The Chris Cuomo Project - Ryan Holiday on How Stoicism Can Transform Your Life

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Ryan Holiday (author, “Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds.”) joins Chris Cuomo to explore the wisdom of Stoic philosophy and its relevance in today’s world. Holiday shares how ancient principles of courage, justice, discipline, and resilience can guide us through life’s toughest challenges. From practical advice to deep philosophical insights, Cuomo and Holiday’s conversation uncovers how focusing on doing the “right thing, right now” can lead to a more fulfilled and ethical life in the face of today’s chaos. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's more cash on hand to grow with up to 55 interest-free days. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. What if I told you I know how you can deal with the worst things that happen to you? That I know the right way for you to live that'll make you happy, that'll make you successful. But then there's a truth that comes with it. It's really, really hard. Now, I'm Chris Cuomo. This is The Chris Cuomo Project. But today's

episode is about Ryan Holiday. Now, if that name doesn't mean anything to you, you're probably not trying to get better in your life. Google it and check out how he has reintroduced Stoicism, one of the oldest philosophies, into modern day life. His books have sold millions of copies. He's not a politician. He's not political. He's a philosopher.

He didn't create stoicism. Now when I say philosophy, you're like, no, this is all about how to live. It's based on cardinal virtues. Cardinal why? Cardinal just meaning essential, that they're pivot points, they're hinge points for how to live. What are they? Courage.

What does that mean? Does that mean running into a fire? No, it's often about what you don't do as much as you do do, all right. Temperance, what does that mean? Sounds like a church lady term. No, it's about discipline. Your ability to follow rules, to follow ethics.

Discipline doesn't mean bad boy. No, that's punishment, that's consequence. Discipline means to follow, like the word disciple. A disciple is someone who follows. It's not someone who gets punished all the time. How do you practice discipline in your life? My guess, staring at my waistband that is stretching out right now,

probably not too well, but it's a cardinal virtue and that's why. Wisdom, wow, talk about a forgotten word in our society. Wisdom, how do you about a forgotten word in our society, wisdom. How do you acquire knowledge? What is curiosity? Why is it so important? How do you learn to hold competing thoughts in your head?

Remember me always saying, you know, two things can be true at the same time. That's where I got it from. So you have courage, you have temperance, you have wisdom, and the fourth is justice. And justice is the topic of his latest book, which is called The Right Thing Right Now. Right Thing Right Now, Ryan Holiday. Wait a minute, where's the justice? Man, if you put the word justice on a book, it breaks right left. People don't want to hear about justice.

It sounds like you're concerned about other people, right? And right thing right now is about how you can practice what you believe matters and how you can control the only things you can control, which is what you do right now and how it leads to the next and how you repeat that pattern. Ryan Holliday is not just a modern-day philosopher. He is one of the helpful people. Okay, sure you can call this work self-help stuff if you want but it ain't cheap and he ain't making it up. It's as old as wisdom gets and it's a way to a better life and I'll give you a little hint. Ryan Holiday,

this is the first time I ever met him in person, he has made a huge difference in my life by making these works and these understandings that I used to get through some very, very dark days. Ryan Holiday. A.I. might be the most important new computer technology ever, storming every industry, literally billions of dollars of being invested. So buckle up. The problem is, A.I. needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.

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Go to CozyEarth.com slash Chris, use the code Chris and you'll get an exclusive discount of up to 40% off. And you can't lose. If you get a post purchase survey, say you heard about Cozy Earth from the Chris Cuomo project, please. When you were deciding what to embrace philosophically, why Stoicism and not any of the other big names and disciplines? The simplest answer is none of them spoke to me.

I think what so struck me, I was reading Mark Shreeles in my college apartment, is it didn't feel like philosophy. It felt like a human being giving advice to other human beings for an actual world that actual people lived in. I mean, that's what's so remarkable. Like on the one hand, okay,

the most powerful man in the world living 2000 years ago with all these beliefs that don't make any sense to us, he has the least relatable existence you could imagine. with all these beliefs that don't make any sense to us, he has the least relatable existence you could imagine. Writing a book exclusively for his own private benefit about some obscure philosophy that was ancient even to him. Like that's been interesting for me to wrap my head around that like stoicism was as old to him

as like Shakespeare is to us. Like it's going back hundreds of years. And so on the one hand, like the idea that I'm picking up this book in my college apartment, I have no help from a philosophy teacher or I'm not even going to like a fancy school that I would be able to read it and relate to it.

And it would have practical advice for my actual life at 19 years old. It's insane. That's like as close to time travel as you could possibly imagine. So it's this amazing thing. And then to hear like, oh, he's not even the only one that believed this.

There are these other guys who are also relatable and accessible. And by the way, it's not all emperors. One of them's a slave and the other's a writer. I just blew my mind. I mean, there wasn't that much to blow. Like, you know, I said before, it like I mean, there wasn't that much to blow. Like, you know, I said before,

I like sort of shook everything that I thought I knew about the world, which was not very much. But when I learned about, I was studying Aristotle and all these other philosophers, there was interesting stuff in there, but I wasn't like, how do I download this into my brain and apply it in my life?

There wasn't an aspirational element to it. It's really becoming, I believe, you're creating a cultural movement as far as I'm concerned. And I love it and I'm here for it. And I'm here to help you with it. And I think we need it very much. And I think there was a big move of progress recently when Jerry Seinfeld went viral telling everyone

about Marcus Aurelius, who he described as the founder of Stoicism. And I thought that was so interesting as a student. I was like, he's not even close to that. But that doesn't matter as much as people understanding that so much new age thinking is repackaged old age. Of course, yes. And even meditation is as beautiful as a book as it is.

When you go back and you read some of the more obscure stoics, you realize that what Marcus is doing is actually writing what they said in his own words. And so it's much more of a, it's a beautiful work of literature and unprecedented in what kind of literature it is, but it's also much closer to a notebook than you would think.

And when you kind of break something, you really, oh, this is, this is a metaphor that somebody else came up with 200 years earlier, or this is a metaphor that somebody else came up with 200 years earlier. This is a line from here. This is an unattributed quote here. So it's just, the more I study the text, the more I love it. But it was incredible, obviously growing up watching Seinfeld,

and then to see, so I know he talked about it in a couple of interviews, and then he did one with GQ where he took out his bag and he was pulling out. That's not only is that the translation that I fell in love with, that's the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library that I read in my college apartment that I just pulled up Amazon and that was the first one.

Like it was just a lucky thing that I picked that one instead of another one. But I, for daily so I bought the rights to that translation and I, the edition that he pulled out of his bag is one that I publish. And so it was like, whoa, that. Did you get a huge spike in people buying it? There was definitely people,

but for me it was like when I, in my college apartment reading this book going, does everyone, it was like, does everyone know about this? And then quickly realizing like, oh no, no, no, most people don't know about it. And deciding like, well, maybe that's a thing I could do. I could tell people about this thing for that to happen, you know, all these years later, just to watch, you know,

there's been other moments like that. But like one of the, I was like, oh, this is, this is what I've been, this is what I was hoping might happen someday. Has any bigger celebrity ever talked about stoicism? I was like, oh, this is what I've been, this is what I was hoping might happen someday. Has any bigger celebrity ever talked about stoicism? Yeah, I mean, what do you say big? The New England Patriots read it

on the way to the Super Bowl in 2014, I guess the Super Bowl was in 2015, but that year. And then the guy that read it there and passed it through the locker room gave it to the Seahawks the year after that devastating loss. So it's gone through sports. Nick Saban. So Nick Saban, you know him, he's the big coach. The process is absolutely right here. If you're a football fan and you want to know why Saban is so effective with the process and understanding what you control and what you don't and what you should focus on right now,

that's what he put into this book for you and much better than Nick says. I was lucky enough to speak, as I spoke to Alabama a couple of years ago, that was cool. Roy McElroy has read it. So there's dip, like, you know, it's had different, whatever the big people are in different fields, I've had the experience of it like,

holy crap, did you hear so-and-so read it? That's been a very weird but surreal. Here's the difference of it. As a self-help sucker, okay, which is definitely what I am. I read them all. I read The Secret. I love Paulo Coelho. I won't throw him in with the self-help guys,

but the alchemist. He's great. It's incredible. I mean, he's a real writer. I read it all. Seven Habits of, I mean, Stephen Coelho, I'm in there. I'm telling you, if it comes out, I'm in there. And here's why that stuff is successful.

It's because it's ephemeral. And you take it in, you think it's gonna be a shortcut. You think that if I can just understand this one thing, that's it. And that's not the truth. The truth is you have to live it. And the truth is it's hard. And that's the beauty of what you've brought to life

with stoicism. If, if, now this is a transition point for us. If people can handle it. I was saying to Ryan when he came in, by the way, this is a transition point for us, if people can handle it. I was saying to Ryan when he came in, by the way, this is a big deal for me. What I love about the podcast most is that I get to meet people who I care about on my own terms.

Often I get to meet them in the news world on the news's terms, which is, Ryan, I love you, but I gotta talk to you about, you know, you having two cows, too many on your, whatever it is that brought you into my aperture. Yeah, you're usually in trouble. So I was saying to Ryan, man, I don't know if it's the right time or the worst time,

but I believe our society is doing this the least that it has in my lifetime, that we care about the signature virtues of humanity and being present and understanding why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing less than ever. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for you, but we certainly need you right now. Well, I think stoicism by definition challenges the way we naturally are.

Like just that it is a set of exercises and a way of thinking it is a set of exercises and a way of thinking and a set of virtues that are in not, I'm trying to think, that challenge us out of what is easiest or most natural or most comfortable. And so it's not as if, you know, 2000 years ago, this was all really easy and everyone was doing it.

Of course not. And even the Stoics, the reason they're writing and talking about it is because like they're struggling with it. But I would say, you know, social media and all these tools are wonderful in some ways and then they challenge us in other ways. I also just got to imagine, you know, it's like Marcus really is talking about how annoying people are and stuff. And you're just like, there's a lot more people now. So like there's more annoying people. It's all the things, it's like, in some ways they had all,

in the ancient world, they had all our problems and a bunch of others. And we have all their problems multiplied by, you know, just the bigness of the world and the interconnectedness of everything. So I don't know, I would say in some ways we're not stoic. And then I also kind of go, I guess I'm right in the middle of the millennials,

but this idea that millennials are soft and snowflakes and fragile. And then I go, just look at the events of the last 20 years. And you go, this has actually been a generation that's been through some shit. Since the greatest generation, your people, let's say like the 9-11 generation. Man, have you gotten hit with a lot of shit.

Yeah. And I mean, I've lived it too, but I had years under my belt. Though it was formative for me as a gender Xer also. I got married because of 9-11. Really? My wife loves when I say that, by the way. But the- What does that even mean?

9-11 happens. I lose a ton of my guys down there. And I believe this is the new normal. This is way too easy. They're gonna bomb the shit out of us. And I gotta live my life now. I don't know why I've been fucking around, but I know what matters to me.

And it better happen because I'm gonna be going to these things and they're gonna get me. This reality is gonna get me. So 11 days after 9-11, because I was volunteering at night and I was covering it obviously like everybody else, I got engaged. And my then girlfriend, we'd been together

for a while. She was like, are you sure about this? Because I was not the marrying kind. I said, yeah, we have to get married. We have to do this. And we started a family without questions. There's a glimpse into your mortality and all the things that you're talking about. You better do what matters to you and you better do it right now, otherwise it's not gonna happen.

And it was a very activated thing. And then, we lived through all these different things that covered wars all over the place in the economy, but this generation has been formed by it. And I have nieces whose lives, I mean, the signature of a life is incredible cataclysm that we've had. I mean, you know, now topped off by the pandemic

and now the apparent, you know, dissolution of our kind of decency and democracy. And at the same time, there is a huge cultural reverb push to get back to virtues. Now I'll take, I've taken care of a lot of this in the introduction, but just as a reminder for people. So stoicism is really simple. It's a word that Ryan explains really brilliantly

and often and frequently that is misunderstood. We use the word stoic to mean like, you don't have any emotion, right? But that's not what it is. It just comes from the word stoic to mean like, you don't have any emotion, right? But that's not what it is. It just comes from the word for a porch, which is where they were doing the first teaching. If you think about your life, you break down courage, wisdom, justice, temperance.

Now, they mean a little bit different things. Ryan's book, Discipline, is about temperance, right? Because who uses the word temperance anymore, right? So they are the building blocks of a good life because. Well, it's funny, they're called the cardinal virtues in Christianity and in Stoicism. And they're called the cardinal virtues, not because cardinals,

but because the Latin word cardos, which means hinge, the idea is that these are like pivotal things that you could say like the good life hinges on. And so for the Stoics, the idea was that what life was, was a constant series of opportunities to act with courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. And that basically nothing could stop you from doing that. So you could be thrown in prison, you could be made king,

you could become very rich, you could have everything stolen from you, you could be dying of cancer, you could be attacked by the mob. You know, every situation in life demands one or all, ideally some combination of those virtues. And that that was always something in your control, that so much of life, so much of the world

was not up to you, but how you behave in response to it, the standards you hold yourself to, that is the one thing that is up to you. So you could be the victim of a grave injustice, you could be criticized unfairly, you could be the victim of a grave injustice. You could be criticized unfairly. You could be misunderstood, but nothing cuts you off from doing the right thing, from knowing truth, from keeping your cool

and then from doing what you need to do. So like, I've been writing about this series now for five years. And- Is that it? That's the, the, the, the, the Courage Book came out in 2021, but I, I started in 2019.

So I'm five years in. I've won one- What are the daily Stoic? I read the daily Stoic every day. And I haven't missed a day since I got shit can. Sometimes I read ahead, but I do it. And I don't remember, I don't know if it's a long COVID or what,

but I don't remember like a year later, I read all this shit like it's new again. You can't possibly remember each day. It's a great daily practice. The criticism of it, which my son hit me with, he was 18, Muscles Marinaria. So he sees me reading this every day and he basically sees it as me being

like in some kind of 12 step program. So- What's wrong with that? Right, listen, I believe all of us kind of 12 step program. So. What's wrong with that? Right, listen, I believe all of us need the 12 step program. It's about as beautiful a model for existence as you can have if you have the gut for it. And that's the point. People will say, well, the criticism is,

this is too fucking hard, man. This is so ascetic. It's so spare. Epicurus had it right. It's about happiness and demand. And we're all about happy now, finding our happy. And it's all about what makes me happy. And that's all that matters.

And if that's bad for you too bad, you got to figure out your own happy. And this is like, where's the happy? What do you say? It's a stern philosophy for sure. But I think we have to separate what the Stokes were writing about or with have to separate what the Stokes were writing about or with the balance out what the Stokes were writing about

with how they lived. They got married, they had kids, they went to the theater, they wrote plays, they laughed at jokes. I mean, Marcus Willis had like 11 children. This isn't, he's not like in a monastery abstaining from the pleasures of life. He's just reminding himself, you know, he's not like in a monastery abstaining from the pleasures of life. He's just reminding himself, I think,

of ideas to balance out these sort of natural inclinations and urges. But the Daily Stoic, I wrote in, it came out in 20, the fall of 2016. Wow, what great timing that was. And the Obst obstacles away came out, I'm working on the 10 year anniversary of obstacles away right now.

So it's been, it's great. When I went to my publisher and I was like, hey, I want to write about stoic philosophy. And my publisher is this publisher portfolio, which is at Penguin Random House. They were like, we're a business imprint. What are you talking about? And I said, look, there's been some books

like Machiavelli for CEOs or Sun Tzu for CEOs. I was like, let me try stoicism for the business crowd. And they were like, probably not gonna work. And so we worked out, I took a huge pay cut, like a huge pay cut. Like my first book, I got paid half for the obstacles away what I had gotten for my first book. And I just was excited to write about it.

I had no idea it would become this thing. And it really didn't become this thing. Like it came out, it did okay, but like it was this slow process. The sports teams were like a big driver of it. And then it's become this thing, but it's really, the Daily Stoke is crazy because it came out in 2016

and it sold more copies almost every year since it's come out, even though it's the same book. And so it's been this surreal thing. And then I started the Daily Stoke email. So every day I've done like an email version. And you have millions of people. The Daily Stoke email is a million people every day, which is insane.

It's more stoics than have probably, not just ever existed at one time in history, a million stoics is probably more stoics than ever existed cumulatively in the ancient world. And you don't know who they're sending it to. That's true. And a lot of it is getting, and there's flattery in this, right. And a lot of it is getting, and there's flattery in this, right?

But a lot of it is getting taken and just iterated by other people, which is what the beauty of philosophy has always been. That's what I'm doing. Other way, right, of course. But obstacles, the way people is gonna be like, what the fuck? You know this lesson.

It's when something happens to you, you got a decision, right? It can do you or you can do it, right? I mean, that's the, to break it down in like a street knowledge kind of way is everything that happens in your life is an opportunity. And I know that sounds Pollyannaish when like a piano just hit you in the head,

but what are you gonna do in those moments? That's why I came back to it, all right? So you don't need philosophy necessarily when things are going well, unless you're smart enough to prepare yourself for what comes next. So we are all searching when we're in need. We are all searching when we're in pain, right?

When do people tap into their faith? When someone gets sick, okay? And now all of a sudden you're praying your ass off, there's no atheists and foxholes, you know, in extremists, extremes bring out, you know, your loss of control, your desperation. And for me, in a very mild way, because I was never impressed with my own situation,

but I wasn't just fired. The reason I say I was shit-canned is because I'm trying to be as pejorative as possible because it was identity stripping for me. Yes, your world was blown up. Yeah, and I had never really been cognizant. One of the great things about being on TV and journalism is depending on how you do it,

is it's really easy to not deal with yourself. Cause you're always just dealing with these bigger dynamics. Yeah. And you're maybe- You're holding other people's feet to the fire. So you don't have to worry about what you're doing. It's not about me. I'm not the one asking for your vote. You know, I don't have any accountability.

I mean, I do to my audience, I do to my bosses, but you know, you're the man. You know, you wanted the power. So, and you're living their lives, their tragedies, their traumas. Oh, you know, like you never asked this question anymore because it's too trite, but you know, how do you feel? How did that make you feel when that happened, right?

And you're not dealing sometimes with your own, depending on who you are. And that was certainly me. So I came back to this and I read obstacle is the way. And then you also have a great voice, which is really helpful. So if you're someone who has the tedium or you have some kind of diagnosis

where you don't read well, you can listen to these passively doing other things. Now I don't suggest that, okay? Because I believe you wanna sit with this shit. That's why I love the Daily Stoic. And I have no arms length on this. I'm not talking to him as like a fair broker. I'm in.

I believe in this. I'm a fan of his. I love what he's doing. And, you know, not to sound as like a fair broker, I'm in. I believe in this, I'm a fan of his, I love what he's doing. And, you know, not to sound like we're on Oprah, but it helped me decide to get, now some people may come after you for that, but it helped me decide to get off the floor, get on the one knee, get up onto my feet,

and then realize that I wanted to do what I used to do, but for different reasons. And not that I was doing it wrong, but my pursuit was to be great when I was doing it at first. I was at CNN, I wanted to be number one. I wanted to be a number one at CNN. And that's why I did it.

I wanted to do the job well enough to achieve that. Once I went through what I went through and I read obstacle is the way, and I started to really obsess on understanding why I can't do this better. Yeah. You with your co-author on the lives of the stoics. Yeah.

And going through the source materials on that and getting back in touch because I had studied this stuff in college. I studied it for a long time. And I realized, oh, okay, I have to be 24 seven on this bitch for this to take from me. I have to do it that way. I can't drift in and out.

I'm not built like that. I can't just have reminders from time to time. I'm not that kind of player. I gotta be coached every play. And this works very well for me. And the obstacle of the way is the way was the key because it was like, okay, what am I gonna do with this bucket of shit? And look, it's still not over, right?

My brother's still got litigations, he's still got drama. So what do I do with those things? The way you have explained this philosophy has been absolutely functional for me. And I do it every day. It's funny because I'm doing the 10 year anniversary of obstacle. So what would I change? What would I update?

And two things struck me. One, I was like, they asked me, am I gonna rerecord the audio book? So I listened to the audio book or a chunk of it. And I'm like, who is this person? Because I mean, your voice changes in 10 years, especially for me, I was 25 when I was recording it or something like that.

Is that right? I don't know, but I was early when I was recording it or something like that. Is that right? I don't know. But I was, you know, early mid twenties. And so I'm like, you kind of know, you know what you're talking about intellectually, but do you know it? I know it at a different level now. And one of the things I am changing in the book too is like, okay, yes, on one level,

everything in life is an opportunity. And as an entrepreneur, you gotta always be looking to grow and expand and use your disadvantages to your advantages. And the book is about that at one level. But on a deeper level, and what's been, I think, humbling, and then also sometimes really heavy about the book,

is yeah, you talk to people and go, hey, I heard this when my life blew up, or I found out I had cancer, or someone I knew was murdered and like things that I've not experienced. And then I think what I've come to understand is even going through the pandemic because Marcus Rios was writing during the Antonine Plague

and so he lived through it, which makes COVID look like a walk in the park, is that when the Stokes are saying that everything's an opportunity, they don't mean everything's an opportunity to be more successful or make more money or get in better shape. They're saying like the worst things in life

are still a chance to be virtuous. So forgiveness or perseverance or creativity or just learning from like, so the obstacle is the way there's this level, there's a superficial level that it works at. Hey, everything's an opportunity. Then there's this more profound, deeper level that's saying like these things that ruin you

or wreck you or hurt you so much, it would be glib to say, oh, there's a silver lining and everything. That's not what they're saying. They're saying that as bad as that thing is, and as much as it is, it doesn't stop you from still having an opportunity to be disciplined or to learn, to be,

most of those bad situations are at least a chance to be courageous. Right. There's a tripe for true in it, right? I mean, what doesn't kill you, make you stronger. And I always used to joke when people would say that to me is, or it just makes you in a lot of pain that had changed you forever that you can't do what you did before.

But a lot of this is obviously perspective training. And what I tell people when they say to me, they'll comment on the asceticism of it. And be like, I wanna live more, not less. And so, all of this was written as a function, certainly Marcus Aurelius by definition was written as reaction formation, meaning he would party. And by the way, he's writing in a palace.

That's right. Like he's not, he might be sleeping on a hard mattress in the palace, he might be writing after he just, rode horses or wrestled or did a cold plunge, like he's doing hard things, but he's also like, he talks about this in meditation, he learns from his stepfather, like to appreciate the things when they're there, but it's can you not be dependent on them or need them?

Because if you need them, it has to be at a certain level. Well, then you're very, very fragile because those things can, and in many cases will be taken from you. Right. And the truth is, he was doing all the things you want to do. He's talking about the excesses of partying because he was partying.

He was talking about what happens when you're angry and you regret actions afterwards because he was doing things that were sometimes very severe, even though he was the last of the good emperors, he was no fan of the Christians. Think about how many frustrating subordinates the emperor of Rome had.

He's getting messengers, he's having, you know, people are playing political games underneath him, the Senate's not doing what he wants, some, you know, tributary or king has decided to engage in a, he's gonna be mad all the time. And that's why in meditations, he talks so much about not losing your temper

because one, he's losing his temper. And then also I get the sense, there's a famous story about Hadrian, Hadrian's the emperor too before Marcus. Hadrian is dictating something to his secretary and they keep screwing up or maybe he's insolent or something but he grabs like a stylist and he just stabs the guy in the eye just in a fit of rage.

This is the power of the Roman emperor. Stabs a man in the eye, it's that guy's problem. There's no consequences for this. You can do whatever you want. And you know, Marcus witnesses this or he hears about it and he's like, I don't want to be, it doesn't matter what I can get away with. I don't want to be that person.

I see what that does to you to say nothing of the consequences on other people. And so he's living in a world where there are literally no checks on what he can or can't do. And so he has to be the check. What you could argue, Mark Sturlus has unlimited power, and yet philosophy has power over him. And so that is why he's one of those rare exceptions

of a person who is not corrupted or made worse by the position that he holds. And I think it's a key distinction is the barrier to entry and wanting to really dive into this and own it as a lifestyle is that it seems that it's all about what not to do. Whereas I think the more accurate reality is it just tells you how to deal with what you will do.

Sure. And there's always this how to be better, but it's how do you deal with what happens will do. Sure. And there's always this how to be better, but it's how do you deal with what happens in life? And also look, there's a lot of things that are not in stoicism, probably because we don't need that much help on them. So like Marcus isn't like also running, and then be sure that you have fun.

And by the way, sex feels good and drinking can be fun. You don't get laughter is, jokes are funny. You know, he's not reminding himself of the very obvious natural stuff. Yeah, it's just the tough stuff. And by the way, this is something, I wouldn't say it's a flaw in Stoicism, but we have to understand that when we read the Stoics,

we don't have like the Stoic Bible. We don't have like the Stoic Bible. We don't have like the Stoic Ten Commandments. We don't have even assist very, almost none of the Stoic texts about specific topics or about philosophy itself survive. Seneca writes a series of letters to his friend, Lucilius, that are philosophically inspired. He writes a couple of essays on Stoic themes. to his friend, Lucilius, that are philosophically inspired.

He writes a couple of essays on stoic themes. Marcus Aurelius writes meditations, which is his private notes to himself. Some of Epictetus's lectures were recorded, but there is no totality of stoicism. The vast majority of it is lost. So we're only getting what the Stoics said about a handful of things.

That doesn't mean that it's all the Stoics said. There were one of those, there's this early Stoic named Chrysippus who wrote supposedly like 700 essays and books. Well, I would love to know what he's saying. And maybe we would have a totally different view of Stoicism as a result. The Stoics, the things that we have were influenced

by those things, but there is no, this is the point by point argument for and about Stoicism. That didn't make it through the century. So we just have what the Stoics talked about the most and that's probably representative, but by no means exhaustive as far as the philosophy is concerned. We're really heavy handed on one student. Yes.

Which is Aurelius. Yes. Good student. He was taught by a good tutor, right? Who had had a fairly good breadth of knowledge and exposure and was pretty old for the time. So that's good, but it's still, we're still hanging on one student.

So Mark Cerrelius's tutor, Junius Rusticus, his philosophy tutor, probably attended Epictetus' lectures. So like, so two of the big guys that we have, and he lends Marcus Aurelius his copy of either the lecture notes or the edition of Epictetus that was published. But like, so even there, you got like three guys, or you got two guys there, that's two of the big three. And then Epictetus is living at the same time as Seneca.

They work in the same administration effectively, which is Nero's court. And so you're like, okay, the three big Stoics, it's like a hundred years, and they are all adjacent to each other. This isn't the totality of the philosophy by any means. So it's, I think sometimes the criticism of Stoicism or the stereotype of Stoicism is based,

it neglects the fact that we have just some fragments. That's not necessarily all that they thought. And certainly when we look at the lives, we go, oh, okay, these were more well-rounded individuals than this sort of, if the stereotype was true, they wouldn't look and act this way. For you personally, has there been a curve of the amount of absorption

the philosophy has had in your life? Oh, sure. I mean, look, when I read it when I'm 19, I'm like, this is interesting, this is exciting. Look at all these great little one-liners about adversity or resilience or productivity or waking up early. I think I was interested in what it could do for me

and what even my range of experiences allowed me to understand. And then as I've gotten older, I've had kids and gone through stuff, you realize, not only is this stuff operating on multiple levels, they really did think and talk about a lot of stuff. And so I think my understanding of it has grown and some of it has grown too, just with,

it's not something you're supposed to read and then you get. It's supposed to, Stoicism is not a philosophy you studied, it's a philosophy you are studying. It's supposed to be an ongoing process and that to understand that's what Marcus is doing in meditations, that's what Seneca is doing in these letters, is they are practicing the philosophy in front of you.

And it's this process of talking and writing and thinking and applying and then repeating that. So I would say, yeah, my early understanding of stoicism was very masculine, I was probably a little glib, it was very self-involved in the way that self improvement is by definition self involved. You're like, I have some problems. I have some things that I don't like. Can you help me fix them?

But the more expansive version of the philosophy comes with all the ethical obligations, the public participation, the also just coming to terms with the, you know, the, obligations, the public participation, the also just coming to terms with the, you know, the heart breakingness of life, you know, like just the shit that happens. And I think you understand stoicism more deeply the more you experience. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Shopify You know when you think of great duos Batman and Robin

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Use Chris, don't forget to tell them I sent you when you go there. If you do that and you fill out the post purchase survey, you get free socks and you hook me up. Let's get after it. So here's the good news for everybody watching and listening right now. Even if you don't feel like taking on a new practice

or something like that, This book is a standalone. Now, not for people like me, it isn't, because it fits into a broader intellectual construct of things, but right thing right now is the foundational. And by the way, Ryan's gift is he makes abstruse things accessible to you. He makes things that are complicated, that could be very off-putting because of that,

even offensive because of it. He puts it into an understanding, a vernacular, a mindset that is easier for you to grab onto. And right thing right now is everything that you've been learning in the self-help world anyway. It's what made Seinfeld, what he was capturing was that, like, listen, if it happened in the past, if you learned something from it, great,

but you ain't doing shit about it anymore. So every moment that you spend on it back there is wasted. And, oh yeah, because you know, I really want this to happen in the, all you have is what you do right now, and then when the next comes, you got to figure out the same thing again. And this book is a really, really good digest

of that concept. What do you want people, assuming they have never read any of your other stuff, they don't even know what stoicism is, this book is still value because? Yeah, it's funny. So when you're doing a series, you have a different, I've never done a series before where I'm intentionally,

every other book I'd done, I was like, I wanna write about this, I wanna write about this. And I was never thinking more than one thing ahead. So to do this series, I'm like, okay, first off, what are the virtues? And then how are they distinct from each other? That was like a really interesting challenge. I didn't, before I sat down to really think about it,

I wasn't quite clear. Like where does the line between courage begin and end and justice begin and end and how are they related? Because all the great stories of courage have to be rooted in justice in some way, or it's a hollow kind of courage. So that's been a really interesting part of it. And so doing this one, which is about justice,

which I don't say on the cover of the book, because unfortunately we live in a world where if you go home writing a book about justice, people are like, no thanks. Especially in self-help, because like I said, self-help is supposed to be about me. And when we hear justice, we're like, oh, you're telling me that I have to care

about other people, which to me is the fundamental problem of our time is that like, some people are like, hey, we should care about other people. And then other people are like, why? Tell me why I should cap to care. And that's the sort of big culture war issue that we're, ultimately so much of our political fighting right now is like, some people give a shit

and other people are not convinced that they should have to give a shit and we can't bridge that divide. So anyways, what's interesting about this book is like, I don't know if it's the one I would start with. I don't know if it's where I would start with Stoicism. I'd probably start with discipline because discipline is the way into,

oh, here's what St stoicism can help you do. Because everyone wakes up and thinks, I'd like to be more disciplined, right? Unfortunately, not as many of us wake up and go, I'd love to be a better, more generous, kind, fair, just person. We don't think of justice as like a component of how we should be

or we do, but we just assume we already have, I don't know. Anyways, the point is with what I was trying to do in this book is say that first off, stoicism is not just all these, it's not just working out and getting up early and managing your emotions. There's an ethical framework to it too, a set of assumptions and standards

that you have to hold yourself to. And I really wanted to say after courage, what we were just saying, which is like, courage cannot exist as a virtue in separation from any of the other virtues, or else it is a vice. Are there a lot of brave soldiers in the Confederacy? Sure, but that's not the virtue of courage. Isn't just rushing into danger.

Why are you rushing into it? Standing alone and risking the criticism or the jeers of the crowd, but you're wrong. Cause you don't know what you're talking about and you're misinformed. There's risks to that, but is it courage? Is it certainly not wise because you're a fool. So what I'm trying to do in this book is talk about

like what I think, to me, justice has to be the North Star that the other virtues are directed towards. And he says series because you've got the four cardinal virtues. And he's going to give us a work on each one. So this is his third. I felt like it had to be third. Courage was obviously first to me, discipline was next.

And I guess it could have been the fourth one in this series, but to me, wisdom is the culmination of all this stuff. And obstacles the way is outside of it, but knits them all together. The idea, and as I've come to understand all the books are related, the obstacle is the way. What we're saying is the obstacle, whether it's, you're being outspent by your competitors

or you just, you know, made a mistake or your wife just left you or you found out you have cancer, the opportunity is the virtues. The opportunity is the chance to be brave, to learn. The opportunity is to do the hard right thing. The opportunity is to, you know, thing. The opportunity is to grit your teeth and push through it, right? So when we say the obstacle is the way,

what we mean is it's a chance to be great and to be good. It's not, hey, if the obstacle is the way is just to our business or professional advantage, like we're just talking about like a way to be a sociopath. Like virtue is something, it's something higher than just that. I found that what, and it's one of the interesting things

about being a creator is that you put it out there with one set of rationales of why you're writing it this way, and then people take whatever they want from it, whether you intended it or not. For me, it was you have to deal. I have this, which is not a catchphrase. I started saying, let's get after it,

as a cue to my prompter operator when I was doing a morning show a lot of years ago. Because the cat was always asleep, because it was so early in the morning, and maybe I was just boring. But he, I would be saying, let's get after it. Come on, let's go. Which was my cue to him.

So I wouldn't say Abdul, Abdul move the prompter. So I would just say, as we were resetting these things, get after it. And then it became a thing for me where I was like, listen, you have to deal. You have to deal. The obstacle is the way to me. That was the inculcation of that idea,

which is, how are you gonna deal with it? How you're not gonna deal with it? What's action, what's inaction? All those things, okay, are to be determined, but you've got to deal with what it is. You have to accept it before you can do something about it. And if you wanna live in denial or you wanna spend your time blaming,

or you wanna spend your time wishing it was otherwise, it's still happened. It's still there. You're just not dealing with it. It's just there. Churchill called his depression the black dog because it used to follow him around everywhere. And I always found that really interesting.

And then some drug company took it for another mood drug where they had this blue blob following this lady around all the way. And I thought that was very instructive of a reality. You may not want it to exist, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Yeah, and look, I think that one of the things we do as a culture is we spend a lot of time arguing

over whether things should be the way they are. Like I was thinking, like, I love, to me watching sports journalism is always helps me understand some of the tricks and the things to be wary of in like television journalism because you're like, you know, they're like, should Caitlin Clark have been named to the Olympic team? Well, it doesn't fucking matter because she wasn't.

You know what I mean? Like, so there's a lot of like, should this have happened? Were the lake, was Dan Hurley, this is dating it all to like today, but was Dan Hurley an idiot for not accepting the offer from the Lakers? And it's like, so they're debating things that happened or they're wondering what it would have been like

if it had gone differently. And so you're watching this and it feel, it's very engaging because one person thinks this and the other person thinks this and Stephen A. Smith is just a genius at finding the thing you wouldn't expect someone to have an opinion about. He's like, but then you watch the news

and you see that's also what a lot of us do. Our relationship is like, well, should this be happening? And it's like, well, it is happening. So what we're not doing is talking about how we're going to change it or how we're gonna stop it or how we're gonna do, what we're gonna do in response to it. So we just spend a lot of time arguing over, effectively reality, whether it's real

or whether it should be the reality. And this is not doing anything about it. And we do a version of this in our private life. The company gets together and talks about like how the product should have done better or like that it sucks that X, Y or Z happened. And what they're not doing is fixing the product or redoubling the marketing efforts or whatever.

Yes, there's a tendency to distraction. Yeah. doing is fixing the product or redoubling the marketing efforts or whatever. Yes, there's a tendency to distraction. Yeah. Now, and that can be very entertaining. Sure, and if you're honest with yourself that I'm watching this because it's entertaining, but actually you're going, I'm an informed citizen and I'm, like they did this study I wrote about

in my first book, it's called the Narcotizing Dysfunction, that like basically people who watch lots of news feel very politically engaged as if that in and of itself is political engagement, which it is not. So if watching the news is making you vote, making you volunteer in campaigns or because of what you saw on television,

you're now picking up trash by the side of the road or protesting outside of a prison or something, then great. But what most people do is they watch a bunch of television, read a bunch of articles, refresh on their feed, and they go, I did my part. And you actually did nothing. And in fact, the reason that all of this is encouraged by both the media company and the powers that be

is because they know it's preventing you from storming the steel. You know, like they're like, as long as you're venting yourself in the polls, like the polling numbers, you're not actually voting. You're not activated. Social media is now the great distraction to that. It's a proxy for action.

That's why I think- Because yeah, on social media, you're arguing with the people who have the other views. That's right. So you feel like you're really battling it out. And it's like, actually you were talking to a Russian bot. That's right, if you're lucky. And there's something at actually you were talking to a Russian bot. That's right, if you're lucky. And there's something at a minimum,

very masturbatory about it. And I know you did it by design, but I believe wisdom is gonna be the hardest one. Because you are talking about a society that doesn't value it. And I mean that even in the sense of the way the Stoics broke it down as a virtue. I mean, fake news, the absence of respect for truth,

the malleability of truth, everything being convenience. I wanna do a chapter in the, I think like, what aboutism is like the plague of our time, because like, if I'm like, if my wife's like, hey, stop doing this, and I go, but what about? She would be like, what are you talking about? That's not how, you can't argue that way. But that's what we do in politics and business and life.

But only, no, we don't do it anywhere I would argue, subject to what you think. We only do it in our political plethora. Yes, that's what I mean. It's like this part. It's the only place. It's this part, but it's like the place where you need truth and fact, the most clearly stated.

And so yeah, it's a, you know, like what's interesting in the wisdom book is I've like, obviously learning and being wise is like, like part of, I'm still figuring out how I'm gonna do it. I'm about halfway through, but like the acquisition of knowledge is one part of, I'm still figuring out how I'm gonna do it. I'm about halfway through, but like the acquisition of knowledge is one part of wisdom, but a big part of it is also not being a fool,

which the Stoics talk a lot about. Like, cause you can be smart and still be a fool. And so, and what I think a lot of what social media does and a lot of our media is it encourages foolishness. Like we have all these biases, right? And the battle is against those biases, right? And so what a lot of these platforms do is they are built on exploiting that.

What about is a classic, I told you a fact about something and instead of facing and dealing with that fact, you are pointing out another fact as if these cancel each other out, and then you don't have to do any critical thinking, right? And so that's a way, you can be a very smart person and do that.

And so wisdom has to be that, wisdom is both the understanding of that, and then you could argue that discipline to go, I'm going to sit and deal with this thing in front of me both the understanding of that, and then you could argue that discipline to go, I'm going to sit and deal with this thing in front of me and not let myself off the hook by bringing up unrelated information that has nothing to do with it.

So wisdom is definitely the last one because I wanted to be the oldest as I was writing it and I wanted the most time with it. But I think it's the hardest and in some ways the riskiest because like it's also just a dangerous topic to talk about. Like one of the things about wisdom is that it's very elusive

and anyone who thinks they're wise is not. And anyone who thinks they have gotten close to wisdom is rudely surprised when it, there's always more. Yeah, it is the culmination of all of our worst habits. You know, our seeking of convenience, of ease, of confirmation, what we now call confirmation bias.

It is, we are so set up in terms of the worlds we're architecting for ourselves right now to convince ourselves that we're right about things. Curiosity is at a huge premium. People, you know, so I keep going into all these unfriendly spaces, okay? This is a big reason I came back though, which I haven't really talked about a lot.

I'll just say that I believe conversation is a commodity we gotta get back into and that, you know, you gotta stop thinking that just because you disagree with somebody, they're a bad person. I'll say those things, but the real reason I came back into cable news, cause I was not going to do it. I was just going to do this. And this would have been enough.

But I believe I can help by going into the places where I represent things that they absolutely hate. Your big media, your work for big pharma, and want everybody to have nanotechnology injected into their veins, whatever it is. And I go to those places and the media people that I know, I've never been a big media person.

I've been big in the media, but I don't hang out with media people. And they'll contact me though and say, how could you talk to this person? What were you doing there? How angry at yourself are you? This is where you're going. And I say, but they need the attention.

They need to understand that you may feel a certain way about the vaccine, but I'm not your enemy. And it's not easy because they are not in the mode of being understanding. They're the aggrieved, you know, people who have a grievance are not looking to meet you halfway. You know what I mean?

They're angry, but I think that's okay. And part of wisdom is knowing that you got to take the loss sometimes. This is not gonna go the way you want. But the exposure and the repetition and the time have value, like parenting. The idea that you're gonna sit down with a teenager and tell them something once and they're gonna be like,

hmm, yeah, all right, that makes a lot of sense. I didn't see it that way, but you're right, here are the keys back, you're right, I shouldn't have the car tonight. That's not gonna happen in all likelihood. And if it does, you better worry about where the second set of keys is, because they're gonna go.

But I do think that it's the lesson we need the most. I do believe. Sure. Look, I think it's all, I'm in. You know what I mean? Like I love it all, I got the coin, I got the book. I got, you know, I'm in. I love it. You put shit out, I buy it.

But the, why? Because I know it's right'm in. You put shit out, I buy it. But the, why? Because I know it's right for me. And I know I'm terrible at it, but that's okay. It just, it keeps me wanting to try every day. That is one interesting thing for me about it all, is like, I didn't make any of this up. So I'm just talking, so I had this kind of dual thing where I'm both a student of it,

but I'm also a writer in the way that a journalist is a writer or a reporter. So like I have, like, I think sometimes people can flate me with the things, which is not that I, I'm ever writing anything I disagree with, as I get to say what I want, but just because I'm writing about it doesn't mean I'm good at it or natural at it.

And in fact, if I've chosen to write about it, it's almost certainly because it's something I'm trying to explain to myself and understand better. And so it's this weird, it's weird. It's strange, cause I'm not, I don't know, I'm associated with a thing that's not my thing. It's just a thing that I love and I'm interested in about it and want people to know about, but I'm not-

But you're very transparent about. But I'm not- But you're very transparent about it. I mean, sometimes people will give you shit and be like, he didn't create Stowe's. Who says he did? Yeah, definitely not. I mean, you talk about everybody else all the time. I mean, you couldn't be more transparent about it.

No, no, I mean, the goal was to tell more, like people were like, well, you should just read the actual books instead of Ryan's books. And I go, agreed, agreed. I would love for you to do that. I also understand that everyone's not gonna do that. And by the way, I mean, I've sold millions of copies of these books of the Stoics at this point,

but this isn't like my religion or something. This is a thing, this is a topic that I'm really interested in, in the way that I could have easily just been really interested in geology or something. I just love this thing and I like talking about it. And I'm also a student of it. It is an interesting dynamic of Stoicism though,

that they were very careful. Anybody who's a student of religion is, each iteration of faith had to be very careful. Christians, the reason Easter is when it is, Christmas is how it is, the Trinity is what it is, amen comes from Amman, the God, the smearing God. But is because you had to be eclectic because if people thought that you were saying

what they believed was wrong, they would kill you. They were absorbing. Right, so you see the Stoics here, even though they were part, you know, the Greeks were part of the dominant ethno type at the time, they could have said, this is the only way there is. They are very noncommittal about deism. Yes.

You know, hey, if it's, and you spell this out a few times very well, and I think Aurelius did also, where he's like, listen, if it's the Roman gods, okay, that's great. If there's one God, you know, that's okay. If you just want to do it for you because you believe it's the ethically human thing, that's okay too, it's all good.

And the Christians did this too. There's like these series of letters that some Christian in like, I don't know, three or 400 AD writes and they're forgeries. But for hundreds of years, we thought that Seneca and St. Peter had a correspondence. And I mean, the reason they believed it is that Seneca's brother is in the Bible because he's a judge and Paul, who's from Tarsus,

who studies stoic philosophy comes before him and he lets them go. Conversely, Rusticus sees Justin Martyr in front of him and makes a less generous call. But the idea, like the stoics are absorbed into Christianity. Christianity absorbs ideas from the stoics. You know, it becomes this kind of joint thing.

And so yeah, it's an eclectic thing and it's not a religion. It works with, you can be a Zen Buddhist who takes some of the stuff from the Stoics. And by the way, this is what the Stoics are doing. Seneca, Seneca's favorite philosopher is Epicurus. Like it's the philosopher he quotes the most because he's like you're saying, he's disagreeing with them.

A lot of times he's quoting them to then disagree. But he is so familiar with the work that he can do this from memory. And that's one of the things that you're gonna have to deal with in wisdom that no one is doing right now, which is to say, all right, so you and I are on opposite sides of whatever it is. And I'll see, you know, Ryan Holliday said the other day, this and this, and it

made a lot of sense. People would be like, and? No, no, no, and. That was a good point you made. Yes. But you're against Ryan Holliday. Well, I don't agree with him about this thing, but that was smart what he said. So you see that all the time with that Epicurus and Seneca dynamic, no one does that to you. You can't be right about anything if you and I aren't on the same side. Keats had this idea of negative capability,

the idea of to hold contradictory ideas in your head and to like sit with uncertainty and complexity. And we're really bad at that. And it's a skill of genius. It doesn't suit a binary system though. And I don't know how you deal with it. Now, first of all, one of the things I wanted to say to you today is the only thing.

I like that you stay out of politics. I do not want you sullied by what's happening around us and for people to ascribe you to a, you know, to designate you with a side or a group, because I don't want your audience to be limited at all. But I would say I'm not. I would say I don't stay, like people, I'll say something political and people,

what would Seneca say of this? I mean, Seneca, the career politician, he would probably agree, like his whole point was your, so I go back and forth because on the one hand, I don't wanna be discussing like daily policy issues or culture war topics. At the same time, the idea that philosophy is just the self-improvement thing

and it's not about being involved and engaged would also be a perversion of the philosophy. So it's hard. I don't know if I always get the right balance, but like it would be much easier and much better for me personally to pretend that none of the things that are happening in the world are happening and just talk about this thing from 2000 years ago.

So I am conscious of what it means to have a platform. I think the lane with your platform is the one that matters the most. So for the first time in our political lifetime, you have not a majority, but you have a plurality of Americans who say, I don't wanna be Democrat or Republican. I really don't like them, which is good.

The party system is poison. And that's not me, that's George Washington. George Washington said, avoid the parties. He was right. In terms of, everybody has something to benefit from this. Doesn't matter what you believe, rightly or wrongly. There's value. But those people need an ideological home most

because they're closed out of the system. You know, look where the parties have left us. They don't care how good their products are as long as there's only two. Right. Think about it. If you are the Venetian sausage versus the ballpark Frank, if that's the business, you know, well, those are both disgusting.

Yeah, I know. But those Venetian ones are worse than us because I'll tell you, you know, at least, you know, we have a 2% meat, you meat, they are fine for them. You mean a Vienna sausage? A Vienna sausage. Oh, the little ones in the can? Oh, God. Disgusting.

Yeah, of course. But if your only competition is a hot dog. Also disgusting. That's exactly right. But you don't wanna think about it. That's right. And that's where we are. That's hilarious. But then you have this other group

who's like, this is terrible. I don't wanna vote for either of these people. I hate making bad choices all the time. I don't wanna vote for either of these people. I hate making bad choices all the time. I don't do this anywhere else in my life. I don't date this man because he's less ugly than the other guy. I don't say it to my boss, I'm gonna half ass this assignment,

but it's better than me not doing it at all. That's true. Only in our politics. Yeah, but also I think what I do like about the stoics, what they do teach us is like, one of the critics, so Cato is the principled Stoic, never compromises as, you know, so virtuous that no one can even dain to touch him

ethically and morally, but Cicero writes, the problem with Cato is that he believed he lives in Plato's Republic when in fact we are in the dregs of Romulus. He's basically saying like, he thinks he lives in this fantasy world and in fact he lives in the most corrupt, you know, murderous empire in history

and you gotta make some choices, right? And I do think the Stokes can teach us there, like so everything you're saying about the batch, sure, but you do have to make a choice. And one choice is clearly much worse than the other. And this is, I'm not just speaking of the presidential election, I'm talking all the time. There is this part of us that this goes back

to arguing with reality. It shouldn't be this way. It sucks that it's this way. I don't like that it's this way. Okay, but you gotta be an adult and try to make the obstacles the way is like, there's a pragmatism to it. Stop spending your time whining that it's this way, make the decision you have to make now

and then get to work creating the reality you want to live in instead of sitting around, which is what most of us do, lamenting the system and then hoping there is some other adults that's going to come along. Like if things get bad enough, then the responsible people will eventually step in and fix this. And that's never happened in history. That's not how change happens.

It's all got to start with you. And that's the best you can do. And it's the only thing you can control. And let me tell you, Ryan, nobody is laying it out any better than you so thank you for taking the time to sit on the couch. Thanks for everything you said. It's no pain to torch but I appreciate what you've done for me I appreciate what you're doing for us and I don't know what you do after you check all

the virtues off but I can't wait for it. Thank you very much and to be continued. Any way I can help you do what you do, I'm a call away. All right, done. So do you want to read it? Do you care enough to do it every day? Every damn day? Do you really want to struggle or do you want excuses? Man, life sets them up for us all over the place.

There are all these shortcuts. Forget discipline, I'll take Ozempic. Yeah, and lose muscle mass, right? And fat. And then what happens to you? I'm telling you, everything that matters in life is hard. The philosophers have always had it right. The struggle is real, but you got to be willing to struggle.

And that's what Ryan Holiday is helping us all do. You can be happy, you can be fulfilled, you can be the kind of person you want to be. You just have to do the work. And the understanding of what that work is and why you do it and how to do it is all in Ryan Holliday's books. And right thing right now is the right way to help you get to the right place. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for being with me on The Chris Cuomo Project. Subscribe, follow. I mean, you know, not enough of you who are watching this right now are signed up to subscribe. It's free. Yeah, but the ads, the ads, get them ad free. You can get all the episodes ad free. It's just five bucks a month. Go to my sub stack and you'll learn all about my long COVID journey and all the protocols and all my understandings and my doctor's understandings

right there. I mean talk about a bargain. Oh, this? Free agent. I wear my independence. Do you? You want the swag? You can find it. You know how we use the money. I gave 10 grand to help kids affected in Gaza. Oh, but you hate Gazans. No, I hate terrorists. There's a big difference. I'll see you soon, my friends. News Nation, 8P, 11P, every weekday night. Let's get effort.