Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) All right, and we're up.

   4. RHRyan Holiday0:14

      Sweet.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Hello, Brian.

   6. RHRyan Holiday0:15

      Hi.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Nice to meet you, man.

   8. RHRyan Holiday0:16

      Yeah, good to meet-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Happy birthday.

   10. RHRyan Holiday0:17

       Thank you.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:18

       How old are you?

   12. RHRyan Holiday0:18

       I'm 35.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:19

       Wow. Do you feel 35?

   14. RHRyan Holiday0:21

       Uh, I feel like after like late 20s, I just kind of like l- I got to check in every year to be like, "Wait, how old am I again?" You know?

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:28

       Yeah.

   16. RHRyan Holiday0:28

       So I, not really, I guess.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       It's a strange time, 35.

   18. RHRyan Holiday0:33

       Why?

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       'Cause you're kind of middle-aged.

   20. RHRyan Holiday0:37

       Yes.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       But you're young.

   22. RHRyan Holiday0:39

       Well, I was like successful pretty early in my life, so like I was always like the kid. You know? Like I, I dropped out of college at 19, and so ... And I, I worked in Hollywood, and so I was always like the, the youngest person in the room by far.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RHRyan Holiday0:52

       And so like I- that's ... It's not been part of my identity, but I like felt it. You know?

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       What'd you do in Hollywood?

   26. RHRyan Holiday0:58

       Well, I dropped out of college. I worked o- 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 wanna know ... So-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Sure.

   28. RHRyan Holiday1:10

       So I (laughs) ...

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       (laughs)

   30. RHRyan Holiday1:12

       Uh, I was working for ... One of the reasons it didn't work out, it didn't work out for ... 'cause it was a horrible life and I don't know why anyone would want to have it. But I was working a- at this desk as an assistant and, uh, I was also a research assistant for Robert Greene, uh, The 48 Laws of Power guy.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      everyone gives in to the temptations of being in that position.

   2. RHRyan Holiday15:05

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:06

      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.

   4. RHRyan Holiday15:20

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:29

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RHRyan Holiday15:30

      And, and purple cl- purple, if... Now, we're just like, "The Color Purple." To get purple, it was this complicated process of different merchants. Actually, the founder of Stoicism was a merchant in Tyrian purple. But like, they, slaves would smash up sea slugs or sea snails, dry them on rocks, and this dust would eventually become, like, the source of purple.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:52

      Oh.

   8. RHRyan Holiday15:53

      So and he's like, "Don't be stained purple." So he was act-... 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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:09

      That was, that was the character in Gladiator, right? He wa- wasn't that Marcus Aurelius? Was it based on him roughly? Loosely?

   10. RHRyan Holiday16:18

       Well, it's a, it's, I think, one of the great movies of all time. But-

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:20

       Great movie.

   12. RHRyan Holiday16:21

       He-

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:22

       With Peter O'Toole?

   14. RHRyan Holiday16:23

       Yes. He's the one that Joaquin Phoenix's character kills at the beginning.

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:27

       Right.

   16. RHRyan Holiday16:27

       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 Aurelius' son was in real life.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       Really?

   18. RHRyan Holiday16:43

       He really did get killed by a gladiator. He was a psychopath. Uh, immediately destroys all of Marcus' work. It's one of the tragedies of Marcus that he has a, like a POS son.

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:58

       Uh, I've always wondered, like, how that, that did seem like it's Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Like, that is a very common thing.

   20. RHRyan Holiday17:06

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       Why, why is that, like, i- it's an archetype?

   22. RHRyan Holiday17:12

       It is. Uh, there's another great Eastern emperor, uh, Cyrus the Great, and he has a shitty son, too. Um, you know, it doesn't look like Queen Elizabeth's kids were that great.

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:23

       Yeah.

   24. RHRyan Holiday17:23

       Uh, but I th- 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' father was not emperor. So th- there's, there's, uh, what they call the five good emperors. So it's basically, in all of Roman history, there's, like, five good emperors. And they happen in a row. And they happen in a row because each one does not have a male heir. So they don't have sons. So in the Roman tradition, it was much more common to, if you didn't have a son, you would adopt a son. Um, and so the Emperor Hadrian is old, probably gay, does not have any children, and he adopts, uh, he, he sees something in Marcus that they're very... Marcus is young, but he sort of starts mentoring this boy. Uh, they, they actually go, like, hunting together. Like, he sees something special in this kid. Marcus' nickname was Verismus or the truthful one. Um, 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan18:41

       Mm.

   26. RHRyan Holiday18:42

       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've killed him, who could've 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.

   27. JRJoe Rogan19:14

       Oh, wow.

   28. RHRyan Holiday19:15

       It's fucking crazy.

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:16

       And his son, uh, what was the, the deal with the wife?

   30. RHRyan Holiday19:21

       Uh, Marcus' wife?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yes. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      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, uh, it, it, uh... That discipline is a part of the mind, right?

   2. RHRyan Holiday30:28

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:28

      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 reestablish yourself and come back feeling better. The, 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 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, and your body's 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.

   4. RHRyan Holiday31:32

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:32

      It's a mental thing in a different way than learning languages is. But it's e- equally as difficult.

   6. RHRyan Holiday31:39

      I think one, 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-"

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:48

      Yeah.

   8. RHRyan Holiday31:48

      "... tweed, you know, uh, jacket with pads on it," or whatever. Like, you'd think of a weakling. And in the ancient world, like, philosophers were people who did shit.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:57

      Right.

   10. RHRyan Holiday31:57

       Right? Like-

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:58

       They were warriors.

   12. RHRyan Holiday31:58

       They were warriors. They were kings. Like, Marcus Aurelius hunts. Uh, there's an early Stoic who's a distance runner, one who's a boxer. Like ... And what I love when you really read the Stoic texts is like, the, the, their metaphors are all sport. It's wrestling and fighting-

   13. JRJoe Rogan32:13

       Yeah.

   14. RHRyan Holiday32:13

       ... and running and hunting, because they did those things.

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:16

       Those things are difficult.

   16. RHRyan Holiday32:18

       Yes.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       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 'em. There's ... In America, unfortunately, there's this sort of, um, intellectual elitism. There's this, this mindset that some very smart people have, 'cause 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 gonna humiliate you and something's gonna make you feel bad. It's like, they c- 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.

   18. RHRyan Holiday33:07

       Yeah. Seneca says, uh, "We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind."

   19. JRJoe Rogan33:13

       Ooh.

   20. RHRyan Holiday33:14

       I like that.

   21. JRJoe Rogan33:15

       That's good. That's good.

   22. RHRyan Holiday33:17

       You're ... 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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan33:30

       Yes. This is what my friend John Joseph says. John Joseph is the lead singer of the Cro-Mags, but he's also done like a shit ton of Ironmans. Uh, he has got this great saying about doing an Ironman. He goes, he goes, "That's when your mind has to tell your body who the fuck's in charge." (laughs)

   24. RHRyan Holiday33:47

       I love that. Yeah. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan33:50

       It's like ... And you hear it with his heavy New York accent. It's beautiful. But that's what it is. It's like you, 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, 'cause it's like, it's a ... It's so much easier than it used to be but it's still hard.

   26. RHRyan Holiday34:13

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan34:13

       But it's just easy because I'm as- 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 m- modern day conversations, and it doesn't get emphasized in, in media, it doesn't get talked about. Uh, i- 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.

   28. RHRyan Holiday35:01

       Well, and I think it's a transferrable skill. So like-

   29. JRJoe Rogan35:03

       Yes.

   30. RHRyan Holiday35:03

       ... 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-"
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yes. …

   1. RHRyan Holiday45:00

      to keep ... It's like you're, you haven't been exposed to germs, so your immune system is now, like, more vulnerable.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:05

      Yes.

   3. RHRyan Holiday45:06

      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 noi- like, my heart is just like ...

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:23

      Yeah.

   5. RHRyan Holiday45:23

      'Cause 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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:39

      Yeah.

   7. RHRyan Holiday45:39

      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. It's too much.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:48

      Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think, uh, I think you're exactly right. My friends that love New York that I, um, m- close with, they're the most unhealthy people I know.

   9. RHRyan Holiday45:57

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:59

       It's, and one of 'em, who I love dearly, he's always saying, "It's the energy of this city. I love the energy of this city." I'm like, "Don't you have your own fucking energy?"

   11. RHRyan Holiday46:07

       Yeah. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:08

       Like, I don't need to hear people yelling at each other and honking horns. We were there at 3 o'clock in the morning getting falafels and I heard gunshots. I was like, "This is great. This is great." Bang, bang, bang. I'm like, "What the fuck are we doing, man?"

   13. RHRyan Holiday46:21

       Although, I get-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       Let's get outta here.

   15. RHRyan Holiday46:21

       ... I hear, I hear plenty of gunshots where I live. It's like-

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:23

       Different.

   17. RHRyan Holiday46:23

       If s- someone decided to play with their AR at, like, 6:00 in the morning, but-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:27

       Or kill a pig.

   19. RHRyan Holiday46:28

       Yes, yes. The, the one that I dislike the most is, like, when the, the tru- like, a dump truck or something goes through an intersection in New York and the back kinda lifts up and then it-

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:37

       Boom.

   21. RHRyan Holiday46:37

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       Yeah.

   23. RHRyan Holiday46:38

       That, I can feel that, like, in my chest.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:41

       (laughs)

   25. RHRyan Holiday46:41

       Ugh, I just cannot-

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:42

       Woo. 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, uh, like, there's a lack of appreciation for other human beings-

   27. RHRyan Holiday46:55

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:55

       ... because they're a burden. Instead of being a benefit, like a community-

   29. RHRyan Holiday46:58

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:58

       ... 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, uh, th- the value of people diminishes to the point where people become a liability instead of being an asset.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      television the same way we talk about social media today. And he compares television to the way they talked about the printing press.

   2. RHRyan Holiday1:00:08

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

      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.

   4. RHRyan Holiday1:00:23

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

      And this printing plu- press was some cheap, easy cop-out that was gonna make people stupid. Isn't that fascinating?

   6. RHRyan Holiday1:00:30

      Well, I love Amusing Ourselves to Death. There's another book called, um, The Image by Daniel Boorstin, which was written in the '60s, and he was talking about this thing called pseudo-events. Like, a press conference is a pseudo-event.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:41

      Mm.

   8. RHRyan Holiday1:00:41

      He, he was 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 it will get more attention, right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

      Right.

   10. RHRyan Holiday1:00:55

       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, 19- Anyways, Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle. You know The Jungle?

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:16

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RHRyan Holiday1:01:16

       The expose of the meatpacking industry?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       Yeah.

   14. RHRyan Holiday1:01:19

       He wrote an expose of the media industry in, like, the 1910s about how almost all the same things that were happening then are hap- Like, it, e- 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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:42

       Yes.

   16. RHRyan Holiday1:01:42

       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 things. And so, like, our world conforms around what the medium wants, right? Like, what the medium is good at.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:58

       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 then he's comparing it to the way Lincoln's debates were.

   18. RHRyan Holiday1:02:11

       Oh, yeah, they're like seven hours.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

       Yeah.

   20. RHRyan Holiday1:02:12

       People went home for lunch, and then came back.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:02:14

       Yeah, they told people to go home for dinner-

   22. RHRyan Holiday1:02:15

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:15

       ... and come back for four more hours. And so they would make these agreements like this man would speak for an hour and a half, and then, then he would have a rebuttal for a half an hour, and then he'd have his own speech for an hour, and then the other guy would rebut. And it's like they had these attention spans that it was based possibly on that there was no TikTok. 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 on- 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.

   24. RHRyan Holiday1:03:06

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:03:06

       It, 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.

   26. RHRyan Holiday1:03:29

       Well, the thing is, we don't always think of things as technology 'cause when you think of technology, you think of tech, right? We don't think, um... Like, a book is a piece of technology. It's a great piece of technology, right? Like, it's, uh... And, 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? It's... 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 po-, but podcasting is a medium that I think generally extends out, right? Like, it's not short.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:04:34

       Right.

   28. RHRyan Holiday1:04:34

       It, 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, uh, you know, two people talking or what... 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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:05:08

       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, um, platform, and then people will take out of context clips-

   30. RHRyan Holiday1:05:25

       Yeah.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:18:55

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      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 of 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-

   2. RHRyan Holiday1:15:18

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:18

      ... like I reached out to you, or-

   4. RHRyan Holiday1:15:19

      I can't believe you do it yourself. That's crazy.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

      I do it myself, yeah. Well, well, I have a guy, too. I ca- I have my friend, Matt. I- I have him contact people. But, um, i- so I'll schedule it on my phone.

   6. RHRyan Holiday1:15:31

      Wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:31

      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 did- where did he go? What's he- what?" Like, Charlie Walker was on the other day. Like, "What? He- four years, he bicycled through fucking Asia and Africa? Holy shit. Get that guy. He just got out of a Russian jail? Holy fuck. He wound up in Russia 'cause 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. "Fuck yeah, I want to talk to Snoop." It's that kind of a deal.

   8. RHRyan Holiday1:16:20

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:16:20

      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 fucking hint of disingenuous behavior, if there was a hint of bullshit, 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.

   10. RHRyan Holiday1:16:49

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:16:49

       But that's not. I- I d- only- I don't have to. I- it works. I- a- and I did it from the beginning, where I didn't think I was ever gonna make any money doing it, so I only did it for fun.

   12. RHRyan Holiday1:17:00

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:17:00

       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 s- promote it everywhere.

   14. RHRyan Holiday1:17:20

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:17:20

       You'd have to, like, go way out of your way and take ads out and pump a bunch o-... I've done none of that.

   16. RHRyan Holiday1:17:25

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:17:25

       I've literally, I've d- I don't even, 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.

   18. RHRyan Holiday1:17:35

       Well, that's what I like. I like Substacks that way, the idea that you're writing for an audience.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:39

       Yes.

   20. RHRyan Holiday1:17:39

       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 i- 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."

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:57

       I think the big risk today is someone like Substack decides to disempower you and to take away your platform, and that's a real issue.

   22. RHRyan Holiday1:18:06

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

       I mean, I know people that have been banned from PayPal. I know people that have- they- 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- that- where things have happened where someone has decided that they're gonna censor this person's positions on things.

   24. RHRyan Holiday1:18:25

       Yeah. But they call this audience capture, though, like, where you are...... 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:18:39

       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.

   26. RHRyan Holiday1:18:50

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:18:50

       That's a big one. And then they really lean into it and that becomes their thing. They just go after people-

Episode duration: 2:56:41