The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Virtuous Living, America’s Responsibility Problem, and Developing Your Moral Code — with Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Ryan Holiday, a writer, media strategist, and expert on ancient philosophy, joins Scott again for a conversation around his latest book, “Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.” Ryan shares what the stoics can teach us about living by your values, how to deal with adversity, and choosing to do the right thing — no matter the consequences. Follow Ryan on Twitter, @RyanHoliday.  Scott opens with how the digital advertising industry is plagued by fraud.  Related Reading: Carcinogens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Episode 107, the atomic number of borium, a synthetic element that can be created in a laboratory but is not found in nature. I can't get over how boring TV has become. Oh wait, those are Zoom calls. Recording in progress. Go, go, go! Welcome to the 107th episode of The Prop G-Pod. It felt strange to have an opening that wasn't profane or somewhat pornographic.

Oh, well, trying to push the limits or the boundaries of our comfort zone and go from NC-17 to R to PG-13. Crazy, crazy town over here. In today's episode, we're joined by Ryan Holiday for a conversation around his latest book, Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Brave. Ryan is a writer, media strategist, and blue flame thinker. We last spoke with Ryan in March to hear his thoughts on stoicism. And today we discuss virtuous living over virtue signaling, why America has a responsibility problem and how to develop your moral code. Okay. Okay. What's happening? What's going on? We're taking a trip down carcinogen lane, and that is how fraud is plaguing digital advertising and industry that accounts for nearly half of all ad spend in the US. So while we know that digital advertising produces the ill effects of algorithmic enragement bias,

ad fraud has poised itself as the second externality for companies using this revenue model. Between the platforms, agencies, exchanges, and other middlemen, 89% of dollars are spent on programmatic advertising, or more specifically, ads bought by algorithms. A study by MIT professor Catherine Tucker found that targeting something as basic as gender was unsuccessful more than half the time, meaning it was worse than just guessing. Furthermore, a Nielsen analysis of a household income-adjusted ad campaign found that only 25% of its ads were reaching the right households, and as much as 65% of location targeted ad spend is wasted.

Plaintiffs in a class action suit against Facebook have alleged that its targeting algorithm accuracy was between 9 and 41 percent and quoted internal Facebook emails describing the company's targeting as, open quote, crap, close quote, and open quote, abysmal, close quote. And speaking of Facebook, a new chart released by the company shows that there is no correlation between the click-through rate versus return on ad spend. You heard that right. No correlation between click-through rate and return on ad spend. So what can be learned here? If you're a small to medium-sized retailer,

you should rethink how much of your budget is spent on digital advertising and make sure that the platforms you're partnering with are providing you with legitimate and audited insights into the efficacy of that advertising. Secondly, it's evident that a shakeup is coming to the digital advertising complex due to the various updates we're seeing from the big tech gatekeepers. The Apple iOS 14 update, which went into effect earlier this year, requires app users to opt in to whether they want their activity tracked. And Bloomberg reported that users are giving apps that permission only a quarter of the time. In addition, Google plans to eliminate third-party cookies from its Chrome browser by the end of 2023. Cookies, of course,

track your internet activity as you move from site to site and are something digital advertisers heavily rely on. We're already seeing companies make moves to get ahead of this shakeup. Twitter, for example, recently sold its mobile ad unit, Mopub, for $1 billion. Mopub is a mobile ad company that provides in-app monetization features for app publishers. Twitter's CFO told Reuters that the purpose of the sale is to concentrate more of the company's efforts on ads on the website and in their apps. Put another way, do away with ads served by an algorithm and move towards contextual advertising. Contextual advertising works similar to the way you would place an ad in a print magazine. It's relevant to what you're looking

at and then you're targeted. Essentially, any company that relies on digital advertising is going to be vulnerable to the externalities that are bound to play out when Google eliminates cookies and Apple continues on its privacy crusade. Now, where do we go from here? How do we take the carcinogens out of the digital ecosystem? We need to externally impose and enforce industry standards on transparency in advertising. Expecting these conflicted middlemen to self-regulate is just naive. And we should consider taxing algorithms that serve ads and content.

We tax cigarettes and alcohol to suppress their use and fund policies to address some of their externalities. Why wouldn't we tax media or ads that are served algorithmically? We know it's damaging. We know the algorithms ultimately tap into our worst instincts

and start serving content that enrages and divides us. So why wouldn't we tax it and then reinvest those proceeds in something that helps manage that? In addition, and I hate to say this, but is this to say that digital advertising doesn't work and that you should stop advertising on Facebook or Google? Yeah, I don't think so. I think that as bad as this ecosystem is, and it is bad, and there's rooms for a ton of improvement, by some estimates, the kind of the digital ad fraud, and supposedly there's a lot of links to organized crime with this, with kind of these fake fraudulent clicking. It's supposed to be one of the biggest businesses run by organized crime. So there's some real negatives

here. The thing is, digital advertising is less shitty, is less ineffective than offline analog advertising. And I hate to also say this, but Facebook and Google are that they don't need tracking. They don't need cookies because they get enough signals within their own ecosystem that they can implement fairly sophisticated tracking. So to a certain extent, a cookie-less world is disarmament except for China and Russia who begin to basically put everyone else out of business because they have enough capital to build their own weapons, or I don't know what the analogy would be, but I think this consolidates power around Facebook and Google. I run an online ed tech startup, and someone correctly pointed out that I advertise

on Facebook despite the fact I rail on them all the time. And here's the thing. If you run an online education firm, you have to acquire your consumers online. You're not going to run billboards. You're not going to run a print ad. You're not going to put ads in the newspaper. And so, if you want to have an online business, you got to advertise, wait for it, online. If you want to advertise online, 80 to 90% of the traffic and the action comes through two platforms, Google and Facebook. And they are the best at it or the least bad. And so as much as I hate Facebook, and this is what I tell entrepreneurs who say, should I advertise on Facebook? I don't agree with what they're doing. At this point, you don't have any goddamn choice. And this is the problem. They should be broken up. I would love to not advertise

on Facebook. I would cherish the moment where I no longer have to send any money to Google. But that's saying, hey, I don't believe, I believe climate change is a problem and I don't support coal, fire, power plants, so I'm not going to turn on my lights. Well, yeah, good luck with that. We need to break these companies up. such that someone can have an online startup and advertise across a more robust ecosystem and put some pressure and some competition on them such that they are motivated to invest in things, including checks on ad fraud. But the bottom line is, the bottom line,

digital advertising is still a lot better despite the fraud. And I hate to say this, Facebook and Google, they got us, they got us. You want to build an online business? Welcome to Facebook. Welcome to Google. Stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with Ryan Holiday.

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Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ryan Holiday, the author of Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Brave. Ryan, where does this podcast find you? I am in Bastrop, Texas, right outside Austin. Nice. So a big theme of your latest book, Courage is Calling, is how to choose virtuous living over virtue signaling. Can you walk us through what this looks like, especially when our political ecosystem is so divided and our discourse is so coarse? Yeah, you know, virtue signaling is a tricky thing because, first off, it's the perfect word to capture a thing that definitely exists, right? Like, there's definitely such a thing as virtue signaling, and it's obnoxious and annoying, and certainly a lot of people are guilty of it. But it's also this weird

thing now where like, I would argue, particularly on the right end of the spectrum, it's now just an epithet that people use to dismiss anything they don't like or anything that would demand not being a horrible person from them. You know, like vaccines are virtue signaling, masks are virtuous. Everything is now virtue signaling, which of course is not the case. Some things actually are, you know, virtuous, like virtue is a real thing that the Sto or set of values that you live by and you try to adhere to them, even amidst the temptations and distractions and frustrations of life. To me, that's the whole journey. It also strikes me that it's become very binary. And that is, you either need to constantly virtue signal and reward virtue signaling on the left or on the right. You need to constantly gaslight and call out people's political correctness and think of yourself as an irreverent truth teller who's practical and roll your eyes at everything on the left.

And there's absolutely no room in the middle. And the thing I don't get is the far right goes after the near far right and the far left goes after the near far left. We like write each other off. We don't even deal with each other. They're infidels. But we on the far left, we can save the near far left by throwing them into the purity fire. Oh, you're not, you're woke, but not with a capital W. You're just not woke enough. And on the right, you can be Liz Cheney and say, okay, I'm not signed up for everything here, including Donald Trump. I'm just a deeply conservative woman. That's not enough. Let's throw her to the wolves. Is it? There's something about the spectrum of the polarity of it and the fact that on either side,

we go after each other more than the other side. Any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think especially on the left, where like, if you look at things like Me Too, or you look at some of this political correctness stuff or the sensitivity stuff, it's almost more potent when used on people who you largely agree with, because the insult or

the criticism actually matters, right? So it's like, if you accuse someone on the right of being, I don't know, transphobic or something, and they reject the premise entirely, the criticism doesn't land. But if you are taking someone who is generally sensitive and in agreement that these things are important, and then you accuse them of one of these things, it lands because they are agreeing that the issue in question is an important one. There's almost this sort of self-destructive component to it. It's like, because we'd like to hold the other side accountable, but can't, we instead eat our own.

And I remember you were talking about, you wrote a piece for The Economist and you explained how the pandemic revealed some stark realities that in our nation, we don't have a freedom problem. We have a responsibility problem. Can you say more about

fostering a sense of responsibility? What does that look like in practice? I'm reminded of, I remember the Republican convention, and I think it was 88 or 92. I forget his name, a Republican congressman. He was a quarterback. And he quoted his dad. He said, character is doing the right thing when no one is watching. And I thought that was a pretty good definition. No, I totally agree. And what I was saying is, I was basically, in the 1950s, Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, proposed a counterpart to the Statue of Liberty to be put up in San Francisco. So on each coast, a statue of responsibility, which I love the idea. And certainly with the work that you've done,

you know, as a sort of a cultural critic of some of the excesses of Silicon Valley culture, although now it's not really isolated to Silicon Valley, the idea that with great power comes great responsibility, Silicon Valley of all the sectors of the American economy seems to have abdicated that role most egregiously. But like, for instance, I'm actually not, I wouldn't identify as far left or even particularly leftist. I like to see myself

as a centrist or even center right on some issues. What I found really interesting about the vaccines, like there is part of me, for instance, that doesn't like the idea of a vaccine mandate. There is something a little uncomfortable about the idea that the government's like, you have to go do this. You have to go do this right now. But the solution to not having vaccine mandates is not that nobody gets vaccinated. It's that people should go voluntarily get vaccinated because it's morally the right thing to do. It's your duty as an American, and you should not want to die of the coronavirus. So it's interesting to me that the party or the part of American life that is the

most in defense of freedom, like where I live in Texas, the governor of Texas has basically said, the solution to COVID is personal responsibility. I would totally agree, except he's followed it up each time by insisting that the people of Texas have precisely zero responsibility or obligation to each other to stop or slow the spread of COVID. So if you want to say that liberty comes first, I'm right there with you, provided that the next words out of your mouth are about the expectation of personal responsibility

that follows that. Yeah, it definitely feels like we've conflated liberty with selfishness. And the strange thing here is that, I mean, we just screwed up so badly politicizing these vaccines. There are, I mean, we ask people to take their, who want their kids to go to public school,

I think to take nine vaccines by the time they're in the sixth grade. And somehow that didn't get conflated with violating people's liberties. It just feels so- Don't you think that's going to be the real legacy of the Trump presidency? Not just that he fucked up COVID,

not just that he screwed up this vaccine, but don't you think all vaccines are now politicized? And I think you're going to see... I was trying to think about this. If you zoom out like 20 years and you look at, how did we get where we are in 20 years from now? If this vaccine hesitancy, refusal, politicization doesn't end, the public health consequences that are going to be enormous and immense. And I don't see how that doesn't get laid at the doorstep of a very

specific strain of the Republican Party. Yeah, we're going to need a bigger boat. And it strikes me that, and I bring everything back to big tech, I think that there's few, I think if there's real genuine attribution analysis, I think it'll be difficult to find the trifecta of Trump, Facebook, and Fox. There's very few three-party organizations that have done, levied more death, disease, and disability on America in this short of time. Because we just didn't need to be here.

What do you think it is that's made them decide vaccines? I don't know. It seems like not a totally solvable issue by technology, but it does seem like they decided not to address it technologically at all or way too late. And I'm not quite sure what the business case for that was. Well, the business case is fairly straightforward.

And that is as a primal species and then lately our enemies we've identified. Ideally, you have a common enemy that's outside of your borders, the Al-Qaeda or Nazis, and we all bind together to fight that common enemy. When there's no kind of existential threat from foreign shores that we can easily identify and label, we go after each other. And now Democrats have decided Republicans are their enemy and vice versa. And something like 40% of each party thinks the other side is their mortal enemy. And then Facebook and the algorithms decide, okay, we can tap into that tribal rage where the research shows

that you'd rather your opponent miss a goal than you make a goal. And we can pit people against each other, which creates enragement, engagement, more Nissan ads, more shareholder value. But more than anything, it goes to the things you've talked about. And that is some of these organizations

have demonstrated an incredible lack of courage and character. And that is they of these organizations have demonstrated an incredible lack of courage and character. And that is they know what the right thing to do is. They know the damage they're doing. But in a society where money buys you love, access to more mates, financial security, better healthcare, more opportunities for your kid, you start talking yourself into this lack of character or you trade off character in the short term such that you can be wealthy and then demonstrate a lot of character when you're older in philanthropic efforts or taking care of people. It strikes me that the system has created very perverse incentives that absolutely chip

away at people's character. And one of the things that you gave me, this is your second time on the pod. I have, I've really, because of you, been doing a lot more research around stoicism. And it strikes me, and I'd love if you have certain practices that we all have a role. We can blame the algorithms, which I do a lot, but we all have a role in making our discourse less coarse and being more kind and showing more discipline and more strength and being warriors that leave their sword in the sheath. Can you tell us, can you bring this sort of these problems and solutions and hacks back to Stoicism? Yeah, you know, I struggle with it myself too, especially the way you just phrased it,

which is, there's a great line from Jeff Bezos. He said he learned it from his grandfather. He said, it's easier to be clever than kind. I find it very easy to drag, you know, to dunk or to criticize, especially when the people you're talking about are advancing a viewpoint that's not just morally abhorrent, like in the case of vaccines or something, but just so preposterously incorrect. So I've struggled with it. The other thing that I've struggled with that I think stoicism has helped me with is like, I've been disappointed and surprised that the number of people I know with large platforms or audiences or running large companies, how little they have actually done with those assets. So like I was reading the Michael Lewis book about the pandemic. It was interesting to see how integral the Chan Zuckerberg Institute

was in some of the early COVID response. So it's like they understand that. And then as you're saying, sort of decided to do next to little algorithmically. But I've also just been interested at the number of authors and public figures I know who are just like, well, I don't want to piss off 30% of my audience. So I'm just not going to talk about this, which of course is in some ways an endorsement of the status quo. Oh, Ryan, I mean, if you're, I call myself kind of right of center left, but if you don't surrender to the dogma and the narrative on the far left or the far right, you're the enemy. And people want to engage in a fight with you and are constantly looking for ways to make a,

you know, caricature of your comments, dunk on you, embarrass you, call you out because they get some sort of fame and Twitter and Facebook absolutely love when that happens. They're like a Tyrannosaurus Rex drawn to violence. And again, now I am virtue signaling, but I have talked myself into believing that if you are blessed with people who love you, you have really strong relationships, and more importantly, not importantly, a second, you're economically secure, you sort of have an obligation to speak up, even if it involves risks to your, you know, psyche, because there's too many people that can't afford it. There's too many people that are mid-level managers that if they make the wrong move, they'll get fired or they'll get shamed. So I feel as if we have an obligation to occasionally say,

oh, as someone who considers themselves, I don't know if you want to call it woke or progressive, I don't buy this. I don't, I think we've taken it too far here. I think, you know, cancel culture being called consequence culture, well, that's fine, but we have to look at whether the punishments or the consequences are proportionate to the actual infraction here. And and I think it happens to millions of voices out there. Whenever I say shit that's slightly off color or I push back, I get so many emails and text messages from people saying, yeah, I agree with you, word, you know. Yeah. But people feel like they can't – the downside is so much greater than the upside. It's like either surrender to the far right or surrender to the far left or you are the enemy.

And it is absolutely killing discourse. You know, it's okay to be wrong. It should be okay to be wrong and learn from it and be willing to evolve. In our society, it's like, nope, you're wrong. Wrong thing at the wrong time. Let's go after him or her. Let's shame them. Let's try and go after their livelihood.

Even if this person is probably, let's disappear Al Franken. And what do you know, fewer children are going to end up with food stamps, fewer girls are going to end up or women are going to end up with family planning and reproductive rights, but we showed the near left. I just don't, I absolutely think it is all going to a very dangerous place. And it's, it's, it's,'s... What's one of two trends, right? There's like the nihilism of the sort of destructiveness that you're talking about.

They're just like, we don't care about the consequences. We can't understand trade-offs. We don't understand sort of how politics or change works. So we'll just destroy anyone who makes the slightest transition. And then there seems to be

this whole host of people who have like large platforms or podcasts or brands or social media followers who are so intimidated by that, they just won't say anything. And I guess I just come back to the idea of like, what the hell is the point of having the audience if then you let the audience decide what you're willing to say? It's like, does the audience have you or do you have the audience? And I think I've had to think, and I know it's cost me like hundreds of thousands of followers, but like, to me, what is the point of having the audience if I'm not going to tell them what I think needs to be said? I'm going to only say what is in the spectrum of, it's not even what's politically correct, but it's like what

won't piss some of your people off. Like, I don't care if you don't like what I have to say or you unsubscribe, if you're a fucking snowflake, like good riddance. Yeah. So, I think that, I think you're more what I'll call psychologically fit or resilient than me. I'd like to think I think that and I run it through my mind. But these constant barrages you get from people, I think most of them are bots actually, trying to undermine your authority and credibility or attack you because they don't like what you said about something else totally unrelated.

You know, it wears on you. You're like, you know, I just don't need this shit. And then people get mad at you if you don't respond. And just no one's happy. No one's happy. And you're get mad at you if you don't respond. And just no one's happy. No one's happy. And you're like, why am I going through this kind of mental obstacle course on these fucking platforms? And then you realize your own addiction and you kind of go down this rabbit hole. But let's pivot back to stoicism. And I've learned a lot and gotten really into this because

of you. What can Stoicism teach people about dealing with adversity in their personal, professional, and political lives? Well, I think first off, if we put Stoicism in its context, right, the Roman Empire, like they would have been very familiar with the perils and the intimidating factor of the angry mob, the populist mob. And they would have been familiar with cancel culture too. I mean, in the ancient world, cancel culture meant we're going to send you to an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, right? Or we're going to confiscate your property or first we might even execute you. So I think that almost all the things we're

talking about today have their roots in the ancient world. And I love that about Stoicism. Stoicism is this idea that the world is unpredictable. The world is chaotic. Marcus Aurelius says, remind yourself, this is the first line in Meditations. He says, remind yourself today that the people you meet are going to be angry, jealous, surly, stupid, backwards, covetous. You know, he just goes on and he's like, and you're going to have to deal with them. And he says, to be surprised by that is on you and to be implicated in their ugliness is on you. And so, I just love Stoicism as a really practical philosophy. It's not theoretical. It's not abstract. It's not, you know, how do we know we're not living in a computer simulation? It's more like, how do you deal with people when they're awful? How do you deal with the balance between ambition and a desire to contribute to society? You know, I'm fascinated even with the fact that

most of the Stoics were obscenely wealthy and they were having to wrestle with plenty amidst income inequality and struggle with, you know, balance and moderation inside an affluent lifestyle. To me, it's almost you could not design a philosophy more perfectly for the environment that we are in today. Coming up after the break. Marcus Rios says the impediment to action advances action, stands in the way, becomes the way. So we accept that a bunch of stuff is outside of our control, but instead of throwing up our hands and complaining about it, we say, well, what can I do with this? What opportunities does this provide for advancement, for growth, even just for virtues like forgiveness or tolerance or endurance? Stay with us. more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps,

and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series,

Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this Thank you. series from Where Should We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. Can you give us two or three principles? Our listenership is pretty young. Two or three sort of principles that are sort of foundational or things to start with. If you think I'm attracted to stoicism, what are three things I can kind of incorporate into my life and my behavior? Well, so the first, Epictetus, who's a Roman slave, so I don't want you to think this is just a philosophy for privileged people.

Epictetus says the first job of the Stoic philosopher is to separate things into two categories, what is up to us and what is not up to us. He says the chief task in life is that- Control, within your control or not within your control, right? Yeah, and you just see how miserable people make themselves today about things that are totally outside their control and then how much

control over things they have, which they abdicate to spend time tweeting out into the void. You know what I mean? Like, for instance, we're obsessed, obviously, with national politics. And then, you know, you go to vote and you're like, all these local positions are Republicans running unopposed, right? Like we focus on the, you know, the things that are outside of our control, often at the expense of what's in our control. I think that would be the first lesson. I'll just put a pin in it till we get to number two, but I didn't realize that I was adopting stoicism. I constantly quoted Brokeback Mountain, you know, if you can't fix it, you got to stand it. That's what he just says. I'm like, that was, I didn't realize it, but that was kind of an

introduction to stoicism. I'm sorry, continue, Ryan. No, and the next one I would give you, this is obviously what I derived the title of my first book on stoicism about, Marcus Rios says, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. So we accept that a bunch of stuff is outside of our control, but instead of throwing up our hands and complaining about it, we say, well, what can I do with this? What opportunities does this provide for advancement, for growth, even just for virtues like forgiveness or tolerance or endurance. And so for the Stoics, it's life's going to throw stuff at you. And who we are is how we respond to that stuff.

I guess the third is an easy slash not so easy one, which is just this exercise of memento mori. To the Stoics, all the stresses and problems of life are put in perspective by a sort of constant meditation on the fragility and the shortness of life. Seneca writes a great essay with that title on the shortness of life, but he basically says life is not short. It's that we waste a lot of it, and we waste a lot of it because we constantly take for granted the most precious resource in the world, which is our time. And if you need evidence that time is a precious resource, this is why Facebook and

Twitter and all these websites monitor how much time you spend on them every day. That's what they are optimized to exploit because they then sell this resource, which is more valuable than gas or diamonds. They sell this to advertisers, and that's how they've become the most valuable companies in the world. Yeah, it's striking. You are where Sam Harris says, you become where your attention is. And if you're on Twitter all day, and I noticed this about myself, you become more terse. You are drawn to kind of making like short-term comebacks to people. You don't want to be that thoughtful. You just want to be really pithy all the time.

And it's dangerous. But the attention economy has gone absolutely berserk. I think it broke the brains of a whole generation of journalists and pundits and analysts. They're like, it's not that everyone is on Twitter, but it's that the people who drive our culture are addicted to Twitter. And so instead of thinking, you know, in the way that a New York Times reporter 30 years ago would have thought primarily in terms of long form, heavily researched, pseudo-objective views on stories. They'd think in a thousand words or 2,000 words, and they'd think about it over the term of a week or a month or a year, depending on the length of

the investigation they were doing. That person is now thinking in terms of 240 character hot takes repeatedly throughout the day. And then we wonder why they're so wrong on so many things. It's they're not cultivating the long-term view or the wisdom or just background necessary to know what the hell they're talking about on issues. So we talk about being both physically and mentally strong, similar to how you think heroes should be both morally and physically fit. What is your strategy or advice for achieving kind of this perfect blend of mental and physical health? Yeah, I mean, to me, the importance of the physical health is that it is something in your control. So like what people say about your writing is not in your control,

whether the stories are coming your way, whether, you know, all this stuff in the work world is largely outside of your control. But every time I work out, every time I go for a run or a swim or a bike ride, or I lift weights, like there's a clear connection between work and rewards, right?

And if I decide to do it and I do it, that's a win. And so to me, one of the really important parts of having like a physical practice is that it just gives you momentum every single day. It's like momentum on demand. It's validation on demand. So instead of going to Twitter and asking people to make you feel good about yourself,

you feel good about yourself because you sweated for 45 minutes. 100%. And I just think it's so important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that this is not a, your body is not a rental, right? It's your home for the rest of your life.

And if you don't invest in it every day, it starts to collapse on you and radon and emissions start popping up and it becomes a dangerous place and you can't leave. So I'm particularly bullish, sorry, I'll just say I'm particularly bullish on swimming as an activity because it is impossible to have screens.

I mean, I guess my Apple Watch is waterproof. That's interesting. Like what I love about good working out, like when people are like, oh, I listen to audio books on 3X speed or even podcasts. I go, look, I'm glad you're listening to my podcast. And there's certainly worse things you could be doing. But part to me of the physical activity is that it gets you outside usually and away from the noise and social media for like at least an hour.

Mm-hmm. I think that's why people find golf and yoga so meditative is it's very hard to do either without being totally absorbed in it. And it just takes you away from both those things. And I do, I used to do a lot of both those things and I do neither, but now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have music on when I'm working out. Aside from fostering the four virtues of stoicism, wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, I think. What else do you believe can help people develop their moral code? And I think of my colleague at NYU, she had a Nobel Prize winner, I'm totally blanking on his name, about growth theory, Paul Romer. Anyways, he said, I asked him to come speak about economic growth to

my students once. And he started talking about economic growth to my students once. And he started talking about everybody has to have a code. And his advice to young people is they have to decide what their code is. And can you give us some suggestions or exercises for trying to develop this moral code? Yeah, Marcus Aurelius, he talks, he calls them epithets for the self. Like, what are the words that you adhere to that generally describe your behavior? So, I even have like, I have a four, I can't show you because it's on my computer, but I have a four by six note card with seven words written on it. And they are honest, calm, fair, brave, generous, father, and still.

Those are like, I know they're not technically, it's not really a code because they're more like evocative words. But to me, these are like statements of priority in my life. And I'm not perfect at them and I fall short of them, but I want to constantly be thinking about them, checking myself against them, and making my decisions in light of them on a regular basis. So I think that really, to me, is what stoicism is about, is a set of values or themes or virtues that you are just trying to keep in mind always in any and everything that you do. I love that. And in my brand strategy class, the last class is, it's called The Brand is You, and it's talking about applying these principles to managing your life successfully, both professionally and personally. And I do sort of the Cliff Notes version of that. And that is,

I say, okay, here's your tombstone. You get three words to describe your life, and you're going to put these three words and then we're going to reverse engineer back how that alters your behavior or guides your behavior. But I love this notion of being able to say, and you've been more thoughtful. I think seven words is probably a much stronger guide, but I love that notion that just start with words and that sort of act as guideposts, guidelines. Are you, since the last time we spoke to you, are you more hopeful, less hopeful when you see kind of what's happened with the pandemic?

What is kind of Ryan Holiday's view of the world as we sit here now? Yeah, it's like I'm deeply hopeful in when I look for things to be hopeful for, right? Like when I look at, when you look at the fact that we invented, not we, I don't want to take credit for it, but that humanity, an accomplishment akin or greater to landing on the moon, you know, humanity pulled off in 18 months. And it was an immensely collaborative, collaborative, not just in terms of different

countries, but collaboration between government and business. And then, you know, I had the experience of volunteering in a number of vaccine clinics out here to watch these operations spring up from nowhere with no experience. And we've never done something like this as a society, and watch them give out millions of shots to people all over the country. And I watched, you know, sometimes the National Guard was there, sometimes it was civilians, sometimes it was doctors. To watch that happen made me deeply hopeful.

And then, you know, it's almost as if we're a championship team that has like one player. It's like we're the Brooklyn Nets, right? We have all the things we need. And then we have a cancer in the locker room who, and ironically, Kyrie about captures, you know, one of five. 20% of the team is just egotistical, stupid, selfish, deeply entrenched in a toxic set of beliefs, and not just putting everyone else in danger, but tearing the team culture apart in the process. So I'm hopeful that we have all the pieces we need. Where I get discouraged or where

I think we're struggling is what do you do when you have a cancer in the locker room? And unlike a team, you can't fire 20% of the population or 10% of the population, whatever the number is. But how do you drag along a percentage of the population that has decided to act not just selfishly, but in complete contradiction to the values and ideals that the country is founded on. I don't just mean that in terms of vaccines, but that seems to be the recalcitrant part of American society that I think we're stuck with. Ryan Holiday is a writer and media strategist. He is the author of nearly a dozen books. His latest, Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Brave, is out now. He's also one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and read by

over 2 million people. His writing has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Entrepreneur and Fast Company. Ryan dropped out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power. He joins us from his home just outside of Austin. Ryan, thanks for your time and stay safe. It was an honor. How's the word happiness? When to run to people, when to run from them. I watched this great documentary on, I think it was on Netflix, called 15 Minutes of Shame by Monica Lewinsky.

And it talked about counsel, consequence, culture, whatever you want to call it. And the thing that struck me was not, you know, the takeaways. There's some really interesting takeaways, I think, about, culture, whatever you want to call it. And the thing that struck me was not, you know, the takeaways, there's some really interesting takeaways I think about counsel culture. And the takeaway I had was that accountability or calling people out is very effective with companies. And it's also effective with our elected political leaders who put themselves up for that type of appraisal. But the sort of shaming of individuals doesn't, A, it's not usually very effective, and B, with platforms that engage in incentives to promote dunking on people, it oftentimes has unintended consequences, loses a lot of nuance, and it's just a net negative for society. But that's not my key takeaway. My key takeaway is that there's something called schadenfreude,

and it's joy in people's misery, a German word. And this research shows that we'd rather see someone miss the shot, and we talked about this with Ryan, than make the shot on our team. And I think something you want to start from your life is schadenfreude. I kind of enjoyed it. I remember my little circle of fraternity brothers when something bad would happen to someone or they lose their job, you know, everyone would know about it.

And here's the thing. When someone fucks up and makes a mistake, gets fired, says something stupid, has a substance abuse problem, it's just like, you know, deservedly or undeservedly, just in a bad way, it's easy to be allergic to them. Like, oh, you know, we're drawn to people who are successful. Oh, I want to be friends with people. I want to reach out to people who are killing it and be around them and kind of

bask in their success. And then we become, if we're not careful, allergic to people who are, you know, said something stupid or did something stupid. Here's the thing, your friends and your family, they kind of don't need you when they're right and they're killing it. They're fine. They're killing it. Your friends and your family and even acquaintances or people at work that you don't know that well, when they need people, when they need support is when they fuck up, is when they get fired. Something Michael Bloomberg said that always struck me is that he always reached out to friends whenever they got fired. Like, hey, what's going on? Let's grab dinner. How can I help? And that's something I've tried to do, is that when I hear about people who are quote unquote moving on, which means they've been fired,

I reach out. I say, I'm a big fan and I would like to, how can I be involved in your next thing? Let's grab lunch. And it does a couple of things. One, people remember. People remember who was there for them when they needed them. And it's a great way to solidify relationships. It's also you feel good about yourself. That's what leaders do. They protect people when they're at their most vulnerable.

And one of the things I really don't like about what's happening in our culture is that people get called out, they do something stupid, and then all of a sudden, everyone decides, oh, well, you know, they also did this. They start piling on. Okay, let them do that on social media. Do not do that in your personal life. When you see a fire, run into it. Nobody needs you, or people don't need you, I should say. They appreciate you when they're killing it, but when they need you, when they need you,

is when they fuck up, run into the fire. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll catch you next week on Monday and Thursday.

Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. the show comes from Alex Partners. Did you know that almost 90% of executives see potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive impact on revenue growth? In Alex Partners 2024 Digital Disruption Report, you can learn the best path

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