The Daily Stoic - Alex Lieberman on Defining Values, Restraining Opinion, and Curating Wisdom

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

Ryan talks to Morning Brew founder Alex Lieberman about his journey with Stoicism, the false belief that money can change your level of happiness, the higher standard that leaders should hold themselves to, the power of restraining opinion, and more. Alex Lieberman is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Alex started Morning Brew as a college student in 2015 and has grown it to over 3 million subscribers. Alex is also the host of the podcast Founder’s Journal, which offers a backstage pass into building Morning Brew.Sign up for Daily Stoic Life to get a members-only gift set, access to all of the Daily Stoic Courses, bonus weekend meditations, and more at dailystoiclife.comGiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. Go to Givewell.org to read more about their research or donate to any of their recommended charities. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you.Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC. Terms and conditions apply.Stamps.com makes it easy to mail and ship right from your computer. Use our promo code STOIC to get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale. Go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in STOIC.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Alex Lieberman: Twitter, Instagram, HomepageSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. I love newsletters, of course. Daily Stoke is a newsletter. If you didn't know that,

well, you should definitely subscribe. Daily dad is a daily newsletter we do. There's a bunch of newsletters I like. I've gotten Maria Popova's brain pickings newsletter for many, many years. She just renamed it the Marginalia. I like Emily Oster's parenting newsletter. That's a great one that I get. I love Tim Ferris's Five Bullet Friday. That's a great one that I get.

I love Tim Ferriss's Five Bullet Friday. That's a great one that I get. One of my researchers, Billy Oppenheimer, has a great newsletter that I love that you can sign up for at billiopenheimer.com. I like Matt Levine's newsletter for Bloomberg money stuff. I like the dispatch, David French, especially. I love Andrew Sullivan.

I love Heather Cox, Richard Sins newsletter, letters from an American. I just love newsletters. They're great. It's a great way to get information. They're not filled with ads. It's not a bunch of stuff to click. You read it in the browser, you read it on your phone,

you print them out. Just a newsletter. I love, it's been a great way for me to learn over the years. And of course, been transformative for me. My reading list newsletter, which I started like a decade ago, is now a bookstore. The Painted Porch bookstore here in Bastrop Tech, this would not exist. I hadn't started that newsletter where I just recommended my favorite books that I read each month, which I'd love to have you sign up for. If you haven't, and again, Daily Stoic being the newsletter that fundamentally changed

my life and is now the largest collection of Stoics anywhere in the world. So one of the fastest growing newsletters in recent history has been Morning Brew, sort of a media business newsletter, it's supposed to give millennials, young people like a rundown of everything that's happening in the world. And my guest today, Alex Lieberman, is the co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. He just sold a majority stake of it to business insider this year for reported $75 million. It's a huge newsletter. He was an at age 40, under 40,

Forbes 30, under 30 recipient. He has a podcast for fidelity investments. He's talked all over the world. You can follow him on Twitter at BusinessBerista and of course sign up for MorningBrew at MorningBrew.com. It also happens that Alex is a student, recent student of stoicism. I saw him tweeting about it and we connected. And we were going to, you know, you meet people and they go, hey, you want to have a phone call, we should connect. And instead of doing a 20 minute perfunctory phone call, I thought, why don't we just record an episode of the podcast and we'll just talk about stoicism and talk about life.

We'll talk about newsletters. And that's what we've got here in this conversation with Alex Lieberman. I think you'll like it. And I was glad to get to know Alex through it and enjoy this combo. Let's start with your introduction to stoicism because I'm always curious about how people heard about it

and maybe what struck them about it. Yeah, so, you know, I've known about stoicism, stoicism for a fair bit of time, I wanna say, I don't know, four or five years. And I think I actually first came across it when Tim Ferris had referenced, you know, a Seneca quote or some quote on Twitter. And I had this perception, right?

Like we all create stories. I drew the story of what stoicism was without even knowing what it was. And the story, yeah, the story that I created was stoicism. Sounds like it's a derivation of being stoic. And that is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to achieve because for context, I grew up in a Wall Street family, not super, pretty unemotional. And for the longest time, I've actually

wanted to do more to tap into my emotions and be in a motive person. And so I just created this very simple story in my head of like, I'm trying to be less stoic, not more stoic. Stoicism is based off of being stoic. Therefore, I'm not interested in stoicism. And so that was my story for the longest time. And then what happened was, I did this speaking engagement,

I don't know, six months ago, and the guy who arranged it as a thank you for me speaking, he sent me a book. And honestly, it was so nice. I really am not sent books when I'm sent thank you. Things and it was like actually the coolest thing to just get a book in the mail thanking me for my time. And what he basically said is, you know, I read this as I was trying to gain more clarity in my professional journey. And I really loved it. And I think you'll love it too.

And so what the book was is this beginner's guide to stoicism, tools for emotional resilience and positivity. And- What's it called? It's called the beginner's guide to stoicism, tools for emotional resilience and positivity by Matthew Van Nata. Okay.

And it's like a little handbook-size thing and it has like 150 pages. And so- Oh, I know this book, yeah, he sent me this before. Yeah, got it. Yeah, yeah. And so this was kind of like the re reminder to me, the thing that that reupped it. And I think the reason I actually started reading this was I was feeling particularly lost. I had been doing a lot of soul searching on kind of like, how I want to spend my time. And this book was on my bookshelf,

and I picked it up one day, and I read the description again, which was tools for emotional resilience and positivity. And I think I looked at that word positivity, and I was like, this is in, this breaks my story. This is in part of my story of what being stoic is. So maybe there's a difference between stoicism and being stoic.

And so I broke open the book. I went to the dog park with my dog Rambo for two or three hours and I just read the whole thing. Yeah, no, it's funny. I think that's actually an interesting marketing thing you brought up, which is like, so sometimes people will question like certain decisions that I make in how I present work or videos, I'll do or whatever.

But that But the idea that every customer or every person has a story and that this story is often limiting in some way and that when you present something or you put something out in the world, you're not just having to represent it as it is, but you're also having to anticipate potential objections that people might have and present yourself in a way that you either don't threaten or you don't meet those reservations. Like for instance, my book The Ops goes the way, deliberately says nothing about stoicism on the cover because I found that stoicism, people have the exact impression that you said. And so if you put stoicism in the title, although I obviously did this later with the Daily

Stoke, but up front, you are often limiting yourself. And so that's a very interesting story. Well, and what I like about even, you know, I've deli-stoke in front of me right now also, and it's like, at least for me, and I would assume there are a fair number of people like me because that, what I ended up doing is after reading this book, I have a podcast of my own, and I did one episode on basically my learnings about stoicism from reading this book. And I had so many of my listeners who basically wrote back saying the same thing that they were like,

oh, this is so interesting, I've heard of this, but I assumed it had to deal with being emotionless. So I never thought to dive deeper. And so I mean, even in daily stoic, right? On the cover, you have the 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. To me, that provides more flavor that potentially counteracts the narrative that I and many people have. But yeah, I think it's in a lot of ways just like a branding question

more than anything else. Yeah, I mean, I think I say that in the intro of the Daily Stoke that the phrase stoic philosophy is like perhaps two of the least appealing words in the English language combined to make a super unappealing phrase. And so if you want to reach people, which obviously you want to do with a book, but you definitely want to do if you have something you believe in that you want people to, if you want to reach people with, you have to find a way, if not to subvert it, then to anticipate and address. You just don't want to be running into a headwind. You want to try to find a way always.

Just like I'm sure with the morning brew, if you're like, there's something sort of light and nice about the name that's not like, even though it's a serious email, it's not like, oh, this is something you're gonna dread doing in the world. Oh, totally. And by the way, that's like why we spend so much time in the early days especially, but even today, on subject lines, right? Because like, it's like the goal with writing as well, right?

It's like when you write a sentence, your goal is to get someone to read the next sentence, and it's like, you know, if your goal is to get someone to learn and benefit from the principles of stoicism, it's to get someone to be willing to actually learn what those are. And like for Morning Brew, the number one thing that determinative people

were gonna read our whole newsletter is if the subject line was enticing enough to get them to open, and we would test our subject line. We still do it. We're at five in the morning, Eastern time. We send four batches of emails to a group of 10,000 people. And it's four different subject lines. We let those go out for an hour. And then at the end of the hour at 6 a.m., we see what the difference in all those subject line is in terms of open rate, and then we send the remaining call 3.4 million email addresses, the winning open rate, because that literally was the difference of called 50 to 100,000 more people reading it a day. Right. So what do you think hit you about stoicism other than this idea that

yeah, you're very, very repressed and now, now stoicism's going to open you up. What do you think hit you about stoicism other than this idea that you're very, very repressed and now, now stoicism's going to open you up? What do you think hit you about the philosophy that, and maybe why it didn't hit you earlier? So here's my, here's my honest take on it, which is, you know, after, after we sold Morning Brew in late 2020, call it four months later, was when I moved out of the CEO role into the executive chairman role, which is the role I'm in now. So I'm not in the day to day of the business. And I'm spending more time creating content working with my co-founder on high level strategy. I felt directionless and I felt like I was in this circular reference of a story that

I had created. I was basically trying to figure out how do I get out of this circular reference? And kind of like the, the, the, what the story was was, okay, we sold the company. I thought money was going to make a big difference to my happiness in life. It has not. It is not going to be a crutch anymore for like trot, basically for doing things to get money because money will give me happiness. You know, I've been given the freedom of time now and I don't feel any better this sucks. That was kind of like my circular reference and at the same time as doing that, I had

all these doubts that about like, what is the future hold for me? I don't want to be the 28 year old who peaked at 28. I don't want to be the one trick pony. I don't know if I could build another business again. Did I get lucky? This was the narrative I was telling myself. It's so different from, I would say people on the outside, they'd be like, oh wow, those guys from Morning Brew built this amazing media business. They

bootstrapped it for five years, like they're incredibly talented. And that was totally not the story that I had. And so that's why I think I went on this exploration to Stoicism because I was like, I was like this sucks and what I'm realizing is basically we all have, from my perspective, two realities. We have the reality of what actually happens in the world, like objectively what occurs. And then we have our story in our perception

of what occurs. And I want to figure out how I can gain clarity around my story and my perception and get myself out of this circular reference. And so, you know, reading about stoicism, I think to me, actually bridge of some of the things that I've learned in, call it, eight years of doing therapy. So like traditional Western psychological practice that I would say is very much about like labeling, naming, and prescribing and then mindfulness, which I would say can be very high level ambiguous, up for interpretation. And for me, at least my, what I really loved about both your book and

this original book I read was it brought specificity to some of these higher level concepts. So the idea of basically like, focusing on controlling the things you can control and not focusing on not controlling the things you can't control. It's so obvious and I think there's so much in both Eastern and Western that talks about this, but I just found it to be very approachable when reading Stoicism in a way that made sense to me and it was practical.

What did you, so I assume that the business was making a good chunk of money? What did you think that suddenly tens of millions of dollars was going to change for you? suddenly tens of millions of dollars was going to change for you. I think part of it was that I had money in anxiety in general growing up in the sense of like I was afraid to spend money, especially after when I was a junior in college, my dad passed away. And I kind of like had made this promise to myself that I would be the person to bring in money for my family.

I mean, I had anxiety around like the fact that everyone in the Lieberman household was cash outflow and there was no cash in flow. And so I think in my head, this story I told myself was that when I have some large windfall of money, that money anxiety will go away because I'll feel like I am able to provide for my family and provide for myself in a way

that I will not have any sort of money in security or anxiety moving forward. So you suddenly actually get more money than a person could possibly need. What does that feel like? What actually does change? I'm always fascinated. I've not gotten a good self-aware answer

from a single person from just regular successful entrepreneurs up to like legit billionaires. But I am curious. So suddenly there's nine or 10 figures in one's bank account. What changes? Yeah. Well, what I would say is not a whole lot. And I think that's also, that really is a function of values, right? In the sense that like, I just, I don't place a lot of value on buying very expensive things, right? Like I was actually talking to my executive coach today and he was like, what do you want when you grow up? And I was just

like, I want to have a family with three kids. I want to have two homes, one in like the tri-state area, one in Colorado would be awesome. I'd love to take great vacations with my family. I'd love to, and I'd love to have new experiences with my family and friends. And in doing all that, I don't want to have any anxiety about money. That's kind of like that's my image. And I think part of the reason nothing changed is, you know, I'm still 28. I still don't have a family yet. None of these massive purchases or things have come up yet. But in the same sort of way, and I think it's what's making me realize a lot of this, like, money and security and anxiety is irrational.

I think I still have as much insecurity or anxiety about money today as I did before the transaction. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur and a Virgo. Just the name of you.

I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast.

I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it.

These are the questions that keep me up at night. But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kicky Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kicky Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, Prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Wow. Um, which is such a fascinating thing.

Have you listened to Remi- uh, say, Tees Podcasts? Uh, so I've read some of Remi's stuff I haven't listened to the podcast. Podcasts is great. I know I'm using my podcast to read about his, but I was just listening to an episode the other day where it was a, uh, two, like a couple, they work at tech companies, they've been successful. They have a net worth of $8 million and they compare us in shop for blueberries, right? Like, they're sort of stuck in this cycle.

Um, I think we all get sort of get scripts or ideas about money or what it means or what it will do for us. And then whether you have $80,000 or $8 million, you're still trapped in that thing. It's a, I think you would really like it, but I'm a big fan of that podcast. Yeah, yeah, I'll listen to it. And yeah, and I think what you said is like,

I do think in general we get trapped in stories as well, right? Like this story in my mind was that money equals success. The more that I have of it, the more successful that I am, also the more that I have of it, the less that I have any anxiety around it. And I think it's one of those things where even, even like rationally, where you see those statistics about once someone is making a certain level of income,

I can't remember, it depends where you are in the US. It's like 70 grand, exactly. Yeah, like 70 grand, your marginal happiness per dollar you make goes down significantly. Like you hear that and you rationalize it, but at least for me, it was very hard for me to appreciate that until I lived it. And now that I've lived it,

I'm just like no dollar is going to change my marginal happiness. And so I really need to look inward to gain a sense of clarity and happiness just through my perception of the world. Well, this is really interesting too, because, and I think this is why the Stoics resonate with me more than some of the Eastern philosophers, is that although there are certainly

impoverished Stoics, Epic T2 is being won. Marcus really, this is very wealthy, Seneca is very wealthy, Cato is very wealthy. Xeno comes from wealth, loses it, then seems to get a chunk of it back. The idea being that they were like real human beings in the real world who were probably all primed, like we all are, to think that more is better,

and that you will be happy when you have more. But then unlike a lot of philosophers, they actually got more. Right? So it's like very easy to go like, more will be better or to say more doesn't mean anything, but like it matters if you actually have tested the hypothesis in the real world, not just in the classroom. And you get, you get Senica basically saying like, look, it's better to be rich than poor in the sense that it's probably better to be tall than short, beautiful than ugly, or to have two arms versus one arm. If you had your preference,

that's what you would do, but you are also at a place where you don't need it either way. So, like when the Stokes talk about indifference, we tend to think indifference means you don't like it, which is obviously the definition of what ind difference doesn't mean for the Stokes in difference was like good one way or the other Totally. Yeah, I think I think it totally makes sense and You know as I was reading both books and and I think about this generally, as I'm kind of practicing called my inner work, is so much of what I'm trying to do,

is just unlearn the expectations, anxieties, and regrets that the world has taught to me, and not necessarily intentionally. But in so many ways, when I feel like I'm, you know, practicing whatever it may be like controlling things I can control or living in the present or, you know, separating like my reactions to kind of my final judgments. Like, I don't know, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just trying to live like a child again. What does that mean? my final judgments. Like, I don't know, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just trying to live like a child again. What does that mean?

Like, in so many ways, when I think about what when Alex Lieberman was in kindergarten, I would say like Alex Lieberman was his happiest self. Like I, I loved learning in my kindergarten classroom with Miss Golo. I was super creative. I remember in kindergarten, like I felt like I was the smartest person on planet earth because I took a pen and a highlighter. I cut them each in half, I taped them together.

And I was like, I'm a freaking genius. I just made a pen highlighter two and one. And like I'd go on the playground, I'd play with kids, I'd laugh a ton, I wouldn't be thinking about like, oh yesterday when Sally said something mean to me in kindergarten class, I still really am dwelling on that. Or I wouldn't say to myself, oh,

like am I going to do well in kindergarten in terms of my final grade at the end of this year? Like those were never thoughts, right? And so obviously it's not realistic because we live in a society where expectations progress, like it is both measured and it's how society structured. But like, there's so many things I admire about the way I was able to live when I was in kindergarten.

Well, yeah, I think there's a certain presentness to children, and openness to children, and acceptance to children, even though they throw tansers about things. They're just sort of like, they're sort of, I think, aware of how little control they have. So there's like, oh, this is where we're going.

Okay, you know, and there is, I think, what comes from that are some things you don't necessarily think about as to it, but like sort of joy. Yeah. You know, it is a more, you know, this still talk about living in accordance with nature. And I think children are more in that state,

the connection to the sort of world, whereas we live in this place where we think we're in control, we have things we're trying to do, we have what the Buddhist call willful will, and I think that is the root of a lot of our unhappiness. Yeah, no, 100%. And it's even like, I don't know, it's just thinking about how No, 100%. And it's even like, I don't know, just thinking about how one of the things that really stuck with me in terms of like desiring and focusing on the things that are within our complete control, right? It's such an obvious point when you say it out loud like, oh yeah, obviously, I'm only going to focus on the things I can control. But then when you say it out loud, like, oh yeah, obviously, I'm only gonna focus on the things I can control. But then when you actually reflect on the things that drove your emotions

in the last 24 hours, how many of those things were based on what you could control. Most of what you spend your time on is stuff that's not in your control. It's that, it's just like, oh yeah, let's focus on what you control, that's really obvious. And then it's like, okay, but what did I spend the majority of my time, energy, and emotional energy on in the last 24 hours? It was the opposite of things that are in my control. Yeah. And I would say for me,

like the vast majority of it is like anticipatory anxiety where it's like when I would be managing people within morning brew. And I would need to say hypothetically tell them that they're not doing what's expected of them in work, especially in the early days when I was a first-time manager. I would default to not saying the thing because I'd be so concerned about how they would react. But like that's kind of like not my thing to own. My thing to own is how can I deliver this in a way that is clear and empathetic and compassionate, but I can't worry about how someone is going to respond to that if it's going to impact my ability to do what I think is most important and is within my control.

And I feel like that is the story of 90% of managers. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think the idea, to me, where stoicism really fits well in the idea of management and the stoics were managers, what back to Marx's really is the manager of the largest empire in the world is like, you wake up and shit goes wrong. That is like that is the entrepreneur's life. Is it's never going the way you want it to go? And you're forced to improvise, adapt, accept, you know, change around what's

happening in the world and what's happening with your people. Because that's, I think the tricky part about running a company is that it is dependent on a bunch of people who you do not control. Even though you're in their boss, you do not control them. You don't control what they think. You don't control what they have, you know, how quickly they do. It's this thing that you're only nominally the head of and you have to figure out how to make it work, however imperfect it is. to make it work however imperfect it is. I have, I'm not sure if you know the answer to this, but like something I've thought about, you know, how kind of the Stoics would think about this is, like you just mentioned, like shit hits the fan and work all the time.

And I think actually my thing that happened that was very adaptive and it served me well, but I think there's tradeoff to it is I learned how to become kind of like numb to shit hitting the fan and work, meaning something would go horribly wrong. And I'd always be like, oh, it's fine. We're going to figure it out. Like that would be kind of my default as I would literally not experience the experience because I needed to stay level headed and fully objective. But I think there's a trade off to not fully feeling

your emotions or experiencing that emotion in a way that is productive. Do the stokes say anything about like how do I guess feel or experience your emotion, but do so in a productive way where it doesn't hold you back. Well, I think it's the two things. So one, yeah, that is obviously the job of the leader

because it shit hits the fan and then the leader freaks out. Like, where does that leave everyone else? Right? Like it, it's sort of like, if the parents are handling it badly, then the kid either is in real bad shape or the kid has to then go do the adult job, which isn't fair. Right?

So I think that there is a higher standard for the leader. And Seneca talks about this in his essay on anger. He's like, look, normal people in smaller positions can be angry, have feuds, get worked up about stuff, et cetera. But you, the emperor, he's writing mostly to Nero, it seems like,. It seems like you can't. It's too expensive for you, right? Like too much is dependent on. So you have to sort of be more controlled than the average person. But Senna also talks about sort of generally with emotions. This idea that like there is the immediate reaction, fantasy, that you feel like if somebody jumps around a corner and scares you, you can feel that. It's just what do you do in reaction to it after? So, right, to

again, to go to the idea of anger. Like, if someone says something hurtful or some employee really screw something up, like, you could be upset. This thing just cost you, you know, a million dollars. But the decision to call them into your office and chew them out about it or abuse them about it, that is where the line is, right? So it's like, you can have the emotion, you just have to understand that as the leader, you are circumscribed in your ability to act on that emotion.

And that this is probably a good thing, right? Like the idea is to process that emotion, figure it out, instead of just dumping it on someone, which I'm very guilty of myself. So I'm not trying to say this in some place of sage-ness. Totally. And I think again, the way you put it makes total sense, right? Like you can kind of, you can have both, but you just can't have one impact the other in a way that holds back your ability to run a business or any relationship with clarity of thought. I will say at least from my own experience, I found it very difficult at times to create that delineation where it gets blurred. And I think at a fear that I will act emotionally, I end up acting, I would say, more like a robot

than someone who's overly emotional. Well, this is something that I benefited from in mindfulness and in meditation. The idea of like you're having, like, so you're sitting there and you're trying to have no thoughts. And so the mind's like, here's a thought, here's a thought. There's sort of witnessing that this is what your mind does.

And then what they teach in mindfulness is the idea of going like, yes, you're having the thought, but you don't have to accept the thought. The idea of seeing thoughts as sort of clouds in the sky, they're there, you acknowledge them, but you don't try to grab hold of them. You just sort of let them come in and out of the frame. And like this is something I've been dealing with with just like how screwed up the world is right now.

It's like this, you know, it looks like this Supreme Court's going to do this and it looks like they're going to do this. And it looks like this like the latest on this variant or here's some awful trend that's sort of looming in the background that you're powerless to do anything about. I'm trying to remind myself, you can have that feeling,

like that is scary, it's weird, it's disappointing, it's not what I would choose if I had a choice and then I can just sort of sigh and then get back to what I should be doing. Right? You don't have to anguish about it. You don't have to be consumed by it. You don't have to pretend it's not there. But you also don't have to give yourself over to it. Totally. Well, I mean, like even it's kind of the same exact thought on

called like the Western side with a lot of the work I do with my therapist. It's around, you know, I, I suffer from OCD. I, it's manifested in many in different ways over called like the last decade of my life. And there are different ways that you can work through or work with OCD. One way is exposure therapy. The other way is ACT acceptance and commitment therapy. And it's basically in my mind, acceptance and commitment therapy is kind of a prescribed or labeled version of meditating or practicing mindfulness in the sense that you acknowledge that a feeling is there, but you don't extrapolate it to your entire experience.

You know, the way that my therapist has always kind of like, explained it similar to like the cloud analogy or like the meditation analogy of like a moving river with things moving through the river is, it's like if you have one of those little swimmers in your eye and the swimmer is in the top left corner, it is there, it is annoying, it is inhibiting your vision a little bit, but it's not blinding you, it is not blocking your entire vantage point, it's just there and it's annoying and that's okay. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. It's obviously easy to

sort of agree in theory. And then of course, when it's more than just a swimmer in your eye, and it feels really scary or weird or upsetting, then it's sort of like, you know, getting yourself under control when you relapse. Totally. And by the way, I think in, without getting too much into kind of like the deep discussion about it, like I think we've kind of just seen that on like the world stage with all the conversation around

the virus and the vaccines is like kind of all these different viewpoints on what is the right procedure to stay healthy and safe where there's so much information There's information overload, but there are also a lot of questions that aren't exactly answered yet, right? Even with the new variant it hasn't exactly been answered yet, you know virulent is it, how easily spreadable is it. And I think when there's ambiguity, when people's health is at risk, things get very emotional. And I think it also, it creates a great opportunity for like the separation of emotional and like logical discussion. It creates a great opportunity for that to happen, but kind of to your point, when this is like a very real concern that hundreds of millions of people are experiencing, sometimes it's way easier said than done.

Yeah, and I don't know when people will be listening to it, but it's a great example, right? So, you and I are talking, we're like three days into the acknowledgement or the recognition of the or the recognition of the new variant, which has a stupid name. A great illustration of the failures of communication of various agencies in the world that they would pick a long-ass variant that is not clear how to pronounce. Why would they just call it Omni? Right? Omni. Or any, like like who cares about whether it normally is connected to this alpha better that could be. Yes, either gross. What I think is interesting is they're like, look, this is it. We know that it exists. We don't know. We know that obviously it'd be better if it didn't exist, but we don't actually know the implications of it.

And we won't know for approximately two weeks. So, everyone's going to have to sit in a period of unknowing, right? Which is about the hardest thing you can possibly ask of people and you've watched even the last three or four days. People trying to, it's not that they want a shortcut, but they're just like, I know you said two weeks, but could this be the answer? Could this be Evan? And so instead of just like, like I was saying, going, Hey, this is there. And you're going to have to live the next two weeks of your life with this sort of looming uncertainty. People are like, well, what if I do him scroll all day? Will that make the answer come sooner? Or, you know, what if I just freak out? Or

what if I start blaming fingers? Or what if I go into denial about it? And it's like, none of those change the fact that you have to sit uncomfortably with this thing for two weeks. And by the time people are listening to this, it could be the worst case scenario. It could be the best case scenario having revealed itself. But nothing that happened in this period, shade will have changed that, we're made one or the other more or less likely. And people just really struggle. Mark Serialist in meditation talks about having no opinion. He says you always have the power of having no opinion.

But that's a power we relinquish, you know, pretty much all the time. Yeah, 100%. It's, again, it goes back to control. There's nothing we can do to control the situation, but yeah, ambiguity is again, like I have personally struggled with ambiguity for my whole life and I'm just seeing people who,

I haven't seen struggle with it in the same way that I have for so long, struggle with it as a function of what's going on in the world right now. And it's like you said, it is really difficult. And we don't know it's like you said, it is really difficult. And we don't know what's going to happen, but also it's not within our control

to dictate what's gonna happen. The other thing that, to me, that connects to us as in the pandemic, the best. And it's a quote, again, easier said than done, but one of my favorite passages in meditations, Mark Serello's goes, look, is a world without shameless people possible? And he goes, no, of course,

not. He says, a certain percentage of the people are going to be shameless. So when you meet a shameless person, like, why are you surprised first? But second, like, no, that this is one of that percentage, right? If it's one out of 100, you met one. Okay. That's what out of 100. You knew they existed. And I think, and I struggled with myself, like there was never a possibility where a hundred percent of the people were gonna take the pandemic seriously,

where a hundred percent of the people were gonna get vaccinated, where a hundred percent of the people were gonna do any of these things. And yet, we are dismayed every time we meet one of those people. Now, obviously, there's a difference between 30% of the population and 10%. And there is a certain amount of that that's in the control, if not of us, then of policy

and public culture and how one handles things. You can influence that number. But the idea that you're this was you were ever going to get everyone on board was naive and impossible. And so I do take some solace and then like look, certain percentage of the population is going to be selfish and stupid, certain percentage of populations may be misinformed, certain percentage of the population is going to be, to be misinformed, certain percentage of the population is going to be misled and used against their own interests, et cetera. So you've just got to accept that when you meet one of those people. Totally.

Yeah. I think it's so well said. And honestly, what a lot of this just has me thinking about. And I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as I think about my journey, and also as just I've consumed your content, is just like, just think about how much, just how many more tools you have personally, given all the study you've done in stoicism,

just to navigate life and everything it has to offer. And I've done 1 thousandth of your study, but I have found even tools already. And I don't know, I've just thought to myself recently, like how amazing of a world would be when people have these new tools through inner work. And obviously it feels like things like meditation and mindfulness are so much more prevalent today

than even say in my parents generation, but it still feels so incredibly early. And obviously as someone who's grown up in media for the last six years and just like the power of building a trusted audience and delivering a message that can have an impact, I have just thought to myself,

there's like, I think there's such a white space for, I don't know, like whether it's making stoicism go viral, making mindfulness making inner work go viral in the sense of like making it's making stoicism go viral, making mindfulness, making inner work go viral, in the sense of like making it approachable, to people where it becomes a daily practice, at a masculine, obviously, I'm assuming that was one of your goals with, you know, things like daily stoic. Yeah, of course, of course, the idea of like, how do you, how do you take these ideas that are simple, but perhaps inaccessible at the beginning

and bring them to people? Just like, yeah, there's really nothing in morning brew that people couldn't find elsewhere. But the point is, the value proposition is like, now you don't have to find it elsewhere. Like the point is in the aggregation, right? Or in the collection or in the lens or the angle. And sometimes people will say this, like the point. Why are you reading Ryan's stuff? You should just read the originals. And it's like literally nothing would make me happier. But that wasn't exactly happening at any significant number until I started doing this, right? Or it was very unlikely,

not to take credit for it then, but there was also very unlikely that this chunk of the population that I'm speaking to would have been doing that. Now they are. And so it's funny how people can get sort of really snooty about stuff when actually it is bringing about exactly the thing they claim to want to happen. Yeah. I mean, I think about content in three ways. I think about it as original creation, curation, and in that bucket, I put curation and remixing and then translation.

And I think we put so much emphasis in society on creation that like, oh, I need to be a creator. I need to put stuff out. It needs to be my own original thoughts. I need to be the first person that thought of this. Like the, you know, the newsflash is that like, pretty much everything that all of us are thinking of is not an original thought.

And that's, that's okay. That's not a bad thing. There have been a lot of people on planet Earth that have had similar brains to ours. But I think so much of the value, especially in the firehose that the internet has afforded us today, is in curation, remixing, and translation. And that's basically exactly what you've described in the same way, with thinking like a monk by Jay Shetty, like I think it did the same thing because I tried reading some Buddhist texts and I couldn't get through it. And I think also the hard thing here, the harder thing, which I'm interested in how you think about is like, with Morning Brew, the reason we thought it would stick is because our view is like a 26 year old professional wants to look good in front of their boss.

And to do that, they need to know what's going on in the world, but they don't have a lot of time to do that. So like Morning Brew is like, like stupidity insurance, so you don't look for fat in front of your boss. And so every product I think about, I think about how is it a pain killer

or how is it a vitamin? And the issue is, I think some of the most helpful products in the world are vitamins, but people gravitate towards pain killers, things that alleviate pain today. Sure. And so in some ways, I think about stoicism and mindfulness and even personal finance in this bucket of vitamins.

And the question is, is how do you create urgency for people to engage in vitamins when the long-term benefit is one that compounds on itself and you don't necessarily see today? Well, I went through this with the trilogy that I did on Soysism, Opsicles Away, you guys, you know, me and Soys, this is the key. It was realizing, especially with the first book, it was like, I wanted to write a book about Stoke Philosophy,

but I knew that the vast majority of people were not interested in Stoke Philosophy, but most people have problems, right? Most obstacles are a universal fact of life. And so the idea is, oh, okay, let me present a part of stoic philosophy as a tool for dealing with obstacles or a solution to your problem.

So it's like very few people, and I remember saying this to the publisher, very few people wake up in the morning and say, I want to know about stoic philosophy. They do say, I wanna know about Stoke Flossy. They do say, I have a problem and I need a solution. And so if you can meet people where they are, you can present, so vitamin is effectively preventative, right? And I think that's, people are bad at sort of prevention.

But if you say, actually this vitamin is a pain killer, then you, yeah, it becomes alleviation. Exactly. And so that's like, I want to get you there when you're like, whether it's an athlete who just blew out their knee or it's somebody who just went through a divorce or blah, blah, blah, I want to get you there.

And then you go, oh, this actually is a framework worth exploring more fully and can be applied outside the narrow context in which I was originally envisioning it. Yeah, I think that makes total sense. You seem like you spent a lot of time on Twitter. I was curious about this sort of fire host. I have, obviously, I have a Twitter account and we use one for my account and do so, but I just find that I never, I never feel better after I've been on Twitter. Oh, I've spent, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and like, because so I would say

I got introduced to Twitter, call it two years ago by, yeah, by my co-founder. Like I knew what it what it was but I didn't I didn't really spend time on Twitter and I I would say sometimes feel really good on Twitter and I sometimes feel really shitty on Twitter and and the, I would say the reason I feel shitty is actually not the reason that a lot of people feel shitty. I feel like a lot of people feel shitty because they doom scroll on Twitter, they see sad things happening in the world, they see really polarizing conversations,

and they're like, what's the world come to? For me personally, that's not what makes me feel shitty. What makes me feel shitty is honestly that it is an addictive platform. It is addictive just like any other social media. I think one, I procrastinate too much as a function of Twitter, and that I feel shitty because I've effectively not kept my promise to myself

of not going on Twitter and doing the thing that I said I was going to do and then I feel really bad because if I can't keep my word to myself, who am I going to keep my word to? And I think the second reason I end up not feeling great on it at times is because I feel that gravitational pull to look at the likes I'm getting and the retweets. And that is the exact call it like trigger for enjoyment that I don't want to be perpetuating, right? Like I was even thinking the other day, I would love to create kind of like a tool or a chromatin where I could publish my tweets,

but it never shows likes or retweets or comments going up. I all I can look at is the content that I've put out, and that's it, and I have to just have a love for the information that I've put out. But you can do that. I mean, that's how I sort of do it, which is that I write all the things that I post, but then when it goes to someone on my team,

but even then, it just gets scheduled, right? So, like, I don't interact. It's a one-way medium, unfortunately. I wish it just gets scheduled, right? So like, I don't interact. It's a one way medium, unfortunately. I wish it could be otherwise. But for me, it's a one way medium. And I think that is the healthier way. The only thing that I find that that you could possibly

miss out on as a function of making it one way is called the amazing conversations and connections that happen in DMs on Twitter. So like just some amazing people that I've met, like I wouldn't have connected with you. That's it. Yeah. The check mark. You get it's like, it's like this weird like side door loophole to connect with people

you could never, you would never be in the same room with you'd never have their phone number Exactly, it's weird and so a lot of people that I now actively text with every day just talking about interesting topics Some related to work some related to web 3.0 and NFT some not related to work at all and just like kind of the journey that I've just discussed. Those happen through originally DMs on Twitter and those happen on DMs and Twitter as a function of them seeing my content on Twitter. I think that's how we got connected. You tweeted something about stoicism, but then somebody sent it to me because they knew

I wouldn't see it and then I DMed you and here we are. Exactly. So we wouldn't have gotten connected other way, otherwise, or if we, what maybe we would have, it just would have happened at a different time. And so that's the hard thing for me is, if I, I think if I treat it Twitter in the same way you treat it, there'd be so much benefit. I wouldn't feel really crappy about the validation

and happiness I feel from likes and the dopamine hits. And I wouldn't feel like I'm not keeping my word to myself, but I would feel like I've deprived myself of a form of community building and connection. And maybe one could argue you could accomplish that elsewhere, but I just haven't figured out a great alternative yet. No, I get it too. I find Instagram seems to be a platform

that you get most of the benefits less of the, that's interesting. The aftertaste and you still get the same sort of DM benefit, I guess, but. Yeah, I just got a big build, a bigger audience on Instagram than I guess, because I'm not getting access to cool people to DM with. I just find Twitter is sort of radicalized,

like otherwise thoughtful people. And so it's just, it's like Twitter is overtly political, whereas like Instagram and the other networks yeah, have a political component, but it hasn't the tail isn't wagging the dog. And so like I remember in the early days of Twitter, I was actually in Austin in 2007 at South by Southwest when Twitter launched. I remember I was with Simfaris and Tim was like I was like this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. And

Tim invested in it. So I guess that that chose the difference between us, but I remember like people used to talk about pizza on Twitter and there was jokes and it would like Twitter wasn't the sort of toxic successful that it's become. And I think there is a part of these networks where you sort of like, you get something out of them and then the ratio twists and you got to, you got to be able to be like, yeah, I'm getting off this. Totally. And by the way, the last thing that I didn't mention that I find to be particularly unhealthy about Twitter for me is, again, all of us in life do some level of social comparison.

And, and I'm constantly thinking about how can I build more internal sense of self? So that kind of like that voice can be quieted a little bit? But I find that it is definitely activated in a very real way on Twitter. And I think that's a function of the crowd that hangs out on Twitter. Because Twitter has such a concentration of venture capitalists, venture backed startups

and other founders. Honestly, there's a feeling of lack of success that I feel where I see some of these people that I can get. It's almost like it's the double edged sword to amazing access. It's like I get incredible access to unbelievable founders and VCs, but on the other side, I'm like, shit, I've only built one business

and I'm talking to these people that have built four billion dollar companies. Like, what am I doing with my life? And I think that's a really unhealthy thing that I find as well. Yeah, no, it sounds like, I think I'm very suspicious of things that are motivated by FOMO.

And so, like, you're saying like, well, what would I miss if I wasn't on it? I'm like, okay, that's like a good thing to not do. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think I think it's really interesting. And I think almost like another way to frame this is like, how could I find great connection and community without the trade off of my mental health? Totally, totally.

Well, let me ask you then other than Morning Brew, what does, because this is another, I think, source of misery and just, just, just orientation for people is what does your media diet look like? As someone who sort of does this professionally, but also probably has peered behind the curtain a little bit? What is your media diet look like? I would say the vast majority of what I consume is bookmarks that I've booked mark booked marked on Twitter. It is bookmarked on Twitter. It is. What do you want to say? So, as in like I have, you know, my cute, like I have the people that I follow on Twitter.

Twitter is like your newspaper. Yeah, exactly. When I see interesting stuff that I follow, I'll bookmark it. And now you can have folders in your bookmarks. So I have one folder for entrepreneurship, one folder for mindfulness and spirituality. And I, every day when I dedicate time to consumption, I go to those folders and I go through the content. And, and you know, typically like tweet threads have become a big thing, right? Like I was string of tweets. That'll be a lot of time stuff that I'm bookmarking.

So that's one. The second would be just like close connections, friends, contacts that I'm bookmarking. So that's one. The second would be just like close connections, friends, contacts that I'm like texting with. Just sharing articles and things for me to read. So referrals. And then the final one, honestly, I read a bunch of essays. I actually don't like reading this it. This sounds so ironic because it is. I don't read that much news. Like I read the brew every day, I read maybe one or two other newsletters, but for the most part I would say 95% of my media diet is ever gray or evergreen. Things that were written a while ago or have a longer shelf right. Life and a site I always go to to read essays is it's called readsomethinggreat.com Oh, I've never heard of this. And it's amazing. It's basically it's a website that has

manually curated essays and it offers you five at a time and it's always the same categories. The first category is living better. The second category is business and tech, the third category is history and culture, the fourth is science and nature, and the fifth is wild card. And basically it's essays that have been vetted by the person who created this site. They, you know, they range from being a two minute read to a two hour read. And I just find amazing content here. And what I love about this is it helps me with discovery of great writers. And then once I find a great writer,

I'll go down the writer rabbit hole and I'll just read everything by them. And that actually leads me to another site, which is called alias.co. And honestly, you may even be on alias.co, let me see. I've never heard of it. Oh, no, you, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I'm looking at Reshma Sajani, the founder of Girls Who Code, and it has every podcast, YouTube video, tweet, and essay that they have ever appeared on or written.

And so it's like, if you want to study the mind of a person, it is the place to study the mind of people that have been curated. Yeah, this is cool. So wait, so you have to join alias or they decide who is featured on alias? They decide who's featured. So I think as they're spending time on it, like if you go to the search bar, right,

you can look up your name and you'll see it says, notify me. I think they basically say once a certain person has had notify me clicked a lot of times, it's their signal to curate that person's content. And so I think right now, you know, they probably have 50 people on here. And I think their goal is just to expand it over time. But to me, it's like the combination of read something great reveals really interesting people who think in a new way that catch me to think differently. And then if these people are on alias, I'll go down the rabbit hole of everything they've created on alias.

Right. Now, this is interesting. I like, I like read something great. This is cool too. I do, like, I do, like, sort of people who write long form stuff This kind of way I like podcasts to like the idea of of a sort of medium that's not dependent on virality It's just dependent on sort of quality. Yeah, or or but also it's just like it's in depth and the fact that exactly Yeah, it tends to create better stuff and by the way, this is like one of my whole thoughts of it's such an interesting thing that like other than for commoditized content, I rarely use Google anymore. And so like the best content on the internet sits in like the nooks and crannies of the internet, usually through referral or curation.

And it's just so interesting that like I have to do all these steps to find the most interesting stuff because it's never gonna be the stuff that shows up on Google. Right, yeah, yeah, it's funny because these two sites you mentioned are like the opposite of Twitter. Exactly. Maybe I should just have more time

on these sites and was on Twitter. I think so. I think so. No, that's fascinating. What newsletters do you like? So obviously, Morning Brew, I like James Clears newsletter, 321. I like not boring. I like not boring. So packing McCormick's newsletter. He just, he analyzes basically tech trends and up and coming startups. I love Ben Thompson. I just think he's like one of the smartest thinkers about technology companies.

Honestly, I'm looking for more in my newsletter diet that doesn't have to do with business, that either has to do with, again, psychology, mindfulness, mental health, etc. So if you have any recommendations, I'm interested in those, but those are my top few. Well, I may recommend the Daily Stoke email, which goes out every morning and it's one thought of that stoicism. What do I like? What do I like that's not I like do you like Maria Popova? She does brain pickings. I just heard of that name. I think you'd like that one. Okay. I like this one's more

business, but Matt Levine's. He's great. Because even because even though like I it would seem very wall streety, but it's it's actually he's just he's hilarious. He's hilarious. He has a great sense of humor. I've always thought to myself, if he went off like away from Bloomberg and until like sub stacks platform, he would be the number one supported writer on sub stack. Yeah, probably because you could charge like $500 a year for exactly. Exactly. No, his is great.

I like Emily Oster. I mean, this is more of a parenting thing, but Emily Oster's is fantastic. It's a parent to one. Who else do I like? I'm not a parent yet. So I may have to bookmark this for when I end up becoming a parent. I do a parenting email each day, each morning, two called daily data. Those are the two that I write. But yeah, I do.

I think that's a good point. I wish there was more non-political, non-business, sort of daily, or weekly, or whatever, just sort of thoughts about life or psychology or trends or business or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking there could be a cool, I have a few newsletter ideas that I haven't started, but I think we'll be amazing. One being like just a positive email, literally just like three things that make you

smile to start your day. Like a quote, a picture of video that just get your day going with momentum and realize how and allow you to practice gratitude through example. I think that's right. I like, I like Tim's five bullet Friday. I think that's, I get a lot out of that one. And then actually one of my, one of my, he started as my research assistant and now he does

content for day. He's dope, but he has one called six at six. Where it's like six things every Sunday. I like that. And I like that one a lot. But do I find that? Let me see, let me see how, I don't remember, just let me get the name. Okay.

You can let me know later, everyone. Just, it's billiopinheimer.com. It's called six at six. Okay. For everyone who wants to sign up. But no, I think, I guess what we're hopefully kicking around as we wrap up is that there's a business opportunity and a market opportunity here

for people who can create content that does not make people angry at the world when they're dominating it. But it generally improves their life. Yeah, let's get started. Think about it. Content that invests in yourself but it generally improves their life. Yeah, it's good to think about. Content that invests in yourself and it doesn't have to be investing in yourself at work.

Like, I just, because I was feeling that need also, I just started a book club with founders, but the whole, like my whole thing was, you're signing up for this, if you don't wanna read business books. We're like, we can have discussion you're signing up for this. If you don't want to read business books, we're like, we can have discussion or we're gonna have a book club,

but it's not gonna be business books. It's gonna be about everything from like, fantasy to historical fiction to poetry. That's right. No, no, that's true. I like that also. I think books shouldn't just be, you know, about current events.

Totally. Well, this is awesome, man. I'm so glad we got connected and this was a good way to get to know each other, I think. Yeah, man, I love it. I've never done an intro conversation in the form of a podcast, but I love it. Well, I figured, I don't know about you, but I've never had a like, let's get to know each other phone call that either wasn't a complete waste of time or wasn't so good that it should have just been recorded. Do you know what I mean? No, I think it's really smart. I figured we'd try it and I think it went well. Well, this was awesome and I'm gonna check out all these sites

and we'll be in touch. Yeah, man, we'll be in touch. And let me know if I can be helpful in any way. You got it. Let me know when you're in Texas. I will. Talk to you soon. You know, the Stoics in real life

met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Pocula, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place. First off, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the stove. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community.

You can talk about like today's episode. You can talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better in their actual Real lives you get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend just for the daily stoke life members quarterly Q&As with me Clothbound edition of our best of meditations plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts and this is the best part

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