#90 – Ryan Holiday: Stillness, stoicism, and suffering less

1. 0:00 – 0:11

   Intro

   1. PAPeter Attia0:01

      [upbeat music]

2. 0:11 – 10:11

   Farm Life, Phones, and Artificial Silence

   1. PAPeter Attia0:11

      Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you wanna take your knowledge of this space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you wanna learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. [upbeat music] Our guest this week is Ryan Holiday. Ryan is the best-selling author of many books, including Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, his first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, which basically predicted the rise of fake news, The Conspiracy, and a number of other books about marketing, culture, the human condition. His most recent book, Stillness is the Key, came out recently, and while we talk about it quite a bit, it's actually not even the focus of our discussion. Instead, I think we talk more broadly about Ryan's influence, his work, the influence that stoic philosophy has had in his thinking, and, uh, obviously as it permeates into this book. We talk about anger, we talk about just a number of things that I think factor into the way I try to think about longevity more broadly than just living longer, but also this idea of suffering less. And if there's anything I've learned from Ryan, and I've learned a lot from Ryan, because as I mention in the podcast and I'll say it again now, his daily newsletter, the Daily Stoic, is one of the most important things that I look for in my inbox every morning. Being able to kind of go into a little bit more detail on that for me was great and, you know, I've been wanting to talk with Ryan for probably about a year and, you know, maybe six months ago when we sort of realized, well, the book was gonna be coming out, we decided this would be as good a time as any to do so. The book is fantastic. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Ryan Holiday. [upbeat music] Ryan, thanks so much for making time and for coming out here today.

   2. RHRyan Holiday2:16

      Of course.

   3. PAPeter Attia2:17

      Like I was saying to you a minute ago, I'm kind of bummed I didn't get to come to the farm.

   4. RHRyan Holiday2:20

      Yeah, so the problem with the farm is it's very wonderful, except we've got like a weird animal balance going right now. So it's like, what'll happen is like a cow will come and then the dogs will bark, and then that will make another bark, dog bark, and then it can be this whole cycle that takes many minutes to [laughs] settle back down. So it's great for writing, it's great for learning, it's not great for podcasts or interviews of any kind. [laughs] Also, the internet's no good. Well, I guess we're, we're not doing this live to anything, but, uh, that's the other big problem.

   5. PAPeter Attia2:52

      Talk to me about the, the joy of having lousy internet.

   6. RHRyan Holiday2:55

      Yeah, it's great. Weirdly, the crappier it is, the more expensive it is.

   7. PAPeter Attia2:59

      [laughs]

   8. RHRyan Holiday3:00

      Like, I have, I have fiber at my place in town and it's like 50 bucks a month for the fastest internet you can im- possibly imagine. And then in the country it's like 150 or 200 bucks a month for like barely Netflix streamable speeds, and it goes out, you know, [laughs] if it rains or it goes out all the time. But it's, uh, it's nice because that's not what you're there for. And, uh, we, [laughs] we have... I've, I've said this before, but we have like T-Mobile and, uh, it works great in Austin for cell phones, but out there it sucks. And AT&T and Sprint both work pretty good, but we purposely haven't switched just 'cause you get less phone calls. Like, if I have it at the house, like, 'cause you pick it up off the Wi-Fi, but if you walk too far from the house, you, you basically lose cell service, which is good 99.9% of the time. I'm sure there will be some time when I cut off my leg with a chainsaw and I desperately need to call for help and I can't, but, uh, otherwise it, it creates a sort of an artificial silence, which is great.

   9. PAPeter Attia4:00

      Yeah, it's hard to believe that 20 years ago, the... maybe a bit longer, but, but directionally 20 years ago, the idea that we would have had cell phones with us 24/7 seemed kind of foreign. Certainly 30 years ago, completely a foreign idea.

   10. RHRyan Holiday4:14

       Yeah.

   11. PAPeter Attia4:14

       So from a relative, you know, standpoint of our existence on this planet, this notion of being tethered to that type of device is basically unbeknownst to our DNA.

   12. RHRyan Holiday4:24

       Yeah. Or 20, 30 years ago, maybe you would have a cell phone, but you weren't getting called on it all the time. So it was like... Like, I remember when I got my first... I got a BlackBerry when I got my first job in Hollywood, and it was great because now I didn't feel like I had to rush home because there might be emails waiting for me. It gave me some f- more freedom, and then increasingly that freedom turned into now I all... You know, you know what I mean? Like-

   13. PAPeter Attia4:49

       Oh, yeah

   14. RHRyan Holiday4:50

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

   15. PAPeter Attia5:25

       That's right. Yeah. It's, it's a min-max problem that just missed its optimization point, I think. At least if you were optimizing for our lack of misery.

   16. RHRyan Holiday5:33

       Yeah. Yes.

   17. PAPeter Attia5:34

       We still have more to gain on the max if the objective is, you know, making money for the companies that produce things like that. Now, you know, I read something that you wrote and I, I got it. So, you know, I've been following you for so long, Ryan. I've read so much of your stuff that at this point I can no longer remember, was this in a Daily Stoic one day? Was this in this newsletter?

   18. RHRyan Holiday5:55

       Sure.

   19. PAPeter Attia5:55

       Was this in this book? [laughs] So I apologize in advance that I'm not even gonna try to reference for the, for the listener where this came up. But you talked about the sort of harsh realities of, of living on a farm and We don't live on a farm, but, you know, we've got our chickens, we've got our garden, we've got all that kind of stuff. And I remember the first time one of our chickens got killed by what turned out to be a bobcat at the time. We, we-- It took, it took me a while to figure out if... I assumed it was a raccoon or a coyote. Man, it was super upsetting. And, and more upsetting than you'd think you'd be upset over a chicken, right? Like, you're like-

   20. RHRyan Holiday6:25

       Oh, true

   21. PAPeter Attia6:25

       ... Come on, they're chickens. They're, you know... How can you, you know? It's not like it's one of your kids or something.

   22. RHRyan Holiday6:29

       [laughs] Someone asked me not that long ago, they were like, "What is the m- strangest or most surprising thing about a farm?" And I was like, "The, there's a lot of death." Like, just overall, a lot of death. Chickens die. Chickens are, I-- Weirdly, I think chickens are the hardest animal to have because they're the most defenseless and evolutionarily, like, the most pointless, and pretty much everything is a predator to chickens, like, including other chickens.

   23. PAPeter Attia6:53

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RHRyan Holiday6:54

       We had chickens when we were more on the east side here in Austin, and I remember I met my neighbor 'cause I had to go over and say, "Hey, a raccoon grabbed one of my chickens, ripped its head off, and then left its carcass on your roof. You know, I need to go get this," right? So it just familiarizes you with death in a, in a, in a way that I think human beings used to be a lot more familiar with because, like, your grandparents would die in your house, you know? Or your wife would die of childbirth in your house, or you would die being killed by Native Americans in your house, you know? Like, like we were much more familiar with death. Life was more brutal and violent, but it was also more present, you know? When we first got our farm, we bought this goose, and we had this goose and it was super sweet and nice. It would follow you everywhere. We played with it. And I remember I was sitting in my office watching it and, and I watched it get attacked by something in our lake, either a snake or, um, I think m-maybe a snapping turtle or something, and it... So it waddled back up onto the thing and it was, like, gutted. And, uh, we, you know, we hadn't lived there that long [laughs] and so we rushed to an emergency vet. We paid, like, $300 to get this goose, [laughs] you know, that cost, you know, eight bucks or whatever, that had no purpose for the farm whatsoever. But it is what you do with pets, and so we had it all stitched up and then, um, and then we had some other goose, or geese I guess, but, uh, nursed it back to health. And then, you know, a couple months later, like, a dog killed it. Some-- One, one of the neighbor's dog's just like [snap] that, gone. You're like, okay, one, that was pretty ridiculous that we paid $300 to have this thing stitched back up. But I thought it was also interesting the, the other geese, like, they just didn't even care. Like, like it was just like, "We're..." What is it, a gaggle? "We're a gaggle, and there were five of us, and now there's four of us." Do you know what I mean? Like, there, it wasn't this, like, elaborate mourning thing. [laughs]

   25. PAPeter Attia8:49

       Well, my daughter asked about this, right? After-- 'Cause all the, all our chickens have names.

   26. RHRyan Holiday8:54

       Yeah.

   27. PAPeter Attia8:54

       And I forget the first one that bit the dust, but there, we've lost a couple of them. But whatever the first one was, I think it was Gogo was the first one. And I mean, and it was really sort of tender to watch this, but you could tell, like, she was devastated, but she was also very sad for the other ones.

   28. RHRyan Holiday9:10

       Yeah.

   29. PAPeter Attia9:10

       She was like, "Well, what do you think Sarah and Ginger and so and so think? Like, do you think they're afraid at night now?"

   30. RHRyan Holiday9:17

       Yeah.
3. 10:11 – 15:45

   Familiarity with Death and the Stoic View of Time

   1. PAPeter Attia10:11

      What do you think that that's robbed us of? What do you think our sterile environment of not having the concerns you've described... Now, that's not true, of course, for our species across the whole. There are plenty... I interviewed a, an amazing doctor who is the only doctor that serves a million people in South Sudan, and they get bombed by their government every couple of weeks or months, and every time it happens, people are getting killed, and he has to, you know, put bodies back together. But if you're living here in the United States, for the most part, you've become insulated from that. There's lots of good that has come from that.

   2. RHRyan Holiday10:46

      Sure, yeah.

   3. PAPeter Attia10:46

      What do you think is the most negative aspect of that?

   4. RHRyan Holiday10:48

      You begin to assume that you have unlimited amounts of time or that you're in control of your existence, right? So y-you look at the actuary tables and it's like, oh, we're living longer on average, but we forget that we're individuals, right? So the average means nothing to you, [laughs] right? And even if it did, even if you were g-given the genetics and you've taken care of yourself in such a way that you have the cha- you know, you're likely to... Let's say, like, it's all preordained in the biological sense that, like, I'm gonna be 78, you're gonna be 112 or whatever it is, but, like, I could s-

   5. PAPeter Attia11:23

      I appreciate your confidence.

   6. RHRyan Holiday11:24

      Of course. I could still get hit by a bus. A war could break out tomorrow. I could, you know, I could still have an allergic reaction to something. So, so I think w-we have this sense of unlimited time that we take from it, and we, we just believe we're much more in control of our existences than we already are, so there's, like, a form of arrogance there. That's the biggest one. And, you know, Seneca talks a lot about how we're really tight-fisted over the things that don't matter, which would be, like, money, property, stuff, things you can get more of, and then time we're the most generous with. And I think that is rooted in the sense that all we think about are old people. We don't even think about the people that died because they're not around. So you just assume... Like, I even think about this with, like, war. I think when we think about wars We don't think about the people we-- Like my grandfather fought in World War II. So when I think about World War II, I think about it being really bad and horrible, but you come out the other side, right? I don't think about the people who got shot before the boats, but, like as soon as they, they put down the-

   7. PAPeter Attia12:31

      Right

   8. RHRyan Holiday12:31

      ... the door on the landing craft. I don't think about that guy. And, and so there's this weird survivorship bias that I think our lack of familiarity with death exposes us to, and that's why we're so shocked when it does happen.

   9. PAPeter Attia12:44

      Do you think it's even deeper than that? Which is in addition to everything you've said, let's assume that not only do you, do you have the biologic track to get you to seventy-eight, but let's assume you are guaranteed to get to seventy-eight.

   10. RHRyan Holiday12:56

       Yeah. Sure.

   11. PAPeter Attia12:57

       So somehow we've built a cocoon around you that no bus can hit you. No, you know, no peanut can get lodged in your throat or give you an allergy. Isn't the other issue potentially that we are not in the moment that we're in anyway-

   12. RHRyan Holiday13:11

       Yeah

   13. PAPeter Attia13:11

       ... because we have this view of infinite time? And so in other words, there's sort of a lack of quality in our life beyond just quantity. Is that possible?

   14. RHRyan Holiday13:21

       Yeah. So there's two really good insights from the Stoics I love. So one, Marcus Aurelius goes like, "Are you afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore?" He's like, "You should ask yourself that question all the time." So much we, we, we wanna live forever, we wanna think about, you know, we don't wanna think about death, we don't want anything bad to happen, but we don't really actually judge the quality of the existence that we have very much. I think there's a lot of people who are alive who are basically dead anyway, right? They're sleepwalking through life. So I think that's one part of it. The other interesting way, and let's say, 'cause I do think a lot of people go through and they go, "Oh, the average person is seventy-eight," they like lives to be seventy-eight or whatever. That's when-- So they go like, "Okay, I'll start thinking about death at sixty." Right? They're like, "I'm so far from that, it's way off in the future. I'm not gonna think about that." Just like when you're in elementary school, you're not thinking about graduating from college. You're like, "I gotta get through all this other crap first." The big flip for me, Seneca talks about we think that death is something that lays off in the future, but actually death is something that's happening right now. He was saying, so you don't think about it. In my case, I'm gonna live to be seventy-eight, so that means I have forty years left. You should think about it instead that I've already died thirty-odd years. Right? So he's like, the time that... He's like, "Most of our time already belongs to death. The time that has passed is dead." And I think that's a much more active, empowering, adaptive way to think about it. It's like, oh, I'm dying all the time, and I'm-- every second that passes, you don't get back. And then that allows you to decide how you're gonna spend that time or at least think about that you're, you are spending it. You were given a finite amount of time. Are you gonna spend it on whatever you're gonna spend it on? And then I think the other, the part where this gets tricky is people go, "Well, I have to do this, I have to do that," or this happens, this happens. Totally agree. But are you gonna spend time on top of that being mad that that happened or resenting that it happened that way or regretting that it... So, so people go, "Oh, I spent this, you know, I'm mad that I had to spend an hour unnecessarily in traffic." Sure, but now you're spending an extra minute and a half complaining about it, and which part of that do you control? So I think the death conversation gives you some perspective and some urgency and I think some prioritization and perspective on the day-to-day reality that's really valuable.

4. 15:45 – 23:12

   Stoicism 101 and the Cautionary Tale of Seneca

   1. PAPeter Attia15:45

      Now, I suspect a number of people listening here are not gonna be as familiar with stoic philosophy as you are. Probably very few are. But at least I've had the luxury of I read your newsletter every single day or Monday through Friday, and then there's a weekend summary, uh, The Daily Stoic. I can't, I can't plug it enough, so thank you very much for... I mean, it literally is the single most important thing I subscribe to in email, so thank you. Can we give people a little bit of Stoic 101 here? Can we explain who Marcus Aurelius was, who Seneca was, who Nero was? At least enough to give people a context of the world in which these people came from, how it shaped a philosophical field or bent-

   2. RHRyan Holiday16:22

      Yeah

   3. PAPeter Attia16:22

      ... and more importantly, why should anyone care about this today?

   4. RHRyan Holiday16:25

      Yeah. So it comes to be in Athens. The, the founder of Stoicism is this guy named Zeno. He was a Greek merchant who sort of suffers this terrible shipwreck. He loses everything, and he gets exposed to philosophy. Probably like a lot of people expected that philosophy was abstract, that was academic, was not things you use in real life. And he, he gets introduced to, to Socrates and cynicism and, and ends up becoming instead a student of, of his own school, which becomes Stoicism. And then Stoicism worms its way from these sort of interesting Greek figures into Rome as Rome takes over the world. And so this is Cicero and Julius Caesar and Cato. It sort of follows the rise of, of the Roman Empire, the, the fall of the Roman Republic, and then it- it's so integral into Roman life that it becomes not just philosophy of ordinary people and senators even, but you know, Marcus Aurelius is, becomes the Emperor of Rome, and he's this avid student of philosophy. So you-- It's fascinating. Basically, in, in two generations, so Epictetus is this former slave. Philosophy is banned from Rome, so he's like sort of sent into exile. But this slave is writing about philosophy, writing about how to achieve freedom when you're literally in chains, all of this. And then a generation later, Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, is a student of the same philosophy. So it's this really sort of open-ended, flexible philosophy for people in the real world doing real things and sort of built around... Depending on who I'm explaining to, I sort of go one of two tracks. I'll do both. So the, I would say the sort of central precept of Stoicism is basically this idea that we don't control the world around us, but we control how we respond. That's like, that's the main-- If, if I had to give you one thing, it'd just be like, you don't control other people, you control yourself. You don't control what happens, you control your reaction. So that's like the core of it. If I was gonna get a little bit more nuanced, I'd say sort of stoicism is built around four virtues, and the, the virtuous life is what they're aiming towards. And today when we hear virtue, we think like purity, chastity, r- some sort of religious component. To the stoics, the four virtues were courage, justice, temperance, so moderation, and then, and wisdom. So it's sort of truth, self-control, doing the right thing, having the stones to, to stand up for those things, right? That, that's sort of the... That to me is the essence of this philosophy. Tim Ferriss sort of refers to as an operating system. I think that's an interesting way to do it, although that might, that might be a bit reductive. I think it's more of a way of life than an operating system.

   5. PAPeter Attia19:13

      We've learned a lot from the stoics, and I, I always find, I, I think one of the things I appreciate about the way you write about them is they're still humans and they still make mistakes. I mean, you-

   6. RHRyan Holiday19:21

      Sure

   7. PAPeter Attia19:21

      ... I think a couple of days ago you were talking about, I mean, uh, Seneca's a great example, right? On the one hand, this remarkable example of stoic philosophy, and yet in the end, probably a little bit of his desire to be, you know, approved by Nero, his desire to be in his good graces effectively cost him his life.

   8. RHRyan Holiday19:39

      Well, not just cost him his life, but it, it may well have forced him to contradict all the things he believed in. And, and for people who have no idea what we're talking about-

   9. PAPeter Attia19:45

      Yeah, let's tell, tell the story ab- about that transition.

   10. RHRyan Holiday19:48

       Se- Seneca is this fascinating figure in that he's a Roman senator, he's a philosopher, he's a playwright, he's probably the smartest man in Rome at this time, and he's sent into exile by an emperor, uh, Claudius, who sort of doesn't like him. He sends him into exile. And so there Seneca is, he's sort of on this rock in the middle of nowhere, and he's writing his philosophy, and he's sort of like, for a philosophy all about adversity and perseverance, it's like this sort of perfect opportunity. And then he gets this call or, you know, a letter [laughs] I'm sure it was a messenger. But he basically gets summoned back to Rome. They said, "Look, you can come back, but your job is you have to be the tutor to this, this young boy." And that young boy turned out to be Nero. And so Seneca has this complic- like s- Nero was this very promising student, but was about to be dictator essentially. At the same time, you know, just a couple generations before, the, the stoics were the ones who were fighting to preserve the Roman Republican. Here is this guy as a sort of emperor's guy behind the throne. And, and so there's a little contradiction there. But really this promising student also has a dark side. It's almost like the plot of Breaking Bad, right? Like he starts good and towards the end he's writing speeches that help Nero justify why he murdered his mother. You know, it gets very dark very quickly. Seneca becomes extraordinarily wealthy for his association with Nero. Ultimately, he, it's sort of like, you know, there's some analogies I think to the Trump administration where you're like, "I don't like the guy, but I feel called to serve. How can I mitigate the impulses?" But it's, you know, it's a tough balance, right? And you're suddenly morally compromised in a bunch of ways that if you had your choice you wouldn't be, but you also have the choice to leave at any time. And so ultimately Seneca decides to leave towards the end, and Nero's like, "Uh, no. You don't get to leave. I decide when you leave." And so he, it's sort of this, he basically is caught up in this thing he can't get out of. Uh, he ultimately sort of goes into a second exile, but he knows he traded his life for whatever he got, you know? And at a certain, uh, eventually, you know, and sort of Nero sends his, his goons to, to call in the chit, and that's the end of Seneca. [laughs]

   11. PAPeter Attia22:04

       And it's interesting because Sena, of course, is ordered to kill himself rather than being killed, which was the way at, at the time. You can't help but wonder what would Seneca go back and tell himself on the day that he was called to come and be the tutor for this boy, knowing what he knew at the end of his life.

   12. RHRyan Holiday22:20

       Yeah, it's endlessly complicated and complex because maybe he said yes because he thought he could prevent this from happening. Or maybe he thought, like I, I was, again, I'm not being political, I think we just wanna look at analogies, but like John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, just gave these interesting comments where he was like, "Look, when I left, I, I told Trump like, 'You're gonna be in trouble because there are other people who are not gonna be able to tell you no the way that I can tell you no. And it's gonna be worse.'" He's like, "You'll be impeached if I leave." And you know, he ended up leaving, or Trump had him leave. But the, I think what Seneca probably told himself is like, I don't think he was in any denial about who Nero was, right? But I think he told himself, "Who will do a better job than me?"

   13. PAPeter Attia23:09

       It's interesting. It's a slippery slope.

   14. RHRyan Holiday23:11

       It's very complicated.

5. 23:12 – 26:44

   Moral Complexity: Cato, Caesar and Humility

   1. PAPeter Attia23:12

      It begs broader questions, right? Which is what are our obligations? Do we have a greater obligation to our own principles and our own personal beliefs? Do we have a greater obligation to society to maximize the impact we can have on others? Again, through the lens you just described, you, you could argue that Seneca did the best he could've.

   2. RHRyan Holiday23:28

      Mm-hmm.

   3. PAPeter Attia23:28

      Which was if, I mean, Nero was, was obviously a complete dictator. Were lives saved as a result of Seneca's association with him?

   4. RHRyan Holiday23:35

      Yeah, and there's another few stoics, it's, he's not the only one. There's other stoics who, who did actively conspire to assassinate Nero, right? And-

   5. PAPeter Attia23:43

      Which is ultimately what Nero accused Seneca of, right?

   6. RHRyan Holiday23:46

      Yeah. This is, this is what he, this is the pretext that he uses. And, and Se- I would say you sort of go back and forth on the evidence. The evidence is not conclusive that he did. In some ways it would be redeeming if he had, but I'm actually writing about this right now for a set of biographies I'm doing, but you only have to go back a, a generation or two with Julius Caesar to s- to find that it's never as clear cut as you think, right? Like Cato is the sort of stoic philosopher resistance leader at the time. He was so led by his principles that one read on it is that he drives Caesar to do what he did. Like, like Cato's inability to compromise, his insistence on principle and perfect solutions essentially grind the Roman political machine to a halt. And there's all, like there's this interesting story where, so Pompey returns from his conquests. This is before Julius Caesar and Pompey and Lepidus have joined together in the Triumvirate. But what happens is Pompey, seeing Cato, largely agreeing with Cato, says, "Well, we should come together." And, and in the way that one did back then, he proposed that he would marry Cato's nieces, or one of Cato's nieces. And Cato says, you know, "How dare you try to bribe me?" He's like, "I will not have my politics corrupted through sort of female influence." What he even meant, "I'm not gonna create this alliance."

   7. PAPeter Attia25:14

      Right.

   8. RHRyan Holiday25:14

      So Pompey's surprised by this, but then he looks at his options, and he ends up allying with Julius Caesar instead. And even at the time, the historians noted this. They were like, because of his purity, his inability to, to sort of make things work in a less than perfect scenario, Cato ends up bringing about exactly the thing that he was trying to prevent, right? He, instead of allying with the lesser of two evils, the two evils teamed up and destroyed the thing that ultimately Cato gives his life for. And what I think is really interesting is that then, not long after, another sort of inspired Stoic character takes up to assassinate Julius Caesar, thinking that this will be the end of it. And it's not the end of it. It sends Rome into a second civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people die and, and more people are destroyed and, and ultimately ensures that another emperor takes Caesar's place. So I think one of the things you end up taking as you study philosophy and history is just some humility about how complex these things are and how rarely they are as black and white as they seem, and that, that I think what Stoicism is really about is a sort of a personal code that lets you try to figure out what you should do in your individual situations and not, not be so concerned about what other people did or why or how or whether they were perfect.

6. 26:44 – 32:08

   From American Apparel to Writing for People Where They Are

   1. PAPeter Attia26:44

      I wasn't even planning to ask you about this because there's so many things I wanna ask you about, but I, I, I can't resist a slight detour in, in going down sort of your past and how you got here. I mean, you grew up in Sacramento. You go to college in LA. I remember the first time I heard about you was somehow after your time at American Apparel and how you'd done all this amazing stuff there. Can you pick up the story there? Like, what are you doing and how, at this point in time, have you already acquired a taste for Stoic philosophy?

   2. RHRyan Holiday27:11

      Yeah. I think I got introduced to philosophy early on in college. I'd read Epictetus. I read Marcus Aurelius. So sort of interested in it. It was definitely life-changing for me when I was exposed to it, but h- how much you're really getting at that age, you know, is hard to tell. So this is a detour from the conversation. It was a detour in my life. I basically went and I, um, I was a research assistant for a really great writer. I did marketing for a couple other writers, and then through sort of all those experiences, somehow ended up as the director of marketing at American Apparel, which was a, you know, a crazy, dysfunctional, chaotic, but ultimately really fascinating place to work for about six or seven years.

   3. PAPeter Attia27:51

      What year did you start there?

   4. RHRyan Holiday27:52

      '07 maybe, '08, something like that. So the company was already, you know, doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, but was sort of still early on in what its next phase was, which was as a retailer and a publicly traded company. And, you know, it turns out a lot of the same dynamics that have always been true in sort of upstart, ascendant sort of movements or businesses. It was just, it's a lot of money, a lot of temptations, a lot of conflict, a lot of politics, a lot of the human condition out on display. But there was also just, it was a really interesting, creative learning opportunity, and then I, you know, I got to, to do all sorts of cool stuff from a marketing perspective that got seen by millions and millions of people. And so I, I sort of learned how this might be how you write stuff, but this is where the rubber meets the road, where you sell it to people.

   5. PAPeter Attia28:40

      What was the most, or set of insights that surprised you most as you made that transition? I mean, obviously you're an, you're an excellent writer, but I have no delusions that people are born excellent writers. You've worked very hard at your craft. But how did you make that transition from being able to write to being able to market? 'Cause they're not really one and the same.

   6. RHRyan Holiday29:01

      No, I mean, they're both in the ideas business, but they're very different ways of communicating ideas. One of the things Dov was fond of talking about that I liked, and it's from-

   7. PAPeter Attia29:11

      Dov was the CEO.

   8. RHRyan Holiday29:12

      Yeah, it's, it, this is actually from Robert Greene, who wrote The 48 Laws of Power and was on the board of directors and how I ended up working there. But there's a thing in The 48 Laws of Power. He says, you know, like, "Never appeal to mercy or gratitude. Always appeal to self-interest." His premise was like, "Look, I wanna build a company that's ethical. I wanna build a company that, you know, pays its workers fairly, that, you know, isn't destroying the environment." But he's like, "No one will buy clothes for those reasons." Like, they ultimately buy clothes 'cause they look good in them, or they feel comfortable in them, or they're the right price or whatever, and that it's this sort of tension between the sort of pure expression and the realities of the market. And I think I, what, one of the things I definitely took from that as a writer is like, first off, it's not just what you wanna say. It's where that overlaps with the market, right? Like, the, the perfect book idea is, like, what you can't stop thinking about and what people can't stop saying they need a book about, right? That, when those overlap, you get something really powerful. But more, it's that you have to figure out where people are. Like- People are not thinking, "I really care about those workers slaving away in sweatshops." They're thinking, "I need a T-shirt for tonight." So you can deliver them a T-shirt that solves that first problem, but if all you're solving is the first problem, you're not gonna be successful. And so it, like [laughs] it's funny, like, uh, people, because of my marketing career, they'll be like, "Oh, you know, he's like a mercenary who's just in this for money," or, you know, "He's just in this to get rich." And it's like, dude, of all the things that I could apply my marketing skills to, it seems kind of preposterous that I would've chosen an obscure school of ancient philosophy as like my [laughs] my, where I was gonna cash in, right? Like, so it's more like I'm really interested in this stuff. This is what I find endlessly fascinating, and I could nerd out with you about stoicism all day.

   9. PAPeter Attia31:05

      We're having dinner tomorrow night, so-

   10. RHRyan Holiday31:07

       Yes

   11. PAPeter Attia31:07

       ... we're, we're gonna do just that. [laughs]

   12. RHRyan Holiday31:08

       Yeah, let's do it. But it's how can I find a way to channel that passion I have for this obscure, boring, complicated thing and give it to people who are busy, tired, overwhelmed, don't like books, don't like big ideas, can't pronounce any of the names? Do you know what I mean? Like, how do you... It, so it's, it's about finding a way to take your idea and delivering it to people who are not interested in your idea. I see this often. It's like, "Oh, you know, this is just pop philosophy" or, you know, "Oh, this is, he's simplifying. Oh, why don't you read the originals?" And it's like, I would love for people to read the originals, but guess what? They're not [laughs] right? They were not doing it, right? The 1% of people who are reading the originals, sure, don't read my books, right? That's not who I'm writing these for. I'm trying to reach people who, who wake up in the morning and think, "Philosophy, I don't have time for that." And I think you learn that if you get out of the artistic side of your profession a little bit.

7. 32:08 – 38:58

   Timeless Ideas, Backlist Thinking and the Power of Story

   1. PAPeter Attia32:08

      At the outset of that, you explained sort of that Venn diagram of things that are in your sweet spot, meaning you as the creator, the author, are thinking about this constantly, and if you're not doing that, you probably shouldn't be writing about it. And then secondly, the market says, "I want this."

   2. RHRyan Holiday32:23

      Yeah.

   3. PAPeter Attia32:23

      Those things rarely line up. Sometimes it's, you're thinking about this a lot, but you almost have to make a market. You almost have to create something that can be a bit more timeless. And, and again, you've either spoken about or written about this idea, which is you generally try to think about things that have a little bit, I don't wanna say they're timeless, 'cause maybe nothing is purely timeless, but they just have a longer tail to them. Was that a conscious decision, or is that some... Uh, meaning was that a conscious decision at the outset, or is that something that, looking back now nine books into your career, you can say, "No, that's actually... I, I got lucky in that I was always doing the right thing that was sort of creating content that was going to be relevant after a year after the book came out"?

   4. RHRyan Holiday33:05

      Yeah. In, in publishing, like there's the frontlist and the backlist, and all anyone cares about is the frontlist even though the backlist is, is not only where all the money is, is the only reason the industry can afford to buy frontlist titles, [laughs] right? 'Cause the vast majority of books never end up selling. They buy a celebrity cookbook for $2 million, and it sells 20 copies, right? Or, or the, you know, this big book flops. The reason this works is that The Great Gatsby is selling all these copies, and Good to Great is selling all these copies, and The 4-Hour Workweek is selling all these copies, and To Kill a Mockingbird. You know, it's the backlist, right? And so it, it was, I mean, it was certainly k- both convenient but also cultivated that I write about a philosophy that has endured about 2,500 years of diverse human experiences. Like, I think if you're sitting down and you're writing something that you just made up, the, the chances of it being relevant 2,500 years fr- from now are much slimmer. Like, I mean, it can happen. Maybe you're such a genius that you, you nailed it, but I'm not so convinced I have that ability. [laughs] So I, I do think about that. I would say almost every single one of my books is rooted in or inspired or in some way almost a rip-off of some very brilliant, sometimes obscure, sometimes popular title from the past. So even my, my first book was this book called Trust Me, I'm Lying, which is sort of a, an exposé of, of how the media works, and it was-

   5. PAPeter Attia34:38

      Which many people, by the way, have said in retrospect was sort of the canary in the coal mine talking about what would become fake news and, and this idea that you sort of called the shot on that one.

   6. RHRyan Holiday34:48

      Yeah, I mean, I wish, I wish subsequent events had proven me terribly wrong. [laughs] That would probably be a better world to live in, but yeah, I, I think I got some things right with that book. But ironically, that book was... A- as much as I'm talking about blogs and social media and tech and all these sort of things that were even more new th- then, my main model for that book was a book that Upton Sinclair published in 1913 called The Brass Check, and that book sold well when it came out. It's still in print today. It sold quite well. And so the, the point is I'm, I'm less interested in doing... Although I do wanna do things that haven't done, been done before, I'm still kinda thinking like, how can I, how can I take some risk off the table by modeling it on something that has some proven staying power?

   7. PAPeter Attia35:32

      That's a really interesting way to think about it [laughs] actually. I'd, I'd never considered that, the idea that you can at least de-risk the market appetite for something. And again, you still have to do a good job, but that's one fewer risk.

   8. RHRyan Holiday35:43

      Well, you think about Star Wars. Like on the one hand you can see Star Wars as this cutting edge sci-fi movie sort of inventing a new genre. It's using all these expensive technologies. It's breaking, you know, it's introducing like robots and all, this, all this sort of stuff and, and, and what it was. Or you can see it as a timeless story based on the hero's journey, right? I mean, 40 years later, people are still watching the movie. I'm not sure it's because of the cutting edge special effects. It's the story, right? And so-

   9. PAPeter Attia36:12

      [laughs]

   10. RHRyan Holiday36:12

       ... I think when you root things in some arc or story or deeper truth, you are taking some of that risk off the table. I just think that's a strategy not employed enough.

   11. PAPeter Attia36:26

       When did you first become aware of this idea that we all tell ourselves a story?

   12. RHRyan Holiday36:30

       Well, I mean, I think narrative is one of the things that makes us human. We've been telling stories in writing for 5,000 years. We've been telling sto- we have an oral epic poem tradition that's, you know, probably 10,000 years old. So it goes to the core of who we are, and I go back and forth. Sometimes I think it's very powerful, sometimes I think it's very dangerous. I, I've sort of written about it both ways. But at the end of the day, the core premise of my writing, also ripped off from someone, uh, this is what I got from Robert Greene, which is, like, you can tell people facts, or you can tell them stories that leave them with the conclusions that are the same as the facts that you would've told them, right? And so what I decided to do with, with Obstacle You Go And, and now Stillness, was not write a book that tells people what the Stoics say, but give people books that illustrate what the Stoics said or believed through story. And ironically, this is also often how the Stoics told stories or, you know, sort of made their points themselves. But it's just, I think, a far more compelling medium. It's far more memorable, it's far more enjoyable, and it's less preachy and condescending as well, I think.

   13. PAPeter Attia37:41

       What do you think is the downside of the story, the story we tell ourselves? Like, how, how does ... Again, you've, you've written about both sides of that, uh, or both ends of that book. What are the negative parts of this?

   14. RHRyan Holiday37:51

       So I think stories are a great way to learn lessons about other people. Stories are a bad way to think about your own life. So I just see lots of people who are very clearly believing that they live in a movie or a novel, you know, and they are going through life as if they are performing for an imaginary audience. And I think this is a very dangerous, egotistical, and often misleading sort of tendency, right? So I think this is honestly why social media has exploded in terms of, like, why it's such a valuable, lucrative, addictive business. It's that people want to ... Like, we all used to have an imaginary audience. We thought people cared about us a lot more than they did. And what Twitter allows you to do, or Instagram allows you to do, is, like, actually believe that your life is a movie. So we get caught up in this sort of performance, and this, this sort of comes at the expense of actually living in that moment.

   15. PAPeter Attia38:50

       I wanna come back to talking about stillness and being present, but I know that once we start there, we're not gonna leave it.

   16. RHRyan Holiday38:55

       Yeah. All right.

   17. PAPeter Attia38:55

       So there are a few other things I wanna talk about first.

   18. RHRyan Holiday38:57

       Yeah, yeah. Of course. By no means.

8. 38:58 – 52:45

   Enough vs. Craving: Can Greatness Come from Fullness?

   1. PAPeter Attia38:58

      You alluded to it just briefly at the outset of what you said there, this idea of having enough. You tell a story, again, I can't even recall where. I know it's not in ... Well, I shouldn't say that. Again, your worlds are all one to me now. But you tell the story about Kurt Vonnegut at a party.

   2. RHRyan Holiday39:11

      Yeah. That's in Stillness. Yeah.

   3. PAPeter Attia39:12

      That, is that in Stillness?

   4. RHRyan Holiday39:13

      Yes. Mm-hmm.

   5. PAPeter Attia39:14

      I guess I had such an early copy of it.

   6. RHRyan Holiday39:15

      Yeah.

   7. PAPeter Attia39:15

      'Cause the book only actually came out in about, a month ago, right?

   8. RHRyan Holiday39:18

      Yeah, exactly a month ago.

   9. PAPeter Attia39:20

      But I think I got a copy like six months ago.

   10. RHRyan Holiday39:21

       Yeah.

   11. PAPeter Attia39:21

       So maybe that's why I don't realize it. Tell the story about the party that Kurt Vonnegut was at and, and the-

   12. RHRyan Holiday39:26

       Yeah

   13. PAPeter Attia39:26

       ... discussion that ensued.

   14. RHRyan Holiday39:27

       So Kurt Vonnegut was at a party with Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, two of the sort of writers of a, of a generation. And they're at the party of this billionaire, and I'm sure you've been at events like this where you're sort of the, the candy, you know? You're, like, the status symbol. Like, "Look who I got to come to my party," and-

   15. PAPeter Attia39:46

       I'm never that guy-

   16. RHRyan Holiday39:47

       [laughs]

   17. PAPeter Attia39:47

       ... but I can, I can picture it. Yeah.

   18. RHRyan Holiday39:48

       I, I, I know that you have been that guy. 'Cause you're like, "Why am I here? I have no business being here," right? And so they're sort of standing in this enormous mansion, and Vonnegut is teasing Heller, and he says, "How does it feel to know that he made more money this week than your book will probably ever make in its life?" And Heller said, "Well, I have something he doesn't have." And Vonnegut said, "What could that possibly be?" And he said, "I have enough. You know, I have a sense of what enough is." And I just, uh, that's a very powerful word. I think a lot of people see enough as the enemy, right? Like, if I have enough, I won't be good at what I do. My lack of satisfaction is what's propelled me to greatness. And this is certainly true, is, I guess with athletes especially, where it's like your desire to always improve, to always get better, to never be satisfied with your last performance, is what compels you to keep going. And, and it can be responsible for a lot of victories. It can also be responsible for why you fail to appreciate or enjoy any of those victories. So what I talk about in the book, what I'm interested in, what I'm exploring myself, having, you know, e- experienced some success and certainly accomplished more things than I thought I would, uh, relatively early in my life, is this idea of, like, and I think this is what Heller meant, can you do what you're doing well, like at an elite level even, from a place of fullness? Or does it have to come from a place of craving? Do you know what I mean? Like, is it-

   19. PAPeter Attia41:13

       Yes, very much so

   20. RHRyan Holiday41:14

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

   21. PAPeter Attia41:47

       I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this because I, it's a topic I've been interested in since I was a teenager. But what is your take on that now? Do you think those states can coexist? Do you think one can achieve the highest levels without, call it a certain fire that is coming from a place of more rather than enough?

   22. RHRyan Holiday42:09

       Well, you know, it's hard to know because you're only speculating about other people, and then there's, it's sort of awkward to think about it with yourself.

   23. PAPeter Attia42:15

       But I suspect you've spoken with a lot of these people as well.

   24. RHRyan Holiday42:18

       Yeah, yeah. I would say my opinion is probably the minority view, [laughs] right? Like, I think you can do it from a place of fullness. But, you know, most coaches are like, "Oh, you gotta, y- the guy's gotta have that hunger. He's gotta have the..." You know? My goal in my life is to be great at what I do, but somehow n- Be a normal person. Like, I, I, that's a... For whatever reason, that's important to me, not, to not, to have some semblance of a normal life, to not be so lopsided, to not be miserable, to actually like what I'm doing. And, and I would like to think that I'm... I sort of know objectively in s- in one sense, like I, I'm performing at an elite level. Like, there's the results, and there's the, the impact the work has had, and there's the sales, and there's the financial success. So I, I go, "Oh, it's working," right? Like, you can. But then I also, then sometimes, you know, the doubts come in. You go, "Oh, but what have I left on the ta- like, could I have sold more copies? Could the books have more impact? Could my speaking fee be higher? What..." You know, blah, blah, blah, if maybe I was a little hungrier. So I, again, I think these are complicated questions, and I don't, I don't pretend to have the definitive answer, but I do generally think fullness is better than craving, and it, it's more sustainable, right? Like, how long can you exist in the, "I'm gonna shove it all in their faces. That's what's driving me"? How long can you operate on that fuel? Or does it eventually corrode the engine? Especially with writing, I think about it as like a, I'm not in this to win in the short term. I'm interested in to do, to do this for a long time. And so you've gotta come up with a sustainable process and a sustainable motivation because maybe it works in football or basketball, 'cause your career, even if it's a great one, is, like, 20 years max, but probably closer to two years. I don't have a good answer, but I'd be curious to hear what you think.

   25. PAPeter Attia44:08

       Well, I, I don't think my thoughts are nearly as well thought out as yours, frankly. But I, I think the way I look at it is it all comes down to these optimization problems and what you're optimizing for. So if you're optimizing to have the most trophies or the most dollars or the most whatever metric it is by which we measure things... And by the way, those things generally have to be external and quantifiable-

   26. RHRyan Holiday44:32

       Sure

   27. PAPeter Attia44:32

       ... for this game to work, right? You have to be able to display it. It can't be ambiguous.

   28. RHRyan Holiday44:37

       Yeah.

   29. PAPeter Attia44:38

       Right? And again, lots of things in our life do fit that criteria. If you're playing the pure max game, so you're looking for the absolute maxima, the lo- not, versus the local maxima, my view is it's probably difficult to achieve that without being myopically focused on that.

   30. RHRyan Holiday44:56

       Okay.
9. 52:45 – 1:02:52

   Ego, Confidence and a Checklist for Catching Ego

   1. PAPeter Attia52:45

      What role do you think ego plays in, in this? You know, you, you've written about this idea that there are just certain things where the harder you try and the more you want them, the further you get from them.

   2. RHRyan Holiday52:56

      Yeah. I mean, I make a big distinction. I didn't do it as well in Ego Is the Enemy as I, I should have in retrospect, but now I'm able to be a bit more explicit about it, but a big distinction between ego and confidence. Confidence is important, right? You gotta know what you're capable of. You gotta have some evidence of it. You gotta have some knowledge of strength and weakness. I think the problem with ego is that it's not any of that. Ego comes from some third place, right? And I think at, at the core of ego is an association of our identity with results or with external things. And so in some senses it's, it can be helpful in terms of driving external results, but it, we, we see just as often that ego undermines those results once we get them.

   3. PAPeter Attia53:45

      Yeah. I think you, you said that, again, it's a long tail game here, but in the long run, you're probably coming out below than above if you're driven exclusively from this place. How would you explain that to the 15-year-old version of you?

   4. RHRyan Holiday54:03

      Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like historically it's like, are there any super egotistical people who died with their boots off surrounded by people who loved them? Do you know what I mean? Or does the dictator tend to die like Saddam Hussein or Julius Caesar or what? You know what I mean? Like it very rarely ends well. Over a long enough timeline, the ego eventually comes back to get you, you know? So I think the problem for young people, and I think this is also true for people who are more sheltered, right, who have less sort of life experiences or, or more sort of outsiders, it's very easy to confuse ego and confidence because you don't- You don't actually know, right? Like, I think it's inter- there are people who go, "We need a president..." I always get in trouble talking politics, but, "We need someone like Donald Trump, you know, he knows what he's doing, he's..." Someone like Putin is like, "I can't wait to get in a room with this person. I'm gonna fucking break this guy in half." Do you know what I mean? Because he knows that Trump's simplified version of reality, a- he can see all the weaknesses in that ego and bluster. Do you know what I mean? I think the problem when you're 15 is you see Kanye West, or you see St- you read a book about Steve Jobs or, you know, you see these athletes doing X, Y, or Z, and you think that's what confidence looks like, 'cause you're not, you haven't experienced it enough to know what profound insecurities and weaknesses these strategies are compensating for, and how, how vulnerable these guys are to slumps or mistakes or, you know, how often they get in their own way. I think that's the other interesting thing we don't calculate when we think about ego. We look at super successful people who have egos, and we go, "Oh, look at what they've done."

   5. PAPeter Attia56:01

      The graveyard is something we don't get to examine. We have no idea what the denominator looks like for that field of observation.

   6. RHRyan Holiday56:07

      That's true, but look at Steve Jobs, right? He comes back, he's the most successful, uh, CEO of, of probably the 21st century, blah, blah, blah, but, like, what about that lost period? Was that necessary? Did he actually have to get fired from Apple? So the graveyard is we don't think about all the people who got fired from the company they started because of ego and never came back, right? Like the Adam Neumanns of WeWork or whatever. We don't see how many of them never even got that far. But let's say Travis Kalanick comes back and is the CEO of Uber again, and he leads it to stratospheric success. He learned blah, blah, blah. What did he lose? Th- think about the time that he lost, the mistakes that he made, and yes, you've, of course, we learn by experiences. Sometimes you have to touch the stove. But the point is, we're really bad at calculating how much more successful a person could be if their ego wasn't getting in the way. Anyone who's ever worked with or for or around other powerful people, like, everyone knows. Do you know what I mean? I bet if you took every presidential candidate right now and you talked to the people on their staff, they could give you a list of five ways that person's ego was hurting them in the campaign, right? So one of them is gonna win, but that doesn't mean those, those traits were good.

   7. PAPeter Attia57:22

      Yeah, that's right. You can be successful despite ego, and that's different from saying you can be successful because of ego.

   8. RHRyan Holiday57:28

      Yes. We're really bad at calculating that cost, and I think maybe you just have to see it enough times to know. Like, I mean, Dove ended up getting fired from the company. The company goes bankrupt twice. He lost everything. He, not only did he lose everything, he lost shares, his shares were worth about $500 million. He now owes, which he will never be able to pay, about $20 million to the hedge fund that effectively destroyed the company in his plan to save it. And 10, 12,000 people lost their jobs. Like, it's not until you really see just how toxic and dysfunctional ego is at the sort of malignant level that you walk away and go, "I don't want any of that in my life."

   9. PAPeter Attia58:11

      So what's our checklist? If we weren't sitting here on this podcast and we're just sitting here talking about this and I'm saying, "Ryan, I wanna make sure that I have an internal audit. I want to catch my ego when it is creeping up," what are some of the things, what are some of the things you would teach me?

   10. RHRyan Holiday58:27

       Yeah. I wish I had a magical checklist, but, uh, it's more just sort of ideas. And I think why we look at stories from history is we go, "Oh, Gambino-"

   11. PAPeter Attia58:35

       It's the pattern recognition of-

   12. RHRyan Holiday58:36

       Yeah. Being a little bit like h- this person here, being a little bit like this person here. I think when you feel like it all rests and falls on you, you know what I mean? Like when you're Atlas with the world on your shoulders, you have profoundly inflated your importance in whatever situation you're in. So that, it's like when I feel, when you feel that, like, Herculean, "Ah, I'm the, I'm the one," like, that is ego, right? The other one is, like, when you feel paranoia, like, "People are out to get me, they're fucking me, they're screwing me over. I'm being held back," I usually find that's ego. Colin Powell talks about, like, you know, making sure your ego is not associated with your position, right? And so it's like when your identity and worth as a human being is tied up in what you have or what you've done, and this is where that, the story you're telling yourself can be so dangerous. When you have really started to identify with what you've accomplished, when you're like, "You know, I've hit this bestseller list. My podcast has this many downloads. You know, I'm the, I'm the best in the world at X." When you have really locked in these sort of arbitrary ratings or, or rankings or status, to me, that's ego, 'cause now you're not present. You're thinking about how do you maintain and control and get these things. The last one I would probably say is, is when you are comparing yourself to other people. So, like, if you're comparing yourself against other people versus comparing yourself against your intention or your own standards, also probably a decent sign of ego.

   13. PAPeter Attia1:00:04

       Those are actually really great. One I might add to it that, that I find myself having to check is when I'm more interested in being right than knowing what the truth is.

   14. RHRyan Holiday1:00:16

       Sure.

   15. PAPeter Attia1:00:16

       Which I find can happen in the stupidest example, like literally an argument with my wife could easily, if I'm gonna be brutally honest, turn into, "Wait, stop for a second, Peter." This is an internal dialogue. "You're arguing with her, and because you're a better arguer, you can probably look like you are right here."

   16. RHRyan Holiday1:00:39

       Sure.

   17. PAPeter Attia1:00:40

       There are five other ways that this could be viewed. If you're really being brutally honest, you should be stepping out of yourself and seeing them all of these other ways. That's a loving example 'cause it's i- with a person you care about. Where you really see it, I think, is when you're having a debate with someone, like, you don't care about. Like someone on Twitter.

   18. RHRyan Holiday1:01:01

       Yeah.

   19. PAPeter Attia1:01:01

       Right?

   20. RHRyan Holiday1:01:01

       Right.

   21. PAPeter Attia1:01:01

       Like some random person on Twitter attacks you, for me at least, that's very powerful, and that's certainly-

   22. RHRyan Holiday1:01:07

       Yeah

   23. PAPeter Attia1:01:07

       ... where I catch my ego the most.

   24. RHRyan Holiday1:01:09

       Right. 'Cause what, what you're doing is you're associating your identity with a totally meaningless encounter or situation, and you're like, "I can't let this person be better than me," or I, uh, my identity is that I'm the best, I win, I'm right, not I just wanna know what is true or real, or I wanna have a conversation with this person. So yeah, I think that's ultimately why ego is so dangerous, is that it just sucks us into bullshit that we don't need to be do- whether they're competitions or they're arguments or they're, you know... I think the, the sort of rise and fall of WeWork is such a great example of someone who's just like what happens when ego is just utterly unchecked, and how it served him well up until the point it all came [exhales] . You know, there's a joke about gangsters that, like, everything is wonderful until the last 15 minutes, and then it's brutal and violent and pathetic, you know? And I think that tends to be, it goes, and it often goes much longer than anyone thought, and then when it crumbles, it crumbles very quickly. Not only there's nothing left, but there's not a lot of mercy from other people.

   25. PAPeter Attia1:02:17

       Again, I, I always think about things in terms of math, so to me, like, that's just an amazing example of nonlinearity in everything. Nonlinearity in time and nonlinearity in response.

   26. RHRyan Holiday1:02:27

       Yeah.

   27. PAPeter Attia1:02:28

       So that's an interesting thing. You can think of ego as, as an amplifier of those curves.

   28. RHRyan Holiday1:02:33

       Yeah. Cyril Connolly's line is that ego sucks us down like the law of gravity. And so I think the way you think about it is, like, look, if you're not ever getting up off the couch, gravity's not a big problem for you [laughs] . But if, you know, you're jumping between buildings or you're doing something really hard, really high up there, the fall's gonna be real painful.

10. 1:02:52 – 1:10:30

    Humility, Learning and Letting a Book Go

    1. PAPeter Attia1:02:52

       What do you think are the antidotes to the negative effects of ego?

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:02:57

       Well, it's very hard to be egotistical while you're learning something. Ego can prevent you from learning something. But I think the philosopher's mindset, the martial art mindset of, like, I am a student in a thing in which you never truly master, is sort of humility embodied. So Epictetus' line is, "You can't learn that which you think you already know." John Wheeler, the physicist, he says, "As your island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance." And so if you think about it that way, it's like, oh, as I'm getting smarter, I'm actually getting more aware of, of my, what I don't know. And to me, that's a much better way to get through the world. Y- there's people who, as they get more successful, there's less and less you can teach them and there's less and less that they wanna hear. And then there are people who, as they get better, become more curious, more interested, more open, less rigid. I think that's where you wanna go.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:03:51

       Bob Kaplan, who's my head of research, he says this eloquently, and I'm sure he's paraphrasing it from somebody else, but the further and further you get from the shore, the deeper and deeper the water gets. I mean, sometimes Bob and I, we, we, we talk almost every day, and a lot of times I'm just lamenting how little we know.

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:04:07

       Sure.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:04:07

       I'm like, "God, Bob, does it ever just bug the shit out of you that we spend so much time, we've got seven analysts, like we eat, sleep, and breathe this literature-

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:04:16

       Sure

    7. PAPeter Attia1:04:17

       ... and I, I think I know less than I knew three years ago?" On a relative basis, it's ab- that's absolutely true. On an absolute basis it might not be true. But on a relative basis, which is we perceive relative changes, not absolute changes, that is unquestionably correct. It's also sort of like the second valley of the Dunning-Kruger curve, right? [laughs] It's like once you, you know, you, "Oh, I think I know what's going on here. Nope, actually, I have no clue what's going on here."

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:04:39

       I've written about this before where it's like, okay, if, when you... Let's say, let's say there's the Civil War. You know, you learn about it in elementary school, whether you lived [laughs] in the, the North or the South. It's very simple. It's like we went to war to free the slaves. It was a war of Northern aggression, right? Like you learn one of two things. It's very simple. Then you read about it a little bit more and it's really complicated. Now it's not so clear. It's like, hey, Lincoln said over and over again he didn't really wanna flee, free the slaves, you know? And, oh, how can we say it's a, it's just a war of Northern aggression when the states wrote all these, you know, constitutions that basically all they talk about is, is slavery, you know? It becomes complicated, and then there's, there's really no good guys, there's really no bad guys, and then it, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden you're in this morass and you've... This is like you heard it from a teacher, it's simple. You've read one book, it's complex. You've read 10 books, it's complex. You can't... Then you read 20 books, you really study it, and then all of a sudden it's very simple again, right? And like you go, oh, the Civil War was 100% about slavery. It was only about slavery, and it's very simple. Even though you've come to the same conclusion that you had before, you're understanding it in a profoundly different way. One is sort of egotistical and one is, is a humility because you're aware of all the threads that go into it. Do you know what I mean? When I look at this trilogy now that I've just finished it, like when I look at Obstacle, in some ways it's the tightest of the books and it's s- it's sold, it, you know, it sells great. I hear from people how it's resonated, but I don't know if I could write it again. I couldn't write it that way again because I wouldn't n- in having done two other books, having read more, studied more, experienced more, I don't think I would, I would allow myself to be as simple as I was. Does that make sense?

    9. PAPeter Attia1:06:33

       It makes so much sense, Ryan, because I'm, um... Which I wanted to ask you this tomorrow night over dinner, but I think I'm gonna ask you now. Apologies to the listener if you don't care about the nuts and bolts of writing a book. As I'm getting closer to that first submission, which is probably a month away, in fact, by the time people listen to this I will have already submitted it and it'll be, you know, going through the editing process. For so long, 'cause I've been working on this book for three years, all I wanted to do was get here.

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:06:58

        Yeah.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:06:58

        And now I'm like, "Oh, no, no, I don't wanna hand it in."

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:07:00

        Yeah.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:07:00

        Because I'm still learning, and I know things today I didn't know three years ago, and that means that on the day this book comes out, there's gonna be things I know that aren't in the book, and there's probably gonna be things in this book I don't fully think are the most accurate representation of knowledge. And I just- now that I've, I've had this profound empathy for authors now, which is how the hell do you do this? How do you take your hands off something knowing that knowledge isn't static?

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:07:27

        Yeah, it's really tough. Winston Churchill, or who most people don't think of as a writer, probably wrote more books than just about anyone in the 20th century, and he says, "At some point you have to, like, kill the book and fling it to the public." And I think that's right. You do. You have to, you have to stop at some point. That's why the book has to be what you are capable of in that moment, and it has to be a closed thing. Like, the game is four quarters and then it's over. You, you don't replay the same game. You, you play again the next night or the next season. Do you know what I mean? And, and, but a- my point was more like you, you... I look at the book and it's just I didn't know what I didn't know, so there's a certainty to some of the things that in retrospect I see of- I see with more nuance now. And so in a way, each of the books is a pr- is a balance, right? Because you want the books to be tight, you want them to be straightforward, you want them to be compelling, but also you have to be intellectually honest. So each one of the books has gotten a little bit longer because, not because I'm- I feel like I'm droning on, but because what I was comfortable saying in one short sentence before, I now have to qualify and ta- you know what I mean? So it becomes complicated. But you, you... At a, at a certain point you have to go, "This is the best I was capable of up through November 2019," and that's where I'm... When I com- when I look at it in the future, I can't be comparing it to w- who I am now. I have to be asking, "Did I leave anything on the table in November 2019?"

    15. PAPeter Attia1:08:57

        Did you learn that from Robert?

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:08:59

        Yeah. A little bit. I... You, you just learn it from the process. I, I had a weird experience, 'cause so trust me, I'm like-

    17. PAPeter Attia1:09:04

        How, how did you meet Robert Greene?

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:09:06

        Through another author who I was working for, and we had lunch, and then Robert was looking for a research assistant. Yeah, it was just transformative.

    19. PAPeter Attia1:09:14

        You describe him as, as, as one of the most important mentors you've, you've had with respect to writing and maybe beyond?

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:09:20

        Of course. Yeah. As a, as a person, as a writer, as a professional, he's just fantastic. So with my first book, I, I wrote it in 2011, came out in 2012. I did the paperback, which is an expanded edition with some extra stuff, some changes, in 2013, and then I wrote an updated edition after the 2016 election. So it's like I've had this weird interaction with the text where I had to go back and edit and change it. This is where the ego thing comes in. Mostly what I take from that, and what I try to think about on a regular basis, is that certainty is the enemy, because certainty is what you regret when you look back. It's not that you took a stand, or you thought this, or you said this. It's the tone with which you did it-

    21. PAPeter Attia1:10:05

        Mm

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:10:05

        ... that you can come to regret. It was the pretension that of course I'm right, when in retrospect it's like how could you have thought that you knew this? You'd only thought about it for 10 minutes. I'd like to think that as I go on as a writer that it's softer and more balanced and more nuanced, because if that's not the direction you're going in, I think you're going in the wrong direction.

11. 1:10:30 – 1:17:40

    What Stillness Is, and Why Ryan Skips Meditation

    1. PAPeter Attia1:10:30

       Stillness to me seems like a lonely thing, but you say just the opposite, right?

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:10:36

       Yeah. Well, I think that we confuse stillness. We think stillness is synonymous with meditation, or we think it's like stillness is what the Dalai Lama has, or some person on a 30-day silent meditation retreat.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:10:48

       Or even outside of that, there still is this connotation of solitude, right?

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:10:52

       Yeah.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:10:52

       Like, we, we practice stillness by ourselves with our thoughts, with being present, et cetera.

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:10:57

       Well, that's the easiest way to get there, right? Do you know what I mean? Like, i- if, if you are busy and overwhelmed and stressed and having trouble coming up with your thoughts, like you're finishing this book, the easiest way to break through that would be to travel to a place you don't live, like go to a cabin in the woods, and just work on it. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that in life, but that's not sustainable. Like, you can't do that every day if you wanna be what we're... If you wanna maximize for these other things we're talking about. So I'm, I'm interested in how do you have stillness in the real world where you have bills to pay and, you know, a family and a house and neighbors, and you drive a car in traffic. Do you know what I mean? Like, so how do you find, how do you access stillness in the course of normal real life? I think solitude and silence are a big part of it, but I'm thinking, you know, just the stillness of reducing expectations. You know, reducing or, or extracting the unnecessary. Locking into what you're doing, whatever it is, even if it's a minor thing. You know, so I'm interested in Kennedy and the missile crisis, or Anne Frank and her, you know, sitting in front of her diary, or, or I'm thinking of the opposite of whatever Tiger Woods' [laughs] life was like. I'm thinking about stillness for actual people in the real world. Stillness for Marcus Aurelius as the emperor, you know?

    7. PAPeter Attia1:12:21

       So actually I wanna talk about meditation, because you specifically don't talk about it, and I think that was a deliberate decision, right?

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:12:28

       Yeah, it was.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:12:28

       What was the basis of that decision?

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:12:30

        Well, again, we were talking about, you know, how do you find people where they are. I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that people don't meditate, don't really want to meditate. The evidence is equally overwhelming that it works, right, and that it's great, but we have trouble getting there. And so, uh, when I'm talking about stillness, I didn't wanna talk about... First off, I think it's, it's problematic that people live chaotic, dysfunctional, disorganized lives, and then they think going on a seven-day silent meditation retreat is magically going to solve all of that, when they're just coming back to their same life right afterwards. So it's like going on a juice cleanse or something.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:13:08

        [laughs]

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:13:08

        Do you know what I mean? It's, it's not, it's not really doing anything. And so- The idea was there's lots of great stuff a- about meditation out there. Not, it's not really what I do anyway, so I'm not gonna pretend I'm the expert on it. But what I can talk about is a more comprehensive, sort of philosophical approach to stillness, and let's see if we can't start there. And then at the end of it, if, I think you're in a better place to try some of those things.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:13:36

        Let's start with journaling.

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:13:39

        Yeah.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:13:40

        Stoics journaled.

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:13:41

        Yeah, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have any Stoics, we wouldn't have Marcus Aurelius if the Stoics didn't journal. And what I think's so interesting about Marcus Aurelius, having r- now started to really study some of the more obscure earlier Stoics, is you realize even a lot of the stuff, like, a good chunk of Meditations is, like, quotes, like, from other people. But even a chunk of the stuff that's not quotes, he didn't make up. Like, that he is, he's almost running through, like, flashcards in this journal. He's, like, running through exercises or thoughts or things that he's, he's paraphrasing things that he was taught by his teachers. And you realize that philosophy is actually an active word-based writing process, not a book that you read one time and then you've magically absorbed the insights.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:14:32

        Let's talk about this process, because I think the way you describe meditation, you know, the way I sort of explain it to patients is, is sort of similar, right? Which is it's not about meditation. Meditation is, it's a tool. It's a training platform-

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:14:46

        Yeah

    19. PAPeter Attia1:14:46

        ... if you will, that teaches you a skill that for me, and I think people more sophisticated than me will be able to talk about much more nuance around this, like if you listen to Sam Harris talk about this, of course, it's infinitely more enlightening. For me, it's simply gap awareness. That's literally all I care about, is the gap between stimulus and response.

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:15:06

        Yes.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:15:06

        I want a bigger gap.

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:15:08

        Sure.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:15:08

        And I do this goofy thing every day, or most days, this practice where I sit there and I, you know, focus on my breath, and I catch myself thinking, and I come back and forth and back and forth and back and forth because, as Jeff Warren, who's a great meditation teacher, describes it, that's just a bicep curl.

    24. RHRyan Holiday1:15:25

        Yeah.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:15:26

        I'm, like, going to the gym and I'm doing curls or squats or whatever exercise I wanna do so that when I leave the gym and I go and pick up my bag of groceries or I go pick up my kid, I have some muscle to do that. And with physical muscles it's so easy. We're so wired to see that. I think with some of these cognitive, emotional muscles-

    26. RHRyan Holiday1:15:44

        Yeah

    27. PAPeter Attia1:15:45

        ... we don't have quite the same. So how do you think about the exercise of bringing stillness in? I mean, you've talked a lot about it, and I, I think we should talk about these in detail. What are the enemies of stillness, right?

    28. RHRyan Holiday1:15:58

        Yeah.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:15:58

        You know, jealousy and things like that. May- maybe we start there actually, and then we'll sort- sort of, g- unless you think it's better to talk about it in the-

    30. RHRyan Holiday1:16:04

        Sure.
12. 1:17:40 – 1:24:13

    Morning Routine, Phone Boundaries and Email

    1. PAPeter Attia1:17:40

       How long does it take you to finally look at your phone in the morning?

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:17:44

       My thing now is I, I like... So this morning it was about two and a half hours.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:17:48

       So what's your morning routine?

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:17:50

       So I wake up early.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:17:51

       With or without an alarm?

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:17:52

       I mean, I've got a three-year-old, so, and a four-month-old, so usually, uh, it doesn't even matter if I have an alarm. If I am using an alarm, it's my phone, but it's in the other room. Like, it's not, not near the bed. And that's a huge minor thing, but can have a major impact, is, like, do not sleep with your phone in the room. But so I wake up, you know, s- let's say 6:00 or 7:00. Don't touch the phone. Have you used Spar, the app Spar?

    7. PAPeter Attia1:18:16

       No.

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:18:17

       Basically you do these challenges. So it's like, you know, w- let's do 50 pushups a day. You do the 50 pushups a day, but you have to, like, video yourself doing the thing on the app and so people can verify whether you did it or not. And then if you miss, it charges you, like, five bucks or 10 bucks or I've, I've, I'm sure it could be $100. But it charges you each day that you miss, and this goes into a pot, and then at the end of the challenge, the people who didn't miss split the pot, uh, which is awesome. I use that to start the habit, which is I'm not gonna check my phone for the first 10 minutes, then we worked our way up to 30 minutes, then an hour.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:18:51

       How do you videotape that?

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:18:52

        You only do it if you made it. So you're like, I woke up at 6:00, 7:30 right now, it's an hour and a half. Awesome. And people go, "Oh, great job," you know? It's like a, there's a community thing. But so I started, I worked my way up to about an hour, but now it's just like, how long can I go? And, and it, it really, it's very helpful for me in terms of just starting the day not from my back foot.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:19:15

        So what did you do with that two and a half hours you had that weren't cursed with a phone?

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:19:20

        Yeah, so this morning I took my son for a bike ride, like in a bike trailer. So that was, you know, 45 minutes. Then we had breakfast, then I worked. Like, I went, I went and sat with a journal, and then I went straight into the writing for the day. And I forget why, I had to get a photo off my phone for something I was doing. So it wasn't even like, "Ooh, now, you know, now I'm gonna go respond to text messages." It was just like the phone is of value. I mean, like, you know, yesterday it was probably two, two and a half hours, but then I needed directions to somewhere I was going. So I'm, it's not that I don't wanna ever use the phone, it's just like I wanna be using the phone rather than be used by the phone, which is what I think m- most of the time our use of these devices is, we're being used by the technology.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:20:04

        Now, I'm guessing many people listening to this will think, "What the hell is this guy talking about? I don't have that luxury." Right? And there's gonna be a... And, and whether that's true or not, I don't know. Like I, of course, I'm just thinking about it through my lens, like how long could I realistically go without the phone? You know, like you, I sort of have the privilege of working for myself. I probably have more things that are pinging me that may be time sensitive, you know, vis-a-vis a patient or something like that, or someone on my team needs to get ahold of me. But, but in the end, I still live a pretty privileged existence relative to someone who's at the bottom of their pyramid-

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:20:36

        Sure

    15. PAPeter Attia1:20:37

        ... whatever their organization is, and they're at the, you know, they're beholden to somebody else.

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:20:41

        Yeah. And I went through that phase in my life. And I, I... You're trading things to get where you wanna get. So I, I'm totally not saying that this is for everyone f- for right now. But if, what usually people go, "Oh, this is, uh, I'm early in this phase," what actually tends to happen though is that you actually get less freedom the more successful you get, right? Which is precisely the wrong way for it to go. So I, I'm, I'm thinking... It's, I don't know though, it's weird. I think people actively like go, "Oh..." Like when you hear someone's like, "Oh, I don't even have a smartphone." Or they go, "Oh, I, you know, I have, I meditate for an hour each day, or I do this," that people immediately try to make up some story about why that's their sort of privileged existence and that could never work for me, rather than thinking about, "How can I have my version of that?" And it's like, I am probably busier than most of the people who are saying, "Oh, you, how did you have two and a half hours without your phone?" Do you know what I mean? Like, I've got people who work for me, I've got projects that are going on, I've got deadlines I have to meet, but it's precisely because I have all of that going on, I'm not fucking sending Snapchat DMs. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's not that I wasn't working. I was at my computer, I was connected, but what I wasn't doing is using a device that's main purpose is to make me use the device.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:22:05

        When you're on the computer, what is your relationship with that? You know, obviously email.

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:22:11

        Yeah.

    19. PAPeter Attia1:22:11

        Uh, people who listen to this podcast [laughs] I feel, I feel like I must be spending way too much time railing on email, because I'm at the point now where the first time somebody meets me, they usually say, "I know how much you hate email," [laughs] you know? "I'm sorry for emailing you," or whatever.

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:22:25

        So for me, I like, email is my preferred medium, in the sense that like I want it all funneling towards there so then I can have control over it. So like that's one of my things is like you're not also DM'ing me on Twitter, you're not also-

    21. PAPeter Attia1:22:41

        Yes

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:22:42

        ... you know, sending me Facebook messages, you're not also chatting on LinkedIn. Email's like a pretty good medium for me 'cause it's asynchronous. That's what I like about it. What I hate are fucking phone calls. That's what I wa- wanna have the least amount of in my life.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:22:55

        Or, or God bless WhatsApp with the little timestamp of, you know, when you actually saw the message [laughs] versus, versus... I can't stand WhatsApp.

    24. RHRyan Holiday1:23:02

        Yeah, yeah. Or the, "Hey, let's get together for coffee and we'll..." You know, like these sort of things where it's like a thing that could've been a phone call, that could've been an email. Do you know what I mean? That could've been nothing [laughs] 'cause you could've just Googled this, right? Email's good for me. So I think people should figure out what's, what's good for them, but email's good for me. But I'm not writing and simultaneously checking my email every time that, you know? It doesn't, doesn't go ding every time I get one.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:23:26

        So do you have, do you have rules around how often you check email?

    26. RHRyan Holiday1:23:28

        Not really. My thing is like, since it's my main thing of like how people get ahold of me, it's like I'm, I'm sort of peripherally checking it throughout the day so it's, I can see if things are happening. But what I'm, the way my morning is set up and the way my life is, is it's like I'm getting everything in the right head space so I can go right into whatever the main writing or the main task that I have to do for the day is before I get sucked into the email, like reactive response stuff for the day. So yesterday I had some articles to write and then I had a presentation I had to make. That probably took me through towards, you know, 12:30 or 1:00, and then so it was like after lunch, now I gotta respond to all these things people want from me.

13. 1:24:13 – 1:36:03

    Envy, Distraction and Presence with Family

    1. PAPeter Attia1:24:13

       So how does jealousy factor into stillness? I mean, we've talked about the relationship of jealousy and ego. Are these things synonymous? I mean, when you find something that is anti-stillness, is it pro-ego or not necessarily?

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:24:25

       Well, I would find there's very few egotistical people who I think we would define as still. Take the five or six most egotistical people that you can think of historically or that you know personally, I would say you'd probably trade places with very few of them, even if they are extraordinarily successful, right? I do find ego and, and stillness are, are pretty mutually exclusive.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:24:48

       Why do you think that is? Let, let's pick an example of somebody, let's use someone other than the president to throw it at somebody else. I mean, was Bill Clinton a still guy?

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:24:57

       Bill and Hillary's ego has caused them a lot of problems, but it's in, in a less sort of day-to-day misery sense of the word, I would think. Who's a good example? I mean, you look at a Kanye West, right? Or you look at an Elizabeth Holmes, or you look at the guy that did Fyre Fest. [laughs] You know? Like, those, that's not ... You don't wanna be that person. And look at the Fyre Fest guy, I think is a great example. He, weirdly, he called me before he went to jail. He wanted to talk. We never ended up connecting, but, uh-

    5. PAPeter Attia1:25:28

       That's 'cause he called you. He should've emailed you.

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:25:30

       [laughs] Yes. What I found so compelling about the documentary ... So, okay, he commits this massive fraud-

    7. PAPeter Attia1:25:34

       Yeah, tell, tell folks what Fyre Fest is and, you know, how that-

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:25:37

       So he, he was a concert organ- Well, it was a, basically a scam artist who put together this thing called Fyre Fest, which was supposed to be this enormous concert on this island in the Caribbean, and it ended up sort of blowing up all over his face. They made this fascinating documentary about just, like, what happened. But the point, what I lo- Have you seen the documentary?

    9. PAPeter Attia1:25:56

       I have not. I mean, I'm familiar with the story, but I haven't seen the doc.

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:25:58

        You should watch it.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:25:58

        What's it called?

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:25:59

        They're both called Fyre Fest. They're some- The one's on Netflix and one is on Hulu. You wouldn't think this would be worth two documentaries, but totally is.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:26:07

        Really?

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:26:07

        Yeah, it's fascinating.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:26:08

        Okay.

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:26:08

        Um, but so in one of the documentaries, I forget which one, he commits this massive fraud. It's kind of intentionally, kinda unintentionally. It blows up in his face. He's humiliated. It costs him all his money. He gets investigated. When he gets back, instead of looking in the mirror and going, "How did this happen? What change [laughs] am I gonna make in my life," you know, he ends up starting this other scam. [laughs] Like, he starts trying to sell these concert tickets that he doesn't o- The, the point is, like, he couldn't stop himself. It becomes like a compulsion, right? And I think ... I'm gonna keep doing Trump, but when you look at Trump, people are like, "Why can't he just not tweet?" Right? 'Cause it's like, that would make sense, right? He could be a pretty good president, I think, in some ways, without doing ... But he can't. It's not ... He's not in control. The ego is in control, right? And so you just see that time and time again. It prevents one from being able to stop, and it goes so far beyond self-interest, right? Like, it, it becomes actively self-destructive. So I think what you were saying is ... Wait, what? You were asking me a specific question about stillness, how it pertained to stillness.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:27:14

        Well, and jealousy-

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:27:15

        Oh, jealousy

    19. PAPeter Attia1:27:15

        ... and ego.

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:27:16

        Yeah.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:27:16

        Yeah.

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:27:17

        Theodore Roosevelt's line was, "Comparison is the thief of joy." I like Joseph Epstein's line. He said, "Of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the only one that's no fun." And he's totally right, you know? Uh-

    23. PAPeter Attia1:27:31

        Let me think about that for a second. Yeah. In, at least in the moment, gluttony's pretty fun.

    24. RHRyan Holiday1:27:36

        Right.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:27:36

        Sloth can feel okay in the moment.

    26. RHRyan Holiday1:27:39

        Mm-hmm. It's the only one that primarily punishes-

    27. PAPeter Attia1:27:42

        The person

    28. RHRyan Holiday1:27:43

        ... the recipient.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:27:44

        Yeah.

    30. RHRyan Holiday1:27:44

        When you are envious, it is an, always a negative feeling. You're only feeling bad about what you don't have, and you are angry or resentful or hurt that someone else has it instead, right? And so jealousy and envy are just ... You know, it's a zero-sum way to go through the world. It's a negative way to go through the world. It's a, it prevents you ... I think the, the irony of, of envy is often we are envious of people who are envious of other people. In some cases, they're, we don't know it, but secretly they're envious of us, right? Like, you know, it's like, think of all the, all the people right now who are giving up everything and working incredibly hard because they wanna become famous, and then you think of all the famous people who complain about being famous and would in some ways give everything to have their privacy back. This is why the Stoics are saying we sort of question these things and we think about them because under examination they make a lot less sense than they do just sort of in the sway of, of whatever that feeling is.
14. 1:36:03 – 1:47:29

    Dying Well, Fatherhood and Designing Your Ideal Day

    1. PAPeter Attia1:36:03

       This is about living well, but you also say this is about dying well. What is, what does dying well mean?

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:36:09

       Well, I don't have a ton of experience with dying naturally, but it i- it is the sort of the theme of memento mori, the theme about death is this is where we're all going, right? So Cicero and then through Montaigne, they said, "To philosophize is to learn how to die." It's maybe something we've lost, but that sort of death as your last gesture, as the final thing, the most important thing you do in life is, is maybe something that the ancients were much bigger believers in than we are today. Down, you know, in some cases it's these dramatic suicides. I- in other cases it's just, you know, sort of what are you gonna do in these final moments? What are the last things you're gonna say? But I just, I like the idea that you're training for that or that you're moving towards that as a reminder that this stuff matters, you know, these ideas, these things, that you're training for something important.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:37:05

       Expand on that a little bit because I think for many people that's counterintuitive, right? Which is, wait a minute, how could focusing on my death make my life any better?

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:37:15

       One of the things I love from Seneca, he's talking about, he's talking about these sort of old people that you see who can't, can't let go. He's like, "You should look with pity on the aged lawyer who continues to plead in court for his clients." He's talking about the, the guy who can't accept that his moment has passed and he has to pass the baton to the next generation, right? The, that's a, that's a person who, for whom, despite all their success, all their fame, all their money, there's not enough. It's like they're gonna be pleading in court until they drop dead on the spot.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:37:46

       Now, what about the argument that says, but if that is their greatest source of joy, don't we want them doing that rather than sitting in a rocking chair, as using the proverbial counterexample?

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:37:55

       Yeah. I guess the question then is, is this actually fun or is this a compulsion? There's this fascinating video you can watch of Joan Rivers where they're asking her, she's like, "Why are you still performing?" You know, "Why are you doing this?" Like n- not in a, like, a judgmental way, but she, she brings out her calendar, she flash-forwards a couple months, and she goes like, "See these blank pages?" She's like, "If these pages stay blank, it means that I'm nothing, that I'm, I've fallen off, that my career was pointl-" Like, she basically goes in, she reveals that-

    7. PAPeter Attia1:38:27

       Wow

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:38:27

       ... you, sometimes you get those glimpses of people's internal monologue, and you get a glimpse of her internal monologue. And on the one hand, it, it gives you a sense of how she managed to accomplish this incred- she built this incredible career. She was one of the first sort of huge female comics, how she persevered through all the bullshit she would've had to put up with. But I think it's impossible to watch that video and not feel very sad also, right? Like, that's craving verse fullness. It wasn't, "See this blank calendar? What am I gonna do? I'm gonna sit around at home? I love being on the road. I love working, you know? I love being with an audience. Like, this is what I was put on the planet to do." That's a very different answer than, you know, "These blank pages mean that I'm worthless as a human being," right? And so the idea of aging gracefully, of going out well is, it's not this separate thing. It is the culmination of these principles that we're talking about. Death isn't this separate, random other thing. It is a process that we're already engaged in, whether we know it or not, right? Like, you're dying now, and that you've already died however many years you've been alive, and you're just doing it every day until you finally get to the last time that you do it. And maybe that's morbid, but I, I find it clarifying.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:39:45

       You're a father now twice. How has that changed your thinking about this? Because obviously you're a father as you're... You, your first child was already born by the time you were writing this book. Your second child came along after you finished the book.

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:39:58

        Yeah.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:39:58

        How did the influence of them in your lives, I mean, you've written about the, the impact of being a father, but h- how does that help you think about this runway?

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:40:09

        One of the interesting things you expe- it was a, it was a s- shock for me. When you bring your kids home from the hospital for the first time, maybe people prepare me wrong, but I was prepared for, like, complete chaos, right? Like, this sort of sleep-deprived craziness. And that, that's certainly there, but actually it's like, those, like, first couple weeks, you're not doing anything.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:40:32

        Well, especially as the dad.

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:40:34

        Especially as the... But e- you and your, your wife or, you know, whatever your arrangement is, it was this r- rude but also wonderful awakening that, like, that's what being a parent is. Like, being a parent is not, like, running around and taking them places and doing things. Like, being a, a parent, it's just what your life is. The stillness of that period I still think of quite often because you're not supposed to be anywhere, right? You're not supposed to be doing anything. You don't have the ability or the energy to do anything. It's just like what we're doing is being very quiet while this person sleeps. Like, that's what we're doing. You're not also mowing the lawn, right? Or, or, you know, renovating your bathrooms. Like, you're not doing anything. You can't do anything. That's an energy I try to access quite often as well, which is like, like Saturday doesn't have to be this, you know, complicated, orchestrated event. It's not a choreographed dance. It's a, "Oh, are we just sitting out in the yard and, you know, digging holes for the next three hours? Is that what we're doing?" And being okay with that. I think parenting and presence are very related because what is fascinating and entertaining and stimulating for them, to an adult is usually an incredibly boring thing. And so you, you almost are forced to adopt that, that childlike existence, and it's, I, I find it very refreshing.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:42:08

        How do you feel about Saturdays in general? You've, you've talked about this idea of what does your Saturday look like, and the paradox of those days that are hyper-scheduled aren't necessarily very productive days when it comes to doing important work.

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:42:23

        When I talk to people about success, I, I sort of go not like, "What do you want to accomplish? What do you wanna have? What do you want to have done?" But like, "What do you want? How do you want that to manifest itself into your life? Like, what do you want your life to look like?" So, you know, if you're, if you're a basketball player, you want, you know, probably game day is your, you know, your dream life. You know? It's, you got the routine, you go, and then you're in the crowd and you're playing. For me, it's like I like a, a day with almost no interruptions, exterior interruptions. I like a little time to write. I like not feeling pressure. I like time with family. I like being outside. You know? Like, and so when I think about what that dream day is, you know, it's like when you, you visit somewhere on vacation and then you're like, "Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to live here?" You know? It's like I, I think when you have one of those perfect days, you should go like, "How can my whole life be like this?" And you have a lot of power over that. But then we go back to agreeing to shit we don't wanna do.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:43:23

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

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:43:42

        Yeah, yeah

    19. PAPeter Attia1:43:43

        ... the metaphor then.

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:43:43

        And I think Sat- Saturday's hard for people 'cause they think like, "I don't work Saturdays." Right? Like, "My, my Saturday involves me doing what I do."

    21. PAPeter Attia1:43:51

        Yeah. Yeah.

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:43:52

        Right? But it wasn't free for me to set up this life. There were real costs to it. I could live in New York and be on television more. You know? I could live in LA and have a bunch of different writing opportunities that I don't have. Or I could spend more time in town and it would be better. But it's all relative 'cause we do different things, and we have different wants and needs and, and, and different, you know, sort of expectations for life. But the point is, like, this life that I set up was not gifted to me. This, this required a bunch of different compromises and a, a bunch of different well-thought-out, intentional decisions. You know, it was buying a house that was less than I could afford so that I didn't... I could actually enjoy it and not have to go be away from said house to pay for that house. It means saying no to things that would be awesome to do or cool to do or great stories to tell someday, but don't want to.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:44:47

        How do you navigate that?

    24. RHRyan Holiday1:44:50

        Well, I try to go, you know, is this getting me closer to that day or further from that day? So this m- month, I had maybe one of those days, two of those days. So it's like, look, it's wonderful. The, the book has done well. The tour has been awesome. You know, the experience has been great, but, like, I've gotta figure out how to make [laughs] this not happen as often.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:45:09

        And how do you know how to juggle that? I mean, I've heard you... I think I read it in one of your blog posts. It's actually an old post you wrote a long time ago, I think, about So You Want to Be an Author.

    26. RHRyan Holiday1:45:20

        Yeah.

    27. PAPeter Attia1:45:21

        How long ago did you write that?

    28. RHRyan Holiday1:45:22

        Oh, that would've been 2013 maybe, 2012. A lo- a while ago, yeah.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:45:28

        And I'm glad I read it because it also, it gave me a great sort of warm-up for what's to come. 'Cause there's a part of me that's sort of thinking, "Well, look, once I write this book, I'm done. I never wanna have to-"

    30. RHRyan Holiday1:45:39

        Yeah
15. 1:47:29 – 1:56:51

    Practical Paths to Stillness: Walking, Journaling and Hobbies

    1. PAPeter Attia1:47:29

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

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:47:51

       Yeah.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:47:52

       Conversely, you're writing about stillness, which is the desired outcome.

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:47:55

       Yeah.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:47:56

       And I've always found that to be a harder way to explain things. I mean, it's a beautifully important way to do it, which is this is the state you want versus this is the practice you do to get a state. So how do you think about the journey there and the, the, the tangible skills that one puts in place?

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:48:14

       Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that 'cause when I think about ego and when I think about this book, I think the title or the premise or the introduction is, okay, here are the costs of ego. Here's maybe what a better place to, to be in would be like. In this book, it's like here's how busy and chaotic the world is. Here's maybe a better way to do it. But then when you actually look at the chapters, the chapters of both of those books are either examples or counterexamples of processes or practices that allow that state to ensue. 'Cause there, the problem with, like, what you get from meditation or what you get from stillness or what you, what, whatever the opposite of ego is, is that there's an ineffability to it. Like, you can't really describe what it is because it's fleeting and ephemeral and, and also deeply unique to each person and each time you have it. So what I'm trying to do in the books is just give you a bunch of slices of approaches or ideas that if followed, if thought about, if sort of integrated into who you are, will hopefully inch you to that place. So I'm, I'm mostly only thinking about practice, and I can't even give you a definition of what stillness is, let alone, like, a magical recipe. But I can give you some tools or strategies that tend to be correlated with achieving that outcome.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:49:36

       What do you think are three of those that are, I don't actually wanna say the easiest to enact-

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:49:41

       Yeah

    9. PAPeter Attia1:49:41

       ... but I'd rather frame it as-

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:49:44

        Let's say the most reliable

    11. PAPeter Attia1:49:45

        ... uh, the most potent-

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:49:46

        Yeah

    13. PAPeter Attia1:49:47

        ... activators.

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:49:47

        I think walking is a huge one. Every day I walk. Not only do I try to go on walks just, like, to be outside and do nothing. Usually I, I take my son if we're not doing the bike thing, but just some, like, sort of low-impact physical exercise, but doing the exercise for the mental benefits, right? Just being outside-

    15. PAPeter Attia1:50:05

        And you don't get this from your running and your swimming?

    16. RHRyan Holiday1:50:07

        I do, but it's separate. The running or swimming I'm doing for the physical benefits primarily. [laughs] The walking is just- For the walking. It's where you think, it's where you're outside, it's where you're looking around. When I'm running, I'm not like, "Oh, look how wonderful this is."

    17. PAPeter Attia1:50:21

        Do you run with music?

    18. RHRyan Holiday1:50:22

        I do, yeah.

    19. PAPeter Attia1:50:23

        Swimming, I used to swim a bit, and one of the things people used to always ask me was, "Doesn't it drive you crazy that you don't have your phone with you," or whatever.

    20. RHRyan Holiday1:50:31

        The whole point.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:50:31

        And I... Yeah. And, and of course, nowadays they do have ph- And I was like, "Are you kidding?" Like, that's the greatest part of swimming, is the sound of the water going against your ears.

    22. RHRyan Holiday1:50:40

        Yeah, or the fact that it's, it's, it's almost like a sensory deprivation tank. Your, so many of the parts that are normally alive are turned off, and I think this is why the mind becomes more perceptive.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:50:50

        And obviously you're walking without your phone, without music, without interruption. Are you being deliberate about anything? When you... For example, I, I don't, I don't mean to bring this back to meditation all the time, but one of the things I do enjoy is a walking meditation-

    24. RHRyan Holiday1:51:02

        Mm

    25. PAPeter Attia1:51:02

        ... where you focus on the sensory experience of walking, both in terms of sound, feel, you know, air moving past you. Are you doing anything sort of deliberately in that way?

    26. RHRyan Holiday1:51:11

        The only thing I'd be doing is if I find I'm getting caught up in something mentally to just be like, come back to the experience.

    27. PAPeter Attia1:51:19

        So that is kind of a meditation then.

    28. RHRyan Holiday1:51:21

        Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:51:22

        Okay.

    30. RHRyan Holiday1:51:23

        Walking would be a big one. I mean, I think journaling would be a sh- a huge one. We could talk about the exercise thing. I mean, to me, Austin is the most underrated swimming town in America. Like, Barton Springs is incredible. Deep Eddy is incredible. Just, like, the nature you can get here is, is fantastic. Maybe the other one I would talk about is, like, a hobby of some kind. What do you do that's not work?
16. 1:56:51 – 2:02:09

    Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis

    1. PAPeter Attia1:56:51

       And what do you think it was about JFK in, you know, certainly three most stressful moments of the 20th century, certainly three of the most high-stakes moment-

    2. RHRyan Holiday1:57:02

       Yeah

    3. PAPeter Attia1:57:02

       ... of the 20th century that could have truly altered the course of civilization. What do you think prepared him for that moment?

    4. RHRyan Holiday1:57:10

       In a way, he was, like, not prepared. You're almost set up to fail in that moment. I mean, like, if you compare the Bay of Pigs Kennedy to the missile crisis Kennedy, and then even the events in between, you're, you're not thinking that's how that's gonna go.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:57:24

       Had the Bay of Pigs not happened, so let's assume that when Kennedy comes into office in '61, the CIA has already decided the Bay of Pigs... You know, yeah, Johnson wanted to, or, uh, rather, uh, Eisenhower wanted to do this thing, but we think it's kind of a dumb idea, and he goes, "Yeah, yeah, that's a dumb idea. We're not doing it."

    6. RHRyan Holiday1:57:40

       Right.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:57:40

       So there's no Bay of Pigs.

    8. RHRyan Holiday1:57:42

       Yeah.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:57:42

       And yet all the events that unfold in the Cuban missile crisis unfold. Does he behave differently?

    10. RHRyan Holiday1:57:47

        I don't know. I mean, I think it was a variety of factors. I think one of the biggest ones is that he had read Barbara Tuchman's book, The Guns of August. Like, he, he had some understanding of how badly it could go if he wasn't aware of what was happening as it was happening, right? Like, the idea that we kinda slept walked into this war, that we didn't understand, that a lot of people were making very short-sighted decisions, decisions that made sense in the moment, but they weren't thinking about how that decision related to the other decisions, I think was hugely impactful for Kennedy. I think he'd had some humility, too, and sort of getting his ass kicked by Khrushchev in some sort of diplomatic exchanges had made him realize that the job was really hard, and that you can't just go with your gut. You can't just listen to what people say, that it really required sort of deliberation and consultation and consideration. You know, his expression, he says, "We've gotta use time as a tool and not as a couch." Just even that the missile crisis takes 13 days is kind of impressive. Like, you could imagine, let's not even say... You could imagine George W. Bush does not take 13 days to think that one through, 'cause it's kinda obvious what you should do. Like, like, our gravest military enemy has put nuclear missiles 90 miles from the shore of Florida. What you're supposed to do there is, like, very obvious, right? You blow the shit out of that, right? And you believe you're 100% justified in doing so. But it's more complicated than that. You can imagine Bill Clinton. You can imagine Lyndon Joh- Lyndon Johnson gets called into the Situation Room, and they're... I don't know if it's the Situation Room then, actually. But so he gets called in, and he's like, "We gotta do it." There are other presidents who would not have taken 13 days to unwind that.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:59:45

        What's also interesting is they all have different strengths and weaknesses. You know, I didn't grow up in this country, but I'm still incredibly fascinated by its history.

    12. RHRyan Holiday1:59:52

        Yeah.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:59:53

        And I'm always impressed by the different character strengths of different presidents.

    14. RHRyan Holiday1:59:58

        Sure.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:59:58

        Johnson being, like, the master politician-

    16. RHRyan Holiday2:00:01

        Yeah

    17. PAPeter Attia2:00:01

        ... right? The master of relationships, but maybe in that moment, too impatient.

    18. RHRyan Holiday2:00:05

        If you do move to Texas, you've gotta read the, the Lyndon Johnson series, or the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson. But he talks about how Kennedy believed that civil rights were so obvious, and so it was such a morally superior position that all he had to do was say, "This is what we're gonna do," and of course that would happen. And Lyndon Johnson, I would say, equally believed in that idea, but, or maybe actually believed in it less, but he knew politically it would be a lot more complicated, and ultimately he was the only one that was able to get it done. And, and actually some of Kennedy's sort of moral superiority and assurance made it harder than it, it needed to be, right? Like, he sort of telegraphed his intentions. He basically said, like, "We are gonna pass a civil rights bill," and the, the sort of solid South was like, "Well, we're gonna make that even harder for you now that you've told us what you're planning to do." Yeah, different strengths and weaknesses certainly, but if you could bottle whatever he was exhibiting there in that missile crisis, in, uh, there are very few leadership situations that would not be improved by that.

    19. PAPeter Attia2:01:17

        It's not like this guy was perfect. It's not like this guy was without ego.

    20. RHRyan Holiday2:01:19

        Yeah.

    21. PAPeter Attia2:01:19

        It's not like this guy was the flawless character that, you know, you wanna believe the first time you read a chapter on him in grade school.

    22. RHRyan Holiday2:01:26

        I mean, he cheated on his wife in the missile crisis, right? He's, he's expecting that the world could end at any moment, and he's spending that time not at home. So it's not, not great, but I think what's, what's so fascinating to me about the missile crisis is it's not just that he slowed it down. He was also incredibly def- decisive, right? It's not like he... It was non-negotiable that those missiles were going to go. So it's not like he was waffling. You see that, that bad leadership can, that's what he means by a couch. You can use, you could take 13 days just to think about it and go swing this way and that way. Kennedy was like, "This is the outcome, but I am very open to a variety of ways to get there," and that's what he figures out over those 13 days.

17. 2:02:09 – 2:15:36

    Anger, Moral Outrage and Seeing Yourself Angry

    1. PAPeter Attia2:02:09

       There's one last topic I wanna get to, Ryan, and it's a, it's sort of pivot away from this, but it's something you've, you've written so extensively about and, and just on a personal level, something that has been very helpful to me, which is anger. Let's start with when it's helpful, when it's not helpful. What is it about anger that can be destructive? What do the Stoics think about anger?

    2. RHRyan Holiday2:02:31

       Let's say as a group, they're against it.

    3. PAPeter Attia2:02:32

       [laughs]

    4. RHRyan Holiday2:02:33

       Um, I mean, Seneca writes a beautiful essay called Of Anger that's basically a warning to young Nero about the costs and the dangers of anger. It pops up over and over again in his, his letters as well. But I mean, anger's one of those things where like ego, we're really eager to make excuses for it. Like to go, "Oh, it's part of who I am. It helps me in what I've done. It's great fuel." When I look at all the times I've lost my temper, I've been really angry about anything, I never think back going, "I'm really glad."

    5. PAPeter Attia2:03:05

       [laughs]

    6. RHRyan Holiday2:03:05

       You know what I mean? Like, that's different than sort of moral outrage about so- Like when I hear about something that's wrong and I, my immediate reaction is, "That's not okay. I'm upset that that's the status quo," to me that's different than anger in the sort of the temper sense of the word. So maybe if we're making a distinction that Stoics are very anti-temper. But even Seneca talks about it. You know, Seneca's like, "Look, like someone murdered your father, you would still get vengeance. You don't have to do it from a place of anger." And I think he just means that like there's an objective idea of justice. Not being angry doesn't mean you accept everything, and that you wilt and, and you, you tolerate the, the gravest injustices. But it's that you're not being jerked around by those reactions.

    7. PAPeter Attia2:03:57

       There might be people listening to this who can relate, but sometimes when we're angry, we actually break inanimate objects. You had some really interesting things to say about this recently. You wrote about this in one of the newsletters. Again, reading it is so funny because it's, you write about it in a way that's light, but like I can't count the number of inanimate things I've smashed in my life.

    8. RHRyan Holiday2:04:17

       Not that long ago I had, you know, I had, I couldn't find my AirPods, so I had like the regular iPod headphones in. And they weren't tan- they were all tangled, and I was getting mad, and then it was like I ripped, I ripped it apart. And it was like, "Well, I really punished these headphones," [laughs] you know what I mean? And now it's like I can't do the thing that I wanted to do. Yeah, I do think it's interesting. We, anger can so get ahold of us that we will essentially be talking through our actions to a stove or a wall or a computer. Yeah, my desk has got, you know, a crack in it from where I hit it 'cause something was wrong. Yeah, we ... And I don't think the Stoics were perfect, and I, I feel like if they were perfect, they wouldn't have talked about anger so much. I think they're talking about anger because it's a perpetual problem in their life. Think about Marcus Aurelius, like have you seen the movie Lincoln that Spielberg...? You know that scene where they're sort of arguing? I, I think it's one of the greatest scenes in all movies, where they're like telling him why he can't do this, and he's like, he pounds on the table. He's like, "I am the President of the United States." He's like, "I am clothed in immense power." That's impotence. Like, he's angry at the impotence that he got this far and this thing is so obvi- passing the 13th Amendment is profoundly obviously the right thing to do. It's the only course of-

    9. PAPeter Attia2:05:32

       And he can't even will it to happen in that moment.

    10. RHRyan Holiday2:05:35

        That's so much of where our anger comes from. But then when you even think about that situation, it, it's not the anger that solves it. It's that he then leaves that room, and he's willing to, to basically do all sorts of complicated, even in some cases morally dubious things to get where he needs to go. So I thought about this a lot, 'cause I wrote this book about Peter Thiel and his sort of quest to destroy Gawker. There's that expression that, uh, revenge is a dish best served cold. People think that means you wanna enjoy the fruits of your victory, but it's, no, it's a dish best served cold, which means what they're saying is you don't wanna touch a hot plate. You don't wanna do it out of anger because you get burned, right? And, and so that's what I think about anger. Like I think politically we've now confused anger and political change. We almost conflate purity or moral superiority with how angry you are. That's not how you solve any problems.

    11. PAPeter Attia2:06:33

        Do you have a sense of where we are historically on our anger meter? There is so much moral outrage. It's easy to now lose sight of what, what's the root and what's the response.

    12. RHRyan Holiday2:06:44

        Yeah, it's, it's really hard to tell, and I think what's interesting to me, like people go, "Are we on the verge of a civil war?" I have a friend of mine who was, works in DC. He was like, "Who the fuck's fighting in this civil war?" He's like, "None of these people were..." It, I think that's what's actually interesting about all the anger that we have, is that it's primarily v- sort of verbal and social. It's not real.

    13. PAPeter Attia2:07:07

        Is that because we're not willing to die for something anymore? I mean-

    14. RHRyan Holiday2:07:10

        Well, we're, I just don't, I-

    15. PAPeter Attia2:07:11

        Like going back to Stoic virtues.

    16. RHRyan Holiday2:07:13

        Yeah, I, I think, I think this is all a performance. I think this is largely a performance, or it's almost therapeutic. Like it's a, it's in the way that we used to be really into music, we're now really just into being angry about political and social issues. Anyways, there are very few problems to which anger is the solution, and the most serious problems, the ones that are the most aggravating, are the ones that require the most discipline and the least amount of anger. Like I, I think about that again politically. It's like, okay, most of the wrong in the world is not being done deliberately. It's being done by people who don't know better, who are ignorant, who are being manipulated, or in some cases think they're doing the right thing, right? So anger at those people is not gonna make them change their mind, right? You're not gonna yell at someone into waking up to the bad assumption they've taken in, right? And then there are real bad people in this world. There's evil, and there's sociopaths, and there's, there's real bad actors. Those people, you're certainly not gonna yell at a sociopath into not being a sociopath, right? It's like precisely the most dangerous high-stakes situations require our utmost cognitive and rational resources. So I'm not talking about anger from a place of someone who has no temper or doesn't get angry about shit. I'm, I'm just- stating the fact that less anger is better.

    17. PAPeter Attia2:08:41

        The story you led with or the example you led with, which you've written about as well, I think is it's really humbling, which is go back in time, consider every time you've lost your marbles and ask, when did it accomplish what you wanted? When did it actually make the situation better? And I can't say it's never happened, but it's I can't remember when it did.

    18. RHRyan Holiday2:09:04

        Or Seneca talks about like when you see other angry people, like just real like I have some memories of Dove who had a bad anger problem. When I think about what he looked like angry and just how shockingly immature and childish and ridiculous and embarrassing it was, you know, you could see his neck and he felt like he was going to drop dead of a heart attack. I've never seen anything like it. But when we see other people get angry, we're like, what are you doing? But how he talks about Seneca just talks about looking in the mirror when you're he's like, have you ever actually seen yourself get angry?

    19. PAPeter Attia2:09:43

        That was, I think, day four of the anger program you put together.

    20. RHRyan Holiday2:09:49

        Oh, yeah, sure. Like, did you see that photo in the March Madness from last year of Tom Izzo? He's the coach at Missouri. He ends up some player messed up and he's yelling at him. And he's so you got just just look at this after he gets so angry. He's like clench his fist. He's clearly he's so angry. You know how at the end of it, it almost becomes physical, right? He's like trying to physically intimidate a child like, you know, an 18 year old basketball player. And he's in his face. He's yelling and he's trying to get his point across. He's it's like almost like a gorilla. You know, the gorilla is like trying to show don't mess with me. And he's the photo snaps him doing this as another student is another athlete is stepping in to separate the two. Like a child is stepping in between a man yelling at another child. Right. It ended up a lot of people under rationalizing this is what coaches do, blah, blah, blah. And there's like no evidence that yelling makes players better. But if we could get that photo of ourselves whenever we were the most angry, I think it would cut it in half because you'd be like, I never want to do that again.

    21. PAPeter Attia2:10:57

        I agree with that completely. And that was sort of the first thought I had, which was I need a picture of me like that in my pocket as a reminder as I'm getting worked up. Like, don't go here. Don't become the Incredible Hulk right now.

    22. RHRyan Holiday2:11:12

        Yeah, sometimes I think about like, you know, you have security cameras at your house or whatever. I wonder like and I know they've caught it before, but I'm actually too scared to look at it. But like what would watching an argument between you and your spouse look like? What would you actually take from that? Like, I almost know what I would take from it. That's why I don't want to watch it. Do you know what I mean? But like in the same way, I'm sure you found this with your podcast when you listened to your first episode with your you were like, fuck, that's how can anyone listen to this person? Do you know what? Like when I hear my own audio books, I'm like, oh, this is awful. I can imagine what looking at yourself in an argument with another person would be just utterly repugnant. Yeah. You know, and you would realize you do a lot of things that you don't realize you're doing.

    23. PAPeter Attia2:12:00

        Ryan, this has been great. I've been wanting to speak with you for so long, long before Stillness came out, but it just became a great reason to have more than one thing to talk about. Again, as I said to folks, if they don't already subscribe to The Daily Stoic, they should. What's the best way that people can sort of get a hold of all of this type of wisdom that you're very generously providing?

    24. RHRyan Holiday2:12:22

        So I'm at Ryan Holiday on most platforms, ryanholiday.net, dailystoic.com. Do you get the Daily Dad email?

    25. PAPeter Attia2:12:30

        It's I don't and I realize I'm going to have to I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get another email.

    26. RHRyan Holiday2:12:34

        That's that's the one I like doing. I got to find some way to combine them or so. I know it's weird that it's two, but they feel very different to me. So dailydad.com is the other daily one I do each day.

    27. PAPeter Attia2:12:44

        I know I said I would that was my questions. I do have one last question for you. How the hell can you be so prolific?

    28. RHRyan Holiday2:12:50

        It's my it's my job. I mean, like I have a practice. I follow the practice every day and it comes out the backside.

    29. PAPeter Attia2:12:57

        It's unbelievable. It's I'm I'm not jealous, nor am I envious, but incredibly respectful.

    30. RHRyan Holiday2:13:04

        I think that the process is where it comes from.

Episode duration: 2:16:05