Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday

[Music]

nice to meet you man yeah good happy

birthday thank you how old are you i'm

35. wow do you feel 35

uh i feel like after like late 20s i

just kind of like well i have to check

in every year to be like wait how old am

i again you know so i not really i guess

it's a strange time 35

why because you're

kind of middle aged

yes but you're young

well i was like successful pretty early

in my life so like i was always like the

kid you know like i dropped out of

college at 19 and so and i worked in

hollywood and so i was always like the

youngest person in the room by far

and so like that's it's not been part of

my identity but i like felt it you know

what did you do in hollywood well i

dropped out of college i worked at a

desk in a talent agency and then uh then

i started signing new media clients and

then very quickly it didn't work out but

uh

you want to know sure so i uh i was

working for one of the reasons it didn't

work it didn't work out because it was

horrible life and i don't know why

anyone would want to have it but i was

working at this desk i was insistent and

i was also a research assistant for

robert greene uh 40 odds power guys sure

um by the way i brought you

the new one from him oh great we signed

it for you oh that's awesome yeah

robert's great guy he's my favorite

human being in the whole world all right

um damn i want to be your favorite

let's see

well no so i i was working for robert

and uh i had the 48 laws of power on my

desk because i was working on it and one

of the partners became like convinced

that i was like up to [ __ ]

what yeah yeah like uh he was like he

just he got in his head that i was like

not a threat but i was like someone to

be suspicious of

and uh

because you had the laws of power on

your yeah desk yeah yeah it was the

weirdest too ambitious like yes yeah it

was wow and i remember one time uh the

partner i worked for he like never uh

like he was always gone

uh and he never liked to be on call so

he had me on some call for him and i was

supposed to like be like feeding him

info you know like when you're on the

conference call i supposed to like type

him stuff

and uh you know like you log into the

call

and uh

it's like you're the seventh caller but

there's only supposed to be like six

people on the call and so the partner's

like someone else is on the call like

who was on the call

and i was like am i supposed to say

something cause like i'm not supposed to

be on the call and i kind of froze it's

only like 20. and uh i froze and and he

kept

he kept you know who's on the call who's

in the car and it was like too late to

say anything right

uh it's funny i'm like feeling it uh

like the nervousness nerves really well

no because it was so stressful this is

like you know this is like an article

type right right and then all of a

sudden i hear like footsteps down the

hall and it's like his assistant and the

assistant is like looking through the

door and can see i'm like oh [ __ ] i hang

up the phone and then you know

it makes the noise

and then and then i hear like stomping

down the hall and uh he like bursts into

the into the thing it's like what the

[ __ ] are you doing i knew you were up to

something like i saw you reading that

book you know it's like this whole he's

just like screaming at me

and uh and then like he could tell that

i was like not scared enough and so he

i'll never forget he grabbed the door

and he slammed it and then opened it

again and then slammed it and then

opened it again like just pure like

physical intimidation like a chimp

banging sticks yes exactly and so i just

got up and left and then i never went

back oh my god it was crazy

i dated a girl uh when i was like 27 and

she was an assistant for an agent and

she would wake up in the middle of the

night terrified that she [ __ ]

something up

she would just have these like fearful

moments she worked

16 17 hours a day for nothing i mean she

she got paid garbage money and the whole

idea was that like you're kind of

interning slash working there and you

were eventually going to get a career as

an agent so she worked for this guy who

was just

a complete [ __ ] just a [ __ ]

[ __ ] to everybody who worked under

him it's the dumbest system in the

entire world because like the person who

is good at being an assistant and i was

so bad at it

and would put up with it for like five

or six years is not the person that

anyone would then

want to be their age it's like filtering

out for like pencil pushers and like

nerds yeah and like like

you know

it's the craziest system

uh

and that's why most agents are horrible

is because they

most people would get up and quit or

just not be interested in it at all it

encourages abuse too because then you

abuse if you ever get to that position

where you're an agent you get an

assistant you're just going to abuse

them because you were abused when you

were an assistant that's just it's a

hazing ritual yes and people who were

hazed are very un you'd think you'd be

sympathetic to people who

were vulnerable but it actually hardens

you because

you're like well i went through it you

have to go through it how weird it's

awful well it's a it's a weird abusive

system period from top down from

producers and directors to

tarantino's on the podcast he was

telling me about this famous producer

who kept a bedroom in his office where

he would take the starlets and he would

he would bang all the starlets that

power corrupts man yeah

but i think back then

it was unchecked you know now it's like

it's those same guys are like terrified

now

yes like all those stories are

resurfacing like that would that was the

way women got roles like you had to

sleep your way to the top like you

literally had to do that it doesn't seem

that hard to not be a piece of [ __ ]

though

but does it in a world where everyone's

a piece of [ __ ] like depending upon what

like there's different cultures of

different you know businesses and when

you have a business like that where you

know there's like one of the weirdest

things about hollywood is that there's

literally people that just decide to

pick you

and if they pick you

your life becomes

your wildest dreams you're on the cover

of vogue magazine you're starring in an

action movie right next to the [ __ ]

the biggest a-list celebrities in the

world you [ __ ] made it you're at the

oscars accepting the award and thanking

that person who points at you in the

front row if they chose if they choose

you if they don't choose you you're

[ __ ] is not a meritocracy it's just

not you could see by like someone like

amber hurts not a good actress but if

you get into the right spot and you do

the right thing and you [ __ ]

make the right noises you can become

famous and successful well i think any

industry that has gatekeepers is

inherently susceptible to being

corrupted because those people have a

certain unearned power

and they probably deep down know

that they don't really do anything and

that they're just like

guessing you know and uh

it's prob there's probably something in

that too where you're aware of the

inherent bankruptcy like we don't make

anything we don't do anything yeah uh

and it probably goes to your head and

you need distractions and stuff

well i think that's this is an

interesting

jump off point to talk about your work

and your your fascination with stoicism

because

what you're talking about there is like

a truth

like you're talking about like there's

there's a reality to that job

is that these people who are the

gatekeepers like there's a lot of people

that work in hollywood

that work as executives that are really

not talented people and i've known them

forever and i've seen them fail upwards

like i've known them since i've been

there so it was like 20 30 years ago and

they're still around and they were

[ __ ] then and they're stupid now

that's like they're the same person

it's like

there's there's a reality to that

and

one of the things that

i think you're really um that you

highlight very well

is the importance of reality

of of uh dealing with things

and of finding

positives

in any sort of uh you know the the title

of your book the obstacles the way it's

a great title because obstacles are very

important and although they don't seem

like they are

when you know you're there they don't

seem like they're beneficial they seem

like it's just like the end of the world

and this is going to be horrible but

there's some great benefit

in difficult times and difficult things

well yeah even when i was in hollywood

right so i i had to walk out on this job

i'm like [ __ ] this is what i dropped out

of college to do like

this is not good

my entire life would have been

different had that not happened to me

what did you want to do

uh i wanted to be a writer but i got

this really good advice uh from a writer

and he said writers live interesting

lives so you have to like go do stuff

you have to be around people or in a sp

you have to go get you have to go earn

having a point of view you can't just

like look you can't just get good at the

craft of doing the thing obviously

that's super important and that's why i

learned from robert as a research

assistant like here's how books come

together here's the art of doing the

thing

but like if you don't have anything to

say

uh right you know uh and so

i i was just i was like okay i had this

thing the chance to do this and then i

went from there i worked it i was the

director of marketing at american

apparel so i did like weird [ __ ] and i

was around crazy crazy people but all

that ultimately informed you know what i

talk about

uh

but

i knew i knew i didn't want to be a

person who's just like taking a

percentage of

what other people do i wanted to make

stuff like i wanted to

actually produce and create things

so i knew i wanted to be a writer and

when i first read the stoix

i was just like [ __ ] this is it like

when i read meditations for the first

time

i was 19 i was sitting in my college

apartment

and i was just like not only have i

never read anything like this i've never

even heard of anything like this because

you have

the most powerful man in the world

writing notes to himself

that he never thinks are going to be

published like pretty much every other

book ever written was like a writer

writing

to an audience yeah and meditations is

was never intended to be published she'd

probably be mortified that we even have

it

and so

it was just a kind of philosophy and a

way of thinking that

i hadn't heard in any school

you know in any class from any adult in

my life

and i was like i want

to tell people about this

marcus aurelius

one of the more interesting things about

this stuff that he writes is how

relevant it is today like when when you

read it you wouldn't imagine that this

is being written by a man like how many

years ago was that

1900 2000 years ago he's writing in like

the mid

150s 160s a.d

it's

very relevant like the way he writes the

the it's the language is incredibly

familiar it's the same

you know it's

one of the things about um

you know we would always make fun of the

way people talked a long time ago you

know where far now

there's a way of talking that we don't

communicate like today but when marcus

aurelius writes and you like if you read

meditations

it seems very

current well it does depend on the

translation right because like if you

were reading uh and people do this

they'll recommend marcus rules and

they'll just get what's free on the

internet or whatever

um

if you're reading a translation from the

1850s or the 1600s it's going to be in

shakespearean english because oh

interesting right because they're

translating

it into their particular yeah and so the

the right translation is key do you

remember which one you read i don't uh i

like that there's a gregory hayes

translation for the modern library which

i think is the most like lyrical and

beautiful of all of them that's the one

that i randomly bought on amazon and had

no idea

that

it was going to be the one that would

hit me so were the original ones in

latin

so this is what's crazy about marcus so

marcus lives in rome the romans speak

latin but the philosophical language at

that time was greek so marcus was

writing to himself in greek

so it gives it like when you read those

passages or you listen to them and

you're just like that is one of the most

beautiful things i've ever heard like

there's this one passage where he's like

he talks about like this a stalk of

grain bending low under its own weight

the way olive uh you know falls to the

ground he talks about

the way that when you put bread in the

oven it breaks open on top and we don't

know why that happens it's just this

like beautiful inadvertent act of nature

he's just like writing like a poet like

a great writer

and again he's writing in his non-native

tongue to himself

never expecting anyone would see it how

[ __ ] talent it'd be like finding out

that's like a comedian is like funny in

their diary you're just like wow you're

just naturally that you're not turning

it on or off right it's just like

intuitively part of you um

yeah

but i think your point about how it

feels timeless that actually does feel

like a thing i've heard comedians say

which is that like uh

the the specific is universal

i don't think he was trying to talk to

the audience

i think he was trying he was so

unflinchingly honest with himself that

he was touching something

universally human and that's why because

like we should not be able to relate to

his experience at all right i mean he's

literally there is literally a cult of

the emperor that worshipped the emperor

and their spouse as living deities

and he controlled the largest army in

the world he had unlimited wealth he

could kill

uh or murder or torture or exile anyone

he wanted

um

people cheered him as he walked in the

streets

there's no way we should be able to be

like this passage was talking about

struggling to get out of bed in the

morning and you want to huddle under the

warm covers like how how because i guess

people are people no matter

where you get in life people are people

and not everyone gives in to the

temptations of being in that position

and in his case i think it made him more

more apt to reflect upon his thoughts

and find the source of why he believed

what he believed and why he thought what

he thought yeah he says in in

meditations he says be careful not to be

caesarified don't be dyed purple because

the emperor wore a purple cloak

and purple purple if now we're just like

the colored purple to get purple it was

this complicated process of different

merchants actually the founder of

stoicism was a merchant in tyrian purple

but like these slaves would smash up sea

slugs or sea snails

dry them on rocks and this dust would

eventually become

like the source of purple wow so and

he's like don't be stained purple so he

was acting like when he becomes emperor

he's like this will change you if you're

not careful and you have to actively

work to make sure that doesn't happen so

he was aware of that

that was

that was the character and gladiator

right he wasn't that marcus aurelius was

it based on him roughly

loosely well it's a it's i think one of

the great movies of all time but great

movie

peter o'toole yes he's the one that

joaquin phoenix's character kills at the

beginning

um

and then a lot of the sort of things

that uh maximus says are sort of very

stoic inspired

the irony of that movie

uh is that joaquin phoenix probably

underplays how bad marcus realized his

son was in real life really he really

did get killed by a gladiator he was a

psychopath

uh

immediately

destroys all of marcus's work it's one

of the tragedies of marcus

that

he has a like a pos son

i've always wondered like

how that that seemed like it's joffrey

from game of thrones like that is a very

common thing yeah

why why is that

like

it's an archetype

it is

uh there's another great eastern emperor

cyrus the great and he has a shitty son

too

um

you know it doesn't look like queen

elizabeth's kids are that great

but i what's interesting about marcus is

like

it's weird that he's such this great

man and then most people know nothing

about him

but like marcus's father was not emperor

so

there's there's what they call the five

good emperors so basically in all of

roman history there's like five good

emperors and they happen in a row and

they happen in a row because each one

does not have a male heir

so they don't have sons

so in the roman tradition it was much

more common to if you didn't have a son

you would adopt a son

and so the emperor hadrian is old

probably gay does not have any children

and he adopts

uh he he sees something in marcus

they're very marcus is young but he sort

of starts mentoring this boy

they actually go like hunting together

like he sees something special in this

kid marcus's nickname was verismus or

the truthful one

but he's like just a kid

and

hadrian realizes he's too young to name

him emperor

so he selects a man named antoninus pius

who's the like the great politician of

the time and makes him emperor on

condition that he adopt marcus aurelius

so marcus and then the thinking was

antoninus pius would live for like five

years and then marcus would be king

and

in fact he lives for like 19 years so

marcus has like a 20-year apprenticeship

in being the emperor under

a man who like could have killed him who

could have been corrupted by power but

is this incredible example and that's

why at the beginning of meditations

marcus has like a two-page thank you

letter to antoninus his adopted

stepfather oh wow it's [ __ ] crazy and

his son

what was the the deal with the wife

uh marcus's wife yes so marcus's wife

faustina is

i guess it would be

faustina is

antoninus daughter

so they're not related but that's they

marry the family together marcus loves

her

they're married a very long time

there are rumors that she's unfaithful

but as far as we know marcus

pays you know no attention to this does

not believe them

um but the tragedy of their marriage is

marcus

loses like seven children

before they reach adulthood

can you imagine that

well that was very common back then

though wasn't it sevens a lot though it

is a lot but isn't that that's uh one of

the reasons why the um

general age that people lived to

was so low back then people think that

people died the your age of expected

death it wasn't that it's just like you

died in childbirth you died you know

when you were young you died from

infection it wasn't that people didn't

live as long yes like uh there's lots of

old people in rome it's just like

getting getting

like if you made it to 40 maybe you can

make it to 80 right but like chances are

you weren't going to make it to 20. yeah

that's makes sense because they're all

sword fighting and [ __ ] that's also true

i mean just imagine you could cut your

hand and die of an infection yeah real

and obviously they're [ __ ] in the

streets and this [ __ ]

so that's one of the sort of not

rationalizations but if you're like how

does it go so wrong that this great man

leaves the empire to his son yeah well

he does have a male heir that's a

problem uh unlike all his predecessors

but

it's it's that

every one of the sons that he wanted to

succeed him died

and that there there's some speculation

that marcus's plan so this is the other

crazy thing about marx if i'm nerding

out you can no please go so uh marcus um

has a stepbrother through this crazy

adoption process he has a stepbrother

and so that he inherits through hadrian

it's this complicated thing but let's he

has a stepbrother and so like

we know what kings do to their rivals

like you have to kill them right the

first emperor of rome octavian is julius

caesar's nephew

julius caesar has a half son with

cleopatra

or he has a half brother or whatever he

has a son with cleopatra a son out of

wedlock

and

octavian has two stoic teachers

who

instruct him to murder his rival which

he promptly does

uh or have murdered so

the precedent was like you

can't have too many caesars like you

can't have more than one

yeah

uh viable heir um and marcus when he

he's antonine is his favorite anthonitis

preps him he

ascends to the throne the first thing

marcus does is he names his brother

lucius ferris co-emperor

which is not only never happened

basically before or since

it is a nod to how the republic was the

republic of rome before it becomes a

monarchy is

led by two consuls like two elected

presidents who serve together as a check

against power

so marcus by naming he can't put it back

to a republic which is the plot of

gladiator

he can

name himself a co-emperor and the i'd

the thinking is that's what he was

planning to do with his sons but they

all died

so in the movie joaquin phoenix

kind of kills the dad

it kills the dad because marcus does not

no in in the movie not in real life

marcus realized he knows his son cannot

be

king

but in real life

he passes it to him so

and how did marcus aurelius die of the

plague oh wow so that's the other crazy

but again timeless marcus was writing in

what we now call the antonine plague

like they named it after him uh

um

but

it's like a global pandemic it starts in

the east it overwhelms rome

five ten million people die

they have no way of stopping it uh so

marcus leads through all of that and

then the the suspicion is that he

catches it at the end uh realizes he has

it has to send his son away so he

doesn't give it to his son

sets in motion like a series of advisers

who should lead his son

uh and then his son promptly like gets

rid of all of them and

goes

bad so how does a man like that who's so

introspective and so thoughtful

particularly for the times how does a

man like that have a son that's such a

piece of [ __ ]

i don't know i don't know i mean

one argument is he's a psychopath and

there's sort of nothing you can do

like there's no blame whatsoever

the other argument the more likely one

is like

most great men and we're talking about

history so it's mostly great men but

again queen elizabeth has crappy kids uh

most great men are shitty fathers gandhi

was a bad father

winston churchill was not a good father

why is that

i think they're busy

[Laughter]

wow

i mean do you have a theory

um i i think it's a power thing i think

growing up

in that with that amount of wealth and

that amount of power

that your

your mind develops in this privileged

position

where you never have to struggle you

never have to develop character and you

always feel entitled to everything you

know if you like

imagine being a prince imagine being the

son of an emperor you have the most

ultimate power you could have people

killed he probably did he probably

killed people if he got an argument with

a boy you know what they were playing he

would probably stab him you could get

away with that and if you did that many

many many times you would develop this

ultimate sense that you're superior to

all mortals like you would think of

yourself as a god king you would think

of yourself as someone who's not a

normal human being and i don't think you

could ever get that out of a person

if you if you grew up it's like

childhood stars

are the most broken people that we have

on exhibit

if you want to really examine human

beings in terms if you want to do like a

psychological study like

what it you know what is the average

architect like what is the average

singer like you know what is the average

child star like well they're almost all

drug addicts they're almost all

completely wrecked their personalities

never fully develop they develop under

this weird position where everyone loves

them

from the time they're little

and they get exorbitant amounts of

attention that are completely unearned

then they never have to develop

character under adversity they never

have to prove themselves you cannot

prove yourself in fact sure you never

have the opportunity

and so what do they do they get their

faces tattooed they get hooked on drugs

they're [ __ ] up man they're just

falling apart

and it's almost universal

yes

there's the exceptions but the

exceptions prove the rule the exceptions

are so rare yeah and even the exceptions

usually are [ __ ] up

i heard this quote it was actually about

uh marcus

uh no no it was about a different flight

it was it was in a book about monsters

anyways the guy said the worst thing

that a son or that's again male the but

the worst thing a kid can say to their

parents is like i was never a boy or i

was never a girl like you never had a

childhood right so i imagine that's part

of it too it's like from day same with

child stars but also like the person who

grows up knowing they're gonna you're

never a normal regular kid right getting

your ass kicked where you're confused

yeah where where you're struggling to

both fit in and like earn your place

you're just like you know from the

moment you're born you're special and

that's maybe why there's five good

emperors in a row is that each one of

those emperors did not

grow up thinking that um

that makes sense

yeah i

i don't know if it's possible

for someone to i mean i think it's the

same as being famous right

i mean essentially he's the son of the

emperor he is famous

i think it's the same thing

i've met

dozens of people that were child stars

and i've met some of them that were very

nice like demi lovato's very nice miley

cyrus very nice

um

i've met a bunch of them

but they're all [ __ ]

they're all [ __ ] in one way or another

they're all like

i'm sober now or i'm gonna do this now

i'm gonna do that there's never like

like this sense of calm and discipline

and being centered and

there's always like this state of change

and improvement like they're all they're

always like in this weird place where

they don't feel fully centered or they

they're always like falling over to the

left or falling over to the right the

structure's not there

yes yeah i mean do you think about that

like how do you

i've i've tried to make decisions in my

life like one of the reasons i live

where i live is that like i wanted my

kids to be

normal

like i want you know what i mean like to

have us obviously they can't be that

like my life is never going to be super

normal because i don't have a job that i

go to every day and you know i don't

have to think about certain things that

a quote-unquote normal person would but

like

there are definitely cities or

neighborhoods or lifestyles you could

live that are inherently less normal for

your kids and i would like i would like

to have normal kids

yeah normal is an interesting term right

because uh i've met people that grew up

in la

and their parents are in show business

and they're normal

yeah yeah it's possible they probably

had to create kind of a bubble right i

don't know i mean i think it's all about

what kind of activities you get your

child involved in um i get my kids

involved my kids are involved a lot of

athletics because i think people

have this faulty

position on athletics that don't

participate in them and they think of

athletics as being something that is for

the body it's not a smart pursuit it's a

dumb pursuit it's like a physical thing

it's not a mental thing but they're not

right

they're incorrect

there's a giant amount of success in

athletics that

are about

not just

mental states but about discipline which

is also uh

it that discipline is a part of the mind

right we all we all agree to that but so

is the ability to perform under pressure

so is the ability to

deal with a loss and sort of

re-establish yourself and

come back feeling better the the feeling

that you get of the shame of loss is

very valuable and that's a mental thing

and there's

mental sort of challenges that you

[Music]

acquire from sports that i don't think

are available in any other way i don't

think i think you get different mental

challenges and there's there's different

lessons that can be learned from

academic pursuits

but there's mental challenges that you

only get from athletic pursuits you only

get when you have to force your body to

keep going even though your mind is

exhausted your body is exhausted and

your will is leaving you

and there's parts of you that are

telling you to quit and you have to

learn how to manage that and that is a

mental thing but it's a mental thing in

a different way than calculus is it's a

mental thing in a different way than

learning languages but it's

equally

as difficult

i think one of the things i think a lot

about and that i dislike like if i was

like describe a philosopher he'd be like

university professor turtleneck like

tweed you know uh jacket with pads on it

or whatever like you'd think of a

weakling and in the ancient world like

philosophers were people who did [ __ ]

right like there were warriors they were

warriors they were king like mark

surrealist hunts uh there's an early

stoke who's a distance runner one who's

a boxer like and what i love when you

really read the stoic text is like that

the

their metaphors are all sport it's

wrestling and fighting and running and

hunting because they did those things

those things are difficult yes and

difficult things are good for you and

they're good for your mind that's what

people don't understand that don't

pursue them there's in america

unfortunately there's this sort of um

intellectual elitism there's this

this mindset that some very smart people

have

because they're they're very good at

certain intellectual pursuits and they

look down upon

pursuits that are physical in nature

because because of this sort of

prejudice they have this idea and it's

like i think it's also like a fear

of

encountering something that you're not

good at or something that's going to

humiliate you and something's going to

make you feel bad it's like they maybe

came from gym class maybe came from you

know being forced to participate in

sports when they were younger and they

didn't enjoy it so they have this thing

in their head that there's no value

there

yeah seneca says we treat the body

rigorously so that it will not be

disobedient to the mind ooh i like that

that's good

that's good like like uh when i when i

crank the knob to cold in the shower or

i push myself when i'm running or

lifting weights or swimming or whatever

i i feel like part of what that is is an

assertion about who's in charge yes

that's what my friend john joseph says

john joseph is the lead singer the

crowmags but he's also done like a [ __ ]

ton of iron mans he has got this great

saying about doing an iron man he goes

he goes that's when your mind has to

tell your body who the [ __ ] in charge

yeah

it's like and you're here with his heavy

new york accent it's beautiful

but that's what it is it's like you

you're

you have to be able to endure you have

to be able to tell your body that this

is what we do and the more you do it the

easier it is man i made a video about it

today when i was doing the cold plunge

because it's like it's uh

it's so much easier than it used to be

but it's still hard

but it's just easy because i'm

accustomed to the grind of it because i

do it every day so i just get in there

or almost every day but it's like

there's

there's something to that that's so

valuable that doesn't get emphasized

enough in our modern day conversations

and it doesn't get emphasized in in

media it doesn't get talked about

it's like you have to search for that

you have to search for this idea that

struggle is difficult

or you know like the title of your book

the obstacle is the way like getting

through things

is how you you build a stronger

foundation it's how you develop

character it's how

the mind understands how to manage

difficult situations

well i think it's a transferable skill

so like yes you're doing it in the cold

plunge or running or fighting or

whatever and then when

you're

like when i'm working on a book and

books are hard you know and they're like

halfway through i'm like this isn't

coming together this sucks should i stop

i'm like i know this feeling very well

and i know that you don't listen to this

feeling so

like [ __ ] off yeah right like you have

to build that familia because because

you're going to go through hard things

in life

and

you want to have cultivated a sense of

like not quitting yeah things are hard

yes

um i have a very good friend his name's

cameron haynes and he's a hunter ultra

yeah he's also ultra marathon runner

does a lot of and one of the reasons why

he's such a good bow hunter

i believe is because of all the exercise

he does

because i think there's i i used to

think that it was just him building

endurance for the mountains i think

there is some of that too but i think

more than that it's his ability to

maintain calmness

because he's always torturing himself so

he's always running like 15 miles in the

morning before he goes to work he's

always torturing himself so he has this

ability to just stay in this like steady

state

so

when

he's at the top of a mountain and

there's a giant bugling bull that's like

50 yards away he can center his pin

right on that bull's vitals and release

a perfect arrow every time because he's

so good at managing uncomfortable states

he can stay relaxed under fire the stoic

word for that is stillness

anorexia is the greek word but it's sort

of like freedom from disturbances like

even if it's crazy outside or even if

you're going through something

internally like how do you how do you

slow things down marx realist talks

about

he says be like the rock or the cliff

that the waves crash over and eventually

fall still around

i think you cult you you you've been

when you've been in crazy stuff or

you've exposed yourself or you've

endured things you're you you just

realize that i gotta slow this down i

gotta center myself and that being

excited

is not is not a positive contributor to

this situation right

yeah

there's there's a thing that happens

when you do a difficult thing is that

you develop

more of an ability to do difficult

things

and one i mean and it's also like trans

it's a daily thing it's not as simple as

like oh i used to do difficult things so

now i can do this difficult things like

i don't think so i think you you are

better off than someone who has never

encountered something difficult but i

think there's a reason why fighters

take warm-up fights and fighters when

they're active when they fight all the

time they fight better when i was

competing i would be at my best if i

just fought like a week ago

like if i fought a week ago i was like i

know this experience i know this feeling

i've been here before i was just there

yeah but if i was like like i got

injured once and i i couldn't compete

for like four or five months it was

weird coming back was weird it was a

totally foreign experience it felt very

nerve-wracking and i think

there's something to like forcing

the brain forcing the mind into these

difficult positions into these difficult

situations and so that the mind gets

accustomed to that feeling and then you

can maintain calm and then you could

keep yourself in the midst of all the

chaos you can keep who you are yeah well

i try to design my life around

like cultivating slash protecting that

feeling so like i like i know people

they're like they get up and then the

first thing they do in the morning is

they're just like sucked into social

media or the phone

right and then like they're already

riled up from like before they've their

feet have even touched the floor they're

like can you believe so and so said this

or like i heard this or like i was

talking to a friend of mine and he was

like actually i was talking to peter

atiyah and he was saying the problem is

uh he'll he scans his email in the

morning to check for fires

like not literal fires but like stuff

going on and i'm like so you're you're

starting the day looking

for things that are disturbing for like

you're looking for but it's the defense

he is a physician yeah of course he's a

man who has a bunch of clients and if a

client emails him hey my foot's numb and

i can't see it on my left eye there's

this [ __ ] he's got to put out that

fire yeah yeah that's different than you

or i yes definitely and there are

obviously professions where you have to

be more on call but you can and what we

were talking about and he was like he's

happiest though when he like gives

himself 30

minutes to an hour in the morning which

means waking up early right that like

you're not sucked into that yeah and so

i i tried that's what my rule is like i

don't use the phone for an hour in the

morning i broke my phone once on a trip

in hawaii yeah i was uh bow hunting in

lanai and i dropped my phone yeah and um

i dropped my phone and it started just

randomly calling people it would just it

was wild like i would hold it up and it

would call people and i'd hang up and it

would just call somebody else i showed

my wife i go look at this watch this and

it's just doing this wild thing where

just kept calm i shut it off turned it

back on it was doing the same thing so

i'm like okay i got gotta get a new

phone but there's no apple store in

lanai there's only three thousand people

yeah yeah on lanai yeah so i'm all owned

by one person yeah larry ellison the

oracle guy ballin

ballin out of control son

yeah he owns a [ __ ] island so uh it's

a beautiful place too and so anyway i

had to order a new phone well it took

like three days to get there and in

those three days i didn't have any phone

and i felt wonderful it was weird man

like i had a weird relaxation come over

me like uh like an alleviation of stress

and concern and it wasn't even that

anything was going on in my life where

like people were mad at me or i was in

trouble or anything like that it was

simply that i wasn't checking in on the

opinions of so many people and i was

allowing myself to just think about life

clearly also i'm in paradise so that

helps a lot and i'm just with my family

so there's no concern

about other people i'm with my family

right the most important people and i'm

with two of my very best friends and

we're having a great time together with

no phone but there was a feeling that i

had where i was like wow i feel lighter

i feel like there's an alleviation

but then as soon as i got that phone i

went right back into it as soon as i got

that phone i'm a check on my instagram

oh my god look at all these messages i'm

checking my email oh god i gotta answer

all this and i i fell right back into

this

bizarre

steady feeling of like a buzz of subtle

anxiety everywhere just

it can't be good for you terrible for

you yeah

terrible but

is it

like all this other stuff we're talking

about like hard working out like doing

difficult things like endurance work and

sauna work and all that stuff

is it also a resilience

does it build up your ability to

tolerate massive amounts of information

coming your way because would you be

worse at it if you hadn't experienced it

because me personally like

i have something like 15 million

instagram followers and

nine million twitter [ __ ] it's a lot of

people and if i absorb all their

opinions it's unmanageable yeah but i'm

so accustomed to people talking [ __ ]

about me i'm so accustomed to that i can

read someone being really mean about me

and i just go

like it doesn't get me anymore but it

could it used to get me like when like

maybe like if you go back to like the

beginning of social media if someone

would say something mean to me i'd be

like what is this this is awful because

i thought it was a real person as

opposed to like some thing on the screen

well it's in you thought it was a real

person but it's also you cannot respond

there's no one there so you feel

helpless it's like you're swinging at

ghosts

it's like if no one would say to your

face unless they were a really dangerous

person

a lot of things that people say on

twitter

they would i mean for someone to say

that to your face they're trying to

instigate a literal physical violent

encounter

most people would never do that but they

can say something and just throw it out

there and it reaches you and it's like

causes emotional pain to people and they

know it does but they feel disconnected

from it and so it takes a long time for

someone to understand what that is and

how this is

a negative thing that you really

probably shouldn't have in your life so

don't go looking for it don't go reading

that stuff because it's just not good

for you

but if you

aren't accustomed to it when it does get

through and slip into you it can [ __ ]

really bother you and i know some people

that never learn this skill

and i will see something happen to them

and then i'll see them two three days

later and it looks like they haven't

slept because they're just [ __ ] from

people being mad at them

and i think that there's a certain

amount of resilience you can build

from social media it's just like snake

venom yeah take a little bit of it you

develop a tolerance but if you get too

much of it it's gonna [ __ ] kill you

yeah it's like if this is the way of the

world and this is how things are to

totally

step back from it pretend it doesn't

exist live in a fantasy world there's

kind of a fragility to that where you

have to keep it's like you're you

haven't been exposed to germs so your

immune system is now like more

vulnerable yes like i found like i used

to love new york i lived there when i

wrote obstacle actually and then when i

moved to texas

uh and then when i moved to the country

in texas like now when i go to new york

i hate new york like it physically hurts

me it's too loud like i can feel the

noise like my heart is just like yeah

because i'm not the noise pollution is

so radically different than my life

right it's it's it's not healthy

like i think one it tells me that the

day-to-day life of a new yorker is

actually like much worse than they want

to admit they're just they're just built

up a tolerance to it but like my

withdrawal from that makes me vulnerable

to it when i'm in it and i like i just

can't handle it too much yeah i think

that's exactly right i think uh i think

you're exactly right my friends that

love new york that i'm

close with they're the most unhealthy

people i know

it's and one of them who i love dearly

he's always saying it's the energy of

the city i love the energy of the city

i'm like don't you have your own [ __ ]

energy like i don't need to hear people

yelling at each other and honking horns

we were there at three o'clock in the

morning getting falafels and i heard

gunshots i was like

this is great

this is great bang bang bang like what

the [ __ ] are we doing man let's get out

of here i hear plenty of gunshots where

i live

someone decided to play with their ar at

like six in the morning but or kill a

pig yes yes the the one that i dislike

the most is like when the tr like a dump

truck or something goes through an

intersection in new york and the back

kind of lifts up and then it boom yeah

that i can feel that like in my chest

oh i scandal

yeah it's just i don't think human

beings are designed to be stacked up on

top of each other either there's a this

weird

like

there's a lack of appreciation for other

human beings because they're a burden

instead of being a benefit like a

community like a small village everybody

has a role and everybody's welcome and

you need everybody

in new york city there's too many people

so

the the value of people diminishes to

the point where people become a

liability instead of being an asset it

like turned it turns down your ability

to empathize yes because if you did

empathize you would be paralyzed you'd

have to think about how horrible it is

to be like a korean bike deliver food

delivery guy

or to a homeless person or yeah or to

commute three hours from some borough to

make eleven dollars in that like it

would be horrible and so but you the

city wouldn't function if you thought

about it and so it you have to turn off

that part of your brain i think that's

also a problem with social media you

know i've discussed this many times that

i just don't think we're supposed to

absorb the problems of seven point

whatever billion people it's too much

and if you just set out every day

looking for all the problems in the

world you will have a very distorted

idea of what life is yeah because that

is not your life that is all the lives

and we cannot manage all the lives it's

just not possible it's not remotely

possible for you to take in all of the

violent and sad moments that happen all

throughout the day in the whole planet

earth

it's just too much well you think like

we as a normal person probably get more

information

than like a president got like even just

a couple decades ago oh yeah even marcus

ruiz is the emperor of a empire 50

million people he knew nothing about

them he didn't know what they looked

like maybe he read someone wrote a

letter and then you know they would have

been essentially non-existent to him

yeah but we're flooded with more

information than a human than even the

most connected humans

on the planet just not that long ago it

can't possibly be healthy no

it's not and i think it's changing the

way um

our brain is mapped

i really do i think it's it's this is a

very recent thing right social media has

only existed for the last 13 or 14 years

as we know it

and i think we're going to get to a

point

where the mind has to adapt to deal with

the the volume of information that comes

in

and the way we receive it and i think

along the way there's going to be some

sort of a technological intervention and

it's probably going to be something like

neurolink and we're going to accept it

because it makes the management of all

this data more easy

yeah i don't know anything about that

neurolink is an idea that elon has that

is initially going to be used for people

that have spinal cord injuries and it's

going to change the way your brain

communicates with all your muscle tissue

so you're going to be able to move your

body even with spinal cord issues so

people that have it's going to be

fantastic for people that have been

paralyzed they'll have they'll regain

use of their body because instead of the

spine the spinal cord being the conduit

for all the information and all the

signals that you're sending there's

going to be an electronic interface and

this electronic interface will

i think it will initially initially

mimic

what the mind does with the the spinal

column and then

ultimately be

far superior

and then

one of his things that he said that

always freaks me out he said we're going

to be able to talk without words oh man

i think there's going to be an

information a transfer of information

hopefully that

surpasses language

meaning that there'll be some way of

universally

expressing information where you don't

have to like you know you don't have to

write it in greek you don't have to

write in latin it'll it'll come out as

intent interesting

yeah i wonder i know having moved here

one of the really beneficial things was

that like i don't know

i know but i don't see that regularly

people who do what i do

so it turns off kind of like a

competitive part of my brain where like

i just get to be me and do what i want

to do and focus on like what i think is

cool and what i want to create there's

not that like keeping up with the

joneses part of that can be a powerful

driver of your career but also a source

of

unhappiness did you feel that in new

york i felt it in new york i felt it

when i lived in l.a

like how did you feel in like what way

did you compare yourself to like other

people yeah just like why are they doing

better than me do you see that person's

house you know that that sort of

yeah comparison is the thief of joy as

though yes i i didn't know that quote

when i lived in la uh when i first got

there but i was on this sitcom we were

on a sitcom right

incredible yeah oh my god i'm on

television this is amazing and the

people that i was with who were great

people they were they were all reading

the hollywood reporter and they would

read this and they'd get upset

oh why is she getting this oh why is

this happening why are they on thursday

night at eight o'clock why and i'll go

hey i go that's the devil's rag i go

what are you reading that's what i would

call it the devil's rag

and i go guys last time i checked i'm on

[ __ ] tv yeah okay i'm on television

you're on tv we're on a tv show and

you're complaining that other people are

on better tv shows or on tv shows that

have better ratings this is crazy yeah

like you're looking for reasons why your

life sucks when you're in one of the

best positions that a person could ever

be in in your line of work you're

literally on a successful television

show this is so crazy and they're

reading variety to find all the people

that are doing better them oh look at

this oh they're in a movie now i want to

be in film and it was wild to watch yeah

that's one of the things that stokes say

is like you would be gel if you if you

didn't have what you had and someone

else did you would be jealous of that

person oh yeah but all you're doing is

comparing what you have to what someone

else has instead of the gratitude of

holy [ __ ] look how lucky i am 100 that

is sucking your happiness but i think

it's also if if good work comes from

being present it's preventing your

ability from like actually being great

on the television show that you're on

because you're you're you're spending

energy out in the world on stuff that

doesn't matter instead of being like i'm

gonna be the best that i can be in the

thing that i am 100

100

if you are constantly dwelling on other

people's opinions if you're constantly

dwelling on other people's success it

will 100 diminish your capability of

doing good work yeah there's no just no

if ends or buts about it because the

mind has a certain amount of bandwidth

and the way i always just express this

when i talk to people about it i go look

at it like a number if you had a hundred

bandwidth like if your bandwidth was 100

and then someone said something mean to

you on twitter and you read that and

responded and you're going back and

forth now how much do you have i bet you

got about

30 is gone 30 percent is just dedicated

to this thing it might be 40 you might

have four and now what happens now now

whatever work you're actually trying to

do is greatly diminished because you

don't have the focus

well think of the arrogance too of being

like i'm so good i can be on this show

or in my like i can i can deliver this

book in an environment where so many

people would kill

like to to be able to do what i'm doing

so many people are doing it and we're

competing for a finite you know amounts

whatever

i can do it with only 60 of my capacity

yeah it's it's horrendously arrogant and

stupid like i don't think it's arrogant

though because i think it's ignorant i

don't think people are really aware

when they're doing this i think they're

j it's just so instinctive it's so

instinctual it's such a normal thing to

do

to you know read some mean quote that

someone said about you or read uh an

article that someone wrote that pisses

you off or

you know

i know

friends i have friends

i'm not close with but i'm close enough

to them that i pay attention to them and

they

their career is a disaster

but when i go onto their twitter page

they're so deeply involved in politics

like

massively where they're quoting spending

bills that i don't even know and they're

talking about what the problem these

bills i'm like if you spent a fraction

of your life

paying attention

to your own career and doing what you

actually love doing instead of focusing

on this you're focusing on this because

you feel like this is something that you

can get involved with mentally

where the burden of performance is not

on you yeah well there's a zen there's a

zen story like the zen master was told

he was criticized by another zen master

and he said oh how lucky for him to have

arrived at perfection and to have the

time to do such a thing he's like me i'm

not there yet and so what i'm saying

it's arrogant i just i don't i i know

what you're saying the humble way is

like dude i can spare zero yeah i'm so

uh holding i'm so on the razor's edge of

this i cannot possibly afford to waste

even one energy point on this thing

that's not up to me which is what the

stoics say they said epictetus is the

chief task in life is separating things

that are in your control from what's

outside your control and all that stuff

is outside of your control

and you're spending the energy points

that could be on what is in your control

on the stuff that's outside your control

so it makes you doubly worse it does but

unfortunately this is not taught

i mean you're teaching it there's marcus

aurelia's books there's there's

there's many books that are available if

you want to go seek it but this is not

something that's being beaten into the

head of people on a daily basis and it

should be it should be something that

television shows that

you know that are supposed to be

these

intellectual exercises and examining the

world around us

one of the most important things is how

are you looking at the world around us

how are you thinking about things and

through what lens and have you done the

work on your own self because if you

have not you're going to look for these

struggles in other places because you're

uncomfortable dealing with your own

personal struggles and you're avoiding

those so you'll find them in other

places you'll start fires because you

haven't dealt with your own [ __ ]

yeah and this is also what they teach in

like uh 12-step groups right it's like

the acceptance of a higher powers to say

like you're not the center of the

universe right this is why they do the

serenity prayer it's i you're realizing

it's like the source of your

unhappiness and just self-destructive

life is your focus on things you don't

control is your you know you're handing

over that power to this thing that

you're hooked on and so 12 steps are

really

like a way to teach someone how to be a

person again like from from rock bottom

and we don't you're right we don't do

that we just assume well the problem is

even people who study philosophy they

they think about

interesting but abstract questions right

how do we know we're not living in a

computer simulation right which is

fascinating but like

first we should probably focus on like

what is in our control and what is not

in our control once you've mastered that

think about all the big questions you

want right and how does the mind handle

adversity how does the mind handle

difficult situations and the knowledge

that if you force difficult situations

into your life that you can control like

rigorous exercise like meditation like

sauna and cold plunge there's many

different things you can do like writing

like sitting down and forcing yourself

to do work

that will

it will free your mind in so many ways

and allow you to have a philosophy or at

least a philosophical perspective that's

based on how you actually think not

based on overcompensating for deficits

not based on trying to you know pile

dirt on the problems that you've created

yeah it forces you to wrestle with

yourself and your [ __ ] yeah first and

foremost first and foremost which is i

mean social media is designed to like

focus on other people's [ __ ] yeah

what are you thinking about this what's

your opinion about this as if the thing

cares you know i'm going i'm in the

middle of another book um i think it's

called a muse to death oh by neil

postman yes yeah i was listening to that

was it um neil brennan recommended it

yes he did and that's amusing ourselves

to

death books it's great incredible and

what's fascinating about it neil brennan

recommended it i think when he was on my

podcast right yeah um one of the things

that's fascinating about it is that

it's from the 1980s

and

they talk about television the same way

we talk about social media today and he

compares television to the way they

talked about the printing press yeah

when the printing press was first made

available

a lot of people thought it was a

disaster and that really the written

word

on on a piece of paper in a book like a

written book was the way to go yeah and

this printing press was some cheap easy

cop-out that was going to make people

stupid

isn't that fascinating well i love

amusing marcellus to death there's

another book called um the image by

daniel borsten which is written in the

60s and he was talking about this thing

called pseudoevents like a press

conference is a pseudo event

he's like it exists for no other reason

but to get media attention that's why

that's why they do a weigh-in in a fight

right like uh so cameras will be there

maybe something will happen and then

we'll get more attention right like how

so he's talking about how much of what

we respond to even then was not real but

things that were made for the media

to suck our attention away and then you

go back even further there's another

book called the brass check which was

written in i don't know 1910 1912 1930

anyways upton sinclair who wrote the

jungle you know the jungle the expose of

the meat packing industry yeah he wrote

an expose of the media industry in like

the 1910s about how

almost all the same things that were

happening then or have like it

this has always been a problem it's just

different mediums

uh

ex like what postman is saying is that

when television is the dominant medium

the world conforms around that medium

and before that it was radio and then

before that it was newspapers and now

it's social media and

uh you know video and these other and so

like our world conforms around what the

medium

wants right like what the medium is good

at well if we make it too easy then

people get soft and lazy and i think

that's what he's talking about with when

it comes to television and he's

comparing it to

the way

lincoln's debates were oh yeah they're

like seven hours people went home for

lunch yeah they told people to go home

for dinner and come back for four more

hours and so they would make these

agreements like this man would speak for

an hour and a half and then he would

have a rebuttal for a half an hour and

then he had his own speech for an hour

and then the other guy would rebut and

it's like they had these

attention spans

that

it was based

possibly on that there was no tick tock

there was no distractions no no real

like the kind of media that we have

available at the touch of our fingertips

just did not exist back then it was not

a thing so you had to get all of your

entertainment from literature that was

the only if you saw a live performance

that was it or literature and that's it

there was no recordings

so you

and even you can go before that before

written word

everything was oral yeah it was all oral

traditions so you had to learn these

oral traditions they were passed on from

generation to generation and you had to

learn them they were a very important

part of your upbringing so you had to

have a grasp of

language in a sense that you had to be

able to communicate things in an

eloquent and sophisticated way because

it was part of being a fully formed

grown adult well the thing is we don't

always think of things as technology

because when you think of technology we

think of tech right we don't think

like a book is a piece of technology

it's a great piece of technology right

like it's uh

and the incentives in it are pretty good

like an author has to work on a book for

a number of years then it's edited

multiple times lots of people look at it

it takes a while to publish so it has to

be somewhat timeless then the the reader

is paying for it right you contrast that

with like a blog post the blog post

could take an hour to do it's designed

to only be relevant today it's designed

to be shared a lot by other people so

it's focused on the valence of emotion

that it provokes from the person when

they see it it's not supposed to

challenge them it's not supposed to be

complicated right so it's good medium

versus bad medium and

uh the only like

recent medium that i think is somewhat

positive it's not totally but podcasting

is a medium that i think

generally extends out right like it's

not short right it's a conversation

pieces of it don't really spread it's

like a whole thing you consume in a

block it's usually you know two people

talking like podcasting i think is

better than most of the other sort of

online tech focused mediums but i think

what postman's point is is you have to

think about the incentives or the

language that a medium is built around

and then you have to ask yourself does

that make people smarter or dumber and a

lot of these mediums inherently make us

dumber or at least they make it harder

to get to truth and it's interesting

with podcasting how

one of the things that happens

is that you take social media which is

inherently a short attention span

platform and then people will take out

of context clips of podcasts and then

insert them into their world

of

outrage farming yeah and they'll instead

of like looking at a conversation in

terms of the entire three plus hour

conversation they'll find a sentence

from someone may have misspoken or

a disagreement that someone might have

had and they'll

force it into their world and then

attack it with also short attention span

non-sequitur short little 140 280

word sentences or letter sentences well

i think twitter broke a lot of people's

brains you think about like what a

journalist was

like

20 years ago they were someone who

thought

long form so a couple thousand words

they thought like

not the day's news cycle usually but

they might be working on an

investigation or a piece over a sort of

a somewhat long period of time

uh it would be edited it would be fact

checked etc it was it was supposed to be

objective so you had to consider

multiple perspectives now you contrast

that with twitter which is like driven

primarily by journalists right

um and they're like throw all that out

and think about the world

in 240 characters yeah the world is

[ __ ] complicated 240 characters is

nothing but you can have like twitter

threads where you can have one thing and

then you have a second comment on a

third and fourth and people do that and

they do get coherent points out but

nothing is the most viral is a singular

tweet right that's right

and you're not like hey it's pretty

complicated there's a little bit of this

and a little bit of that you're like

screw this person or this is evil or

this is the worst thing i've ever seen

right yeah it inherently and i got

postman i think talks about this really

it's it is inherently driven by the

demands of that medium yes

yeah it is in in many many ways and it's

also so alien to the way we are designed

to communicate we're designed to

communicate looking at each other eye to

eye

and i think that's one of the great

benefits of podcasting is that

podcasting is at its

core

it's communication

in its purest form it's like that's how

people

are designed to communicate like what

we're having right now communicating for

all of other than the microphones yes

what this is

is the one of the most basic human

things that there are and ironically

enough the microphones enhance it

because what's going on is you wear

headphones i wear headphones so i hear

your voice in my ear at the same level i

hear my own voice

so everything is together so any

overtalk

is painful

and clunky sure yeah and that's why like

if you ever heard a podcast where

there's like five guys sitting around

drinking and there's no headphones i've

done those before they're [ __ ]

disasters because if you don't have

headphones on everyone's just talking

over everybody and i have friends who do

podcast that way and i'm telling them

like you can't do this like this is this

shit's unlistenable

but

one on one with headphones is actually

better you like you don't hear the rest

of the world that's right it enhances

sensory deprivation yes yes

yes

well i wrote about this in my first book

i wrote this book about media

manipulation in 2012 which i was like if

we don't get this out right now it's

going to be late you know and it was

like you were 25. i was 25. you're a

little baby and you wrote a book i know

people were not pleased

with that book they were very angry

about because i was i was talking about

media manipulation and i was saying the

primary manipulators of media are not

just bad people like dictators or

marketers or whatever

journalists themselves are inherently

manipulative right like um think about

it this way you would never want a

reporter to write a story about a

company they own stock in right because

that would be a conflict of interest

potentially right like or if they were

shorting the stock that would make them

write negatively if they were long

positive um but what happens when the

journalist is compensated or at least

evaluated

based on the number of views that that

piece gets that is also a conflict of

interest yes it's like they're working

on commission and you wouldn't want a

shoe salesman to be working on

commission because it would they would

pressure you into doing something that

maybe you wouldn't actually want and you

couldn't trust their

uh their judgment yeah and that is the

drive this and that was a metric of

journalism that was invented

by gawker like in 2008 like not a long

time ago like all journalism

forever was not monetized in that

fashion until

like our lifetime well the convenience

of digital news was so much more

efficient than getting an actual

newspaper and unfolding it and reading

it and so people stop buying newspapers

i would like to see let's see if we can

find this

the

difference i don't know how you'd google

this the difference between the

circulation of printed newspapers

pre-social media to now i mean it has to

be a [ __ ]

massive hemorrhaging yeah of course and

not just the subscriber base but like

there were thousands of daily newspapers

yeah new york city at one point like in

the 20s or 30s had like 50 daily

newspapers for one city wow and so all

that goes away all that goes away and

then you're incentivized with click-bait

journalism so people have deceptive

headlines they have salacious stories

that they cover even though it's not

even interesting not real it's just

[ __ ] but that [ __ ] is going to

get people to click on it

total estimated circulation of us daily

newspapers there is a [ __ ] giant

drop-off right at the invention of

social media and what if you tr if you

had somehow charted population growth

along that right you see how many yeah

that would be crazy look at that number

like look where 2007 is

go to 2007

it's right there so it was dropping off

before i guess it was probably the

internet that made it drop off even

before social media because stu i mean

generally wasn't 2007 is that the

creation of twitter i was in austin at

south by when they launched it i was

like that is the dumbest thing i've ever

heard that won't be a thing

and i could not have been more incorrect

i feel that way about nfts

i might be wrong um so it seems like the

drop-off started happening

around like 94. go to 94. the peak here

it was like 91. which i don't know

that's weird well one of the big things

that people don't talk about craigslist

just guts the newspaper industry because

classifieds subsidized their you know

baghdad bureau

and like all that stuff oh that's right

that's right i didn't even think about

it which is also a tech invention that

destroys you know a thing yeah and then

there's also um people advertised online

they started advertising for things

online so they didn't need to take ads

out in the newspaper which was always a

thing yeah like ads in the newspaper was

a big thing

yeah

and so

that was where we got our objective

information if you go back and you read

a new york times story from like 1983

it's a different world i mean the way

they wrote was different the way they

covered

critical issues was very different well

the reason that fundamentally was and

upton's leclair was talking about this

in the 1910s whenever that was uh he was

saying that okay um when the news boys

are selling the paper

like at the street corner it's a similar

competition right so when we think of

yellow journalism it was you know extra

extra read all about it that so you had

let's say there's 50 newspapers in new

york city and you get off a train at

grand central and there's news boys for

all of them they have to have the most

salacious headline or or breaking story

that day to get you to buy it but then

as the 20s uh

as we got in the 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s

the the newspaper stopped being sold

one-off at newsstands for the most part

and most people subscribed or you know

we'd say i i take the new york times or

i take the washington post yeah you

would subscribe to a newspaper and so

like when you look at the breaking of

the pentagon papers

it's the headline is beyond boring it's

like a long ass headline because the new

york times didn't need to sell you the

paper the new york times knew we are

delivering this story to

20 million 30 million homes today

that's the so there's a and i think what

a podcast does like when you

you're not thinking like i want to have

this guest on to grow the show to get

attention you're thinking

how many subscribers do i have of the

show

am i honoring or

disappointing them right you're thinking

i know you don't really think about the

audience too much but your point is you

have a fan base that you are making

stuff for as opposed to

a thing you were trying to sell and

shout over everyone else to like

dominate the news cycle that day that's

an interesting point because that was

one of the things that actually came up

when i first came over to spotify the

first week of spotify shows they're like

who's the guest going to be like who are

you going like hey hey hey hey hey yeah

i'm not doing that i'm like that's not

what i do i put on people that i think

are interesting i'm gonna continue to do

it only that way and when i'm not doing

it that way anymore it won't be the same

show and i'm gonna quit it's not gonna

be the same like i have to just have

people on that i think are interesting

that that's the only criteria i have i

look at all the requests that come in i

look at all the different people that

i'm interested in either i reach out to

people i'm interested in like you like i

reached out to you i can't believe you

do it yourself i do it myself yeah or

well i have a guy too i have my friend

matt i

have him contact people but um

it's all scheduled on my phone

everything's on my phone so i

i just say like i go through the

requests like i get emails and there's

like hundreds of them so i'm like no

no

no where where'd he go

what's he what like charlie walker who's

on the other day like what

four years he bicycled through [ __ ]

asia and africa holy [ __ ] get that guy

he just got out of a russian jail holy

[ __ ] he wound up in russia because he

was uh he was in uh the arctic in

siberia during the time where russia

invaded ukraine just coincidentally and

then they thought he was a spy so they

arrested him and he's in jail in russia

for a month like crazy i'm like let me

talk to that guy so it's that kind of a

deal that's the or you know snoop dogg

wants to come on [ __ ] yeah i want to

talk to snoop it's that kind of a deal

it's like it's not like this is gonna be

huge like i don't think that way at all

and that's i the only reason why i think

it works i think if i stop thinking that

way

i don't think it would work i think if

there was a if there was a [ __ ] hint

of disingenuous behavior if there was a

hint of [ __ ] i think people wouldn't

trust me anymore if there was if they

thought that i was only doing this to

get attention i mean i'm sure some

people that don't know me think that

that's what i'm doing but that's not i

only i don't have to i it works i and i

did it from the beginning

where i didn't think i was ever going to

make any money doing it so i only did it

for fun yeah and then once i started

making money i said well

i'm doing it this way anyway

and this is how i want to do it so i'll

just keep doing it this way i never

would have thought you could

become

the number one podcast in the world by

just talking to people you want to talk

to i thought you'd probably have to

promote it everywhere you'd have to like

go way out of your way and take ads out

and pump a bunch of i've done none of

that yeah i've literally i've done no i

don't even talk about it i just do it

and through word of mouth it's become

what it is it's really like the most

organic thing i've ever done well that's

what i like i like sub stacks that way

the idea that you're writing for an

audience and ideally that audience is

paying you so you're not like doing this

sort of virally thing i think the only

downside the only risk can be

it do you get in a place where i'm not

saying you are but some people are where

you're like if i tell these people what

they don't want to hear that costs me

money i think the big risk today is

someone like sub stack decides to

disempower you and to take away your

platform and that's a real issue yeah i

mean i know people that have been banned

from paypal i know people that have they

can't use paypal anymore i know people

that have been kicked off of you know

youtube i i know a lot of people that

have where things have happened where

someone has decided that they're going

to censor this person's positions on

things yeah

but they call this audience capture

though like where you're

you're

because these people are paying you

because that's your audience you're not

necessarily thinking about what's true

you're thinking about what they want to

hear

right yes i've seen that too that's

dangerous it's very dangerous for

comedians you see comedians they find an

audience

uh like maybe they get a certain amount

of tension from attacking people that's

a big one and then they really lean into

it and that becomes their thing they

just go after people because that's

where they find success and you find

like they lose who they are they lose

who they are and they become captive

yeah like a caricature of yours

yeah you also see that with people that

uh switch political affiliations you

know like

they get lured in to the other side and

they get a lot of attention from this

transition and so they make this

transition and everybody loves them and

so then they go all in

you know it's generally speaking i see

it from people that used to be left-wing

and become right-wing yeah and they go

all in and and it becomes an identity

yeah you want to like it's you want to

be a free agent is what you want to be

like you this is what i think about this

this is what i think about this

and i don't really think about what

other people think like sometimes i'll

write something that's political and

people will get upset and i go like i

didn't build an audience to not say what

i think like right i want to own the

audience not the audience own me yeah i

mean you don't even own the audience you

own yourself right you're going to have

an audience because your ideas are

interesting but if you decide that

you're only going to speak from a

right-wing perspective there's a lot of

people that do that there's a lot of

people that do that already and they do

that because there's a business in that

it's it's it's very valuable

like you can talk from a pure left-wing

progressive perspective and attack

everyone as being far right or nazis and

you can get a lot of money that way it's

it's a good business model yeah but it's

not smart

it's not it's not good for you either

it's not good for you intellectually

because

you're not going to be examining things

from a purely objective perspective

you're not going to look at your own

flaws in your own thinking and the way

you formulate ideas and go why do i

think like that you're not going to do

that if you're captured by you know the

progressives are captured by the

republicans the people that get locked

into that it's like man and when they

transition like if someone transitions

it's very similar the word transition

has been captured right by transgender

today but it's kind of similar because

if you go male to female you're most

likely not going back

sure right and so if you go

left wing to right wing you're not going

to come back to the progressives you're

not going to go you know what i just

decided the right wings are racist and

they're evil and they they support white

supremacy and [ __ ] the military

industrial complex i'm going back to the

left like no one's going to take you

they're not going to take you back isn't

that kind of what happens it's always

like one issue they talk about one issue

and then that issue gets so much

attention and then it's like like magic

they suddenly also have the same right

wing opinion yes on all the other issues

and you're like yeah because you're not

going to be the one guy who has one out

of step opinion and then stay in this

group

you you stepped out in the middle into

no man's land and now these people don't

want you anymore so you're like i might

as well go over here well that's and it

but it's only if you choose to align

yourself with a very specific ideology

if you don't do that you can have

opinions like

i mean i have a lot of opinions that are

on both sides and i think most people do

i think most people have

conservative as well as like i'm very

socially liberal like about as socially

liberal as you get

but more and more as i get older i start

looking at things from a perspective of

being a pragmatist and i start looking

at things in instead of looking at what

do i hope people will do if you give

them free money and if you you know give

them free education if you give them

free this and free that and take care of

them i start going well what is that

what does that do to the psyche yeah and

does does that force laziness like if

everyone in this country look let's

imagine a world where everyone in this

country gets 50 000 a year yeah

everyone

how much less productive would we be

it would probably be horrific

now i want to live in a world

where this is universal basic income

yeah yeah i mean

i want to live in a world where no one

has to worry about how to feed

themselves no one has to worry about how

to put a roof over their head all you

have to worry about is

what

what do you want to do

what would best

serve your interests and also

how could you provide

a service or

whether it's art or something that other

people are going to enjoy and appreciate

and that could elevate you past

the middle class past making fifty

thousand dollars a year into becoming

you know

affluent

wouldn't that be nice if you didn't have

to struggle and and spend your resources

thinking about how am i gonna feed

myself and instead

let me write the best book i can write

instead let me create the best film let

me make can you get paid on top of the

50 000 yes okay yeah that's the idea but

i don't think it would work

i think we would lose a lot of great

people because i think there's a lot of

people that are motivated by desperation

they're motivated by this this kick in

the ass where you have like i have

friends that uh had children and once

they had children they became [ __ ]

hyper ambitious because they realized oh

my god i have to pay for this little

baby and then they realize like it does

turn you into an adult yeah

because you're like these people are i'm

responsible for these people yes

it's a completely different kind of

feeling but

i wonder

but i look i don't want people to live

in poverty poverty sucks it's a terrible

place to be to be desperate and and

that's causes a lot of crime it causes a

lot of violence there's a lot that's

attached to poverty that's horrific

however

it is an incredible motivator to get

people to to get moving and to do

something and

desperation much like

loss and humiliation are great

motivators to make you work harder to be

better at whatever thing you were

attempting to do that failed

there's something about being poor that

forces people

into this feeling this this hunger that

causes

greatness in so many human beings so

many artists so many great musicians so

many great comedians and so many great

people that have accomplished amazing

things came out of nothing and there's

this inherent

hunger and this desire to be someone to

be something that creates greatness that

gets recognized by so many people and

enriches so many people's lives if you

think about how many

hip-hop artists who are so poor became

so rich and inspired so many people with

their music how many comedians did the

same how many

people who wrote books have come out of

utter poverty

and through the struggle and pain

of their existence

it gave life to their words in a way

that you're just not gonna get sleeping

on silk sheets

yeah but are you sleeping on silk sheets

making 50 grand a year no

so there's no

number like right yeah there's like a

subsistence number but you don't but but

then again i was like

how much encourages people to just exist

like that subsistence number

how many people would just get

that kickstart rum from poverty

and leads them in to success and this is

just this is not encouraging poverty i

don't think poverty is gonna [ __ ] i

was poor when i was a kid i hated it

it's a horrible feeling

but that feeling

it it is a motivator

that is unlike anything else that the

pain

and the the the discomfort of poverty

and of feeling like a failure or feeling

like a nothing is is an insane

vehicle

for your

your human potential like it can it can

push you if you get on it and ride it

but it can also destroy your life i mean

it causes so many people to become drug

addicts and so many people to become

criminals because they're they're

desperate and they're poor and they feel

like the world has abandoned them you

know that quote like um

if you aren't liberal when you're young

you have no heart and then if you're not

a conservative when you're older you

have no brain yeah there's probably a

truth to that but i also really hate

that expression because it's it sort of

means like you're supposed to care less

about people or think less with your

heart as you get older which strikes me

as kind of one of the problems in the

world yeah

yeah i agree with you i mean i don't

think it's real

i think people give in to that because

it's so nuanced and complex the reality

of human life and civilization is so

nuanced and so complex

you know i was i was watching this

horrible video the other day it was

really bad

it was um these two guys in brooklyn

they robbed this kid

um they walked up to him and sucker

punched him and he fell back and hit his

head off the street and he died five

days later and they stole 20 from him i

mean that's all he had on him yeah they

punched this guy in the head and took 20

out of his pocket now he's dead

and

i was thinking so many different things

first of all i was thinking like imagine

being that kid's parents and finding out

that that's how your child died

and then i was thinking imagine being

those kids that did that to that guy

and your life

has gone so far off the rails

that you're essentially a parasite on

society you can't find a better way to

make twenty dollars you don't your

development is so [ __ ] like your

morals your ethics

someone's failed you society's failed

you and that's what i really feel like i

feel like one one of the things that

conservative thinking leaves out is that

not everybody starts at the same

yeah the same position you don't start

at the same starting line it's different

and if you don't accept that if you

don't look at the just pull yourself up

very bootstraps they don't have boots

man yeah okay there's people out there

that don't have anything and you i don't

even think most these people saying that

like you just gotta put your nose to the

grindstone and get to work you don't

even understand where these people are

starting from and if you're these kids

living in brooklyn walk around sucker

punching people on the street and

stealing money from them like your

morality is so [ __ ] it would take so

many mushrooms and so many psychedelic

trips and so much therapy and so just to

try to realign you with good and love

yeah

so

this is like the liberal part of me the

the liberal part of me

feels terrible for the guy who got

killed but also feels terrible for these

boys

that sucker punched this guy because in

my mind i think like if i lived their

life i would be them

if i was in that

situation of dire poverty and probably a

lot of emotional and physical abuse but

if you're accustomed to just walking up

to someone and punching them you've

probably been punched you've probably

been abused you've probably seen it all

and you probably have like deep anger

towards society and civilization and you

probably been conditioned to think that

you you deserve this and that you got to

go get what's yours

it's a horrible failure on all of our

parts so even though like

i might have some conservative ideas

most of my ideas are very liberal and in

that regard like my feeling is we need

to pump insane amounts of money and time

and effort into inner cities we need to

fix

the the imbalance there is there's

obviously

an income inequality problem in this

country right sure but there's also an

effort inequality problem in this

country both things are true

and

poverty like extreme poverty has a

gravity that is so difficult to escape

you're like a 500 pound man who's trying

to do box jumps like it is so god damn

and

we got to teach that 500 pound man how

to lose some weight

and that's how i look at

the general state of the horrific

poverty that exists in these inner

cities it's gravity is inescapable so

many people have been trapped in it for

so long and there's been decades upon

decades of these places

there's multiple ones in this country

that have been completely ignored by

this country that supposedly wants

everything to work out better well if

you want something to work out better

you got to look at the people that are

in the very worst starting position

that's available in the united states of

america and change that elevate that

have you um did you watch the movie

nomad land no or there's a really good

book and i i read it not that long ago

and it's basically about people who like

because the financial crisis

and

other stuff it's like old people who

they lost their houses and so now they

live in vans or campers and they just

drive around the country

working at different like theme parks or

amazon seasonal warehouses

uh like these companies recruit those

those people because they're like old

people work hard they don't have

anywhere to go they pay them like next

to nothing they get like a couple

hundred bucks a month in social security

these are people living right on the

edge they live in a van and i as i was

reading it there was this voice inside

me that was trying to think like how bad

do you have to screw it like what

choices do you make in your life where

you end up this way like my first

thought was like basically like how is

it this person's fault right right and i

realized that i was doing that because

if it was their fault then it wouldn't

have to make me sad

and i wouldn't have to do anything or

change

any of my habits or viewpoints do you

know what i mean yeah

and then you're like no the system

failed these people like these these

these people have worked their whole

lives maybe they messed up once they got

addicted to alcohol or they went through

a divorce

or you know they got fired from one and

this

the system failed them in some way

because you shouldn't if you work your

whole life you shouldn't end up in a van

down by the river right like these

aren't these aren't like people addicted

to crack on the side of the street these

are like

these are people who if you saw

on the street you wouldn't know that

they live in a camper right and it was

it i think the idea that the system has

failed huge amounts of people

and that

you can't individually hold someone

responsible for something that is a

collective failing they're a symptom

of a huge problem and many of these

people have not had access to anybody

who thinks

outside of the box the their

the access that they have to other

people are the people that live in their

small community that are also troubled

by the same problems that they are yeah

and you know in many of these places in

the country today it's pills

i mean there's a great documentary that

um

was put out by mariana van zeller like

it was

we had her on talking about this i want

to say it was like eight or nine years

ago and it was called the oxycontin

express did you ever watch that no

but it's all about the the horrible

situation that used to be in florida

where they had these pain management

centers yeah yeah and you go to the pain

management center it's really just a

pill fill a pill mill rather and so you

would go into this place they would have

a doctor on one side they would say

what's wrong ryan oh my back hurts oh

well you need oxycontin yeah and then

you go right next door and they would

give you the pills and there was no

database so you could go to jamie and

jamie could prescribe you the pills and

you can come to my office and i would

prescribe you the pills and people would

do that and they would go to 10 15

different doctors and they had it set up

that way specifically to make the

maximum amount of profit yeah so they

knew they were doing this and then these

people would take these pills they'd

have a trunk full of them and they'd

drive them up through kentucky and

that's the oxycontin express yeah and

then we're like

that person lives in a in a camper park

because they were a drug addict as if

they weren't exploited and

uh

that basically like their humanity

extracted out of them by these doctors

and these multi-billion dollar

conglomerates that they're doing fine

well you know the people that are

running it just so it's a side effect

these [ __ ] people if they weren't

hooked on drugs they'd be hooked on

something else if it wasn't that it'd be

gambling if it wasn't that it would be

cocaine if it wasn't that it would be

you know whatever cigarettes they're

gonna they're gonna find a way to ruin

their lives because they're idiots and

these people can justify things like

that and you don't realize like some of

these people are four

okay and if you're four and you're

living in that trailer and your mom's on

oxycontin like you're [ __ ] yeah but if

that same four-year-old grew up with

like a really healthy person who lives

in an upper middle class suburb and

spends time going over the homework with

the kids and takes them to practice and

gets them involved in sports and you

know maybe exposes them to some activity

that will eventually be their career

that person can be a functioning

thriving member of society and be a

benefit to everybody it's really in

where you [ __ ] start from and this is

why the whole

if you are young and you're not a

liberal then you have no soul but if

you're old and you're not a conservative

you have no mind doesn't work with me

because i'm forced to look at the

reality of the situation i didn't have

the best childhood but i had food i had

parents who cared about me i had stuff i

didn't have a bad childhood i

went to high school in a pretty nice

area it was not bad like there's bad it

was enough bad to make me motivated but

it ain't [ __ ] compared to what someone

who lives in appalachia who lives in a

[ __ ] trailer park whose whole

family's a bunch of drug addicts and

criminals there's

there's people in this this world that

are [ __ ] their starting block is miles

from yours and it's all uphill to get to

you i think i think about that even with

the student loan thing which i'm a

dropout so i don't have any student debt

so i don't i don't have super strong

opinions on whether it should be

forgiven or not but you think about how

exploitative and extractive

that system is where colleges were like

oh you're 18

um you can't even legally drink but sign

this contract to pay 70 000 a year for

your you know insert obscure degree uh

that has no viable job prospects oh you

can't afford that just take out a loan

we won't you don't just don't even look

at it by the way this is the only

unforgivable debt in the entire world

yes and uh

you know when you graduate you'll be

four hundred thousand dollars in the

hole and you'll figure it out and so

when i look at my friends and they're

like you know in their they're my age

and they're just starting to get it

together

the reason they didn't buy a house like

i did when i was in my mid-20s is

because they have a house that they're

carrying around on a in a bank balance

yeah and it's getting bigger every year

every year and then we wonder why they

don't become t like

it it totally changes the jobs they do

like why do they go get a job on wall

street or whatever it's because they

have to pay back this obscene debt

meanwhile the college is just hiring

more and more bureaucrats and

administratives administrators and

putting in a [ __ ] lazy river and you

know all this nonsense and this is

coming off the backs of a generation of

people who were misled or outright

conned

into a thing that you know

is totally unjustifiable totally

unjustifiable and the way you know it is

in the fact that what you said it is the

only debt that's not forgivable yeah it

doesn't matter what happens i read a

story about the the the prevalence of

people who are getting their social

security checks docked

because they owe student loans oh can

you imagine carrying that your whole

life and you have you have a piece of

paper to show for it and you're at the

end of your life and this is your

subsistence income your subsistence

income is reduced because of a debt that

you can never get rid of that didn't

serve you obviously yeah because you

don't have any money if someone sells

you a house that you know you pay too

much for sold termites or whatever you

get a bad deal on a house you can just

walk away you'll take a bath on it but

you'll you can just walk away yeah if

you got conned into some for-profit

school or some you know they

over-promised uh that hey this is what

you'll make if you become a physical

therapist you get your masters in this

or whatever you can't you have no

recourse and those people in their

middle class houses or or bigger the

people that that profited from that

money like i think so people sometimes

say this about me they're like oh you're

profiting from philosophy because i sell

my books and you know stuff that i'm

profiting from it and i go you think

this college professor who has job

security for life paid for by the u.s

government you know subsidized by the us

government meanwhile is charging

students 50 60 000 a year for the for

the courses for this piece of paper like

he's not he or she isn't also

uh profiting from i can sleep at night i

know i charged

seventeen dollars for a book that took

me two years to write

you made someone take out unforgivable

debt

to attend your university class

at obscene amounts of you know what it

is true but gross you know there's no

need to have a what about with that what

about that guy what about this guy just

you're not getting paid for philosophy

you're getting paid for your work you're

getting paid for work and if you put

together a good book

that is your effort sure and you will

profit from that because people enjoy it

it is a meritocracy selling books is a

meritocracy because if people don't

enjoy your books you don't get money

yeah it's really very simple so anybody

says oh you're getting paid from

philosophy no no getting paid for work

in philosophy that's like getting paid

for serving food

uh you know are you getting paid for

serving you're getting paid for work

sure it's work yeah no i don't feel bad

about it it's just value i'm just saying

we don't we don't think of the college

professors or the university present we

think of them as good people and i'm

sure they mean well some of them but the

system is inherently exploitative

and extractive

against people at their absolute and not

their most vulnerable but vulnerable

people who don't understand that they're

signing away their financial freedom or

the choices they can make as far as

their careers goes for their entire life

because you'll never be able to get out

of this yeah in

the thing is too

that information

is available

it's like that scene in goodwill hunting

where he talks about going to the

library like you could learn all this

from the library you don't have to spend

all this money on education

that that didn't really used to be true

but it's true now you can get a

full-blown 100

education without ever stepping into a

classroom you could have a varied

nuanced education about a myriad of

subjects and you can get that all from

books you can get it from online there's

online courses you can take for free i

mean you can become incredibly well

educated now would you be able to do an

internship with like uh you know some

scientist that's working on genetic

engineering no you probably would have

to have some sort of a degree to qualify

you for something like that but for just

general education in terms of

elevating your intelligence or elevating

the information that you possess

that's readily available when you think

about probably what harvard cost when

that movie came out versus what it is

now i bet it's like doubled or tripled

like i remember when my son was born

someone told us that there's a thing in

texas where if you want to send them to

ut

you can pre-pay for their education now

so like you can be like so in eight but

the bet there is that let's say it's 200

grand that 200 grand compounded in the

stock market for 18 years will be less

oh yeah

yes will be less than just the natural

increase in tuition over 18 years

which is absolutely they're inherently

they are they are implying that they

plan to beat the stock market compounded

every year with their tuition increases

for a state

run institution well i think it depends

on who's playing the stock market

because if it's nancy pelosi i'll give

her the 200 grand and i'm betting on

nancy

because i think she knows [ __ ]

harvard college tuition fees room and

board 2017 tuition was 43 000

service fees 1 000 plus

student service fees 2 000 plus room

9000

board six so the total is 63 000 but

that's 2017 so yeah five years later

it's probably quite a bit higher

oh man yeah it's pretty wild but if you

go back to goodwill hunting which was

what was that like 96 yeah so it was

only 27 000. so it's half

less than half you talk to people

they're like oh yeah i went to i went to

berkeley and it was 46 a semester and

then and then they judge people who are

my age and they're like these kids you

know it's like are you [ __ ] kidding

me but then there's a thought if

education was free you would take it for

granted and you wouldn't work harder

it's like the same

perspective about

hard work and poverty you know like if

you're if you're poor it motivates you

to work hard

i mean there's there's there's a lot of

examples of that it's like

fighters

almost all the best fighters come from

poverty almost all of them it's it's

very rare that a rich kid

becomes a super successful fighter isn't

that like the history of boxing is like

whatever the most marginalized group was

in that generation that's who the boxers

were yep used to be jews he used to be

uh like slapsy maxi rosenbloom it was

like a lot of uh jewish boxers and then

it was italians it was italians for a

long time uh it was african-americans

it's still african-americans

predominantly but it's a lot of russian

immigrants irish for a while yeah a lot

of irish a lot of irish it's like

whoever the the poor immigrants are that

are scratching clawing yeah those are

the people that

have the most hunger and the most anger

and unfortunately they're they've

probably experienced the most physical

abuse which is a significant

factor in your ability to dish out

punishment yeah because like if you if

they're your kids and you could choose

you want them to play like lacrosse or

something where they're you know knock

where they have the most upside but the

least downside yeah

my my i would way

more like my kids to fight than to

play football

football to me is the scariest one

because

i you know i don't follow football but i

watch it occasionally and when i watch

those giant super athletes just running

full clip and slamming into each other

that is just car accident after car

accident and then you got to take into

account all the ones that happened in

high school all the ones that happened

in college and then they all by the time

they get to the nfl they probably are

already like severely mentally

compromised

they probably like there's a number see

if you can find this

um

they they did a study on chronic

traumatic encephalopathy that's the yeah

cte

and they did it from they measured from

children playing pop warner football

all the way up into the nfl and they

found

an astounding number of people at every

step of the way exhibited symptoms of

cte

wow

it's a it's a sport with you

i know fighters that don't have

like visible cte and they're really good

fighters the journal of american medical

association found cte in 99

of brains

obtained from the national football

league players

as well as 91 of college football

players and 21 percent of high school

football players

that is [ __ ] crazy

the data suggests that there is very

likely a relationship between exposure

to football and the risk of developing

the disease uh

duh

99

what the [ __ ] man

and it's a degenerative brain disease

and it comes from a

repeated head trauma

it's uh

it's a terrifying disease and

i

you know look in many ways i'm

i'm kind of morally compromised because

i am a commentator for professional

mixed martial arts it's a big part of

what i do i'm a giant fan of the sport

um

you know i've been a martial artist my

whole life i used to compete it's a it's

a big part of

who i am

and

i know it's bad for you and it's not

just bad for you it's bad for you in one

of the worst ways possible and then it

compromises your ability to think yeah

which

one of the reasons why i stopped and i

stopped when i was young when i was like

in my early 20s because i knew that i

was compromising my ability to think i

knew that what was coming i saw it in

other people and i'm like i gotta get

out of this

and

when i see it now in friends and i see

it in people that i care about and i've

seen all they've gone through and i know

what's ahead of them i get terrified for

them

and i try to sound the alarms and when

anybody's thinking like man i don't know

how much longer i'm gonna be able to do

this get out now yeah like get out now

pretend you can't do it think of your

next fight as a death sentence get out

just get out if you're thinking you

don't want to do this anymore don't do

it because somewhere out there there's a

guy's not thinking about that at all and

he's just trying to be a destroyer

that's mike tyson when he was 21 and he

wants to separate you from your

consciousness and you got to get away

from that guy don't do that anymore stop

doing it because you don't get those

brain cells back you don't get them back

you don't cte doesn't reverse itself i

mean there might be some therapies that

come along

in the future but right now from what

i'm aware of

i don't know of anything that makes me

comfortable saying like you're going to

be fine it's going to heal up you're

going to be fine so how do you separate

those feelings from your enjoyment of

the thing because i love football and

it's been cool my books have sort of

made their way through the nfl

i love it i love watching them talking

to players but yeah how do you how do

you

square that i look at it the same way i

look at life period life is finite you

have a finite lifespan you're not going

to live forever you only have so much

time if you choose

to spend

a good portion of your life living the

wildest

most dangerous

and

extreme way

outside of war

and law enforcement firefighting and

you know being an emt or something like

that like being a professional fighter

is one of the craziest [ __ ] things

you could do with your brain and your

body yeah you're literally playing a

game of i'm trying to steal your health

like you're trying to steal health yeah

you kick someone in the liver you're

stealing their health

you're you're shutting their body down

and you can only do that so many times

to a person before their body

deteriorates

and

it's a choice

if as long as you're aware of what that

choice is and the exhilaration of

victory

is worth it to you and you can go

through the pain

and the the

horrible feelings of loss and the

punishment of training if you're willing

to do that and that

is exciting to you because ultimately

you know that the end product is so

entertaining if you watch an incredible

incredible fight it is so entertaining

that the joy that you bring to people

when those guys like if

michael chandler's sitting on top of the

octagon cage with his arms up in the air

and the whole arena is like yeah and

then millions of people around the world

are watching that and they're feeling

the same like wow

you're providing a drug you're literally

providing an endorphin rush to millions

of people

and

you're doing so at the cost of your own

health you're doing so where you're

you're compromising your lifestyle to

dedicate yourself to the spartan

existence where all you're doing is

training and eating clean and resting

right and going through all of the

recovery modalities

you could choose to do that and i i am

all about people choosing i'm all about

people like if you want to [ __ ]

flip dirt bikes over the grand canyon

i'm not going to stop you i don't want

my kids to do it i wouldn't want anybody

to love to do it but the argument about

the argument the structural argument or

the your point about like universal

basic income is like did they actually

have a choice like it was it was between

that and what

for a fighter yeah well it depends you

know like we i use the example of

michael chandler i don't really know

about michael's background in terms of

like how he grew up but i knew he was a

very high level wrestler in college and

generally that means he's got an

education and they he chose he's a

competitor so he chose to fight sure um

a lot of people just come from like

conor mcgregor conor mcgregor who's a

great fighter came from poverty

um you know there's

there's other guys that have come from

you know various levels of struggle

but ultimately were compelled by the

challenge of this insanely difficult

pursuit and the glory of victory

and so in that sense yeah they have a

choice like a lot of these guys went to

college no no there's definitely ones

that have a choice but i'm just saying

when you look at some of these athletes

or fighters or whatever where they were

like the alternative was like jail drugs

like nobody so they they chose it but

they didn't have a lot of choices to

choose from and so is there something

inherently exploitative then

in like being like well it's horrible

but they chose it but they didn't really

choose it because nobody actually gave

them

any option like life did not give them

options i don't buy that

i don't buy that for most mixed martial

arts fighters and that's most i do buy

that for some boxers there's there's

some boxers that didn't go to college

and grew up in abject poverty and that

was the only way out box some of them

are like more scalable and an early and

like groomed into it right like tyson

you know does it seek out even muhammad

ali is like someone's like you're going

to be a boxer there's something to that

sure but at a certain point in time mike

tyson could have retired yeah the amount

of money that he generated by the time

he was 20 years old he could have

probably lived off if he lived well for

the rest of his life

if he decided to

it's just

the glory of it and the excitement of it

and the thrill of victory you know it's

the old sports the sports uh thing abc

wobbler sports the thrill of victory the

agony of defeat remember that yeah

that's uh that's what it is you know you

you certainly

can make an argument that is exploitive

because you exploit people's desire for

victory and their desire to conquer and

the desire for wealth beyond what they

can imagine you know if you're the

average fighter that becomes a world

champion you're going to make millions

of dollars the average person doesn't

make millions of dollars like you're you

you have a path that is an incredibly

lucrative path if you can get to the

tippy top but how many people get there

how many people become a camaro usman

you know how many people become a

charles oliveira how many people there's

not that many people it's really hard to

become a champion

and those are the ones that make the

money the the regular folks you know

it's just a hard scrabble existence well

i've heard similar arguments for like

women who become prostitutes or women

who enter porn it's like these are

consenting adults but it's like it's

more complicated than that because

there's other

factors you know weighing on this person

yeah and you can't just be like uh you

chose this sorry i think competitive

athleticism is there's a there's a dif

see the thing about porn and

in many in prostitution is like there's

probably sexual abuse involved there

it's there's not always but there's a

large percentage that have been abused

by relatives or by you know it's

horrific [ __ ]

and then there's a lot of like fighters

that were beaten up when they were young

they're bullied or they're abused by

someone close to them and they they got

good at lashing out and they got good at

dishing out punishment on other people

because they know how horrible it feels

when it's dished out on them with a

positive argument and they might also

make this about porn is that this is an

empowering way to recover from that

trauma to take this

thing where you were small and little

and vulnerable

and turn it into a strength of yours

that you can channel that energy and

that rage into something positive you

know that you're really good at like

clearly i think when i think about like

why did i become a writer clearly there

was some

desire to be seen or heard that went

fundamentally unfulfilled as a kid

because why would you develop the skill

to sit at your computer and just you

know if i just get it perfect they'll

understand me and it'll be it'll matter

you know there's maybe in a non-fiction

context but in a fiction contest don't

context don't you think there's a lot of

people that just have ideas and it's

kind of very satisfying to write out

those ideas and have other people enjoy

them like ooh this is a good story but

it could be the same thing maybe their

circumstances were

dire and awful and unpleasant and it

drove them to pursue a world that they

could control and make you know and

explore and have

agency over and you know what i mean

like you could imagine the fantasy

author being drawn to fantasy for a

reason yes well you know the story of

robert e howard no robert e howard's the

guy i wrote conan the barbarian and um

what does that got vincent d'onofrio

played him in a film a few years back

that i never watched which is really odd

because i'm a giant robert e howard fan

can i have one of those yeah yeah yeah

yeah what do you want a minute yeah

neural mints for the win dude i actually

really like it i love them yeah i love

the gum more than anything but um robert

e howard uh

was

like a really [ __ ] up depressed guy

who lived with his mom you know and his

life is kind of a disaster and he wrote

the greatest fantasy novels the world

has ever known i mean his character to

this day is like i don't know how many

millions of copies of the conan books

but i read them all when i was a kid

and um

they're [ __ ] good man and it's about

this character that is the opposite of

who robert e howard was roberty howard

wound up taking his own life i think he

was like 30 something years old he shot

himself

but before he did that he wrote about

this unstoppable

unconquerable man who was a giant

amongst men who slayed everyone before

him and fought demons and dragons and he

carried you through this

these

incredible adventures that conan would

go through with

like it was so impassioned it was so the

the words were so vibrant and exciting

meanwhile this guy's life was dog [ __ ]

yeah it was terrible but he wrote about

someone who he wishes he would be

i think also like if your life sucks or

you're struggling with something or you

don't feel good you don't feel your

parents are proud of you or whatever

there's something inherently

satisfying and rewarding about just

mastering something because you have

power over it it operates the way that

you want so whether you're mastering

writing fantasy or archery or

fighting or you know any of the or

trading stocks there's something about

like i go into this place

and in that place

it doesn't feel quite like real life

feels like

you're a superhero or you know what i

mean there's something

inherently human and wonderful though

about mastery and mastering something

well i think it's we have

an

a desire

that is probably genetic it's probably

the result of thousands and thousands of

years of evolution

where

figuring things out is very rewarding

figuring out how to flint map and make

stone tools fingering figuring out how

to play the wind and sneak up on a deer

when you need food for your family like

all of those things

they're incredibly rewarding for us

because that's how you survived yeah and

figuring out how to conquer your enemies

figuring out how to

convince this woman to mate with you all

those different things

yes the puzzles of life

they're

and they transfer to chess

right and the the the feeling of winning

at chess like i'm a big fan of pool i

play a lot of pool

it's a stupid game who gives a [ __ ] if

that ball goes in the hole it means

nothing yeah but it's hard to make that

ball go in the hole and you have to

concentrate and in that concentration of

getting that ball to go in and getting

positioned on the next ball and all

those things the reward when you knock

that final ball in is like wow you get

this this exciting feeling and when you

miss you like oh

it's the same feeling it's like missing

an animal your your family's not gonna

eat or not figuring out how to make a

tool that's vital for your survival or

not figuring out a way to start fire if

you're a person in the village and you

were the guy who knew how to start fire

go to ryan he knows how to start a fire

and ryan could teach you like there's a

there's a there's a value in figuring

these things out and i think that is

inside of our minds and we activate

those human reward systems we activate

them whether it's through creating

literature or whether it's through music

or whether it's through getting better

at things there's like this pathway

that's ingrained into us that's

incredibly human

that we get rewarded for getting better

at things yeah you go back to the first

cave paintings like what's motivating a

person to do that right and then you

look at like where they were and where

we are now and this sort of un broken

passing of torches from like these

rudimentary buffalo or horses or

whatever yeah so like the sistine chapel

you're like yes wow

that is a chain of masters yes yeah

that's a perfect example too that is a

great analogy like the difference

between the cave paintings and

like uh saint peter's basilica yeah

which uh when i went to when i was in

rome a few years back i couldn't believe

how big it was yeah like when you look

at that you're like

how long did this take because you see

it in a photograph and it's it's pretty

beautiful and it's it's gorgeous but

when you're there in person and you're

walking around you're just like holy

[ __ ] this is insane the amount of effort

is so undeniable yeah

or like some of these like uh cathedrals

where it's like they don't even know the

person who did it right because it

wasn't one person it took 200 years yeah

and they're just like collectively that

is such a human thing we're just like

we're coming together to build this

burial mound or we're coming together to

build this yeah uh this cathedral and

it's just a process and we all just plug

into the process there's something that

the stoics kind of believe that we're

all this like giant organism that's

working together and there is just

something crazy about

that that just happened that's what

humans do like in the way you look at

like ants they just do stuff yeah weed

or beavers they just that's what i'm a

beaver this is what i do that's what

humans do that homo faber is one of the

names for the human species like man the

maker hmm

we make stuff we do stuff yeah i've

always said that if you were something

from another planet and you came to

observe us you'd be like what's going on

here oh there's this one creature that

can manipulate in its environment in a

very sophisticated way and all it does

is make better and better stuff yeah and

that's what we do we just do it

collectively you might think you're just

working on your poetry and you but

you're basically plugging in to this

human need to improve upon things you

might think that you're just practicing

the saxophone but

you're practicing getting better at it

yeah that's what you're doing because

everybody gets a reward out of getting

better at things but ultimately the

collective reward is better and better

technology well and then maybe randomly

you are

a

saxophone player who moves the ball

forward yeah right so it's like

and and it's funny though the marks

really talks about this

you think it's kind of weird like only

recently like could you get up and look

down on human beings right like you can

maybe climb a mountain but like you

couldn't get in a hot air balloon you

couldn't get an airplane right we only

saw the earth from space in 1970

something right like you know the blue

marble photo the famous photo

like

that was just 50 years ago yeah but like

that's what bees do that's what uh

beavers do that's what ants do there are

other things that do we just think we're

special because we're us

but like empires are that and whole

civilizations and whole eras like we're

just all part of this giant collective

thing that's just going on and we all

think we're so important we're so

integral but we're really just one part

of a process that randomly produces

progress for the most part sometimes

produces the opposite of products but

randomly produces these sort of

evolutionary improvements

and then that's how you go from there to

here but it's this timeless enormous

thing that you're just a minuscule part

of and there's certain instincts that we

have that we think are detrimental like

the instincts and inclination towards

materialism well why does that exist

because well that ensures that you keep

buying the latest and greatest stuff

which ensures that we keep making the

latest and greatest stuff so innovation

keeps pushing forward if everybody was

wise and

you know and didn't need anything it was

pragmatic and was relaxed and wanted to

just live in a log cabin we would stay

static and nothing would improve but

there's these design and then when

something comes along like

some horrible situation like where

things go badly like war like the nazis

like hitler

well what happens well the reaction to

that is so intense

that it forces people into action and it

forces them to go out and stop that and

then you look at the innovation that

happens after world war ii and it

changes culture all around the world

like this horrible event takes place and

through this horrible event we realize

oh my god this can happen this and now

we got through that and there's v-day

where they're kissing in the street and

everybody's celebrating and and then

civilization moves forward in like this

beautiful way for a while well there's a

beautiful kind of symmetry to it it's

like horrible thing reaction to the

horrible thing

and like so you know if you look at

world events up close right you're like

russia invades ukraine it's this

horrendous

violent awful thing

it's also though you zoom out you look

at it on a 100-year timeline a 200-year

timeline

it's

humanity staggering towards some sort of

global balance of power then it gets out

of balance and it has to rebalance and

so we take these things personally when

in fact they're just they just are what

they are and it's always been happening

just like waves have always been

crashing on the beach and trees have

been growing and falling down this is

what it is and it's always been that way

it always will be that way until

eventually it's not that way but it just

and that's why i think so fascinating

about meditations is like marcus is the

most powerful man in the world and he's

like

who remembers the emperor six emperors

ago

you know he's like he'll go like the

name vespasian you know like how odd

that feels now and that was like just a

couple before him and he's like think

about all the people that worked in

vespasian's court they were so powerful

where are they now yeah and and he's

like the same thing's going to be

happening to you

and that this is this thing that just

happens and there's a beauty and a

horror to it but you got to choose the

view you're going to take i think it's

interesting because the uh elite minds

of the day for lack of a better term

like marcus aurelius like

there's no other form

of

there's no other form of discourse

there's no other form of entertainment

there's no form of distraction

you have life and you have writing you

have literature you have reading other

people's writing and you have making

your own writing and then you have this

comprehension and understanding of the

world around you where you're trying to

express it in in his case to himself

and the the valuable lessons that he

learned like one of the things that was

really fascinating was the value that he

placed on forgiveness yeah

well so he famously is betrayed by his

best friend uh who declared he thinks

marcus is sick and near death and so

this guy named evidius cassius goes like

i'm the emperor now but marcus wasn't

dead and so it puts him in this horrible

position of like obviously you can't

allow this

but he doesn't want to fight a war over

and he basically says this is the final

chapter in the obstacles away the idea

that like even this is an opportunity

and he says like i want to show

history how civil strife can be dealt

with

and

so he he tries to give

cassius a chance to come to his senses

eventually he has to take the roman army

out in battle to deal with it and then

he weeps when someone kills cassius

because it deprives him of the

opportunity of

forgiving him of like giving him

clemency wow

and

and he orders the senate he says do not

execute a single person for this he says

do not let

my name be stained in blood which is pr

maybe impractical maybe too

philosophical but there is a beauty to

that

that

you know

he talks about forgiveness in

meditations

but then he has to like actually apply

it in his life yeah at the highest level

well that happens in history right when

there's truces and people have to sort

of

they have to deal with whatever just

happened yeah like that was a real issue

the civil war in the united states for a

long time there was a lot of murder

that happened where people were

punishing people for their participation

in one side or the other and they would

go back and forth and kill people like

this like a long history

went on for decades and decades of

people murdering people who were

responsible for killing their relatives

in the civil war yeah i mean the

horrible part of the civil war

the genius of lincoln is he's

both lincoln and grant are like just let

him go home right just let him go home

he says turn their swords into

plowshares

according the bible and and they think

it's going to work and it is gene if

there's a genius element to it a sort of

almost a christ-likeness to it uh

but then the horror is that the south

doesn't

like they're not like immediately like

yeah this slavery is bad why did we

fight this war over they go home and

they're like we still hate black people

we still don't want them here and now

that we can't own them now they're a

problem for us and some of the worst

massacres in american history

are basically confederate sort of

paramilitary soldiers is what the clan

is originally is this terrorist

organization that just goes around and

murders black people

cut sometimes hundreds at a time there's

other sort of almost battles of the

civil war

and the us really struggles with how do

you pacify

after a war like that

the argument is we kind of learn this

lesson in the second world war we go and

there's a process of denotification

in germany

which we which we don't manage to do

after the u.s civil war cause lincoln is

assassinated which you could argue is

why he was assassinated

but we never fully sort of get rid not

get rid of but but change the hearts and

minds of the people who went to war for

like the worst possible cause you can

think of for going to war for next to

the nazis um

and so like there's a confederate statue

in the little town that i'm in

and like why is that there

that's there as a giant middle finger to

the federal government yeah many of them

were actually put up during the civil

rights era this one is here's a crazy

thing this one went up in 1910 right

and so that's 50 60 years after the

civil war

um i met a guy when i lived in east

austin uh down the street this guy his

name was richard overton and when he

died he was the oldest man in the world

he died at 112.

he was born before the statue went up

wow so you and he he's black he lived in

the the segregated part of what is now

east austin but you like we think these

things are so old but they were put up

for very specific reasons to send a very

specific message it's not that long ago

that's what's really terrifying about it

and when i was a child when i was 11

years old my family moved from san

francisco to florida yeah and that was

the first time i'd heard the expression

yankee i got called a yankee

and i mean this was this doesn't happen

in florida anymore this is what's

interesting it's like what happened from

the civil war to 2022 is like

it takes generations to escape the

hatred of the past

but when i was a kid so this was like

this was the 1970s um because i was

i was 14

in high school which was 81 that was my

first year of high school so this is

before that so it's like 79ish somewhere

right now and

they were calling people yankees yeah

like it was a thing like you're a

[ __ ] yankee i was like what am i yeah

i'm a what yeah like what are you in a

cartoon i'm a yankee like this is real

like

so he had to have heard that from his

family so he probably heard it from his

parents or his grandparents so they had

an attitude about people from the north

like they didn't think of us as all

being one

population

i don't think people experience maybe in

some pockets of the world they

experience some pockets of the country

rather they experience that today but i

think for the most part people think of

america's america you know they think of

red and blue like the red states and the

blue states and we're separated

conveniently line up with the same

states as

how it broke in the civil war like the

mason-dixon line is there is that um for

red and blue though isn't aren't there a

lot of red states that are northern

states there are of course but i'm just

saying all the reds all the red states

were confederate states or all we can

sorry all the confederate states are now

red states

almost interesting i see what we're

saying

yes yes yes so the states that used to

be confederate are now read but there's

also some red states that were not

confederated i see what you're saying

yeah that's true um

it takes generations we're we're [ __ ]

dumb and slow to learn

it takes it takes a long time for people

to figure that out and i think

what we were talking about before and

this is something i taught discuss ad

nauseam this the lack of attention to

the worst spots in this country like

i've always said that if you want to

make the world a better place make less

losers how do you make less losers give

people a better starting position give

people more support don't i don't think

you should hand things to people

necessarily but i think there's a real

value in making communities safer and

more conducive to people advancing and

getting ahead and showing people more

examples of it then you have a better

more robust civilization because you've

got you have more competition you have

it filled with more people that are

doing exciting things and doing things

that are fulfilling and i think you

probably have less finger pointing

because you'd have a better

perspective of what our society actually

is our society is a society that lifts

people up our america america is a great

place because we treat people not just

equally but we look at people who don't

have an equal shot and we want to give

him a head start and give him a hand up

and i think

some people have criticisms of that in

terms of like uh

aspects of it like some people have

criticisms of um affirmative action

because they think that affirmative

action rewards people that are less

qualified simply because they came from

another place i think there's a way to

do that where we don't feel like that

work get them young

and train them better and educate them

better and also protect them give them

environments give them community centers

give them give them places where they

feel like they're a part of a great

group of other human beings that are

also striving so the environment that

they're around is an environment of

information

education they're learning how to think

and behave and rewarded for progress

rewarded for improvement rewarded for

succeeding and overcomer

and overcoming bad situations and also

rewarding themselves for discipline and

and then

also

learning that loss and learning that

failure and humiliation are valuable

teachers and you don't have to be

defined by your worst moments those

worse moments can actually enable you to

produce a better result in the future

and

show other people that have done that

and help them lead the way this is all

possible man this all can be done it

would have a radical effect on the way

this country behaves but i think a lot

of people want to pretend this is all a

really long time ago right like what's

going on right now like no no but i mean

like ruby bridges you know from the

famous like photo she integrates that

school she's the little girl the all the

parents are yelling horrible things at

her right she's like 63.

wow

you know you you want to think she's

like 90 or

190 yeah yeah but no it's not that long

ago not that long ago and like think

about the effect that that think about

what her parents went through and the

effect that that had on her

and think about like the age of her

children now

like they're

they're like maybe my age right um

yeah because she's like

she i remember yeah she's like a year

older than my mother-in-law and you're

just like

wow okay so this could

like my grandmother uh went to

uh

uh arkansas uh little rock high school

the the famous one that was integrated

like two years before

it was integrated

um

and so you think about the environment

that she grew up in in the privilege

you know the privilege of the fact that

like

a good chunk of the population was not

allowed to go to school with her no and

then what what those people the school

they had to go to

and like

it's not any part of like my family's

history that we benefited from this you

know we think it's a long time ago like

but it obviously shaped my dad it shaped

the

the

the life that we live like there's a

legacy of that and you have to figure

out how to address it but we know the

reason we haven't figured out to address

it is i think a good chunk of us just

don't want to think that it's true

i think there's that it's inconvenient

for people to concentrate on things that

have happened in the past when they can

say well hey i had nothing to do with

that i'm i'm just living my life and i'm

doing the best that i can

but i also think that it's like you were

talking about before

with the negative things that happen and

then through those there's this kind of

yin and yang effect right i think one of

the things that we're going through

today is just that it's just like we're

in the middle of it so we can't

recognize that progress is being done

it's just

there's so much work to do and it's one

of the reasons why greedy politicians

are so disgusting when we find out that

politicians are making hundreds of

millions of dollars off illegal insider

stock well i guess it is legal insider

stock trades and that's really what

they're concentrating on they're not

really concentrate on their constituents

they don't give a [ __ ] if people get

ahead that's nonsense it's all lip

service when you hear the white house

press secretary talk about you know the

economy is in a better place than it's

ever been before like you know that's

horseshit and it makes everyone angry

and that anger

is there to encourage people to act it's

encourage people to take steps to do

better to

to force politicians to be more upfront

to force honesty and also to get people

that are maybe qualified to be better

leaders but are reluctant to get

involved in that it may motivate them to

get to get going i even think like i'm

very critical of like woke ideology

because i think it's essentially a

religion but i think the overwhelming

thing about work woke ideology that

gives me comfort is that all of it

is encouraging people to be

more inclusive

kinder

more accepting even if it's wrong like

even if you're like even if you're

in in doing so and forcing this ideology

you're really victimizing other people

which is possibly the case in some some

ways the overwhelming direction that

things are going is to make it so that

everything's okay yeah sometimes when

they make everything okay they make

people that are not guilty guilty and

they make they make victims out of

people that were innocent but

the oh the

direction that it's going is supposedly

in kindness now they're being vicious

and mean and enforcing their kindness

but this is sort of a a natural aspect

of human ideology anyway like when

people have an ideology that's rigid

they enforce it and they enforce it the

same way they enforce a religion now

that's a good way to think about at

least virtue signaling is pointed

towards virtue as opposed to like open

cynicism or nihilism right or evil yeah

yeah i mean if you were you know growing

up in nazi germany and you know you were

openly a nazi

like it's that that's an ideology that's

an ideology that you you signal to all

the other nazis that you are on board in

your cruelty to jews and your deci your

decision to enforce genocide you're

you're signaling to your tribe that

you're doing so that that's humanity in

a terrible direction this is humanity in

a good direction but it's been hijacked

by terrible people and generally by

people that are failures that don't have

good character or will and don't have

the ability to objectively assess their

own thoughts and their own actions and

try to figure out why they're motivated

to do what they do instead they just do

what gets them attention because this is

part of what people do they try and

strive to rise to the top they try and

strive the economics of the internet are

pulling them in that direction yes yes

which is why you know

twitter is essentially a a mental health

compromised market

have you seen the we are the bad or are

we the baddies sketch yes that's like my

favorite like wait the people we have

the skulls and

you know like yeah are we the bad guys

what who who made that i don't know some

uk thing yeah i think it's because i

mean we don't say baddies right right

it's definitely a uk thing

yeah we should find that we should find

that because i haven't seen that in a

while that mitchell on the web

can you put it up yeah um

how long is it

three minutes yeah let's play it

i think this is the whole thing give him

some props

you got it yeah here we go

very well

they're coming

now we'll see how these russians deal

with a crack ss division

uh

hands

have courage my friend so these guys are

wearing nazi costumes folks they're just

listening hans i've just noticed

something these communists are all

cowards have you looked at our caps

recently

our caps

the badges on our caps

have you looked at them what

no

a bit

they've got skulls on them

have you noticed that our caps have

actually got little pictures of skulls

on them

i don't so hands

are we the baddies

[Laughter]

we should be able to hold them at this

point here at least for a few hours

and why scowls them

why scowls

well

maybe they're the skulls of our enemies

maybe

but is that how it comes across

i mean it doesn't say next to the skull

you know yeah we killed him but trust us

this guy was hurried

no

i mean what does skulls make you think

of

death

cannibals

beheading um

pirates pirates of fun

i didn't say we weren't fun but fun or

not pirates are still the baddies

i just can't think of anything good

about a skull what about pure aryan

skull shape

even that is more usually depicted with

the skin still on

is the ally oh you haven't been

listening to ally propaganda of course

they're gonna say we're the bad guys but

they didn't get to design our uniforms

and their symbols are all you know quite

nice stars stripes lions sickles what's

so good about a sickle well nothing and

obviously if there's one thing we've

learned in the last thousand miles of

retreat is that russian agriculture is

in dire need of mechanization

but you've gotta say it's better than a

skull

i mean i really can't think of anything

worse as a symbol than a skull

uh rats anus

yeah and if we were fighting an army

marching under the banner of a rat's

anus i'd probably be a lot less worried

hands

let's go skull ashtray

drinking i have a skull cup this guy's

needing a skull

okay

so

[Music]

that's funny very funny that's the best

it's a great sketch

yeah nobody ever has that realization

though

they just they're in the middle of it

and they just keep doing what they're

doing and i think it's also uh the

culture that they're involved people

imitate their atmosphere right i think

if going back to politicians

one of the things that um

got uh

revealed when this whole nancy pelosi

thing happened when they started looking

at the insane amount of money that she's

made from insider trading they started

looking at all of congress

and

it's across the board yeah i mean

republican democrat they are all dipping

their toes into those waters a bunch of

them sold stocks like right before the

pandemic yeah

yeah yeah they know they knew a lot of

what was going on like in terms of like

the adoption of electric vehicles by the

entire united states

you know the the government they were

adopting evs and so before that bill

gets into play they dump a shitload of

money into tesla stock and then we

look how much money we made like they

knew these bills are going to be passed

there's a lot of that going on but

that's the culture that these people are

involved in that's are we the baddies

well or to go back to the hollywood

thing it's like it's not that hard to

not be a piece of [ __ ] but if everyone's

doing it you're like why not yeah they

there's people that i knew there were

agents that thought they had to act like

that they thought they had to be like

get my [ __ ] cup of coffee let's go

here they they wanted to be ari gold

like ari gold is a that's a real human

yeah i mean there really are people like

that yeah yeah there's a there's this

great book called what makes sammy run

and it's about this like uh jewish agent

like hollywood agent in like the 20s or

30s like endlessly ambitious and we're

talking about boxers like because he's

from the disenfranchised group then he

comes from the slums becomes the most

powerful man in hollywood sort of a

cautionary tale but the irony is as the

book

as society evolved like all the things

that it doesn't age that well because

you read it now and you're like yeah

that's what you do to get successful you

stab people in the back right like ari

gold is the hero of entourage right not

a garbage horrible boss right right

yeah well he's also like what people

aspire to be yeah that's the baller

that's the guy with the expensive watch

who drives the mercedes he's killing it

yeah he's out there killing it you know

you gotta crack eggs to make an omelet

yeah it's um i mean that obviously

we we have to look to that when we look

at horrific moments in history like um

like world war ii or like

genghis khan or like like any of these

horrific moments where things

are

so hard to imagine years later like when

we're looking back uh on

the inquisition and looking back on the

horrific methods of torture that they

used on people that were infidels like

who the [ __ ] are these people and how

could they have done this yeah like i

was someone sent me this i'm gonna send

you this jamie because this is

really fascinating this is from i forgot

what year this is

but um yeah i'll send you this jamie

um

this was a uh

he was a judge

uh that took a bribe in court

um his name is uh

systemness

oh i saw this on reddit yeah look at

this

it was from reddit yeah read it today i

learned uh he was a judge that took a

bribe in court and passed an unfair

sentence he was skinned alive and his

leather was used to make a chair that

his son had to sit in as his son was

appointed the next judge

there was a later painting made

depicting him being skinned alive and

then there's the painting that shows

they're just stripping his skin off

while he's alive look how stoic he looks

he just

cut me open we don't give ourselves

enough credit for the progress that

we've made collectively as a society

away from cruelty yeah right like at the

founding obviously the founders were

horrible hypocrites you know owning

slaves but the idea that like cruel and

unusual punishment should not be a thing

yeah um that that that was an

advancement like not that long ago not

that long ago

and even the ones they they said were

not cruel were still super cruel that

we've made a lot of like i mean

they in world war ii

they still executed shoulders by firing

squad

and just like how horrendous or heinous

that you would just make a bunch of your

troops just murder another one of your

members of

for doing something wrong you know what

i mean and that the progress away from

cruelty is a huge improvement and so

when we watch something like george

floyd or or

the video of armad aubry and you're just

it you're just like that's the worst

thing i've ever seen that does say

something about the progress we've made

as a society because not that long ago

people would have seen that many many

times yeah and even though horrific

things still do exist it doesn't

minimize them by recognizing that the

trend is towards people being kinder and

better to each other if you like what

you're patient like stephen pinker is a

great example like his work has been

like roundly criticized by woke people

because they're saying you're you're

spending too much time concentrating on

how much better things are instead of

how much better we need to get yeah that

are so but he's like that's i'm i study

trends yeah i'm studying the progress of

the human race and over time things have

gotten far safer and

you know people are far kinder and

they're far more educated than ever

before well the problem is if you just

look at the trend you're like this is

just happening you're missing the point

like you know there's that quote like uh

the arc of history is long but it bends

towards justice

that's because people are pulling it

that way yes like martin luther king

pulls it that way frederick douglass

pulls it that way abraham lincoln pulls

it that way the harvey milk right like

the activists that were by the way

widely hated in their own time

criticized often assassinated etc like

they

they were pulling it that way it could

have just kept going in the horrible

direction that it was things also can

get worse

um

but the in you have to accept that you

as the individual or we collectively at

a moment in time have the ability to

change the direction yes

yeah and we collectively have

an ability to communicate these ideas

that is

unprecedented we've

there's never been a time in history

where we could communicate these ideas

better and there's going to get a lot of

fog and a lot of noise and a lot of the

background noise and a lot of people

trying to take advantage of this

opportunity because of the fact that

there's

unprecedented models of communication

but

overall the ability to change things for

the better has

never been

it's we've never had a situation that is

is this positive that we have i mean

yeah the economy sucks yeah gas is too

high yeah there's

potential for a nuclear war with russia

but just our understanding of the

inequalities of life our understanding

of what could be possible

understanding of the positive aspects of

being a good person they've never been

more highlighted

well yeah and it's kind of weird like we

so focus on misinformation like all this

bad information is spreading out in the

world and it's true like there is

misinformation but it's also equally

true that these same tools the tools are

neutral yeah right let's say they have

biases but the tools are are are the

tools well you know what a great example

that is the early books

the early books were mostly about

witchcraft and how to spot witches

i didn't know that until like a few

years ago like not even a few months ago

i should say somebody was explaining to

me that the early books that were first

printed the vast majority of them were

it wasn't like you know how to learn

french it was like how to spot a witch

the first self-help book was published

in the

1870s

really like just think about how many so

it's like the printing press is the

1400s right 14 1500 so let's say 500

years ish

uh or wait no 400 years

and

someone was like what if we use this

book to help people get better

as a person and it doesn't have to be

because god said so

like i wonder how many charlatans there

were out there back then how many fake

help guys

fake self-help guys napoleon hill who

wrote that book think and grow rich he

was a literal con man really yeah it's

crazy no kidding there's a huge daily

beast article about it's nuts

i have a friend of mine who's a jiu

jitsu black belt who reads that [ __ ]

before he does anything it's a lot of

people's favorite book but they sort of

i mean i'm not saying the book doesn't

have value if it made you better as a

person by all means but there's a dark

story there so who wrote the article

about him being a comment i think it's

the daily beast or it might have been it

was a different site what was his deal

uh you pull it up i don't have it

memorized but it's like when you read it

you're just like whenever someone's like

that's my favorite book i'm like read

this piece

[Laughter]

but maybe people would say that about me

i mean my first book was about media

manipulation but uh you know people

change wow write them out but you're a

young man

you know it's uh

the the self-help genre is a very

troubled genre

because there's a lot of people engaged

in self-help that really haven't done

[ __ ] that's true and also it's like

do you want to tell people what they

need to hear or what they want to hear

they want to hear you just have to

manifest it into reality just think

about it right i mean think and grow

rich right like

that's what i think that's his genius is

he's like yeah i'll just tell people

just it's just a matter of your thinking

yeah i've had to explain that to many

people that want to talk about the

secret they want to talk about the law

of attraction like hey hey you're only

hearing from the people that are

successful like there's a lot involved

if you want to talk to a successful

person how did you make it well i

visualized it and i kept working okay

yes they they but the second part is the

most important they kept working but

it's also the visualization is an aspect

of success you can't just

succeed and make it to the point where

you're running some gigantic business

without some sort of a vision but it

doesn't mean that vision created it

there's so many people out there that

try to manifest something and it never

takes place

yeah well i know you quoted this once

but marcus realized this thing about how

your life is died by the color of your

thoughts it's true if you think it's

impossible it's impossible for you yes

right if you think you're not capable of

it if you think it's unfair it that that

is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that

sense but it doesn't mean that if you

think it's possible it's going to happen

like if you visualize yourself beating

mike tyson he's still going to [ __ ] you

up yeah but yes but if you visualize

that you're capable of making a better

life for yourself and then you [ __ ]

work at it every day

chances are barring some insane

unforeseen

unfair circumstances you will likely get

there you will likely get there and it

is a thing that other people have done

and you can model yourself based on what

they've accomplished and if you put in

the kind of effort that they've done and

the kind of thinking that they've put in

you can accomplish great things it is

possible for almost everyone to achieve

something beyond your imagination you

you can get there in incremental steps

and each incremental step will open and

broaden your possibilities well and it

also if you allow a long enough timeline

it becomes a near certainty yeah right

so like when the obstacles away came out

it did okay i didn't hit any bestseller

list the publisher was sort of like you

know and they'd offered me like half

what i'd gotten for my first book

and because i didn't think an obscure

school of ancient philosophy like that's

not going to work

but you know six years later in number

one you know now it sold like you know

almost a million and a half copies like

wow now but that's because

you know that's like a hundred thousand

copies a year a little more you know

what i mean like over time steadily it

works

you know well it works because it's

effective yeah like if you read the book

the what's interesting to me about the

book is it's clearly

you have absorbed yourself into the

writing of the stoics and you

relay it in a manner that's very

absorbable and applicable and that's why

it's so effective and when i put it up

on instagram my god i got so many

messages from friends i'd say i [ __ ]

love that book the book's incredible has

helped me so much so if you know through

this fascination that you have with this

philosophy i mean you've generated a lot

of really positive thoughts for people

and you've really got people moving and

in generally a good direction because

you give them these quotes in this book

you know

all these the different philosophers

that you quote and all the different

scenarios and

where you apply these these thoughts

those things they they stay with you and

they're like little sparks that you have

in your head that you can blow on those

embers and start a fire with

yeah yeah that's a good way to think

about it the funny thing so i got

offered to write a book about stoic

philosophy because i'd written an

article about it that was popular online

in like 2008 2009 and i went to robert

and i was like this is my dream this is

what i want to do should i do it and he

was like i don't think you're ready yet

and that was like the hardest thing in

the world to hear but he was totally

right i turned it down and i waited like

almost five more years and then i think

i mean i if i wrote it today i'd be more

ready but like there's always a point of

over preparation what did robert want

you to do what did he what was his uh i

think he was like look you're getting

better every day as a writer so you're

going to only write this book one time

so you should every day that you wait

you'll be more prepared you'll be

better for it and he's like also like he

was like the difference between like 21

and 27

is a transformative amount of life

experience it's still pretty young to

have written that book but like i i went

through some [ __ ] in that period right

and so

that the book is more relatable

because of my experiences you know like

if i just was i would have just been

speculating about the ideas if i wrote

it when i was 21 i think well luckily

we're talking about stoicism and you

literally are preaching the philosophy

in your books

that

any sort of negative

happenstance or any you know anything

that sets you back will probably

ultimately be to your benefit yes so you

had to practice what you preached

totally totally and then you know when

it came out and it sold enough copies to

hit the list and it wasn't there

you're like oh is this something i

control or not like am i proud of the

book or not do i think it's going to

work or not and then you should i mean

oh it happens all the time like you you

can sell enough copies objectively to

qualify for like the new york times list

and then you're just not there they it's

an editorial list it's really yeah of

course and there's so but wait a minute

so when they say new york times best

seller

so that's not necessarily the best

sellers that they can they can eliminate

you from the list like if they don't

like what you're we're talking about for

sure and

one one to eliminate outright fraud like

what if a billionaire just bought a

hundred thousand copies of their own

book like no one would think that should

be included i actually know a guy who

did that it's there's a company that

helps you do it um

but

like if you look at the fine print in

the new york times list and i know this

now that because i have a bookstore and

so we report to the list right you have

to send a report each week and you have

to flag like whether there's bulk copies

or other things but like

the list every week would be like

in advice how to miscellaneous the bible

would be the best-selling book every

every week right right so they or harry

potter would be the top of the fiction

like they they decide

uh they decide to filter stuff out they

even explicitly i wrote a book about

this a couple years ago but they

explicitly filter out what they call

perennial sellers which are books that

sell every year

a [ __ ] ton of copies because like

schools buy them or you know so so

there's a certain amount of filtering

but the big one for the best seller list

is like you know how many your copies

were sold on amazon how many of your

copies were sold uh independent

bookstores was it all in new york and la

and san francisco or did you sell a lot

of books in cincinnati right like they

they're trying to it's not that they're

putting their thumb on the scale but

they are trying well they are putting

their summons there's certain books that

don't appear for suspicious reasons

people allege but like they are trying

to create a

a more robust definition of what best

seller is

not just objectively who sold the most

because

that could be

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unfair well it's okay

because of those reasonable examples

that you use but not because of the ones

where they just decide that your subject

matter is problematic so do you think

that they decided that stoicism is

problematic no i just think like

i think it was like maybe borderline or

they just weren't even thinking about it

they weren't tracking it or

you know because my first book was about

media and the corruption of media

i imagine

there was some reticence to

recognize me did it ever make it onto

the list uh i don't know if it's ever

made the new york times it's hit number

one on wall street journal which is a d

which is a different set of criteria the

first time

i did 10 books before i hit the new york

times list and it was at number one so

that's unlikely that i never qualified

for any other spot for any of my books

until suddenly in 2019

which book uh stillness is the key so

that one hit number one that one debuted

at number one so they decided uh [ __ ] it

i think i think it was an overwhelm like

it the the number of copies was

overwhelming that it would have been

like egregious to not be included

interesting that's interesting

yeah how gross

well and the decision of what list

you're on so are you advice how to

miscellaneous

or are you non-fiction general

non-fiction like the general non-fiction

list like maybe the 10 spot is like 5

000 books

but the

10 spot on the advice how to

miscellaneous because you're competing

against the guinness book of world

records and blah blah blah is

uh

you know could be 15 000 copies like

malcolm gladwell because he's sort of

part who i love uh is a super awesome

guy and i think one of the greatest in

the world at what he does

his books are considered non-fiction

but that's i think because he's a new

yorker writer right and he's part of

that establishment yes and so that's an

incredible gift to him in the sense that

he's ranked in a category that is less

competitive a good example that is

cameron haynes yeah he does book and

door should have been in non-fiction it

would have been number one but instead

they put it in how-to

and it was highly ranked but it wasn't

number one yeah they

basically anything that isn't sort of a

fancy

like new yorky style thing

is going to

be relegated to advice how to

miscellaneous the crazy thing is

for advice how to like that's not what

he's doing he's telling his life story

it's not how to at all it is a

non-fiction book about his life story

yeah i mean i did a book called lives of

the stokes which is like a set of

biographies of all of the main stoics

it's there's not any how-to it or advice

in it and it was put on that list

instead of the non-fiction list yeah

that's so weird

but you can't it's like all the games

are rigged you know what i mean the

nobel prize is [ __ ] [ __ ] like all

of these

like

all of these organizations these

gatekeeping organizations are inherently

about keeping people some people out and

keeping some people in

and so marcus says uh in meditations

that ambition is tying your well-being

to what other people say or do

insanity is tying it to your own actions

so you have to get to a place where

you're like i'm good in any of the

recognition or respect or ranking

is extra yeah i think that has to be the

case when it comes to selling books

right because the most important thing

you have achieved is that your books

resonate with the people who read them

and they enrich people's lives and

that's what she meant set out to do he

didn't set out to i don't know how many

people are involved in curating the new

york times bestseller list but he didn't

set out to please those people you don't

even know who those [ __ ] are but some

people that is all they care about yeah

but well that's on them no no and it's

it's just it's the wrong thing to do

it's the wrong thing it's the wrong game

to play yeah yeah for sure but like

seeking recognition is always the wrong

thing yeah it's just especially when it

comes to awards

you know like

that those are you know

this podcast is one a gang of awards

um and i just leave them places like my

kid found the i heart radio award and

she's like you [ __ ] won this she

didn't say [ __ ] she was 10. and i go

yeah yeah just put that over there

like i don't

that doesn't mean anything to me it's

just what means to think things to me is

did it did the podcast provide enjoyment

to the people that listen to it that's

all i'm trying to do right and if people

an award doesn't mean anything it's just

that's a small group of people there's

there can people people that decide it's

the worst podcast that's ever existed

does that mean it is no it just means

some people don't like it there's people

that don't like things i like i don't i

can't take into consideration what other

people like i can take into

consideration did i do my best and put

something out there that resonated with

a certain amount of people that's all

i'm trying to do there's a story about

jimmy carter who was not the best

president obviously but he was being

interviewed by admiral rickover who was

the head of america's nuclear navy

and jimmy carter like people don't see

him this way because maybe we think

about him as this old man but he was

like he went uh to the naval academy he

was ambitious successful uh like he was

driven to be like great from a very

early age and so he's being interviewed

he just graduated from the naval academy

it's like 48 49

and he wants to get on a nuclear sub

that's but that way to do it is this guy

admiral rickover decides who's one of

the unsung heroes of american history

that very few people know about

um

immigrant went through ellis island a

jewish guy his family flees persecution

helps us win the second world war and

then the cold war but anyways he's he's

interviewing jimmy carter it's like a

three-hour interview like this they were

kind of these like big long

discussions

and you know jimmy carter is like going

on and on about all his accomplishments

you know like here's what i did i got

this grade this grade and then um

rickover goes like how'd you finish in

their class at the naval academy and he

was like i was 56 out of 800.

and and uh carter thought he'd be like

oh wow that's great like you just

beaming with pride about it

and uh

rickover just looks at him and goes did

you always do your best

and then jimmy carter was going to be

like of course you know that's what you

say and then he thought about it he's

like you know i kind of coasted through

this class like i didn't always study

this like you know just and he was like

i'm going to be honest he's like no i

didn't always do my best

and then rickover looked at him and he

said why not and then he got up and left

the room

and that quit like what you control is

whether you did your best you don't

control how you rank in the class you

don't control whether you won this award

or the scholarship or

bestsellers you don't control any of

that you don't even really control

people like what you do right you only

control if you did your best and if you

were proud of it

that's a great metric

yeah did you leave anything on the table

on the table yeah hold anything back

right

yeah

yeah

that's the thing that haunts athletes

right

when they they examine their legacy

because that's the one thing

unless you're involved in organized

practice like certain sports

where you you're and even then there's

off season yeah what are you doing

during the off season yeah yeah certain

athletes are notorious for working

incredibly hard during the off season

and coming back better than ever whereas

other guys get fat

and you know people think it's funny

that they're laying around waiting to

come back

isn't that life though like like for for

sports like you have let's say 10 years

in your professional prime

but like we think we're so different

like because we have a longer amount of

time yeah but you don't like

and it's only in the light of the cancer

scare or

you know the cova diagon only the thing

that

shakes you out of that entitlement do

you go like oh no it could end at any

moment

and to take it for granted or to waste

it or leave something on the table is

the rejection of a

credible gift and an opportunity yeah

absolutely that's a great way to end

this all right um i write some books by

the way fantastic thank you very much

these are all yours uh no no no these

are books different i know because i

know you love uh

empire the summer moon yes so i tried to

pick some books that i think i got i

went through my story this morning i was

like these are books i don't think i

haven't heard you talk about that i

think people [ __ ] love okay all right

uh genghis khan in the making of the

modern world i know you don't like him

very much but i think it's a different

life

no i

i think you will see him in a different

way okay uh the tiger this book will rip

your [ __ ] face off what's this this

book is about a guy in siberia sent to

hunt down a man-eating tiger oh

and it's

literally i know it's one of the best

non-fiction books i've ever been because

i've heard from so many people about it

and then have you read shadow divers no

it's about these guys diving he's like

christmas this is this is my life man

they're diving a sunk german u-boat off

the coast of new jersey that they

discover

oh wow and it's like all about the

thrill of like diving

and discovering something and the

mastery of this thing that could kill

you at any moment

have you read the black count no okay

this is you know the you know the count

of monte cristo yeah the famous story

okay alexander dumas his father

was one of napoleon's generals

but he's black

oh wow and his real life story is

[ __ ]

incredible this one the pulitzer prize

speaking of prizes it definitely

deserved to it's amazing wow all right

river of doubt you read this no i can't

believe how many books you brought i i

figure you're going to get them all on

audio but i'll give them to you okay so

after theodore roosevelt is president he

goes to africa he kills bunch of animals

the greatest hunting trip of all time

but this book is about he explores like

a 500-mile

river in the amazon the first time a

human being has ever done this and

he

almost dies he takes his son his son

with him he almost dies actually if you

look up

if you look up theodore roosevelt

epictetus

he brings a copy of epictetus with him

on this journey and you did you ever go

to his birthplace in new york city no

next time you go you can go to the house

that he grew up in you can see he

maintain it yeah it's still there how

big is it it's just like a townhouse in

new york city oh wow and you can see the

gym where he

worked out his asthma and became like

the dude that he became

but if you if you look up uh you can see

he took a copy of epictetus with him

that he wrote as he was near death he's

one of the main reasons why we have

public land in this country yeah we have

our wildlife preservation system that we

have in place he also saves uh

professional football

he gets them to wear helmets people

would die playing football at harvard

and he loved sports

and he

comes together forms the ncaa

and institutes safety wow uh this is a

book about yeah so if you click on

see the word sign this is like the

engraved copy that he takes with him oh

wow

but that book's amazing

what happened there jimmy

[Laughter]

zoom's just automatic

wicked river the mississippi when it

last ran wild

the mississippi is [ __ ] crazy i have

more i have even more can i keep going

okay all right uh i know your daughters

are into sports so this is a book i give

to every

college coach that i talk to it's about

this she's one of the great

cross-country runners of her generation

she commits suicide she runs off a

parking garage

and so it's about mental health and

pressure

and

the

i think it's any person who has a kid

who is good at sports and wants to make

something of it and kate fagan's an

incredible writer uh should read that

book it's like a cautionary sort of

warning and about what social media does

to kids

uh actually i did this book with chris

bosh he lives here he might like that

and then

all right last i have two two more

this is the best history of texas it's

[ __ ] epic the best history of texas

you have if if you if you

i would listen to it you could listen to

that one but seriously it is also

incredible okay and then all right last

one this is my favorite translation of

meditations i don't know if this is the

one you read but

i would read this

and then i know you like uh steven

pressfield this is the first edition

of the war of art dude that he signed

wow all right that i read that book

every time i start

a project it's a great book dude it's

one of the great the resistance

it it's so perfectly outlined that's

what that's what it is that's what

you're at war with in every thing

thank you very much ryan question great

to meet you i really appreciate your

work appreciate everything and i really

enjoyed this conversation thank you all

right bye everybody

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