a code inspector in a neighborhood. And just like, what are they seeing that a normal person isn't seeing? That's what the premise of the book is. But on this one, she goes on a walk around the block where her apartment is with like a two or a three-year-old,

or two or three-year-old son or daughter, I forget. But one of the things I think about that I took from that book is she talks about how she thought the walk began when they left the building. But so she's like interviewing her kid after I think about that I took from that book is she talks about how she thought the walk began when they left the building. So she's like interviewing her kid after her talk. The kid thought the walk was from, she's like, we're going on a walk. And so the kid, the walk started when they left the apartment and walked to the elevator and then went down the elevator and then across the lobby and

then out the door. Do you see what I mean? And so to a kid though, that actually is a far walk. That's the other part you don't realize. You take for granted how easy things are for you. But just the idea that the definition of what the is is is something kids bring to the table and as a parent you're like, oh, yeah, this is what we're doing. My son is like, I wanna play dirt.

He just means he wants to play with dirt. And it's like, this is what we're doing. We have these expensive toys, I can take you somewhere, can do anything. But what we're doing is we're sitting here and we're playing with dirt. And there's a purity to that and a magic to that, I think that that is as much

stillness as Kennedy in the missile crisis and that I think they're accessing the same place. And what do you think it was about JFK in, you know, certainly three most stressful moments of the 20th century, certainly three of the most high stakes moment of the 20th century that could have truly altered the course of civilization. What do you think prepared him for that moment? In a way, he was like not prepared. You almost set up to fail in that moment. I mean, like if you compare the Bay of Pigs Kennedy to the missile crisis Kennedy,

and then even the events in between, you're not thinking that's how that's going to go. Had the Bay of Pigs not happened? So let's assume that when Kennedy comes into office in between, you're not thinking that's how that's going to go. Had the Bay of Pigs not happened. So let's assume that when Kennedy comes into office in 61, the CIA has already decided the Bay of Pigs. Yeah, Johnson wanted to do this thing, but I think it's kind of a dumb idea and he goes, yeah, that's a dumb idea. We're not doing it. So there's no Bay of Pigs.

And yet all the events that unfold in the Cuban missile crisis unfold does he behave differently? I don't know. I mean, I think it was a variety of factors. I think one of the biggest ones is that he had read Barbara Tuckman's book The Guns of August. Like he had some understanding of how badly it could go if he wasn't aware of what was happening as it was happening. Right? Like the idea that we kind of slept walked into this war that we didn't understand that a lot of people were making

very short-sighted decisions, decisions that made sense in the moment, but they weren't thinking about how that decision related to the other decisions, I think was hugely impactful for Kennedy. I think he'd had some humility too, sort of getting his ass kicked by Krushchev in some sort of diplomatic exchanges, had made him realize that the job was really hard,

and that you can't just go with your gut, you can't just listen to what people say, that it really required sort of deliberation and consultation and consideration, you know, as expression says, we gotta use time as a tool and not as a couch. Just even that the missile crisis takes 13 days, it's kind of impressive.

Like, you could imagine, let's not even say, you could imagine George W. Bush does not take 13 days to think that one through. Cause it's kind of obvious what you should do. Like, like, our gravest military enemy has put nuclear missiles, 90 miles from the shore of Florida. What you're supposed to do there is like very obvious, you bullet a shit out of that, right?

And you believe you are 100% justified in doing so. But it's more complicated than that. You can imagine Bill Clinton, you can imagine Lyndon Johnson gets called into the situation room and there I don't know if it's the situation room then actually. But so he gets called in and he's like, we got to do it. There are other presidents who would not have taken 13 days to unwind that. What's also interesting is they all have different strengths and weaknesses.

I didn't grow up in this country, but I'm still incredibly fascinated by its history. And I'm always impressed by the different character strengths of different presidents. Johnson being like the master politician, right? The master of relationships, but maybe in that moment to impatient. If you do move to Texas, you've got to read the Lyndon Johnson series or the Robert

Carro series on Lyndon Johnson, but he talks about how Kennedy believed that civil rights were so obvious. And so it was such a morally superior position that all he had to do was say, this is what we're going to do. of course that would happen and Lyndon Johnson, I would say equally believed in that idea but or maybe actually believed in it less but he knew politically it would be a lot more complicated and Ultimately, he was the only one that was able to get it done. And actually some of Kennedy's moral superiority and assurance made it harder than it needed to be.

He telegraphed his intentions. He basically said, we are going to pass a civil rights bill and the sort of solid south was like, well, we're going to make that even harder for you now that you've told us what you're planning to do. Yeah, different strengths and weaknesses certainly, but if you could bottle whatever he was exhibiting there in that missile crisis, and there are very few leadership situations that would not be improved by that. It's not like this guy was perfect, it's not like this guy was without ego, it's not like

this guy was the flawless character that, you know, you want to believe the first time you read a chapter on him in grade school. I mean, he cheated on his wife in the missile crisis, right? He's expecting that the world could end in any moment and he's spending that time not at home. So it's not great. But I think what's so fascinating to me about the missile crisis is it's not just that he slowed it down.

He was also incredibly decisive, right? It's not like he, it was non-negotiable that those missiles were going to go. So it's not like he was waffling. You see that bad leadership can, that's what he means by a couch. You can use, you could take 13 days just to think about it and go swing this way in that way. Kennedy was like, this is the outcome, but I am very open to a variety of ways to get there. And that's what he figures out over those 13 days. There's one last topic I want to get to Ryan, and it's sort of pivot away from this,

but it's something you've written so extensively about and just on a personal level, something that has been very helpful to me, which is anger. Let's start with when it's helpful when it's not helpful What is it about anger that can be destructive? What do the stoics think about anger? Let's say as a group there against it I mean, Sennaka writes a beautiful essay called of anger that's basically a warning to young Nero about the costs and the dangers of anger pops up over and over again and is his letters as well.

But I mean, anger's one of those things where like ego, we're really eager to make excuses for it. Like to go, oh, it's part of who I am, it helps me what I've done, it's great fuel. When I look at all the times I've lost my temper, I've been really angry about anything. I never think back, I'm on, I'm really glad. You know what I mean?

Like that's different than sort of moral outrage about, like when I hear about something that's wrong and my immediate reaction is that's not okay. I'm upset that that's the status quo. To me, that's different than anger in the sort of the temper sense of the word. So maybe if we're making a distinction that still looks are very Anti-temper, but even Seneca talks about you know Seneca is like look like

Someone murdered your father. You'd still get Vengeance you don't want to do it from a place of anger And I think he just means that like there's an objective idea of justice not being angry doesn't mean you accept everything and that you wilt and you tolerate the gravest injustices but it's that you're not being jerked around by those reactions. There might be people listening to this who can relate but sometimes when we're angry we actually break inanimate objects. You had some really interesting things to say about this recently.

You wrote about this in one of the newsletters. Again, reading it is so funny because you write about it in a way that's light, but I can't count the number of inanimate things I've smashed in my life. Not that long ago, I couldn't find my AirPods, so I had the regular iPod headphones. They were all tangled, I was getting mad. And then I was like, I ripped it apart. And I was like, well, I really punished these headphones, you know what I mean?

And now it's like, I can't do the thing that I wanted to do. Yeah, I do think it's interesting. We anger can so get a hold of us that we will essentially be talking through our actions to a stove or a wall or a computer. Yeah, my desk has got, you know, crack in it from where I hit it because something was... Yeah, I don't think the stokes were perfect and I feel like if they were perfect, they wouldn't have talked about anger so much.

I think they're talking about anger because it's a perpetual problem in their life. Think about Marcus Aurelius. is like have you seen the movie Lincoln? Does he know that scene where there's sort of argue? I think it's one of the greatest scenes in all the movies where they're like telling him why he can't do this and he's like he pounded on the table and said I am the president of the United States He's like I am clothed in immense power. That's impotence like he's angry at the impotence that he got this far, and this thing is so obvious, passing the 13th Amendment is profoundly obviously the right thing to do. It's the only person who can't even will it to happen in that moment. That's so much of where

anger comes from. But then when you even think about that situation, it's not the anger that's all said. It's that he then leaves that room, and he's willing to basically do all sorts of complicated, even in some cases morally dubious things to get where he needs to go. So I thought about this a lot because I wrote this book about Peter Teal and his quest to destroy Gokker. There's that expression that revenge is at dish best served cold. People think that means you want to enjoy the fruits of your victory, but no, it's dish best served cold, which means what they're saying is you don't want to

touch a hot plate. You don't want to do it out of anger because you get burned, right? And so that's what I think about anger. I think politically we've now confused anger and political change. We almost conflate purity or moral superiority with how angry you are. That's not how you solve any problems. Do you have a sense of where we are historically on our anger meter? There is so much moral outrage. It's easy to now lose sight of what's the root and what's the response. Yeah, it's really hard to tell. And I think what's interesting to me, like, people, are we on the

verge of a civil war? I have friend of mine who works in DC. He was like, oh, the fuck's fighting in this civil war. He's like, none of these people were, I think that's what's actually interesting about all the anger that we have. It's that it's primarily sort of verbal and social. It's not real. Is that because we're not willing to die for something anymore? I mean, like going back to stoic virtues? Yeah, I think this is all a performance.

I think this is largely a performance or it's almost therapeutic. Like it's in the way that we used to be really into music we're now really just into being angry about political and social issues. Anyways, there are very few problems to which anger is the solution. And the most serious problems,

the ones that are the most aggravating are the ones that require the most discipline and the least amount of anger. Like I think about that again politically, it's like, okay, most of the wrong in the world is not being done deliberately. It's being done by people who don't know better, who are ignorant, who are being manipulated,

or in some cases think they're doing the right thing, right? So anger at those people is not gonna make them change their mind, right? You're not gonna yell at someone into waking up to the bad assumption they've taken mind, right? You're not going to yell at someone into waking up to the bad assumption they've taken it, right? And then there are real bad people in this world. There's evil and there's sociopaths and there's there's real bad actors. Those people, you're certainly not going to yell at a sociopath into not being the sociopath, right? It's like precisely the most dangerous, high-stake situations require our utmost cognitive and rational resources.

So I'm not talking about anger from a place of someone who has no temper, it doesn't get angry about shit. I'm just stating the fact that less anger is better. The story you led with, or the example you led with, which you've written about as well I think is it's really humbling which is go back in time consider every time you've lost your marbles and Ask when did it accomplish what you wanted?

When did it actually make the situation better and I can't say it's never happened But it's I can't remember when it did or it's did. Or Sanita talks about when you see other angry people, like just really, I have some memories of Doug who is a bad anger problem. When I think about what he looked like angry and just how shockingly immature and childish and ridiculous and embarrassing it was, you know, you could see his neck and he and embarrassing it was. You know, you could see his neck and he felt like he was gonna drop dead of a heart attack. I've never seen anything like it,

but when we see other people get angry, we're like, what are you doing? But how, he talks about, Santa could just talk about looking in the mirror when you're angry. If you ever actually see yourself get angry. That was, I think, day four of the anger program you put together. Like, did you see that photo in the March Madness from last year of Tom Ezo,

he's the coach at Missouri, he ends up, his some player messed up and he's yelling at him and he's so, you got to just, just look at this after. When you get so angry, he's like, clenched his fists, he's clearly, he's so angry. He's like clenched his face He's clearly he's so angry You know how at the end of it almost becomes physical ready. He's like trying to Inphysically intimidate a child like a you know an 18-year-old basketball player and he's in his face He's yelling and he's trying to get his point across He's it's like almost like a gorilla, you know the gorilla is like trying to show don't mess with me and he's the photos snaps him doing this as another student is, another athlete is stepping

into separate the two, like a child is stepping in between a man yelling at another child, right? I ended up a lot of people interbrationalizing, this is what coaches do, bubble-bobbing, there's like no evidence that yelling makes players better. But if we could get that photo of ourselves, whenever we were the most angry, I think it would cut it in half, because you'd be like, I never want to do that again. I agree with that completely, and that was sort of the first thought I had,

which was, I need a picture of me like that in my pocket as a reminder, as I'm getting worked up. Don't go here. Don't become the incredible Hulk. Yeah, sometimes I think about, you know, you have security cameras at your house or whatever. I'm wonder, and I know they've caught it before, but I'm actually too scared to look at it. But what would watching an argument between you and your spouse? Like, what would you actually take from that?

Like, I almost know what I would take from it. That's why I don't want to watch it. Do you know what I mean? But like, in the same way, I'm sure you've found this with your podcast when you listened to your first episode with your, you were like, fuck, that's whore, how can anyone listen to this person? Do you know what, like, when I hear my own audiobooks, I'm like, ugh, this is awful.

I can imagine what looking at yourself in an argument with another person would be just utterly repugnant. You know? And you would realize you do a lot of things that you don't realize you're doing. Ryan, this has been great. I've been wanting to speak with you for so long, long before stillness came out, but it

just became a great reason to have more than one thing to talk about. Again, as I said to folks, if they don't already subscribe to the Daily Stoic, they should. What's the best way that people can sort of get a hold of all of this type of wisdom that you're very generously providing? So I'm at Ryan Holiday, most platforms, RyanHoliday.net, dailystoke.com. Do you get the daily dad email? It's, I don't, and I realize I'm gonna have to,

I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get another email. That's the one I like doing. I gotta find some way to combine them or so. I know it's weird that it's two, but they feel very different to me. So dailydad.com is the other daily one I do each day. I know I said, that was, it was my questions. I do have one last question for you. How the hell can you be so prolific? It's my it's my job. I mean like I have a practice. I follow the practice every day and it comes out the backside

I'm I'm not jealous nor am I envious but incredibly respectful. I think that the process is where it comes from. I personally am incredibly grateful as a result of that process, and I know that I'm far from the only one. So thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper into any topics we discuss, we've created a membership program that allows us to bring you more in-depth, exclusive content without relying on paid ads. It's our goal to ensure members get back

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