Ryan Holiday on the Case for Stoicism in an Age of Distraction

It was the center of the world that was the most powerful empire on Earth,

and so a lot of the predicaments and dilemmas that America is in, a lot of the forces acting on America are the forces that were acting on Rome, just as it was acting on the Greeks in the Socratic Period. Hi everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.

The Greek and Roman philosophy of stoicism has been around for millennia, since the ancient Greeks and Romans, obviously. Anyone who has read Meditations by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius has had a taste of it. Generally speaking, stoicism centers on the ideas of self-control, rational thought and letting go of the things we cannot control as a means of living a better life.

So maybe unsurprisingly, it's finding new resonance in a world where we've lost sight of some of these virtues. And one of the biggest evangelists right now is author and media strategist Ryan Holiday. He's written around a dozen books on the subject and has a website and popular podcast called The Daily Stoic, where he shares Meditations, Lessons, and interviews inspired by the great stoic thinkers. And holiday is willing to call out the ways tech leaders, mega politicians, and Manusphere

“influencers are getting it wrong. I think it's important to talk about stoicism right now,”

because one of the things the Silicon Valley companies I have covered of the years have done is perverted it in a way that I find distressing. And at the same time, it's a great way to think about your life and how you want to lead it. And we are at a perfect moment in all this chaos to do so. And I think Ryan is an excellent teacher at doing that. All right, let's get to my conversation with Ryan. Our expert question comes from my eldest son, Louis Swisher, who is a fan of the topic. This is a

thoughtful conversation with a thoughtful person, so don't go anywhere. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting and other for inventory and other for sales and somehow, none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odu comes in. In an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together from sales and accounting

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“I second guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? And who should I even call?”

That's where thumbtack comes in. Upload a photo or voice note, and their AI powered search helpstack knows the issue and match you with the right top rated local pro. Instead of second guessing or searching for hours, you get clarity. And can hire the right pro with confidence. If you're next home project, try thumbtack. They know homes. Higher the right pro today. Hi, it's Karah Swisher. You know me as co-host of Pivot, but for August, I'm flying solo,

and I've lined up some incredible guest hosts to join me. Mark Cuban, Chelsea Handler,

Caitlin Collins, and a lot more you won't want to miss. Already out, my conversation with Hillary Clinton, among many other things we get into redistricting fights, reshaping state politics, and what trumps golden makeover of the presidency actually means. And it's not good. Trust me, you don't want to skip this one. Find Pivot on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ryan, thanks for coming on on. Yeah, thanks for having me. So there's a lot I want to talk about

about modern stoicism. It's appeal to young men, how leaders in tech and politics are getting it wrong. My first clue, I had four kids, but two of the older boys were carrying around Marcus really as suddenly. And I didn't know what was happening, although I was thrilled for them to do so.

“But to start, what people get wrong about stoicism? Well, I think the word stoic is unfortunate”

in the English language, just as the word epicurian is, right? We think an epicurian is a pleasure loving hedonist, and then we think a stoic is an emotionless robot. Right. And that's- Ryan and Barrett essentially, right? Yeah, which is not what either of the philosophies are about. So I think this stereotype as the emotionlessness is the big one, and then as stoicism has become sort of popular again here in the 21st century, it's hypermasculine, you know, it's like the

this like anti-intellectual thing, almost, when in fact, as a philosophy it's based on

“on reason and virtue and decency and goodness, and some big things that I think are missing”

in some of the popular conceptions of the philosophy. So they get that it's sort of a strong man, kind of, like a strong silent type, kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, Marcus Eurelius is

the most powerful man in the world. There's- there's the Emperor of Rome. I think there's a reason

that that is attractive to young men in particular. It's different than the sort of academic philosopher. It's different than the nerdy philosopher. It's different than the egghead, you know, all these things. So I think there's an attraction there that the irony being that Marcus Eurelius, although he is the Emperor of Rome, is known in his time for how thoughtful and considerate and patient and all the opposite of these things we're now projecting on to. Absolutely. So let's

then just find what Stoicism is and why I've seen the research and popularity. And again, you're not talking about the modern dictionary definition of the word Stoicism, which is to endure pain and difficulty without showing any emotion, the great and bare thing I was talking about. What you're talking about is Stoicism goes back millennia. Yes. Give us the- and I hate to say Cliffs Note, Surgeon of the Philosophy of Stoicism, but how you define and how you're

putting it out there in quite a popular way, speaking of popular. Yeah, it's interesting to think like Stoicism is an ancient philosophy to the Romans. Right? It starts in Greece, you know,

sometime around the fourth century BC, it's rooted in in cynic philosophy first and foremost.

Basically, this guy named Zeno suffers this shipwreck. He washes up an Athens totally penniless and he starts talking about this philosophy as he's rebuilding his life on what's called the Stoapokele that's the painted porch in the agora and Athens. And so it's this philosophy that ultimately comes to be rooted around these four virtues of courage, temperance or moderation, justice and wisdom, and it makes its way ultimately from Greece into Rome. But as a philosophy,

I sort of summarize it as it's this idea that we don't control much of what's happening in the world around us, but we control how we respond to the world around us. We control who we are inside that world. And so you can imagine Zeno coming out of this disaster living in a Greek world that's constantly at war and in this state of flux and then ultimately the Romans, you know, so much was outside of their control. You know, most children died in infancy, you could be thrown in jail by

a tyrant. They couldn't predict the weather. They were plagues. Like the ancient world, although we see it now is this kind of golden age. It was a horrible place to be alive, a violent dark, disturbing place. And so a philosophy that said, okay, we'll inside all of this. What's up to me?

“Where should I focus my energy? How can I both survive and thrive inside that? That's what the”

philosophers were thinking about then, as opposed to, you know, how we think about philosophy now, which is, you know, so removed from the data data. So how to cope? I mean, like you just mentioned, the four foundational values are, as you say, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. Can you apply those today, you know, even with yourself, as a way of explaining what they are

and how they intersect, because intersection is critical for all four of them? Yeah, Zeno would

talk about how the four virtues are distinct and yet inseparable from each other. I'll give you a great example. So courage, we know what courage is. It's running into a burning building. It's also the moral courage to stand up and speak out. But courage inseparable from the virtue of justice, that is to say, in pursuit of the right, in pursuit of the good, is obviously not a virtue. And so

“they all inform each other. Discipline would be, if not just, you know, what time do you wake up?”

What do you eat? How fast can you run? Discipline is also rooted in the idea of temperance or moderation. What is the right amount? So even Aristotle was talking about how, you know, too much courage becomes recklessness and not enough courage is, of course, cowardice. You know, yolo and everything, isn't courage. It's just wildly irresponsible. Right. And then all of the virtues are then informed by the virtue of wisdom, which we could say is sort of discretion and

judgment. It's not just like how smart you are, but it's your understanding of things, the value of things, the truth of things. So all the virtues inform each other and are difficult to separate, but you can't really have one without the other. Do you have some point to something in your own life recently where you were trying to balance them out? I mean, I'll give you a good one. I struggle with with discipline. I, in the sounds like, you know, my problem is I just care too much. My problem

to go, hey, like my ankle hurts today. So, so the discipline for me is I'm going to rest and I'm going to recover and take care of myself as opposed to pushing myself and injuring myself further.

So, like, the discipline there, it's not always pushing to do more. Sometimes it's pushing to

do less. I have two young kids. So, for me, the discipline that I think about the most is just the, do I need to get upset about this? Am I keeping my cool here? How am I expressing myself both firmly and reasonably? So, I would say I deal with the virtue of sort of,

“maybe the best way to describe discipline in the stoic concept is the idea of self-mastery, right?”

Not being the slave to your passions, not being the slave to your urges, not being the slave to your emotions, not being the slave to, you know, your first reaction to things. So, that's probably the day-to-day one that I'm thinking about the most. That's a good one. I'm very disciplined. I didn't

run this morning. I'm like, I'm tired. I'm tired as fuck, and I'm staying that. I'm very disciplined

about that. Again, we're talking about a philosophy of dates back for the birth of Christ. And yet, your YouTube videos and podcasts are hugely popular, millions of views. You said the interest in services and seems to pick up when the world feels out of control. And you were just talking about the chaos of the engines. Do you think that's what's happening now or is it linked to that in your mind? Yeah. I mean, look, one of the great stoics is Epictetus, who is actually two of

the great stoics. We have Epictetus in Seneca, both live through the reign of Neuro. So, you can imagine Seneca and Epictetus turning to stoicism when they're like the guy in charge is insane. And there's not that much we can do about it. Yeah, Epictetus was a slave. Yeah, Epictetus has been

slave. He spends the first 30 years of his life as a slave. It's really interesting just how much

of the social spectrum the stoics end up taking up, you know, we have Epictetus on one end of the social spectrum. And then, he's the primary philosophical influence on Marcus Relius. You know, Marcus Relius lives through a plague, you live through these wars. I do think like when everything is awesome and everything is going well, you know, it's a little easier to be an Epicturian. It's when it feels like things are changing fast. It feels like they're falling apart when

the political system isn't working. Like, what do you do when you wake up in the world is filled with injustices and cruelty and stupidity and corruption? And you know that it's wrong and you would like to think that everyone agrees with you that it's wrong. But that's actually

“a minority view. You know, I think there's a reason that the stoics are resonating today,”

but it's worth going back and thinking, you know, 250 years ago at the time of the founding, the most popular play in the world is this play called Cato by Joseph Addison, which is all about stoic philosophy and all the founders know it by heart, like in the way that we could sing lines from Hamilton today. George Washington is quoting lines from Cato and his letters. He puts on Cato at Valley Forge. So it's in the, you know, the times that try men's souls

that that I think we turn to our forebears who who went through difficulties and we try to go, well, what do they figure out about getting through this? And I think stoicism has long been back. Absolutely. There's also a lot of overlap with stoicism and the three Abrahamic phase due days of Christianity and Islam and church attendance seems to have at least flat night after decades of decline. Oddly enough, one of my other sons is going to church every week now and we

“never took them to church. I'm very supportive of, do you see this as part of that trend to me?”

It's communities with he's searching for or non online life, I guess, something like that or real life. I think communities part of it, but I also do think spiritual guidance and moral direction is something we are thirsty for. Like you take church out of public life, you take moral instruction out of school because we don't want to be judgmental, we don't want to yuck any one's young, we want to look at history and and go, well, this person was a slave owner and this person was

a tyrant and this person was of this and of that and all of that is well and good, but what it does create is a bit of a vacuum. Like who should I look up to? What is good? What is evil? How should I live my life? I think particularly for young men, there is a hunger for direction. I think of all the faiths to have a resurgence, Catholicism is interesting and I do think, you know, I grew up Catholic so there is something about stoicism that I think is resonant there.

They share the same cardinal virtues. I just think people are, they know that what they're doing

to the past to answer some of those questions. There's also some attraction to this pope, I think,

“and the previous one, I think that's one thing, which is interesting because I never took them”

to church. Never did. I happened to be Catholic and I haven't been in church in a hundred years,

but again, I'm very supportive. I'm like great. This is what makes you feel better. It makes you feel like in coke, it gives you direction. It makes them more rounded. Great. This is really good for you. It seems very good. Did you read the pope's thing on AI? His, of course, I did. I did all show on it. Yeah, what did you think of that? Magnificent humanity. I thought it was so fascinating because, you know, for my whole life, but I think for a generation or so now, we've been

looking at this technology and then asking ourselves, is it economically good or bad? Is it unavoidable or not? And what's so interesting about that work is, is you have him looking at it from a moral perspective. Like, is this right and wrong? Is this the direction we want to go as a society? How will this change our obligations to each other? What are our obligations to each other? So, I do think it goes to that idea of, like, we just live in this, unfortunately, I think, like, a fundamentally

a moral society where we have stripped out the ability to even ask those questions about, like, is this right or wrong? Should I be doing this or not? It's just, like, hey, can this get funding or not? Will this go viral or not? And I think the pope is sparking something there, which I think great philosophers and spiritual leaders are supposed to spark, which is going, hey, that's all well, good, but there are some other questions to consider here. And the, these are, in fact,

the most essential questions to consider. It's also not anti-tech, actually. If you read it

“carefully, if you read everywhere, and that's what I thought he did. And really, I wonder if the”

pope is a stoic, he feels a little bit. You know, I was just in Roman, and we went and saw a blessing of the pope, and you see him going around in the little pope, mobile, and it was funny, you know, they, they'd be like, oh, you're American, you're like, Bob from Chicago, like, the idea of the pope being a human being that's accessible to Americans is interesting. I like to point out that that Marcus really is in the pope have, have the same title, Pontifix Maximus. The Rome

absorbs, you know, Rome as the Catholic Rome absorbs so much of the iconography and the, the names and the words and the titles of the Romans and then the stoics, this sort of continuity is interesting to me. But yeah, I thought the work was really interesting, and I just wish we would, I wish we were having those kinds of discussion. I think this is what's really great about the Odyssey. Like, I hate that so much of the dialogue about the Odyssey is about like, who should have

been cast and, you know, this or that. But the Odyssey is supposed to be contentious and create debate and, and Odysseus is a hero and a villain for the purposes of spurring complex man.

Yes, it says it right there in the first life. That's the whole point, is you're supposed to

argue at these different ways and then make different choices in your own life. 100%. We're going to look at the tech in a second, but every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours. Hello, my name is Luis Fischer. I'm Cara's eldest son and like many young people, I found comfort in the words of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. But I do wonder, what is the purpose of a philosophy of self-regulation in a modern world that incentivizes

self-access and indulgence. That's a great question. Thank you. I love that. Yeah, I used to write. Yeah, I mean, the stoics were thinking about this themselves, right? So, Marcus Aurelius can do anything he wants, right? And we know we can guess at what some of those things might be based on the behaviors that we know from the other emperors. Like they were remarkably creative at the excesses they figured out how to go to. So Marcus Aurelius could do all that,

but I think what he realizes is that that's actually not freedom but a kind of a punishment that the tibirious isn't actually having a good time on this pleasure island that he's, you know, throwing people off of cliffs when they fall out of favor with him or whatever, that this sort of excesses a kind of a prison. And so the idea for the stoics is like not whether you

“can or can't, but whether you should or shouldn't. And I think in a way, it's remarkable that”

your average person in America, 2000 years later, could relate to the luxuries and temptations of a Roman emperor, but that is how fortunate we are as a society, right? And we have a level of choice and agency that would be unimaginable, not just to the ancients, but even to people a couple of generations ago. So it then becomes imperative on us to go, well, how should I live, what should I do? And what kind of person do I want to be? And so those are the questions that

because you're free to do anything? Actually become a slave to whatever your impulses are. Like

“Epictetus looking around at Nero's court, even though he's literally enslaved, I think what's”

striking to him is that he's actually freeer than many of these people. He tells one of my favorite scenes, he sees this guy sucking up to Nero's cobbler to win favor with the emperor. And he goes like this guy's to blow smoke up the ass of a guy who makes shoes because he doesn't want, you know, to lose favor with this deranged emperor. That sounds familiar. It does. It does, right? It's like, do I want to go to the Melania premiere? Yeah. Yeah. And you go, okay, if a billionaire can't say no,

to doing something that they obviously don't want to do, is it actually that great to be a billionaire? Correct. Sure. It's great. Is it is the billionaire as powerful as you think they are?

And the answer is no, because there's things that they can't not do. Yeah, we'll get to these

billionaires in a second. It's sort of like the, why would you have fuck you money if you can't say fuck you, essentially, right? And to me, it's more like, I always think I did a podcast on succession. I call them cashmere prisons, right? They're in prisons. When I, and when I look at a lot of the tech people, I'm like, I can leave. You can't, you can't cashmere prison. Like, you have so much stuff around you now. You can't move. And I feel much freer. But how do you grapple with the

idea that Mark's release? Of course, was a dictator if you can apply that to our modern era. He had every choice. But I guess we're like that too. We have every choice, or at least in a United States. I, I like to think of, of Marcus a little bit like Thomas Jefferson, you know, he said all men are created equal, but we have to take him literally, even though he probably didn't mean it. There's an interesting passage at the, at the beginning of meditations where Mark's

really says, I encountered Thracia, Hellvideous, Cato, and Brutus, and conceived of a society of equal laws governed by a quality of status and of speech. And of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. So I like the idea of it. And then it's hard to escape the fact that Rome had ceased to be a republic. And it's now this, this empire. He doesn't choose this. Doesn't, how much can he change the system? I don't know. I'm fascinated by the moral predicaments

that these philosophers get themselves into. Yeah, because, you know, I'm asking for freedom. Yeah, and, and look, it's easy to talk about it from where I sit or where a Harvard professor sits, where you don't have the same ethical conflicts because you're not actually in the arena, like literally or figuratively. So I, I like that the stillx were involved to a degree

that their philosophical principles are being tested. I don't like that. They didn't always pass

these tests, right? Like Seneca would, would be a familiar character in our era in that he starts off as heroes sort of governor and teacher and guardrails and towards the end is widely seen as his enabler and doesn't break with him until far too late. So I have no problem criticizing the stillx. I have no problem putting them up and analyzing their moral predicaments. I just, I think ultimately the game should be thinking about, you know, what choices are we making in our

own lives that give us evidence that if we were thrust in such a position, we would do anything

“differently. Yeah. How often do you have to think about the Roman Empire? Because the relationships”

you can make very easily between now and then. I mean, look, our system is based on Rome. They're called senators because that's what they were called in Rome. It's called the capital because in Rome there was capitaline Hill. Like we are living, we are living in a system designed by people who are cost-playing as the Greeks and Romans. And so I do think about Rome all the time. Like Rome is my Roman Empire and I love it and I find it endlessly fascinating. It's also just there. It's like

it was the center of the world that was the most powerful empire on earth. And so a lot of the

predicaments and dilemmas that America is in, a lot of the forces acting on America are the forces that we're acting on Rome, just as it was acting on on the Greeks, you know, in the in the Socratic period. And the British? Right. Yeah, sure. I mean, the reason you study history is to

“understand the present. And I think they have a lot to teach us both good and bad.”

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much written about the ways young men in particular are struggling in modern society. Scott might partner on pivot, writes and talks a lot about this. So it makes sense that young men would turn to Stoicism as a means of finding resilience and strength. See, they're that are peptides and T, I guess. But it can also be warped into a more problematic message of be tougher,

hide your feelings, or that it holds secrets to becoming rich and powerful. Be very clear with people,

what does it says about what it actually means to be a man for people who sort of take it and use it for whatever purposes? Well, one of the most interesting pieces of writing, like I said, speaking that that survives to us as a little essay, is from Masonius Rufus, who's the teacher of epititas. And he asks, should women be taught philosophy? And ultimately where it comes down is the idea that virtue is virtue, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, you know, he says,

like, you don't really care what the sex of your hunting dog is, just whether they do their job. Or, you know, is the horse fast or not? That's all that really matters. And so, although Stoicism because the ancient world was inherently patriarchal, 95% of the Stoics we know about are men, and a lot of the metaphors are wrestling and fighting and, you know, things women were not allowed to do. That being said, there were plenty of Stoic women, one of the most impressive Stoic

women in history is Cato's daughter, Porsche, who assassinate Julius Caesar with her husband, Brutus, though she could sort of short-triff in both Shakespeare and the Plutarchian histories of it. I guess what I would say is that Soicism does talk a lot about being a man, but it primarily talks about what it means to be a good person, like what are obligations as a human being

So I do think there's this sort of over emphasis on what it can teach young men.

“Like, I know from my talks that like a good chunk of the audience is women in positions of leadership.”

It's not like women are not stressed out and overwhelmed in dealing with things. Like, of course, they are. So I don't want it to be a particularly gendered philosophy. You know, you found Stoicism as a young man across the life. You were in early 20s. You were a director of marketing for American and Parallel at face

many PR crisis under its problematic founder, Doug Tony. What a job. And in your first book,

Trust me, I'm lying, which I read. I liked a lot. You admit to using some pretty and seemingly publicity strategies generate buzz. Is that what brought you to it? Like, what's the fuck am I doing? It's one of those things where it takes a while to sort of get its teeth into you. I think the reason that young men are attracted to Stoicism is that it speaks so clearly about mastering your emotions, about, you know, fulfilling your potential, about being great,

about accomplishment. It is a philosophy that can make you stronger and faster and more productive and tougher and all these things that I think young men are particularly after. So if that's the way in, I'm all about it. And that was certainly the way in for me. I was thinking like, hey, how does this make me better professionally? It took a good chunk of my 20s for the ethical framework of the philosophy to trickle all the way down. And for me to see that

“actually these things are related to each other that they're equally essential. So I think as a”

motivational philosophy, the entry point is often there, which is good. You know, I mean, the early stuff that even someone like Jordan Peterson was talking about is great, you know, make your bed, read the great books, you know, find your purpose. All that stuff's really important.

The problem is when that gets yoked to sort of grievance politics. Yes, yeah. I caught the grievance

industrial complex. Totally. So what motivated you? What got you there to actually start living stoicism's opposed to chewing on it in your head like that? Yeah. I mean, watching somebody destroy a billion dollar company because they were a slave to their appetites. And there you go, was quite eye-opening. You know, I've dubbed Charlie built an incredible company that was making the world a better place. Like a garment worker should not work for 50 cents an hour in a

sweatshopping Guatemala, especially when that t-shirt is being sold for $50, right? Like he used to say, like, you can't make a bikini for $6 without fucking somebody over. And he's totally right. You know, like, that's so much of the fashion industry is built on exploitation and people make millions of dollars for it. But it comes at the expense of the workers. It comes at the expense of the environment, comes at the expense of all these things. So, so I very much believed in that company. I was very

inspired by it and I, I loved it. And then watching him destroy it to choose, you know, he could have walked away. They offered him a bunch of money to say, "Look, you basically took this thing as far as you can take it." And it's not going well. The stock price is 70 cents. Like, we got to bring in some adults. And he was like, "I'd rather burn it to the ground." And so to watch, I know that.

“Yeah. Right, watching somebody do that. I think it, first off, again, we talked about the timelessness”

of these things. Like, that character exists in all sorts of works of history and literature. And so to watch that, I think it was eye-opening. And I never was part of the sort of the scene of that company. My wife and I have been together for 20 years. I didn't go to the parties or do any of that stuff. But just realizing that that sort of chaos and dysfunction and

meglomania was ultimately like, it always ended in the same place. Was, was for me a really powerful

inoculation against Trumpism as a powerful inoculation against some of the Silicon Valleyism that Elon Muskism. It's like, "I've seen, I saw a microcosm of this." When you were, yeah, no, absolutely. Now, in your interview with comedian Hassan Manage, you talked about the thing that Marcus really wrote about most was the common good and how stoicism is inherently a philosophy about our obligations and responsibility to other people.

But as we were talking about earlier, our tech and social media put a premium on the opposite on the individual and self-projection on performative behavior. And it turned us all into marketers or ourselves or personal brands. Talk about how you counsel young people about the way social media takes us away from that. It's the opposite direction of stoicism. Yeah, it's like a recipe for being a hypersosyopath. It's like, hey, let me take your worst impulses

mentally ill people do so well on social media. They lack some of the restraints and the shame

“that is a kind of a final check on some of our worst behaviors. They can fully turn themselves over”

to the algorithm in a way that I don't think the rest of us can. What I love about stoic philosophy is that ethical core that we're talking about, that it says, there's a great passage of meditations that I've been thinking about lately. Mark's realist is talking about how everything is going wrong and it's sideways and he says, you know, I was once fortunate and then at some point fortune abandoned me. And then he says, but that's not true. We make our own lock. He says, like,

we make our own good fortune. And so you might think he's about to say, you know, like this

pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of make your own lock. And he says, like, good lock and good

fortune is good actions, good character and good intentions. And so you think about what a refreshing frame of reference that is for someone who has power and responsibility over a lot of people. And then you sort of compare that to the model we have today, whether it's political or, you know, economic or talking about the leaders of big companies. Like this transition towards like, hey, my fundamental obligation is to shareholder value or to my investors or to scale or to my own,

you know, my own self interest. You see just how fundamentally distorted that is.

“Now, what's interesting though, at the same time, I think about this a lot to how to reconcile the”

inherent tension myself and you would probably have the same thing. You're growing your platform to our mind making money in no small part to social media and your millions of followers. Talk about how you reconcile that because I don't think all of it is bad for sure. No, it does. It does incentivize as you said narcissism. And look like, uh, book publishers are multi-billion dollar companies selling through multi-billion dollar companies, selling through multi-billion dollar companies,

moved by multi-billion dollar trucking companies. Like, there's really no way to sort of

operate in this world or in this system with totally sort of clean hand. Like, you're always

going to be dealing with unsavory trade-offs or dilemmas. I think that's part of it. The thing I get a lot is people go, well, what would Senika think about, you know, you doing this or that? I go, look, Senika inherited wealth and lived on an estate tended by his many slaves. Like, there is something fundamentally more honest and decent about our system where you make something and if someone likes it, they purchase it under their free will and if they don't like it,

they can get their money back or not purchase it. Like, I do think like the sort of world of commerce is not inherently in conflict with, you know, art or the exchange of ideas. So I don't have a problem with, with making money or working on these platforms. I think about, um, am I contributing a positive message? Am I carrying water for people that shouldn't have water carried for them? Am I providing intellectual cover for bad things? I think more about that. Like, I don't think

about so much of like what platforms am I on? I think about what ideas or people am I having on my platform? Like, I've had the number of friends I've texted that said, look, I realize this episode will get lots of downloads, but you don't have to have RFK junior on your podcasts.

“Like, you don't, there's no law that says you have to interview this person. And in fact,”

you should think about when you are interviewing him, you know, what message you are allowing him to propagate into the world? Like, you can't silence him or shut him down, but you can decide not to contribute to the propagation of fundamentally horrible ideas. Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This? I got to sit down with legendary Minnesota links coach Cheryl Reeve and Chicago during all-star weekend. We get into her personal

style of activism, how she supports her players as people, and why she proudly considers herself a diek. Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This? Wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Hey girl, it's Tephi. This week on Tephi Talks, we're talking about parasolcial stand-ups with Ariana and Perez Hilton, a Harry Potter star joining Only Fans,

and the Metcala is the co-extable theme for next year. If you're not already following the show, find us everywhere at Tephi Talks. Subscribe on YouTube and all the podcast platforms and Instagram

Concerns about dark money in U.S. politics date back years. At least to citizens united, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed barriers on corporate spending in elections.

During midterm cycles and presidential races, there's always grumbling about dark money,

and this year in Michigan, it's sometimes seemed like the whole race. The pro-Israel lobby in group Apex spent about $30 million boosting the campaign of Haley Stevens, her opponent Abdul Osaya drew attention to this again and again, and she lost. Apex is in a difficult position. It's support can now be a liability, and some people are questioning the way the organization disperses money.

I'm going to sound crazy when I say this, but crush maga pack is affiliated with a different pack called Save Democracy, and Save Democracy has received $100,000 from United Democracy Project, which is Apex Superpack. So sometimes the layers here are two or three or even four packs deep. On today explained, the backlash against Apex today explained drops every weekday. So like we've been talking about, a lot of major figures in tech, maga politics, and the

manifest fear, claim the mantle of stoicism. I have listened to them, but you correctly say they get a lot of things wrong. They did a similar dance around Yuvall Harari, who surprised them by thinking they're awful in many ways. You have said there, you said there are worse things these tech people can study than stoicism, but in tech will embrace the philosophy, it feels like it's

been stripped of its essential parts, like courage and justice. Talk a little bit about that,

because they feel betrayed by some, they definitely betrayed by me, and I have betrayed them. But you talk about you. Yuvall had went under the Sam Harris had this moment with them. Yeah, I have been slowly removed from all the group texts that I want once on, and some of the conference invites have certainly evaporated. That's a favor to you. It's been weird. I don't feel like I've changed that much, and it's been interesting to watch people radical. I talked

about this in the book I did on wisdom, like watching Elon Musk go from reading Soviet rocket manuals to getting all his news from social media. You realize just how easily smart people can

“fry their brains, and I think that's kind of the main problem of our time is like how to avoid”

getting brain fucked, and watching some of these people. Yeah, watching some of these people who are incredibly smart, who have had all sorts of interesting intellectual conversations, just like say the most deranged things, and to say them sincerely is almost the most alarming part.

With certainty is the thing. I always say they're frequently wrong, but never in doubt. One time

Mark said we were starting up first amendment, and I was like, that's not what it said. Like, did you read it? It's short. It's really easy. Kind of stuff. And so it's often that case. So if Mark is really a centric walk through Silicon Valley today, what would they make of the kind of stoicism practiced by some of these elite figures? Because they do think of themselves that way. They actually do. Yeah, it's like someone tweeted a couple of years ago, it was like every athlete

wants to be a VC, and every VC wants to be a stoic philosopher. And again, there's worse

“aspirations than being a philosopher. But ultimately, I think the most important philosophical”

questions are not the things they're hammering out on these group texts, or at these dinner parties that I'm sure you used to go to as well, where they would talk about things. I did. The interesting philosophical question. This is what I love actually about having a business about being an entrepreneur is that all of a sudden theoretical or abstract issues are decisions you have to make. Like, you have to decide whether you want to be on this platform or that platform,

whether you want to do a deal with this company or that company, whatever. Like, I don't accept gambling advertising. I don't accept alcohol advertising. I don't accept weed advertising. This, you know, cumulatively will cost me ultimately millions of dollars over the course of my life. And so, to me, the philosophy and philosophy in general is about the dilemmas and situations we find ourselves particularly where there's money on the line or status on the line or access

“on the line. I think what's been fascinating to me and also disappointing to me with the Silicon Valley”

people is with billions of dollars on the line. And real questions about national security, about the future of our democracy. They've all made the decision about what's good for, you know, the investors in VC funds, 17 or whatever it is that they just raised money for and not, like, hey, what kind of worlds do I want my grandchildren to live in? What would you, when you think about

The current power. Why do you think that is, and what would change if they actually did follow

“these principles? I'm thinking of some like Peter T. Hill or Mark Andries and now T. Hill is not”

a stoic in fact he's criticized stoicism at times ring-to-pass of injuries and has occasionally talked about it and also infamously said he'd practice a zero introspection. This is not true. This is a lie. Talk about how it would be different and why they're practicing it the way they are. But they seem attached to it in some fashion at the same time. Yeah, it's probably worth stipulating there's not a single American industry that is distinguished itself particularly well in the, particularly the

second Trump era as far as living up to these philosophical principles. Yes. But I trace it back a

little bit to when the media turned hostile on tech. They took it very personally and they all kind of hunkered down in this bubble and created their own media ecosystem that's actually not that dissimilar to Trump itself, which is like I don't think they're all living in real. Like sometimes when I see some of these extremely bad takes, they remind me of things that I heard when I used to get invited to the dinners. They're reminded me of bad takes that they would say at the dinners.

But when you looked around and everyone there was on their payroll or wanted to deal with some kind, no one would go like that was spectacularly dumb or that is that's not just politically incorrect. It's like it's mean and it's offensive and it's stupid. I have to say I've been in those rooms and I actually would say that's stupid and then people would stare and I, because it drove me insane. And I didn't stop going because it was like pointless. Total. You're an outspoken critic

of President, but you say you're not out here to be a regular political commentator. How do you decide when to use your platform for political criticism, when to use restraint? You could very easily just stay in stoicism. I could accept, you know, the stoics are all involved in politics, right? Like it is hard to be philosophical or ethical and then just simply tune out what's happening in the world. So I think it's, I don't know about you, but I find it particularly

“obnoxious when people will get mad. There's a way you have to get political and I go, you know,”

I'm not talking about like the house budget or, you know, state referendums. I like I don't talk about these policies. I talk about where politics intersects with the most basic parts of the social contract or with the most basic obligations that we have as human beings. Like I don't know how you can say sure the government is running around with mass agents and unmarked cars and throwing people in concentration camps and then deporting them either to foreign Gulogs or countries they've

never been to before and go, well look, I write about personal philosophy and that's just not my

back, right? Like I just, I don't know what is the point of having a platform if that's not the line that you draw about what you're going to speak up, especially as a grandchild of immigrants, people who came here as refugees, like look, everyone should pick their issue, the thing that resonates with them, but I do think there are some things that no one is excused from commenting on. And commenting is only the start, right? Like you also have to be involved locally and as a citizen too.

But has it, do you feel like it's cost you? I don't think it's cost me. I don't think the cost is fine. It is certainly cost me people who would have who disagree with me on those things, right? But like one of the realities of having a newsletter, having a podcast, having social media, is like, do you have the audience or does the audience have you? And I think this goes to the

stoic idea is like, you look, you could have 10 million YouTube subscribers or newsletters or

“subscribers or whatever, and then is that something that frees you to say what you think is important?”

Or is that something that constrains you from saying what those people might not want to hear? And then you go, okay, well, actually is this person? Is that a form of power or is it a form of slavery? Right, yeah, I agree. You talk about astosism is ultimately a call to get involved, not just acceptings as they are. Give us an idea of what that looks like in practice from your point of view. So there's this idea that stoicism is about not being affected, right? Like not being affected

by what's happening. And I think we can stipulate to that if by not affected, we mean in corrupt times you do not become corrupted. If in times of cruelty, you do not become cruel. In times of mass destruction, you don't get distracted. You know, if you're able to maintain your moral compass, your decency, your goodness in a fundamentally indecent, screwed up broken world,

human in in human time. So I think first and foremost, that's really important. And we're,

I don't know about you, but I talk to people that I know that are like, I can't write, I'm just so upset about what's happening in the world. I go, you're letting them win like you

“Yeah, that's what I say. If they came in and tried to physically prevent you from writing,”

you would see that as as textbook oppression. But if you just let the vibes get in your head and prevent you from doing your work, then that's in a way it's even worse. And then I think practically like how involved are you other than just talking about things on social media, you know? Hashtagism, right? That's yes. Yes, like have you actually been to a protest? Do you actually vote? So I think it's about being involved, like unless something is preventing you from

being involved, like your parents are dying or, you know, you're living hand to mouth,

you should be involved. And not just you vote every two years, but like really, really involved. You are very obviously steeped in teaching of these ancient philosophers. You want to bookstores in your Austin and advocate not just reading books like the Odyssey, but reading the multiple times. I completely agree with you on that. There's a big conversation happening right now about whether we're witnessing the end of reading on study found that if you were then half

adults reporter on reading a book in 2022. Talk about the tension here of interesting people who works without reducing them to digestible content because you want them to actually read it. Yeah, I think people are consuming too much news and not reading enough books. And the ancient

“texts are about all of the dilemmas that we are talking about today. I mean, that's what's”

so fascinating about this movie edition of the Odyssey is like the Odyssey is about a collapse in the order of things and the contradictory and conflicting desires of the human heart against itself. And so, um, and people like it, they said they attracted to it. Yes, but I just think people are reading too much contemporary news and they're not rooted enough in history and psychology and humanity. It's like, I would love for you just to be reading more literature and

poetry and and these are all going to help maintain that again, again, ethical moral core that fundamental humanity that all these people talking about preserving Western civilization. That's what Western civilization is, what we owe the stranger, you know, what's beautiful and good, what are our values? That's Western civilization, not blonde hair and blue eyes or whatever. Like skin color is not Western civilization. It's the texts which, by the way, would have been lost if

it weren't for the writers and thinkers in the east. So, this silliness of racial distinctions is absurd. Well, that's a whole other show. But a lot of people are understanding extremely skeptical of the world of self-help and the people evangelizing self-improvement. It's all it's been around forever. But if there's one thing that even someone who's not unborn ought to try, what would it be from your perspective? If I could give like a basic thing, you know, a sort of a make-your-bed, kind of a

piece of advice that people should do, just to push back on that idea from Mark and Jason about not being introspective. Like the, actually, the smartest, most successful, big, prime movers of history, most of them kept journals or wrote memoirs because they were putting themselves up for review.

They were thinking about what they were doing. And one of the incredible things about Mark's

roots is meditations is we have the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world who is trying to get better. And I do think spending some time off of a screen with a pen and a piece of paper and writing and analyzing your own thoughts is an extremely powerful, transgressive, life-changing thing that we would be better if more people did.

“Yeah, I agree with you. I think the reason Mark Anderson doesn't do it is because in the quiet moments,”

he knows exactly the damaged trouble person. He would have to make some changes. So that is an excellent piece of advice. Right, things down and read the text, please read the text. Anyway, Ryan, you're a wonderful person. I really enjoy a lot of your stuff. I'm a big fan. Thank you. And I really appreciate it. Oh, that's so nice. Thank you very much. Today's show was produced by Nishat Perwatt, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop,

Madeleine La Plant, Ruby, Meghan Bernie, and Kaylin Lynch. Special thanks to Rosemary Ho, Dave Shaw, Jim Mackel, and Minolo Marino. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rekwann and our theme music is by Tracodemax. If you're already following the show, you think about the Roman Empire a reasonable number of times each week. If not, you practice zero introspection. Go wherever you listen to podcasts search for on-with-caruswisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on-with-caruswisher

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