The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan Talks Social Media, Social Distancing, and Stoicism with Congressman Mike Gallagher

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

In this episode, Ryan speaks with US Representative Mike Gallagher from the 8th District of Wisconsin. They talk how not to be distracted by social media and disinformation, how Stoics dealt with plagues both past and present, and how anyone can implement the lessons of Stoicism.This episode is brought to you by Go Macro. Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping.This episode is also brought to you by Leesa, the online mattress company. Each of their mattresses is made to order and shipped for free right to your door. All mattresses come with a 100-night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can feel confident in your investment in a good night’s sleep. And Leesa's hybrid mattress has been rated the best overall mattress by sites like Business Insider, Wirecutter, and Mattress Advisor.Daily Stoic listeners get 15% off their entire order with the code STOIC. Just visit Leesa.com and get your mattress today.Finally, this episode was also brought to you by Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon makes delicious cereal just like you remember from when you were a kid—only this version has only 3g carbs and 11g of protein. Use code DAILYSTOIC at magicspoon.com to get free shipping. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicAnd follow Representative Mike Gallagher:Home page: https://gallagher.house.gov/Twitter: https://twitter.com/RepGallagherInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/repgallagher/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RepMikeGallagher/See 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 Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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 Holiday.

Welcome to another weekend episode, the Daily Stoke podcast. Today, sort of an interesting episode. It was sort of a mix of me being interviewed and me interviewing a guest. The guest interview we today is Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin. He tells the story of how we met. It's sort of a funny story. I won't spoil it, but he and I become good friends over the years. There's actually a number of mostly Republican and conservative politicians that have gotten into stoicism over the years, which I think is cool. Mike and I don't agree on everything, but we have managed to have a lot of conversations over the years. I think what I like is that he always seems to have a smart take on things.

Again, even if we disagree, I don't find him to be a particularly partisan person. I find more of a policy guy. He wrote a fascinating article for the Atlantic, maybe last year, sort of about reforms that he would institute in Congress, not nationwide reforms as far as specific policies, but reforms as to how Congress in the U.S. should be reformed itself, namely with the fact that, which I was surprised to hear, the folks only work like three or four days a week, maybe less, because they're always flying back to their districts. And so what I've found interesting about Mike is not a career politician. He was in the Marine Corps. He's got an Ivy League education. He's a super bright smart guy who happens to have become so well-versed in politics and policies, specifically a lot of

sort of global international geopolitical issues that he ended up making his way to Congress. And yeah, just a really smart guy interested in stoicism. So we talk a little bit about that. I think we end up talking about some COVID-19 coronavirus stuff. Namely, how does one remain stoic when it can feel a little bit like the world is tearing itself to pieces? So we talk about that, which I think it's good. And yeah, I'm just,

I mean, one of the reasons I agreed to do the talk, I think both of us, he was stuck in Wisconsin. I'm stuck here in Austin. And this is kind of what we're doing in that. A lifetime challenge I was telling you guys about, which you can check out at dailystoke.com slash a lifetime. Just how do you stay productive? How do you stay connected? I heard someone saying that it's better that we call this physical distancing, not social distancing. And so it was awesome just to sit there and chat with Mike for an hour or so. We're going to condense the interview down a little bit for you. So it's just about

stoicism and a little bit more on topic. But I hope everyone takes a page from that, which is maybe reach out and connect with someone that you haven't connected with for a while. You know, most of the time, like, I don't want people to call me in the middle of the day. And I don't call people in the middle of the day because I know they're busy and I try to protect people's private time and space and don't want to interrupt. But most of us are, a lot of people are just sitting around and schedules have been blown out a little bit.

And so to do this in the middle of the day was someone I don't normally connect with was great. Mike is an awesome smart guy, check out his stuff. And I would definitely recommend checking out some of his essays, which have been in the Atlantic and other places, because they think he's a smart dude. And we also get into a bunch of books we both like. And so if you're really looking to make this into a live time, one of the best things I think you could do now, and additional listening to podcasts, is to just do a fair amount of reading. That's what I'm doing. I'm going through a lot of big books that I just didn't have time for before and I hope you guys do the same. The only other heads up

I wanted to give you the exciting news. Ops goes the way still this is the key. Ego is the enemy are now available in a box set. You can get a box set. It's called the way Enemy, and the Key. You can get available on Amazon. If you want to order through a local independent bookstore, that's great, retail struggling, so try to support them as much as you can. You can check that out on Amazon. I've linked to it on social media as well. I think it looks great, and I hope you check it out and enjoy this conversation with Congressman Mike Gallagher. There's nothing wrong with being wrong.

This is the April 25th entry from the Daily Stoic. If anyone can prove and show me that I think and act in air, Marcus Relius says in Meditation 621, I will gladly change it, for I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed. The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance. Someone once attempted to argue with the philosopher Cicero by quoting something he had said or written. This person claimed that Cicero was saying one thing but had believed something different in the past, his response.

I live from one day to the next. If something strikes me as probable, I say it, and that is how, unlike everyone else, I remain a free agent. No one should be ashamed by changing his or her mind. That's what the mind is for. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson said, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divine.

That's why we should go to such lengths to learn and expose ourselves to wisdom. It would be embarrassing if we didn't end up finding out that we were wrong in the past. Remember, you are a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your beliefs or your actions, they're not criticizing you. They're presenting a better alternative, except it.

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Download the Amazon Music app today. Welcome to Ryan. Oh, sorry, I was just doing some light reading on my desk here. Wait, what are this one as well? Welcome to my friend Ryan Holiday, famous author, probably the most famous college dropout besides Zuckerberg or Kanye. And Ryan, before we get started, I just want to sort of tell our tens of listeners

how we got to know each other. I had done an interview in a random journal. And also, I get a book in the mail with the following letter in it. And it says, dear Congressman Gallagher, I was reading an article about you in independent review journal this week, as one does. And this is, and was completely surprised to see a copy of my book, you go as the enemy on your coffee table.

I can't tell you how flattered and honored I was to know the book had somehow made it to your offices. And with sitting next, this should be something to talk about, sitting next to the brilliant Stephen Pressfield, no less. And you went on and on. And I gotta tell you, I was impressed by one, the fact that you had read that article.

You had seen your book on the coffee table and then had proactively reached out to me and Since then I think it's fair to become we say we've because friends Best friends probably But thank you for taking some time to have a discussion. Yeah, of course So I obviously don't remember what the paper was and I am not a regular regular reader of it But what had happened is someone had emailed me, I think one of your constituents who was reading it. And they said, Hey, I saw a photo of your book in this article,

and they sent me the link to the article. And then so I read it. And I don't remember, I think you mentioned the book in the article. So I was like, Oh, I'll just shoot this guy a note. And then we connected. It was super thoughtful. By the way, my predecessor, who's a great guy named Reebbel, was the one who gave me your book, and then that inspired me to kind of read all your other books. And then most recently, I forced my entire staff to read Ego as the enemy a little while ago. So it was a very serendipitous series of events. Yes. So okay, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say and clearly you're a very big reader because I'm looking at the books behind you and I am liking what I'm seeing. I see let's see, Debork by Cal Newport. Very good book. I highly recommend. Play Doe. It was out of

the Republicans. That the collected works. This is the Republic by Al Bloom. Yeah. And then there's, then there's Boyd fighter pilot who changed the art of war all the time. You go all the time favorites. That's flow, right? By the guy whose name I can't love. Nihae Chexet mihae. I think I love flow. I recently reread flow. I think it's amazing. But then a skeer title, which I was somewhat involved in, that's dear reader by Michael Malis, the unauthorized autobiography. Wait, you were involved in this? I keep recommending this book to everybody. So Michael is a long time friend,

and he was, he's basically a celebrity ghostwriter. He's worked on all these weird books for like, you know, Brett Michaels and UFC fighters. And he and I were having dinner in New York City and he was telling me, he's obsessed with North Korea, he'd visited North Korea and that he had this idea for a book and no one was interested in it. And I was like, that's a crazy idea for a book.

You should do a Kickstarter for it and just self-publish it. And he did and it was the first book that he published under his own name. And he became sort of apublish it. And he did. And it was the first book that he published under his own name. And he became sort of a pundit out of it. And then he recently did a good book about the rise of the alt-right. Oh, interesting. I did not know it. So this is one of my favorite books I've read in the last few years. It's hilarious. But I think it also does in a very intelligent way, genuinely convey the jujhi idea and other crazy notions that allow Kim Jong-un to sort of maintain

this insane stranglehold on power. Yeah, I mean, I think from a literary perspective, it's a totally unique book, because it's an unauthorized autobiography, which doesn't make any sense, but that's because he built the book based on all the public statements and materials that he had put out into the world. So yeah, it's a crazy book and it's hilarious. And Michael is a

a totally unique contrarian dude. I don't agree with him on a lot of stuff, but that is a fascinating book. And I could see it in the corner, so I'm very impressed to see it. When do you do your reading? Are you a regimented person? Are you up at the same time every day? You write from a set period of time, you read, and what's your general schedule look like? It's a little of both and we're actually just writing about this for daily stoked today. We're doing this like challenge and I like a lot of people have my sort of whole life blown up by the quarantine and the social distancing. So usually my I am very regimented. I try to get up at the same time. I've got young kids. So we keep a schedule. We do all that stuff, but I young kids, so we keep a schedule, we do all that stuff, but I was much more active and I was gone more often.

So I kind of had like an at-home schedule and a travel schedule, and my travel schedule is where I do most of my reading. So I just tend to read on planes. So like when I'm home, I actually don't do a lot of reading because I'm trying to do family time and be present. So I've tried to build in reading the last couple weeks more sort of in a regimented way, you know, sort of at home before bed. Typically, I try to get my reading in like,

when I have lunch, I read while I eat if I'm by myself, but I think I'm a very big believer in routine and schedule. But I tend to be more of a person who has schedules, plural based on what's happening in the world or my life. So I kind of have a, like, I kind of tend to own the mornings and do like my own thing in the morning, try to get all my creative stuff done. And then the sort of what I do in the afternoon,

the second half of the day is more sort of fluid based on what's happening. So I'm similarly, not identically, but similarly scheduled. But I just read or in one chapter away from finishing this book, anti-fragile by Nassim Talib and my say, all right. Yeah. Making me think that I have the entire wrong approach

to this whole thing. On two accounts, one, I think a point he makes repeatedly is people that are excessively scheduled, you know, and you know, everything is built around. Okay, this 45 minutes is we're gonna have a meeting and then I'm gonna squeeze in golf and the afternoon blah blah blah are empty suits or nerds as he calls them.

Yeah. I don't think originally or deeply. And then two, he has this heuristic of, he at some point in the book, he tells someone, don't, who asked him for, you know, what are the 10 best books you've read? And he's like, I hear questions like that, but don't read anything that was written in the last 30 years,

or if it was, it should be about history, that's at least 50 years old. So it's making me think with the exception of Ryan Haldes, books, I shouldn't read anything new. So I have strong thoughts on both those things. First off, Nassim Taleb is a brilliant genius also sometimes way out there and probably a sample size of one on a lot of things. We're not all sort of multi-millionaire traders who have retired to write and globetrot. But I do think schedules can make you very fragile and routines can make you very fragile. Like I wrote about this in Stillness a little bit.

When you look at someone like Russell Westbrook, he's almost scheduled and routine-based to the point of like superstition. You can see how fragile that makes someone because you just have to disrupt the plan or disrupt the sort of the control that they have over their environment. And suddenly they become very easily rattled.

So that's why I think the idea of routines plural is important. Have you read the Paul Graham essay on Makers vs. Managers? I don't even remember. But this is a Y you read the Paul Graham essay on Makers versus Managers? I don't even remember. Okay. But this is a Y Combinator Paul Graham. Yes. So it was a high school graduation speech he never gave. There's one good.

I don't know. Okay. He has all these essays, but I recommend this essay all the time. And basically he's like, there's two kinds of people. And this goes to the telepoint. There's Makers and Managers. And Managers basically have basically have sold their soul or their whole schedule to someone else, right? Like you could pay to salary.

This is your job. So from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. or whatever your day is, you're not supposed to be doing anything during that day other than making decisions, checking on people, having phone calls and attending meetings. But if you're a writer like me or a manager, a maker, and I would think that Congressman is actually closer to a maker than people might think, because if you're not thinking big picture or coming up with theories or sort of ideologies by which you make your decisions, then you're just reactive all day.

And so the point is, you have to decide if you're a maker or a manager, and then you have to realize that these two schedules are inherently in conflict with each other. The manager is constantly interrupting and disrupting the flow of the maker, and the maker is living in a fantasy world that does not work for the manager's sort of nine

to five reality. So like that's why, so like when I wake up in the morning, I wake up early, the first thing I do is I don't touch my phone. Like I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning and I did not touch my phone until probably 8.30. So that was, I got up, I took my kids, we went for a long walk, then we spent time in the garden, then I wrote in my journals,

and then I did a bunch of writing. And so I could call it quits now, and have already done the bulk of what I'm kind of supposed to do today. So I kind of have a hybrid maker manager schedule with the point is the morning is like family time, outside time, thinking time, and then writing time, and then the rest of the days for those administrative tasks.

Like when I look at my, like if I pull up my calendar right now, my calendar today has this interview with you, and then I have to drive to go pick up groceries from a grocery order that we have. Those are the only things that are in my schedule today. The point being, my rule for my assistant is no more than three things in the calendar in one day, because the rest of the day has to be for making time, like sinking, reading, writing, that sort of thing. Totally. You know, it's so funny you bring that up.

Well, first of all, on the idea of the fragility of routine, I think one of the points that Teleb makes is you can just see this in the most basic sort of physical way, right? Like, if you do the same exercise all the time, like your muscles aren't going to grow, like you have to shock your body and the same should hold true for our minds and our more general schedules. I wonder if you're the one who has said, I mean, this is sort of like something you said, maybe think of the Mike Tyson quote of, you know, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. So yes, you could have someone that goes to a Globo gym and like looks really fit, but the minute you get them in a Jiu-Jitsu ring with somebody, they're totally overmatched and they're actually, you know,

win. Sure. Yeah, yeah, and so for me, like, I realize the day is always going to have chaos and dysfunction in it. There's always going to be things happening. So I try to front load the important tasks and the tasks that take the most sort of quiet or stillness as I call it, I try to do those at the beginning of the day. So then everything else that happens is extra. And I, uh, Rumietsethe, who I also like, he sort of, he goes like, when you talk to like CEOs, presidents, you know, world leaders, you're always like, uh, what's your schedule like? And then it's always like, I woke up at 4 a.m. and went to the gym.

The reason they do that is because it's the only way to guarantee they get time in the gym. So, you know what I mean? Like if you're planning on going to the gym at 2.30 in the afternoon, a lot of things have to go right for that to happen. Whereas if you wake up at 4.50 a.m. like Jaco or something and you go straight into the gym,

the less stuff is going to interrupt or as to let me say less chances of sort of black swans ruining your chances of doing what you're planning on doing. So the way I think about this is I've kind of realized through trial and error in 30, 60 years on the surface that I have about like two good hours and so I will wake up early around 430. I'll try to present back to 5 now. I do about an hour of you know I do my Catholic praying stuff and I try and read something very good to get my my mind going and then I have an hour. It's usually from 6 to 7 where I will use an app called freedom and I'll shut off internet on my computer and I'll just write for an hour. And it may not be writing for publication, it could be to organize my thoughts for, I have to go on TV, but I know like,

I want to put my hardest task in that hour, because I know that as long as I'm good in that hour, then no matter how much chaos emerges through the rest of the day, and no matter how much I'm on defense, at least I've taken care of like the one big thing for the day. Yeah, I think our philosophies are very aligned. And that is what you call the Catholic praying stuff.

To me, that's just a technical term. Right. Right. No, no, that's so for another person that might be yoga for another person that might be meditation. For me, that's what the walking is. But I think it's about having quiet times yourself. And I would be curious for you how you balance it,

like some of the other politicians I've gotten to know in Washington, I go, I walk into their office and it's, of course, Fox News is running on the back rack. And it's like, no wonder these people are reactive all the time and don't aren't thinking, like, how do you balance your information diet with that quiet sort of big picture thinking that you're doing? So some of this has changed now that, you know,

I've got married last year and cohabitating with my wife. Well, for the last five years, I didn't have TV. TV sent, I watched TV or adjusted it. It was only when it was on in my office in DC. And while I had a Twitter account, I almost never posted on it directly and I didn't have it on my phone. So I wasn't constantly refreshing Twitter or Instagram. Now I am sort of because I've tried to, since I'm terrible at social media, and it seems like every person needs to be out on social media, you know, influence certain things, I've tried, I don't have Twitter on my phone,

but I think it's been a disaster for me personally, mentally, and I'm thinking about just deleting it. So I've basically set up a bunch of barriers, which is easier to do if you have like a staff, which I had now. So I can just, if I see an interesting article, I can email it to my comms director and say, hey, let's think about this. And they can also check me if someone attacks me on Twitter. And my instant reaction is to attack back. They'll kind of be a barrier of, okay,

let's take a beat boss and you can feel this way in 24 to 48 hours, then we can do it. I think it's been an imperfect but potentially more useful way of approaching it, but I do see a lot of my colleagues work just watch if you can, the house floor during a vote, everyone will literally just be on their phones the whole time. I think politicians are the worst about this because politics has evolved to a weird thing where it's almost like the incentives for every member of the House and Senate is to be their own little media company. Yes. Not a legislator. And I don't fully understand it,

but I know it's unhealthy. No, I have some thoughts on that. So first off, I think you're thinking about it the right way, which is create barriers. So for instance, Instagram has been very good for my career. You wouldn't think like ancient philosophy would be a way, Instagram would be a way to spread ancient philosophy, but it turns out like the medium is conducive to it. But like I have Instagram on my wife's phone. So first off, like I can't get in trouble on it, right? Like as you're saying, you can't get in fights with people,

you're not, you know, people aren't sliding into your DMs or whatever. It's like, it's not there. Like, so, so I have to go, Hey, can I have your phone for a second? I can't be mindlessly doing that on my phone. But yeah, it's ironic that these politicians are so addicted to their phones. And they literally employ a full-time person who is supposed to handle communications. And so one of the things I think about with like my Twitter feeds or my Instagram feeds or even now a little bit with my inbox, it's like you can pay someone to check those things for you.

You cannot pay someone to think for you. Like you can't pay someone to come up with your opinion on an impeachment or, you know, responding to COVID-19 or, you know, ideologically what you think about these issues. And so if the CEO or the leader or the artist or the author, whatever it is, isn't thinking big picture, isn't doing like the making stuff, then nobody's doing it, right? So somebody else can be checking social media for you, can be saying, hey, here's an opportunity, what do you want to do in that thing? And that's where your big picture vision is now applied to the small picture tactical stuff.

But it'd be like, no, it's like finding out that the general is, you know, sort of monitoring radio transmissions. No, like they have to be setting the larger battle plan and then people are bringing them only the most important reports. And so for me, like what I realize is that, so yes, Twitter is an effective way to communicate, but if you are sampling what other people are thinking

from Twitter, you are getting the most biased, most toxic, least representative voice. Like, I basically, when I wrote my book Conspiracy, which is sort of about this, you know, Peter Teales plot to destroy Gach or Media, the first couple days I was still checking Twitter, and I realized like, oh, wait, this isn't even representative of what the media thinks. This is the worst people in media with the least going on, communicating the most aggressively and in the most sort of truncated, least nuanced form you could possibly imagine. I just realized like, I am deeply unhappy when I consume this information and my sense of the world is skewed. And when I don't consume it, I think better,

I am happier and I do better work. It's so fun. Even with an awareness of that, I mean, there are still times when like I'll step back and realize that I and my team have wasted hours if not days trying to come up with a tweet storm. that will maybe be noticed by a few journalists. And I think in general, public figures overestimate the extent to which their constituents are even on Twitter, in this place. One of the related heuristic I used,

at least in my first term to try and get around this was, I sort of basically made a bet on against social media and on long form essays and articles because I do like to think and write. And so my goal was to once a quarter write a long form piece. So something beyond an op-ed that would force me to think through an issue and potentially even though it wouldn't get noticed, right? Because there aren't a lot of people reading 5,000 word essays. There's a lot of people tweeting, you know, 40 character things. But over time, it would allow me to sort of, you know, think more deeply

and seriously about issues. Now, we'll see. I mean, I successfully published some of those essays. No one has read them, but at least it forced me to kind of like go through the process of thinking long-term and not responding to whatever the Twitter crisis of the day was. Yeah, there's an epictetus line. I like you says, like, if you wish to improve, you have to be content to be seen as ignorant or clueless about some things. And so I think part of it is actually having

the sort of strength and confidence to go, I'm not going to be up on every meme, every breaking story. I'm going to deal with the bigger, important things. And then I think it shouldn't just be a bet on long form, although you can make a very good argument that one of the worst things that happened to media was journalists who used to have to think in terms of 2,000 word articles or working on a story

for several weeks have now been trained for essentially a generation to be thinking in terms of 140 characters and tweet storms. Like, the nuance of an article versus the nuance of a tweet is dramatically different. So I don't think it should surprise anyone that the media has drifted further left and further right because both of those are less nuanced positions and more hardline positions. I think this coincides exactly with the incentive for what kind of thinking social media encourages. But I think where politicians and people should really be betting

is primarily on going direct to their audience. So like if you have a hundred, I have like 250,000 Twitter followers, let's say. The average tweet is seen by less than 10% of your audience. So if I have a tweet that does 25,000 to 50,000 views, that's a huge tweet for me. And so you're like, actually, I don't have 250,000 Twitter followers. I have 10% of that. Meanwhile, for daily stoic, every day we send a, I send out an email to 250,000 people.

And I own that. And Twitter can't Twitter or Facebook or Instagram doesn't come in between you and the audience. So it shouldn't just be betting on a longer form. It should be betting directly on owning that relationship. So it's ironic to me that politicians who have the franking privilege are spending all their time trying to leverage free communication on a platform where they can only access a small percentage of those people. Meanwhile, you could be sending these essays

directly to people's houses and have an intense relationship with those people. So I think what you really ultimately want to do is own the relationship with the audience. And that's the most important thing. And you could argue that that was the big mistake that Obama made in 2008. He built a huge, huge platform activated

an enormous amount of voters and then handed that audience off to the DNC when he became president. And one of the things Trump has done well, and I'm not someone who's a fan of Trump like at all, one of the things Trump has done well is for all of, I think the mistakes and failures he's had in office, is he does have direct access and control

of that base at all times. He happens to do it through Twitter, so I guess it is possible. But the point is, you wanna own your relationship with the audience or the fan or the base. That's the important thing. Well, I think it ends up becoming a more authentic relationship.

In other words, I think there's similar appeal for both Trump and Bernie supporters. You know, they both feel that their politician, they follow is authentic. I've been to some of these rallies now, and I'll admit, if you watch it on TV, I think it's easy to be skeptical of it. But first of all, it's not scripted.

I mean, I wrote with Trump in the car and he had a script in his hand and it was only like two pages. I was so in my mind tracking, he just completely does his own thing and it's funny by the way, but it's a more genuine connection to the record with people to your point. So I want to talk about disinformation, you mentioned conspiracy, for the record I think one area where I disagree with Talib's sort of way of working if I I'm remembering it correctly, is he kind of talks about, he only writes when the muse or ball strikes him. I kind of believe more in the Jocco model of like,

there's value even if you don't feel like it every day and kind of bring in the rock from the quarry and just kind of putting the work in. I'd be curious as to whether you kind of force yourself to work even when the muse doesn't strike you. So I actually interviewed Pressfield here about two months ago and he has a great, I think as far as writers go, I don't know if you've read The War of Art, but I think it's like the best book maybe ever written about writing. And he has this great line that says, you know, put your ass where your heart wants to be.

And so it's like, if you want to write, you have to put yourself in the chair and you have to do it every day. I don't think it's something that just comes naturally, that comes based on inspiration. Whatever Talib is saying, I would I would imagine to produce the kind of work he's produced. He's much more disciplined than it might seem to outside to you. I'm just not sure it's possible to create work that good. That's not disciplined. So yeah, for me, it's about writing pretty much every day. And if I'm not writing, I'm at least working on material that will become writing.

So that's reading or doing note cards based on things that I've read or breaking down and outlining, but I'm always trying to, like, like books are this thing that you, you accumulate. There's a Xenoline, he's one of the Stoics and he says, like, well being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. I think that's what books are. Books are, hey, I just, I think I just figured out the introductory, the first sentence in the book today. And if that's all that you did, you did move the book considerably forward. And so a book is a long, a creative process of that every single day, like little things. Because if you think about it, I think the obstacle is the way is maybe 50,000 words.

So even at 50 words a day, that's not that many days until you get to that book. Yeah. So I want to come back to books in general and press field in particular, but we got to eat our vegetables first. Okay. So we have to talk about current events. I think in two dimensions, the both related to coronavirus, one, I think most people and I count myself in this category just struggling to, in this crazy social media environment, we're in, figure out what's true and what isn't, right? I mean, on one hand, we have all these very apocalyptic models, the Imperial College of London study. There was this guy, Thomas Poehau, who wrote a medium post that went viral

about why you need to act now. On the other hand, we have not just coronavirus deniers, but respected Stanford professors who are saying, no, these models may be wrong. Don't extrapolate based on data from China. I'm wondering if there's a connection here between some of the trends you saw in both, trust me, I'm lying your book and conspiracy.

Are you seeing sort of, help me connect this to sort of the way the media has changed and the amount of misinformation that's out there. Yeah, in any sense. It's sort of two unfortunate trends, right? As the media, as people have become more partisan and the media has become less trustworthy on both sides on whatever an issue is, the media has to be more and more extreme, in a way less and less accurate to get the desired outcome they want.

Let's say you're sort of centered to left wing media, and you're not particularly well liked or trusted, to get people to take coronavirus seriously, you had to be a very steady drum of extremism. And I tend to think that they were mostly right about this and people weren't taking it seriously enough. But you can, Andrew Sullivan just wrote a great piece last weekend where he was like, wait, so now they're telling us actually people should be wearing masks. And just a few weeks ago, they were telling us don't wear masks.

So it's this weird thing where when the media ceases to be objective and has an agenda of some kind, people don't trust it because they believe there's an agenda. And then so to get over that resistance, they have to become in a way less and less accurate and more and more intentional about what they're saying. And it becomes this sort of negative feedback loop. So it's like, on the right, you had Fox News basically calling it a hoax and saying all these sort of very dangerous things about it.

And then meanwhile, you have other people who are, you know, essentially saying that a, you know, a disease with a 1% mortality rate is gonna be the end of life on planet Earth. And maybe climate change is another example of where this is happening, where on the one hand, you have a side that is sort of, you know, not taking it seriously, has some maybe ideological reasons for being resistant to it. On the other hand, you have people who are telling you life on planet Earth is going to end in 2030.

And so you sort of sit here and people just I think end up tuning it out. So this is a kind of situation where what you desperately need. And I think Francis Fukama was was writing about this too. He was saying like the difference in the coronavirus responses is not going to be democracies versus authoritarian regimes. It's going to come down to societies with trust or no trust. And this is a perfect example of when you need a media system that people trust, and we do not have that, and that's really bad. And that's why people are reading random people on medium to get their information, because

hey, this guy actually seems like he knows what the fuck he's talking about, versus this person who told you Trump wasn't gonna win,, who told you Trump was going to be impeached, you know, who's been feeding you a steady diet of extreme, extreme, extreme information over the last three years, maybe the last 10 years. Like, that was a big, that on the day my son was born. So again, not a Trump fan, but on the day my son was born, the election returns basically sent my wife into labor in 2016. So we were sitting there in the hospital and I remember they take the baby, they bring the baby back, they take the baby. So I'm sitting here reading my phone and I'm reading some article from some Vox person who's

basically telling me like, you know, everything that this means, the world is going to end, we're all going to die, you know, this is a terrible thing. And I was like, wait, I was just reading from this person three days ago about how Trump had zero chance of winning. Why am I listening to this person at all? Do you know what I mean? So I think in some ways, the response to all of this is to just consume a lot less information filtered through the media to you. And that's sort of where I've had to come to be as a person myself. So two follow-ups. One random, I'm always confused.

It's just seem like reporters, even those who are not opinion journalists like Andrew Sullivan, but report to be objective, kind of live two lives. There's one, it's where they'll publish a piece as a objective reporter on the New York Times or Washington Post. But then in Twitter world, they are not loathed to obscure their opinion. I've always wanted to go to a journalism school and say, is this not a problem? No, it's a huge problem. It's a huge problem and it's a large part of the credibility gap that I think the media has. And I don't actually know how much the opinions of the journalists

have changed, although I do think there's a radicalizing effect that Twitter has had. But Although I do think there's a radicalizing effect that Twitter has had. But their stories used to be the only means of communication that journalists had. So again, they were sort of evolved to adapt to that medium. And now it's like they have two. So it's a bit schizophrenic. And so instead of being thoughtful and taking the time

and being filtered through editors, that's what their stories are. And that's why they're more rational and they stand up more to scrutiny and it's better. And then it's like over here, they can just vomit into their phone every thought that they have. So again, a less partisan example, athletes,

this is a great example. Athletes go into the locker room, they pick up their phone, they say a bunch of dumb, divisive stuff that, like, you know, tears the team apart, but when they're doing, you know, maybe an interview or a panel or they're appearing on ESPN, it's much more well thought out and they're more cognizant of what they're saying.

So like the Stokes would just say, like, you never want to be giving your opinion when you are in the heat of passion or being emotionally reactive. And the problem is that's what Twitter draws out. And I think it is severely undermined the credibility that the media has. I think an extension of that problem is,

if you look at sort of the younger generation, I mean, whenever I talk to a high school class or younger, I'm like, whenever I talk to a high school class or younger, I'm like, please do not put your thoughts online. Because I feel like I just escaped the Facebook. I was like on the last helicopter out of Saigon when it came to Facebook because it started when I was a sophomore in college.

So my entire college life, and certainly not great, the 12 life was not cataloged online. But like you'd think about all the dumb stuff you said when you were 13 years old, 15 years old. And then think about having to answer for that in a job interview 10 years later or running for office 10 years later. I just think there's gotta be some societal wide movement to convince people that they don't need to instantaneously share every thought that comes into their mind.

Because I have about 30 thoughts every day. And I think are good that don't survive to the evening, let alone something that I would have put in writing. I mean, look, Trump himself is a pretty decent example of this. It's like almost everything he has expressed as president. There is a tweet of him as a pre-president having said something about another president that's very different than that. And so yeah, there's a sure, one of my heroes

is William took comes a Sherman and he's like, never tell people what you think because you might change your mind. Basically, you might discover evidence that makes you realize you were wrong. And so keeping your thoughts to yourself until you've gone further down the path to me is not only great life advice,

but it's pretty decent political and marketing strategy advice. Like, just don't go on the record if you don't have to. There's some Washington, DC afferers, and then I'm gonna murder now, but it's too the effect of, if you hold a position Long enough and consistently in Washington DC you will eventually be tried for treason

Yeah, I'll just for now. I'm at the summa phenomena. Okay, so just to kind of go Coronavirus, I mean you are a An expert in stoicism. I mean you may reject the term expert But you've spent a lot of your time studying Stoicism and writing about Stoicism. I am not and steeped in Stoicism the way you are. I'm curious though if sort of instinctively having been brainwashed by the Marine Corps, there are a lot of parallels. Have you started to think about what Stoicism can offer us in the midst of this crisis? There's a lot of people are cooped up inside, anxious about their economic future,

their physical future. I just love to talk about that. Yeah, of course. I mean, it might seem insane to go like, you know what, really help you in the middle of this plague? How about some ancient philosophy? But the reality is that people in the ancient, like the idea of being locked in your house during a plague would be quite familiar to Aristotle

and to Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, or to be besieged by some enemy threat and be locked into your house. So in the ancient world, in a way, I think what coronavirus has reminded us of is just how not distant the past actually is. Like, we are experiencing what Shakespeare experienced, what Isaac Newton experienced, what human beings for, as long as we have lived in cities and societies have experienced, which is like, sometimes everything

goes upside down, and you had to figure out how to thrive in that environment, where at the very least endurance survive it. So the central tentative stoicism is basically like, we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond. And I think leaders haven't done a great job explaining that to people. And they haven't, they haven't done a great job sort of going, hey, look, we didn't want this, we didn't invite this.

It's not our fault. But like starting now, everything that happened in the past is irrelevant and what matters is what we do going forward. It's almost like the reaction has been, either how can we pretend this isn't happening, how can we blame other people or other things for this happening, or is there some magical legislation or tax break or whatever that will make it as if it has not happened? Do you know what I mean?

Really what we should be focusing on is, whoa, how did this sneak up on us? How are we caught so unprepared? How do we mitigate the damage as much as we possibly can? And then how do we put all our energy towards making sure we protect ourselves in future generations from it and learn and are improved by this experience. Because look, a lot of people are going to die. Like, it could be 100,000, it could be a million, it could be 10 million worldwide. It's going to be a large number. The only meaning that can come out of that immense horrific tragedy is that we emerge from it globally and nationally stronger, more together, and better prepared to protect and prevent

this from happening in the future. On the subject of death, do you not have a tattoo that has some sort of expression about death? I carry a coin in my pocket that says, Memento Morionate. And you can't tattoo it over your heart. Yes. But that is a very important thing. And so like Marcus Aurelius, he's the leader of Rome during the Antenine play, which is

a horrific play that would make coronavirus look like he would have gladly had the coronavirus for, I think something like 15 million Romans died in a population that was probably 70 million. And so imagine, you know, we've been in this now for two months or a month and a half. Imagine this being the reality for 15 years. So in Rome, obviously, they were inundated with corpses. And the only thing they thought could ward off the plague was the burning of incense. And so Rome was this sort of putrid, surreal, like cloudy, smoky city of, you know, basically

rotting bodies and incense. And so every day, Marcus Aurelius would wake up and smell that. And that smell of death is something we're very removed from today. But we're not really any less mortal. Like the prophecy that we will all die is as true now as it was in the ancient world. And so he has this line and it's on the back of the coin. It says, you can leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. And I think, even this idea of momentum, worry is one of the things we take out of this,

that we, you know, it feels like only a couple of months ago we are arguing about, you know, these billionaires who thought they could live forever. And it's like, oh, wait, actually, we're all in the same boat. We're all going to die. We're all susceptible to nature. And so let's not get too egotistical and let's not prize the wrong thing. Can I, I'd like to have you help us, it's just you and me. Yeah. Distinguish between us, it's just you and me. Distinguished between the ability to control your response to external stimuli and the inability

to immediately control your emotional response. I think there's a lot of people myself included who would like to want to have thicker skin and would love to be zen about everything. But, you know, and I've sort of come to the realization, I thought I had a lot of thick skin, you know, Marine Corps, awesome support network, amazing wife. But like if someone attacks me, it definitely bums me out.

Or if a local newspaper misconstrues my position, I get angry about it. So maybe you're not taught, I think you're not talking about the ability to negate that immediate emotional reaction. It's sort of how do you recognize it and control that producing a counterproductive reaction? No, that's exactly right. So there's a big difference between sort of lower case stoicism, which means like has no emotions, no reactions, and then upper case stoicism, which is the philosophy. So Seneca and all the stoics they talk about this, they're like, look, no reactions, and then uppercase stoicism, which is the philosophy.

So, Senaqa and all the stokes they talk about this, they're like, look, no amount of training or wisdom makes you not feel cold when it gets cold outside. Or if someone jumps out from around a corner, you're gonna be spooked by that. The stokes were not concerned with, or didn't believe it was possible to eliminate that entirely. What they were focused on is like,

what do you do next? How do you integrate your response into this? So it's like, if you get in a car accident, your body's gonna dump a bunch of hormones, you're gonna, but your decision to say never drive again because you are so rattled by what happened, that's where the stoicism comes in, right? Or again, somebody breaks your heart or you lose someone you

love, you should be sad about this. And there's going to be grief involved. And the stoics would not try to pretend that you should not or could not experience grief. But what do you do day to day? Are you going to be in mourning for the next year and a half? That's probably extreme. And so, like, there are, I think about this now having kids. Like, you are obviously gonna be feeling things,

but then you also have to have the strength and the fortitude to know, like, it's not fair to dump this on a three year old, right? Or if a newspaper or someone attacks you on Twitter, you're gonna have a response, but you have to be able to at least have the self-control to not maybe put that response out in public without having thought about it.

So I think it's more than reasonable to be scared, to be angry, to be frustrated, to be confused, to be nervous. Those are all emotions that I think a global pandemic rightfully brings out in a person. But you have to subsume those emotions day to day through the filter of like what you know is right, the courage that you might have,

knowing that panic makes things worse, so on and so forth. So I think it's about having those feelings, not pretending that you don't have them, but then processing them. So actually to come back to Tolleb, he says, stoicism is not the absence of emotion. It's the domestication of the emotions. And I think that's a good way to put it.

Do you, so we talked about that, one trick you can do as far as social media is concerned is place a barrier between yourself, in and this case that your wife and her phone. Are there other hacks, a word I've come to hate actually, just, just, surestics to use it to lab word that you could, for those who aren't steeped in the philosophy, are there sort of shortcuts to implement so is doesn't in your daily life? Yeah, I think there are. I think stoicism and journaling

are essentially indistinguishable activities. Like Marcus really is his meditations, is not a book that he wrote. It's a set of him. It's probably not unlike your Catholic religious time, as you called it. It's the sitting there and reminding yourself of what you believe and thinking about it and

talking about it, talking about it to God or talking about it on the pages of a journal. So for Marcus, really, the act of journaling was him writing down reminders to himself of what he believes and who he's trying to be. So yeah, you should be scared. This is scary, but you would sit there and you would talk about in your journal about why you're trying to be strong for other people, how you know that panicking is not gonna help things.

It's sort of working through those thoughts on the page. And I think this would be a great time for people to reread Anne Frank or one of the biographies of Anne Frank because there you have a really great example of someone who is far less mobile and locked down than you are, a far more scarier threat outside, 16 years old, sort of working through a lot of similar feelings in a productive way. I mean, it'd be hard to be a 13 year old girl period, but to be a 13 year old girl in Amsterdam when you are from Germany having fled the Nazis

worried about your very likely impending death at any moment, this is where that journaling sort of comes in. And I think that is a very philosophical stoic practice. So we have about 10 minutes left. And I want to go back to fun things. Brazil, why did you, what's your Texas connection? How does you wind up in Texas and I grew up I grew up in California and then I moved to New Orleans when I was writing my first book

Just to sort of get away and I really like the South But I wanted like sort of the South light and I feel like that's what Austin is It's most of the benefits of the South without the intense humidity, all the extremes. So we just really love it and so we moved there. Okay, so the role that mentors have played in your own career and how conscious you are about seeking mentor, mentee relationships and also now that you're in a position to be a mentor. Sure. Yeah, I don't think I would be a writer without having learned. So the note cards I was

showing you, I learned that system as a research assistant for Robert Green. So I didn't come to writing going like, I want to write a book, I have lots to say. That came later. What I first figured out was the process of doing books. So I think I had like training in the craft first and then the inspiration came later. So yeah, I would not be a writer without Robert Green and I think is a sort of a deeply important thing and it actually goes to the core of stoicism. Zeno was mentored by this kind of named Cratees.

Sennaka ironically was the mentor of Nero, trying to prevent him from becoming insane. Marcus Relius was influenced by Epictetus, but then had a tutor named Junius Rousticus, who as I was just writing about as a Catholic, you might not like this, but Marcus Relius's mentor, Junius Rousticus becomes essentially sort of the governor of Rome as part of his service with Nero

with Marcus, and he's actually the one who adjudicates Justin Martyrs trial and sentences him to death. Interesting. So there's a really interesting stoicism Christianity tie and they were at odds for a very long time. So I have our question, given your interest in Rome and all things ancient, do you support the HBO show Rome?

I have only watched chunks of it. I didn't like it a ton, I didn't hate it, but I do think Gladiator is an incredible movie. And weirdly, both very historically inaccurate, but also historically accurate in that comment as probably was as bad as what Keen Phoenix says. And that's Marcus Arellius' son. Really though the movie of Gladiator is the story of Cincinnati, which I think is one of the greatest myths of history, and to tie this back to

what we're talking about, Cincinnati wasatus was George Washington's hero and all of the Cincinnati society that like celebrates all these revolutionary war dudes. And do you know why that comes from? Well, at least in terms of the myth is that since synatus sort of threw down a sword and went back to his farm in the same way that George Washington decided not to run for a third term and become king and went back to his farm. In the same way that George Washington decided not to run for a third term and become king and go back to his farm. Yeah. There's a great book by George Willis called Cincinnati.

That's about George Washington, but basically Washington, basically the author's premises that George Washington's entire life was about trying to reenact the myth of Cincinnati, which is the farmer is called to save Rome, comes in, his name dictator, does everything that he can, saves Rome, and then retires to his farm. And then actually Washington does this three times. He resigns his regimental commission, basically after the Revolutionary War resigns,

after the article of Confederation resigns and returns to his farm. And then after his second term resigns and returns to his farm, and that this is the power of ancient history, it's to inspire us to do great things in the present moment. It's not supposed to be this dead ancient thing.

It's supposed to be a living, breathing thing. Well said, final question. Let's say you walk into a bar in Northeast Wisconsin. You're not wearing your saints gear just to avoid getting in fights. Although we're nice here, no one would hold it against you. And a, let's say a 17 year old, a senior in a high school in Green Bay comes up to you and says,

oh, Ryan, I love your books. You know, blah, blah, blah, you're awesome. I subscribe to all your stuff. Thinking about becoming a writer. Yeah, I don't know if I should go to college or how does one you know is this a good idea? What advice would you give to that young kid? So so usually my advice is that college is the best defaults but obviously it should be an affordable college. Don't rack up 200,000 in debt, because you don't know what you're doing.

You're just trying to figure it out. But I'd say like, hey, there's a bunch of great state schools in Wisconsin, get into one of those. And then to be a writer, you have to go and experience and do things and learn. So I'd say take classes in as many things as you possibly can. You know, there would be what?

Let's say University of Wisconsin, probably 80% of the faculty is a published author, right? Like, what can you learn from those people? Those people are forced to sit in their office a certain number of hours per week and do nothing but talk to students and how few students take them up on this. So that was something I did in college. I went and met as many other professors I possibly

could ask them as many questions, learned as much as I could. And then when I had an opportunity to go do stuff, I left to do that. And I left college in 2006 or 2007, but my first book did not come out until 2012. So it took six or seven years of writing and learning and experiencing to go into the book.

So I think being a writer is, it's about training, it's about knowledge, and then it's about experience, and it's those three things coming together. Obviously having a load of debt or having no prospects on the job market, I think makes accumulating those three things more difficult. So college has to fit in there to some degree. Wise words. And if you're wondering why this hypothetical 17 year old is at a bar in Wisconsin, if you're with your parents, you're allowed to.

Interesting. So weird gap between 18 and 21, where you're not, but prior to that, yeah, it's a terrible Wisconsin. So, interesting. This was awesome. Thank you for that. Yeah, this is so fun. And, yeah, hopefully I didn't screw up the technical side of this, but this is,

this is a real treat. No, I can see it's recording, so we'll, yeah, awesome man, appreciate it. Go take it easy. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the daily stoke email, go to dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.