The Daily Stoic - Casey Neistat On The Purpose That Parenthood Gives You

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

While on tour for his new book The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids, Ryan met up with his longtime friend and occasional running partner Casey Neistat for a live interview at Barnes & Noble in Union Square during which they shared the story of how they met, reflections and wisdom they have gleaned from their journeys through parenthood, the work and life habits that have led to their success, their advice for new parents, and more.Casey Neistat is a YouTube personality, filmmaker, vlogger, the co-founder of the multimedia company Beme, and the founder of the creative and collaborative space for creators 368. His main body of work consists of dozens of short films he has released exclusively on the Internet, including regular contributions to the New York Times critically acclaimed Op-Doc series. His online films and videos have been viewed over three billion times. You can find his work on his website www.caseyneistat.com and on his social media channels: YouTube: CaseyNeistat, IG: @caseyneistat, Twitter: @Casey.*A note on the audio for this episode: an issue with Casey’s live mic resulted in the discrepancy in audio quality that you hear. We apologize for the inconvenience.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. So one of the funny things about being an author, but I think about life, is that you have these things that you want, that you think are what success is, that you think make it all worth it. You may be jealous when you see other people have them, then you get them in your attitude towards them totally changes.

I'll tell you what I mean. So like on my first book, all I wanted was my publisher to send me on Booktour, and they didn't. I remember I did two signings, and I paid for them out of my own pocket. So publisher wouldn't pay to send me. And then, you know, you look, you go, what they send this person, wouldn't it be great? I could get media. You think it's going to, you think it's this critical thing, right? And then, you know, as my books started to really sell, then they were willing to do it.

I remember I went on this long tour for conspiracy, I did like 10 stops or something. And it was so exhausting by the time I finished. I was like, never again. And now the conversation with my publisher has exactly flipped over. Okay, these, you know, what about live events for the launch? And I'm like, how can I do as few of them as possible?

Not because I don't like meeting people. I love meeting you guys. Well, it's okay. As you know, I'm a bit of an introvert, but the point is I don't seek out doing the events. I mean, I have my own bookstore, I don't even do events. But mostly I just don't like being gone. And the economics of flying across the country

to have a couple hundred people, which is a killer, killer turnout for a book event, you know, does not translate much to the bottom line of an author, right? It's a cool experience, but it doesn't exactly make financial sense, even when the publisher's paying for it. All of which is to say, it's a lesson, right? You think you want this thing and then you get that thing and then you're like, oh, this didn't magically solve anything. I don't magically feel good because this isn't as cool as I thought. And that's helped me as I've been jealous of things that other people have gotten as I've

thought. Well, the next thing will be great. I go, no, that's not how it works. The things you thought you wanted before, once you got them, you were like, nah. Right? So when the daily dad came out, the publisher wanted me to do a couple of events because we did this really cool addition

with Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble did a large printing of their own version of it, but it's different color. It's got this cool ribbon. It was really cool that they supported me. And I obviously wanted to support them back. So I agreed to do two events. The first of which was in New York, but I said to my publisher, I'm only willing to do it

if we can have it be more of a conversation as opposed to me giving a talk, and then I want to record that. And so I was really trying to do two birds with one stone, and I wanted to be able to bring that to all of you who didn't get to come to the event. The first one was in New York City at the Barnes and Noble and Union Square where actually I remember getting Robert Green's 33 strategies of war when I was like 18 years old. So long history with this store, very cool to go there and even cooler to get to interview and be interviewed by my friend Casey Neistat, one of the great YouTubers of all time, the person who encouraged me to bring out my own YouTube channel, it was giving me lots of advice. As I talk about in today's

interview, he's the one that helped me pick up my journaling habit. I was an advisor to his company Beam, which was acquired by CNN. He's got this cool creative space in Manhattan that all different kinds of creators use. His videos have done billions, literally billions of views. He's inspired me as a person, as an artist, as a parent. And it was just a really cool experience for me to get to have this conversation. And I appreciate that he allowed me to impose on him and ask him to have this experience with me. I know he's a very, very busy guy. And I went for a run with him in the morning before I talked and we did the talk.

And it was a great experience. Thanks to all of you who came out, thanks to everyone who supported the daily dad. You can check that out anywhere you get your books, including the Barnes and Noble edition, which they still have a few copies of. We have signed copies here at the paintedainted Porch and at dailydad.com. But in the meantime, I will bring you my conversation with the one and only Casey Nistat. You can follow him on every platform at Casey Nistat on Twitter. He's just at Casey. And I think you're really going to enjoy this interview with one of my favorite people, one of the only people I run

with in the world and someone who has changed my life in many, many ways. And we tell the story about how we met in this interview along with some other awesome stories. Thanks to Casey. Enjoy. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonder Woman's Podcast Business Wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, everyone, for coming.

Is this on? Yeah, we're good. I can't see you. Yeah, yeah, let's move on to this back. Is this on? Yeah, we're good. Ryan, I can't see you. Yeah, yeah, let's remove this back. What's that? Good, that looks nice. I actually haven't seen this in the flesh. So Barnes and Noble has their own addition,

and this is very, very cool. It's the only one, it's the only addition with a ribbon. Fancy fact. Fancy fact. So how are you feeling from the run this morning? Casey and I ran 11 miles this morning. It was double what I normally do. So the opposite of an outfit. You're a morning exercise person. Why is that? For reasons that will provide us with an excellent subway in today's discussion, but my kids have to be up at like 715 to get to school. So kind of like the only practical time of day for me to get it in is before the kids

have to be woken up. So like at my deadline, like when I have to be done with all my exercise by like Casey time for the day is pretty like 3 7 a.m. But it's not like you have a job, you could do it any time during the day is pretty 7am. But it's not like you have a job, you could do it any time during the day. Yeah, but once you fall back on that thing, you're like, I'll run it 10. And then it's like noon, and you're like,

yeah, I'll just go get lunch. And then it's like free, and then before you know it, you've got one of those mobility carts and you're just watching TV all the time, and you're watching T.O.K.M.E.L.E. on your iPad, and you're just kind of like watching TV all the time and you're like, you know, watching Tokamela on your iPad and you're getting nothing does. No, I think that's interesting because yeah, it's like once you start the habit of pushing, then you're probably already admitting to yourself that you're not going to do it. Yeah, don't you have like a great Marcus Relius quote about this?

Uh, probably. Let me see. Uh, I feel like I did this really is close with about this. Probably, let me see. I feel like I did this because of one of your quotes. Let's see, well he has a great one about getting up in the morning, which I love. He says, is this what you were put here to do to stay under the covers and be warm? Is this what you were put on this planet to do, which I like?

But Seneca's thing is that he says, the one thing fools have in common is that they're always getting ready to start. So you're about to do it. Like, I got to finish this thing first. I'll do it after. So I think there's something about owning, doing it first, crossing it off the list. That's really, really good.

It's such a healthy practice when you have little kids, because when you get up at 4.30 in the morning, you are like fucking exhausted by 8 o'clock. And my bedtime is 9 o'clock. This will be the latest I've stayed up in months. And I do that because I fall asleep when my kids fall asleep. Like I have the same sleep schedule as a four-year-old. Yeah. And I find it to be a very healthy thing to do.

And I think that my children appreciate that because I'm with them at night. We're on the same kings. I'm not like hit the dead kids so I can watch, you know, the real housewives of Beverly Hills. I'm like kids come out of this all fall asleep and I'm the first one out. Yeah, I have this story in discipline,

it's destiny, but the Tony Morris and thing was she had to get up and do her writing before she heard the word mom in the morning. Where she heard, yeah. So if you get it done, whether it's the workout or the writing or the alone time or the meditation, you wanna do it before you started the clock as a parent

if you can, which I think is really interesting advice. That I don't work, that doesn't work for me, but I do think the idea of getting crossing something off the list as early as possible before you're already tired, before you're already making compromises, before you're already, you know, into the shit. There's something about like the fact that when my children wake up every day, when I wake them up, I like splashy water on them or whatever I do, get those little rest without a bed. I've been up for three hours and have gotten like

a half a day. Like I think there's something's a valuable lesson there. What are other parts of your routine? Or is it, you just cross that off the list and then it's chaos from there? Yeah, I mean like getting the kids to school every morning, I think is one of the most valuable things as a parent Those sorts of routines. Yeah, my children like with breakfast those sorts of routines like Consistency as a parent I've found to be one of the kind of the most rewarding things from the from a child's perspective It's very hard to get into a the mind of a four-year-old or an eight-year-old But when there's consistency at hand like you can really see the response from them.

Yeah. What's interesting, right? Like you can see if your kid's routine is disrupted. You see how disrupted they are, right? Like if you normally do things a certain way, or if your life is chaos, you see how it manifests in their behavior, and then we're not that different. Like I realize that if I don't have a routine,

my behavior suffers and my willpower suffers and my equanimity suffers. And so I think the idea is like everyone should be on a sleep schedule, everyone should be on a routine. It's a human thing as opposed to a kid thing. Yeah. Also, there's like no easier way to look someone in the eye and say, I'm better than you. Then what time do you look at? I wake up at 5 in the morning every day. That is a powerful. I think I've read all of your books. I haven't read the Daily Diary. Well, I just came out. Yeah, I'm there. And you shouldn't be more than one page into it. Just to be know if it's, I haven't read the Daily Diary. Well, I just came out, yeah. And then, and you shouldn't be more than one page into it. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Just to be clear, it should take you a year. If anyone says they finished, they already broke the rule and didn't make it through the intro, it's very clearly. It's one page of deck. But I've been, you know, Rhyla, a very interesting history where we met at this outrageous, are we allowed to talk about this? So I don't think it was secret.

We met at this outrageous Google event at a castle in England where they had like, like when I say Ryan and I were the least important people there, I mean like if there's a spectrum of one to a hundred, everyone there was in the 90 to 100 range, and we were in single digits. Like, we were so out of our league at this event, at this castle that they had ripped up, and we had spent a lot of time together. Well, for some reason, it was you, me, and like, two other people, we had to stay in the castle,

like, they didn't put us in a hotel. So then, all the adults left, and then it was just us in the castle, but it was a castle, but it was more like, it was an English estate, it was called cleaved in. I don't know, it's this like thing. It was the craziest house that I've ever been in, and then they just left for very irresponsible people to stay in the castle by themselves.

What was Tom Hooper, the guy who had just directed in one of the Academy Award for the King's Speech. And I remember like three in the morning, we got in trouble through all this truck, playing on some like construction site outside. Wasn't there a slide for some reason, like a slide from a circus, you know, the...

Yeah, it was either that one, or it was the shoot that the construction workers did to the department job. But when the management yelled at us, I remember Tom fought back. Like how dare you? And I was like, how brutish is this a success? But we've known each other since then.

Oh, actually to give people a sense of how this event was, there was like, if you go to conferences, sometimes it's like, and then we're all gonna do a joint run in the morning, you know, and it'll be like, we're all going for a one mile run together, because it's like, you know, it's a low-scop into a nominator. And then who, they had like,

the guy who just won the Olympics for like, yeah, bo. Yeah, yeah, most for, for Eric, some of them, whatever, and it's like, anyways, he just won the fucking Olympic gold. Yes. That was who Google paid to come in just to lead this one run

of Google executives. And that's assholes. Yes. But we have to know each other then. And I think it was an interesting sort of reflection point both of our careers. And it was before I had both of my two daughters for you, you'd just been married or just about to get married.

And I think that our friendship, personal friendship and our professional relationship sort of grew from there. And it's been really interesting for me to learn about you personally as a friend, but then also learn about you through your writings. And the conspiracy was a all-time favorite because so fucking I can't creepy and just like gossipy and page churny and fun. But then I learned about the Stoics and learned about Stoicism through your writing. And the impact that it's had on my life has been profound, beyond certainly your specific writings, like understanding what Stoicism is and how that can be applied to your everyday life.

And I'm curious about like how you dovetailed those things with a book about parenting. Yeah, so yeah, I think it was 10 years ago. I was just thinking about this almost exactly. So yeah, very. But I think the obstacles the way had just- That's right. That's how it was. So that would have been my first book about Stoke Philosophy. And then the Daily Stoke would have come out a little bit later than that.

I got so much out of writing the Daily Stoke, like the idea of doing one page of Stoke Philosophy every day. And then obviously I've kept that going with the email. So I've basically written going with the email. So I've basically written that book, a new version of that book every year since 2016, that when we had kids, I was like, I think that would make me a better parent

to do that same process. So obviously the book is for you, but writing it was very much for me, the idea of like, what do I think, what are my sort of principles, what are the lessons of principles, what are lessons about two that people should do or should not do from figures from history and philosophy, that was the idea in the book.

But I think what's weird, if you went to the parenting section here, Barnes and Noble, you would see a lot of books, some of which are interesting, some of which are not, I would say most of the books for dudes are very patronizing. It's like, let's put a cowboy hat on the cover or something. Right? It's like, we'll make it camouflage. And actually remember, Adrian, my publisher is here and he was, when I was proposing the book, he was like, men don't buy parenting books.

That's what he said. That was a fact of the industry, which is true. But I think the reason that's true, and the reason why parenting books are with the exception of say what to expect when you're expecting not great sellers, is that it's insane to read about some problem you might have 22 years from now, right?

So you're reading a book about this thing that you never stopped doing. You're always a parent once you become one. But how could you read about that in the course of a week and then retain that knowledge? So I think what I think is special about this format or what I'm trying to do is that it's a book, not only that you read in small chunks,

but ideally you read over and over again. I don't know how to put this into a question, right? Something that's interesting is like, so my wife had read a number of parenting books and she highlights a page or, you know, folds down a page and it's like, how do you have to read this? And that has sort of shifted. Where now she and I are in this sort of perpetual state of sending each other, don't laugh because this is serious, TV and laugh and sweat and ridiculous. Send me each other tiptocks. Do the same things. Sure. From pediatricians and then just from like people who think they know something and they usually do and they're good at compartmentalizing into

these little videos and it's interesting and it's helpful and it makes me feel understood and I think something that you've done that has been very interesting for me to watch as someone who sort of built my own career on social media is like you're an author. I think we called you a media strategist but I see you as an author. I see you as someone who's able to take ideas and put them on paper and communicate those ideas in a way that people are able to digest them. But in the last decade, you have leaned into social media into podcasting. I follow all of your multiple feeds that you or your entities produce on.

If you're doing all that, then I don't know when you sleep. But on social media, and I'm curious about that transition, about that. It's not a transition, because you're still writing. But I'm curious about how you came to that. And what it's like when people come up to you saying, I love your Instagram videos, or I love your YouTube videos, versus I've read all your books. Yeah, I'm like in the same way that, so when you write a book, obviously it gets translated into different languages. Like I don't also write the a book, obviously it gets translated into different languages.

I don't also write the Spanish version, or it would be unintelligible. I don't even see the German or the French or these other versions, they just ship them to you after they're done, and you're like, oh, that's an interesting choice. So it just happens, right? the idea is that obviously there's people who read primarily in French and people read in German, people read in Czech, people who read in Russian, any language. And so that's how you expand the reach of what you're doing. And the way I have come to understand is like, I'm a book first person. That's how I consume information. If I wanted to learn, I'm becoming a parent, I go read a parenting book, right? Or if I wanted to learn about this country I was going

to, I would read a book about that thing, or I want to learn about the Civil War. I'm going to read a bunch of books about the Civil War. But that's not how a lot of people learn, and that's certainly not the easiest entry point into stuff. And so I think about it, it's like, I write the books, and I think primarily in long form. And then I have a team that helps me translate that into shorter and tighter things that in long form. And then I have a team that helps me translate that into shorter and tighter things that bring people in. And it's weird, the books have been this sort of slow, steady climb.

And then somewhere around 2020, we started doing this more in the social media stuff. Like, I guess we've had the Instagram account for Daily Stokes since 2016, but we really invested especially in like video stuff, and it's just been explosive because the same thing you're saying with the parenting ones, it's actually a great medium to encapsulate an entry point into an idea or a concept, and then if someone wants to go further from there, that's what they do.

I think I really learned from your stuff, which is like, how do you, respecting whatever the medium is and deciding to do it at a high level. So like, actually figuring out what works, what doesn't, you know, actually investing in quality and all those things. So yeah, it's been a slow journey, which to this day I'm not sort of naturally comfortable in, but it's been a stretch out of my comfort zone. But usually when you find that you stretched out of your comfort zone, you end up learning

and experiencing and usually reap sort of cool benefits from that. I don't want this question. I don't, I say it's very gently, but like, do you see those outlets, those social media outlets as legitimate ways for you to communicate the ideas and themes that you write about or you do? Yeah, like, I used to talk, I used to do a lot of consulting for other authors, that's the media strategist thing. And I would go like, they're, you know, they're books out in six months.

I would go, I'm going to describe a scenario to you in which your book sales is zero copies. But, you know, the title, the phrase you've come up with, enters sort of the cultural consciousness. The ID, people start, it becomes a buzzword, people start talking about it, people talk about it in business meetings, right? You hear from people that say, you know, that changed my life, right? I'm describing a scenario in which the book has a huge impact,

right? It penetrates, it makes, it changes things, it winks people up, it leads to an investigation or changes who wins an election, a bunch of stuff that could happen. But it doesn't translate into commercial sales in any way. I said, would you accept that as success? And invariably, they say, yeah, of course, because nobody chooses to write a book, because their main motivation is to make a lot of money. It's like the worst way you could possibly do that. People sometimes go, oh, he writes about stuicism to make money. And it's like, yeah, that's why I write long books about

an obscure school of ancient philosophy, right? Like, books are not it, right? You work on Wall Street. You do literally anything else. So, which is actually, as a aside, because it's something I wrote down I want to talk about. I remember after we met, I came here to your studio, we were hanging out, and you gave me a really good piece

of advice, which I think is worth repeating. Casey said, he said, both of us are not interested in making money, and I said, we're not, and he said, yeah, if all we cared about was making money, we'd work at an ad agency. And I said, oh, that's true, well, that's why I don't work at an ad agency. It doesn't seem like

cool work. And then you said, you don't make art to make money. You make money to make more art, which has changed how I think about it. So the books have been successful. And I have done things that have made money. And I think about that as the funding mechanism to make all this other stuff, the videos, social media posts, the producers, the podcasts, like at this point, Daily Stoic, the production budget and the staff is, you know, well into the very high six figures, just to pay for all the stuff that gets made.

So I make a lot of stuff that does not make any money, right? You know, you get small checks here, therefore, like TikTok, Creator, Fund, or whatever, but that's not paying for what you're making. I'm making that stuff because I feel like I really care about it. And if that's the medium in which I'm going to reach someone, or they're going to get access to the ideas, I actually don't care if they buy the book or not. What I care about is if in that 60 seconds, they learn about something that I have talked

about in the books and enough people do by the books that it works out. So I not only think about them as quality mediums, but I think about it as that you have an obligation once you've succeeded to expand out into the other things if you can, because what you should really care about is the propagation of the message or the ideas, not trying to capture it between the two covers, or you only want to reach people who purchased it on iTunes or whatever it is. A funny parent medical about what you're talking about and nobody buys your book but it has social cultural relevance.

My friend's Ariel Shulman and Henry used to brilliant filmmakers. And about 15 years ago, they made a documentary about this woman who turned out not to be who she said she was online. And they showed my brother in me the video, the movie, it was a feature film, like before they submitted to festivals, like, what do you think? And we watched it through.

And I was like, wow, this is like the gnarly Facebook kind of expose that I've ever seen. What are you going to call it? And they're like, we're not sure. And there's this line at the end of the movie that this woman who's like this liar, this bullshitter pretends to be someone else, this ton woman, where this old guy sitting on a porch is like, you know, what I can say about her

is that when they ship fish around the world, they throw a catfish in the aquarium to keep all the other fish moving, keep them on their toes. And when we're discussing what the movie's called, My Brother Vanguos Catfish, that's an Indian movie catfish. I was like, look, how the fucking name is catfish. That'll never stick.

No one will ever remember the name catfish. And catfish now becomes such a part of the global lexicon. You can go with the dictionary from the printed dictionary. Catfish is in there. And it's like that word that they invented had the profundity of that word that they invented has gone around the world a hundred times more than the fantastic movie that they made. Yeah, and who would trade that kind of impact for the film being 20%?

Yeah, right, exactly. That's what you're trying to do. And I think there's something stuck in that too, which is like, at a certain point, you have to make something that you're really proud of, and you have to understand that like sometimes it's explosive and sometimes it's not, and you have to make something that you're really proud of. And you have to understand that sometimes it's explosive, and sometimes it's not. And you have to be happy with it. But if your only definition of success is measured in like copy sold or dollars earned,

that's a very narrow definite. You've so narrowed the target, right? But instead, if your expansion is like, does it have impact? Does it change people's lives? Does it influence other people? You know, like, I have a chapter in the book that I'm writing now, which will be the fourth, the third book in the-

How many books have you written right? I actually don't, I think it's 12, but- How old are you? I actually don't know the answer to that. I think I'm 36. Yes, I to that. I think I'm 36. Yes, I'm 36. I'm 42. I'm 42.

But the point is, in sports, there's two ways to measure someone's legacy. First is how many games did you win, how many home runs did you hit, whatever. That statistic. But the best coaches are measured not in how many wins they have, but they're measured in their coaching tree. Like, who does their work impact? Like, what coaches come up underneath them? Like, Greg Popovich is undeniably the

greatest coach in the history of the NBA. He hasn't won the most titles, but like last year it was two of his coaches head to head for the title, right? Most matchups are one or both of the head coaches or at least the assistant coaches come from his coaching tree. So again, the idea, if you're as you're looking at your work, it's not just the raw numbers, but who are you influencing, what are you changing? So for me, again, yeah, the books had installed at all, but stoicism had the cultural resurgence that it's having. That would of course be something I was extremely proud of and would be equally how I measured

whether I succeeded or failed at what I set out to do. Which, that is what you're saying. Like usually you have an idea, you have a concept, you have a story you want to tell, and you want people to see it. And then if you monetize a small fraction of that, good for you, you deserve it. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast Sports Explains the World brings you some of the wildest and most surprising sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page for a young athlete and then watched as a real team fell for his prank.

Diving into his Wikipedia page we turn three career goals into eleven, added twenty new fell for his prank. And the mysterious secret of a US Olympic superstar killed at the peak of his career. Each week, Sports Explains the World goes beyond leagues and stats to share stories that will redefine your understanding of sports and their impact on the world. Listen to Sports Explains the World on the Wondering App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Sports Explains the World early and ad-free on Wondering Plus. How many parents in here? How many people? Well, there's so few parents in here.

What do you say when someone says to you like, about the news we're having a baby? Yeah, like, do you have any advice for me? Oh, what do you start? Actually mean, actually, I was thinking about this because we were talking about routines. We had some friends that when they had their first kid, I was like, you guys need to start routines because they were like two, this was many years ago,

they're two sort of work from home, self-employed people. We got the keys, that's what you start with. I was like, you got to, I was like, you, like these were people who were like, oh yeah, we go to bed whenever, we wake up whenever, we get started working whenever. I was like, you got to start bringing some order

to that chaos just as practice because you can't raise a kid in that. So I was, it was just interesting. I, again, I think it's good for you, the individual, but it's critical in the house. Like, you can't, you can't just be winning. You got to, I think the first good for you, the individual, but it's critical in the house. Like, you can't just be winning. You gotta, I think the first thing is, you gotta start getting some stuff in order.

Cause it is like a hurricane happening in your house. If you're adding chaos on top of that chaos, I think you're never gonna get, you're never gonna get your arms wrapped around it. And that has that, has that advice that you give when you say it's shaped you as a humanized lifestyle. I think Tom Segura has this joke that I love where he says, people say having a kid changes you and he's like, no, having a kid should change you.

Right? Like, unfortunately, it doesn't. You've got to decide to make those changes. So I think that there was a lot of growing up. There was a lot of getting serious about things. I think that's actually, you know, and you guys see knocked up the movie. Remember there's a scene where she's like,

what do you mean you haven't read the baby books, right? And he's like, there's this huge fight. He's like, why do the books matter? It's funny. I think the reason she's saying the books matter isn't because there's actually that much good stuff in the books. It's about, can you make even the most basic commitment to this being a thing that you are taking seriously? Right? And at the beginning of this book, I basically make this distinction between having kids and being a parent. And I know a lot of people that have kids.

And I know a fewer amount of people who are parents, right? The decision to make this thing a central part of your life, to make changes in how your life is structured, what you prioritize, what you get serious about. That I think is the critical like big breakthrough. Yeah, I would say that like when people have one kid, they have a kid. They're not parents. They're because like one child is like a hand that can't off to a fashion accessory.

It's something to talk about. It's like the coolest arm candy. It's a child. Like it's cool. Like how cute and fun and not and two kids's like the coolest arm candy. It's a child. It's cool like how cute and fun and all. And two kids means like, old me is dead six feet under. I am all in. I am fully committed. I've completely turned that corner.

Sure. And I think that, I think there's a lot of, I say that, Crasley, there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah. There's a kind of commitment that happened. You can win it at first and then having to is like, oh no, this is, this is like, this is it now. Yeah, and when people ask me about,

especially new parents, when they say we're having, like what is it, what is it like? I prepare them for the horrors of parenthood. Because I feel like as a parent you feel obliged to talk about how beautiful and wonderful it is, which it is. I've never not been a parent and that is an absolutely wild statement to make. I have never not been a parent. I was a child and then I was a parent. I had a kid where I was a teenager. I've never not been a parent my entire adult life.

There's never been a moment without it. You're like the story that parents don't want their teenagers to know, because you had a kid in high school and it worked out for you. The kid worked out, you worked out. The best age to start thinking about parents is 15. You're like the exception that proves the rule. Yeah, don't do that.

But I do think that talking about the hardships, talking about the fact that when you have a newborn in the house, it's mostly horrible. The child gives nothing back. Like, my kids are great. They're four and eight. Like, right now I play Minecraft, I'll do it in the morning.

It's super fun. She's really good at it. But a newborn is nothing but scary uncertainty what's coming next, exhaustion, fighting between you and your partner. The challenge is, and it is not sexy to talk about, it's not. And I find that the more... I mean, I always say it was a sense of sort of sardonicism. I always say it because otherwise, sort of sardonicism. I always say it because otherwise you're just a fucking psychopath.

But I mean every word that I say about how challenging it is. And I find that people find comfort in that because it's the sort of honesty that a lot of people are scared to confront. Well, there's two ways to think about it. One, which is, yeah, you go into this thing that's basically impossible to prepare for, but people haven't even attempted to prepare. There's that expression that plans are worthless but planning is everything.

So if you haven't thought about it, if you haven't tried to make the decisions, you're trying to do it all on the fly, you're gonna get overwhelmed. And then the Stokes talk about how the unexpected lands heaviest. So if you're just like, oh, it'll be awesome, you're gonna get crushed.

At the same time, I do feel like people are done disservice when all they hear is how terrible it is. It's like, if it was exclusively terrible, people wouldn't be doing it, right? Like, it is also profoundly rewarding and amazing. And I think there's something weird too. And I do try to talk about it in the book, which is like, okay, so I think we can, I don't think it's controversial to stipulate, like,

moms have been doing most of the work for all of human history, and society's been sort of rigged to make sure that that is the case. When it comes to parenting, right? And so, that also, though, has deprived men of being way more involved and getting way more of the rewards of what is an amazing, rewarding, beautiful experience, right? So, you know, men were in the hospital when kids were born and then they were like, oh, I'll check in when they're six, you know, when I start to take over their education or so, like they've skipped all this wonderful stuff.

There's a story I tell in the book where Winston Churchill is sitting with his son. His son is like, I think his son's already married. So his son's older, they stay up late into the night talking and it occurs to him, he goes, you know what, I think I've talked to you tonight more than my father talked to me in his entire life. And that's obviously an extreme case, but not that extreme, right?

Like parents of this generation spend more time with their kids than the previous generation of the previous, and you think about like that's not just, that wasn't just unfair, it was also really sad. And it cost both the kid and the parent, one of the most wonderful things in the world,

which is time together. Yeah, yeah, I think about that a lot. My father had to work an unrementing schedule to keep us above water when I was a kid. And the most kind of concrete memory, the one that's most visceral, is him coming home from work, because he would always come home from work just as we were about to go to bed.

And when you're putting kids to bed, they fight tooth and nail. So any moment of excitement is an excuse to not go to sleep, and it lands particularly hard. And that's what I remember of my childhood when I think of both of my parents, when I think of it, especially my father, is that moment when you'd hear like the bell ring because we had a bell on our front door and that man, he was home. And that was such an exciting, real thing.

And I think about that a lot when it's like 5'30 in the office and it's like, could say it until seven. I know I'm good, we have coverage till seven. I'm good till seven. And like almost every night I we have coverage till seven. I'm good till seven. And like almost every night I'm like, fuck it, I'm running home to hang out. I don't think I've ever regretted coming home early

or never making more time. And yeah, there is this sense, you know, they go like you only have 18 summers with your kids or 18 years with your kids, but it's way less than that. Right, way less than that, because they're in school, you're working. They also only wanna be around you for the first six, seven years.

Right, so you're like, you have a raw deal. You know that you're gonna miss this time that you're in, right, and then you're like, oh, but I got like emails to respond to, or you know, somebody, I think this is, you and I have connected over this idea of saying no, right, to things because you get a lot of in-bounds as I do. And what I try to remind myself is that when I'm saying yes to this thing, like I probably

is cool as that Google thing was, like if I get invited to it today, I'd be like, sorry, I don't want to fly across the ocean. You know, I would measure that in how many bed times I would miss. Right, that's how I kind of think about things. I think about it in terms of how many bed times am I gonna miss. By the way, I lost the cards, I don't know where they are.

Why was that popular? Do you have them? Yeah. The questions? I made this movie called My Kid Me. Yeah. About my son before my daughters were born. And I did this animation in it because it's a visual that's always been in my brain

when trying to just comprehend what it is to lose your kid's childhood, like when they stop being children. And I drew it as like two points that start together and then they really grow distant and then they sort of come back together. If you can visualize that. And that is when they're children, when they're babies, they're 100% dependent on you. When they're newborns, they're literally 100% dependent

on you. Their survival depends on your attention. My kid's four now and she could probably figure out how to get the cinnamon toast crunch if we left her alone for like three days. But the minute she's out of Cinematos Crown, she's in trouble. So she still leaves me, but slightly less.

And that trajectory continues. And it continues, in my experience, the 42-year-old man who's been both a parent and obviously a son. It somewhat ironically starts to come back together when you yourself have children because it's like that saying that is like, you will never love, your children will never love you.

Love might be the wrong word, appreciate it might be a more fair word, but your children will never love you the way you love your children. And I didn't understand that about my, I was incomprehensible that a parents even liked me. I fucking burned down the neighbor's love your children. And I didn't understand that about my, it was incomprehensible that a parents even liked me. I fucking burned down the neighbor's house man. And this is not a joke. I really burned out my neighbor's house. I was the worst kid that you could ever have.

Until I had children. And then it was like, like I was pretty cute. I was a little, there's no way to get like full of those baby. They felt what I'm feeling for my children. But do I ask you these questions? I don't, I can, given to me, I'll pick the ones I like. I was wondering why you handed this. I don't know. But yeah, like I met, so I measure like what I say, yes or no to, I measured in terms of like,

how many bedtimes am I gonna miss? And, and I, it's helpful for me, like, before I had kids, I was much less disciplined about saying the answer and notice stuff because I was like, I didn't want to hurt people's feelings. I wanted to do cool stuff. Even though I knew that was taking away from my work, it was taking away from my relationship with my wife,

it was taking away from contributing to burnout, any of that stuff. But then when you have opportunity costs personified You have opportunity costs personified in a cute, innocent, dependent thing that you love more than anything in the world, you're able to go, oh, I'm saying yes to you because you want to be on a conference call, which isn't necessary at all, or you want to meet in person about a thing that could be a five sentence email. And I'm saying yes to you because I don't want to argue with you, I don't want to meet in person about a thing that could be a five sentence email. And I'm saying yes to you because I don't want to argue with you,

I don't want to hear your feelings. But I'm saying no to this person, who by the way I lie to myself and say, I do everything for them, I do it all for them. It's not true at all. No, you are, and my wife's been saying this thing recently that I'm been thinking a lot about. She's like, we're being too nice,

and that's making us not be kind. Meaning we're being nice to random people, and then not being kind at home or to people we actually care about, because we used it all up. Yeah, now that is why I'm just a perpetual asshole to everyone, because all my nicest use of my kids. I'm very much appreciate you coming tonight, by the way. I know you, I never asked you for anything.

You get appreciate, you get at least. I'll talk to you in 10 years for around two. All right, we do have some questions. Let's see what we got here. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions.

I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask do have some questions. Let's see what we got here. Casey, do you think it's more difficult to be present? And by the way, I was thinking about the secret to being a good parent. I've decided is presence. Right? You have to give them lots and lots of presence. Not gifts, the other kind of presence.

You have to be with your kids when you're with your kids. So is it harder or easier to be present in New York City or California? How do you deal with the distraction, the business, the most? We talked about this this morning. Yes. And I say this very gently because I've been very, very poor as a parent in New York City. When I first moved here, I had no money. My kidney, we lived in an SRO, which is effectively a halfway house. It was filled up with people who had just gotten out of jail and undocumented immigrants.

We had a shared bathroom down the hall and no kitchen. There was 144 square feet. So in my little boy, we'll wake up in the late half of your feet. We have to put on shoes and grab our bathroom basket and walk down the hall and no kitchen. There's 144 square feet. So in my little boy, wake up in the late afternoon, at your feet, we have to put on shoes and grab our bathroom basket and walk down the hall and lock the door behind us. It wasn't safe and it was scary. With that caveat, I now live in the great house.

I'm like kids go to a great school, but I'm just surrounded by privilege. So within that context, raising children in New York City, I think is one of the greatest places in the world to do it. It's absolutely wonderful. Like my children walk, they ride their scooters, but they don't get into a vehicle. They don't get into a train. They don't get into a car. They don't strap on a car seat to go from our house to school, to gymnastics, to swim class, to meet their friends. They don't leave our building to go hang out

with their other friends. Other favorite restaurants you can see out of our window. So like when I was a child, all I ever wanted was to live in a city. And now I'm able to see that embodied, like I'm saying, as long as I actualize through my children, and I find it to be tremendously easier, like that burden, especially in Los Angeles,

where we live for just a quick embarrassing minute, and I'll never do it again. And I apologize to all of you. Anything we wanted to do that was outside of the house, required strapping the kids into the mini band, sitting in traffic, like the fighting, y'all doing the stress, the anxiety, all of that. Remove all of that bullshit.

And then put them in a city surrounded by people, the sort of culture they're exposed to, what they see when we, like every weekend, my wife and I take a restaurant that's far away, New York City far away, our borough. Do we have to figure out again there? Maybe if they're gonna see there, we expose it like our favorite place to take the kids is Chinatown, which is exactly a half a mile

from our apartment, but to them it's a different world. So no, I find it like not a little bit easier. I find it like on a level, I feel like a lovely parent on the planet because I'm able to raise my kids in what is the Disney world. So what does make it hard for you to be present then? Is it the phone? Is it? Yeah, the phone. Yeah.

I mean, I really like my kids, but there are no competition for the algorithm that makes Instagram work. Are you kidding me? My monkey brain versus Instagram's like ads or whatever the fuck they're pumping into my eyeballs all the time. There's no one to tell me no phone. And that sounds silly, but it is very hard. And my wife, setting a TikTok recently, where some guy with a beard is like, you put your, all your kids on, and you're a tensioner.

You put your phone away at 60 and like, fucking bearded guys. It's a hit again. So we try to do that. And one thing that we did in this sounds for post-race, go back in the 80s when I was born and explain this to any 80s parent, and then we have no, this sounds like this is absurd. We didn't ever have TVs in our house here in New York City. We recently bought televisions on Amazon.

They're like really cheap, about big, flat TVs these days. And we put one in the kids bedroom for their benefit. And it worked. So now like instead of the kids having a iPad, they can touch it. They can touch it. A decision has to be made collectively as a family,

whether we're going to watch in Conto or in Conto again We only watch in Conto Watch the last time Before that was frozen too, so there's something but we watch this movie and it's a shared experience and because that We're like movies. They've seen a million times we talk over it so we're interacting with one another It feels like a much more communal parental legitimate experience versus Handing kid and iPad which as a parent it literally feels like child abuse and I think as we get older we learn

It is actually child abuse and wildly responsible It's like giving a kid a pack of matches is better for their well-being and giving them an iPad As we get older, we'll learn it is actually childhood use and wildly irresponsible. It's like giving a kid a pack of matches is better for their well-being than giving them an iPad. And these are sorts of like the little tricks we try to do to get them away from that. All right, so this question is, what is a philosopher and is this a standard that anyone can meet?

That's definitely for you. So actually, this is interesting. OK, so philosopher, I think, is very accessible and reachable for any person. This would be any person who loves or studies wisdom. So philosophy, if we think about it as the pursuit of truth or wisdom, a philosopher is anyone who takes up that pursuit.

In Stoax, would say say there's a difference between being a philosopher and being a sage, a sage being the sort of penultimate state of studying philosophy, which I think they would say is actually impossible. It's a perfection that you are approaching, but you can never reach because it is always getting a little bit further as you get a little bit closer. So if we can make this distinction between philosophy being a thing, not just that tenured university professors get to pursue or nerds get to pursue or whatever, philosophy is accessible and practical and actually quite useful to anyone and everyone,

but that there is a stage beyond merely the study of philosophy, some, in the way that one reaches enlightenment or zen, this would be sage for the stoke, so that's the highest level. That's a great question. Oh, here's an interesting one for you and me, I'll answer two, but they're basically talking about being great, being a parent,

and then also being ambitious in your profession or in your career. I know you, it's been interesting that you've sort of worked a lot while you've had kids. You've worked less when you've had kids, you're kind of trying to find like a middle ground It sounds like. Yeah, it's an impossible balance. And anyone who says that you can be like, that you can be operating from like as a business

An entrepreneur, a business person, someone who has career ambitions Someone who says they can fire on all cylinders doing that and being a parent full of shit, don't lie to you, it is impossible. And I think that I've been extremely fortunate in the timing of my own career, I think about this all the time, in the timing of my own career that I've ever sort of spread those needles and what that means, very much related, like, you know, I raised my son as a single parent. And I always had a wonderful relationship, but either with his mom or his with me as, you know, most kids of the, of, of, with, with the parents, but that's just how it works. And what that meant was that it was sort of bifurcate my life in a very literal, literal way. I never really ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever know, he was a teenager and there was a lot more now the ability in our relationship, a lot more flexibility.

Well, the afforded us opportunities that weren't lost on either of us. And then with my two daughters now, you know, like, really for me, it was the 2010, 2012 later, fizz and 12 to 2014 was when like, I was at MIT, I started a technology company. I started a technology company. I started a daily show on YouTube. And I ran a technology company of a venture back one that had 30 employees while making a video a day,

every day for 800 days in a row. All of that chaos was happening while my son Owen was age 16 finishing high school. Like he still wanted to hang out, but it was like, no, it'd rather be with his friends. Your role is apparent than as much more, it's much more of a title than it is an actual practice. And, you know, my daughter, Francine,

was born right sort of in the beginning of that. And as she got older and then my second daughter was born, I sold my company and I stopped doing the daily show because I was losing my fucking mind. And then like, it was wonderful. I had a very lucrative exit from selling my technology company. And for the first time in my life, I had some sense of financial security. When I took a step back and it was like, what do I want to do now that I've achieved this thing that I've been trying to accomplish for two decades, having

actual money and not having to stress when my next meal's in a come from, it was like, do I want to buy a Lambo? And it was like, no, I'm not going to let me buy time. And that's what we did. We just like spent all the money on, I still do. It's like the only thing I really value is time. There's a quote I have in the book, I'm forgetting who it's from, but she says something like, kids should be the center of your life,

but not the whole of your life, right? And so the idea that you invest in them, it's this core part of who you are, it's why you do what you do is I think part of it, and then the tension, but also the connection is there that they should see you striving and growing and doing it. It would be sad. There's another quote I have in the book.

It was from Susan Strait. It's great novel. She was talking about how her mother told her when she was a kid, she was like, when you get married, you lose half your life. And then she's like, when you get married, you lose half your life. And then she's like, when you have kids, you lose the other half, right? That is a terrible thing to both say. It's terrible that it's true for some people.

But it's all, that's a sad statement about your life, right? That like, your kids, when they look back on your life, they're like, oh, that's when it stopped. That's when they stopped growing, that's when they stopped changing, that's when their work started to, like the quality of their work went down. Like, I think that's a bad message

to show to your kids that like, you were frozen in place when they were born, that you never produced anything good after that, right? So anyways, I think it's a tension. Your kids have to be both central to who you are and what you do, but you have to show them what is still possible while you have them in your life, which there's a related question someone is saying,

how do you encourage contentment and satisfaction while still cultivating ambition? I think this is a similar thing where ideally, when you have kids, you go, this is everything I've ever wanted. Like you thought what you were achieving in your career was gonna give you satisfaction and happiness and then you realize

that it was nothing compared to these people you're bringing in the world. That's part, but that doesn't mean you stop doing stuff. I think what it means then is that you no longer have anything you have to prove, that you're no longer doing the stuff from a place of thirst. You're making work that you care about because you care about it as opposed to doing work

because you have something you need to show. You're doing work because you're trying to prove someone wrong. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel like I do better, more secure work now that I have kids also because I have a spouse and I have like a system and a life that keeps me balanced. I think I look at the stack of work I made before I had kids and it is dwarfed by the stack of work that I made before I had kids, and it is dwarfed by the stack of work that I made since I had kids. And I think that having kids and getting married, etc., like people think, like being in a relationship, they go, I don't have time, I'm too dedicated to my career. I would say that all those things have helped me in my career.

I don't know if you agree with that. Yeah, when I meet really ambitious people, really focused, ambitious people that don't know if you agree with me. Yeah, when I meet really ambitious people, really focused, ambitious people that don't have kids, I just assume, and I think they're just total fucking psychopaths. I don't see that. I don't see that because I, I, all of my ambition was born from having a kid.

Like, it's hard, because I, like I said, I've only ever been a parent, but like, before I had a kid, you know, I was like selling dime bags and the back part of a lot of my high school, that was my life. You really were the worst kid ever. You did everything. When, like I remember when my girlfriend was pregnant

and you know, I'm a kid, I run away, and I was no money, and it's like, I was so excited because I finally had a sense of purpose. It's like, okay, this is why I'm here. This is my role in this world. And when it was like, well, what do I do now? It's like, well, fuck, I can't afford diapers. If the state of Connecticut didn't have a social program, they gave me three diapers and coupons to go get milled.

This kid would have no diapers, and would be starving. It's like five to fix that. How am I going to fix that? It's like, well, I got to use all my power. And what it meant then was getting two jobs working 16 hours a day watching dishes. It's like, okay, this isn't quite enough. What can I do? Obviously, it's not going to work here. I got to get the hell out of this small time with New York City. This is a work either. I got to do this. I got to do that. It was a kind of like all the time in New York City. This is a work in New York, I have to do this. I gotta do that. It was a kind of like psychosis,

like this very narrow focus, like being shot at the clinic. And I attribute all of that to being a parent. Like I always say like, he was like, I was never held back because I was a parent. I was enabled to try to get the parents. I was a parent.

I was a parent. I was focusing the energy. It was just the most empowering thing in the world. Like, why do you do it? Where do you get your energy? Like all those stupid fucking questions. I have a kid. I don't have a choice.

No, it keeps you honest, right? Like you're saying, if you have a morning routine, because that's when you get them to school, you have an evening routine, because that's when they get home from school, that's when you have to give them a bath, that's when you have to go to bed. You realize just how wasteful and inefficient

you were able to be because you could be so. You had money and time and energy to burn. And when that goes away, ideally it forces you to be really focused and really efficient and to not accept waste or impositions or inconveniences and to do it right, not just because you should, but because the consequences of being inefficient and getting it wrong are so high. What did those questions come today, right?

Those questions, I guess. No, I saw one in here that reminded me of something I want to talk to you about. I remember also when I was in your studio, I saw you had journals that you had written, you're a little white out, you put the year of every, you had journals going back for like 20 years. And I remember thinking, I really wish I had journals that way. And I think I said that to you.

And then you said, well, you don't. And the second best thing would just be to start right now, right? Like if you want to have this in the future, you have to start right now. And I love that and that's one of the reasons I picked up that habit, which has been life-changing for me. Talk to me about journaling. Is it still something you do?

No, I'm too late. I phone fucked everything up. You're just doing it on your phone now. No, I just don't do it. Oh. Because I can be looking at Instagram. But I have journals that go back for 20 years. I also have, there's two and a half years, maybe a little less of my life.

But I didn't just keep a journal, I kept minutes. So I can go through the entire day, not like hour to hour, it's like minute to minute. And I looked at it recently, it is unbelievable. Is that a new phone or does that know the journal? No, the journal. Free phone. This was, I would take a single sheet of paper and fold it into eight, eight, so that's eight squares on either side, 16 days on one piece of paper.

And then I write it what is equivalent of like a four size fault. I mean, probably 300 lines per sheet. So each square would have 40 lines of text. And right there is called the micro point 10. But I have those. They're in my studio. So I can refer back.

This is the day exactly where I was exactly what I did from the moment I woke up to a moment I went to the day. There's a journal, I'm sure they have it here. I sell it in my bookstore, but it's called the One Line a Day Journal, and it has five lines on each page, and each line is for each day of, like, each one day for five years.

So I write one sentence, there's like three or four lines. You could do exactly what you're saying, but I write one little line every day about the thing that I did the day before, something I was feeling, so then I was thinking about some miles out of the kid, first tooth, we went here, first trip to this, and what's really powerful about it is,

so you started at the first year as cool, second year is pretty cool, the third year is really cool, the fifth year is amazing, because you're like, this is where I cool, the third year is really cool, the fifth year is amazing because you're like, this is where I was for the last five years and you can track, you know, here's the evolutions of the books I was writing, there's the evolution of my kids, of my life, things that were happening, and it's really, really powerful. So if people are thinking about a journaling habit and that's something you want to do, that would be a good place to start.

I also have something to know and something to earth had and I don't recommend this to anyone who can value your sanity and well-being. I have 800 days of my life. Yeah right. You can see the trades. And I very highly produce 10 to 15 minute video that is like you know know, it's pretty, pretty acute. Those like really get into it. And it's, it was like, I know then, I knew then what I was capturing my life. I thought, something's going to be interesting to look back on. And one thing that I think people have a tough time wrapping their head around, I don't want, once I click upload, I don't watch my videos ever again. Not like sometimes, I never watch them again.

I like four videos I've seen a thousand times, because every time I do a speaking gauge, I play the same priest videos, like the snowboard, whatever, I get so excited, so I'll play that, I'm doing it. That's fine. But there's a thousand videos, and they heard of them are capturing a day

in my life in sequence, and I've never watched any of them. And my daughter discovered them about a year ago. And I was like, hear my voice in the house. And I like, one word. And I can be like, oh, I know exactly what day, exactly where I was, because I ended that. Like I played it back, framed my frame to get it.

So besides, so I don't know what it, I don't know how this is, you know, totally fuck her up. But I'm sure I me paying the therapy go for the rest of my life forever. It's gonna do to her because she goes back now And they were really busy her early childhood And she's a baby and understand exactly What her life was so I think as I get older as the space between me finishing that thing And where I am in the present as that as that that has engrossed the impact of those videos or the role they have in my life will become more and more profound for a weird to fast

ones as one more yes to two quick ones as we wrap up what is your thoughts I don't remember exactly I think you maybe you've I'm just talking to you. I'm just talking to you. Two quick ones as we wrap up. What is your thoughts? I don't remember exactly. I think you maybe have gone back and forth. Do you show your kids in videos and social media? Do you have thoughts on cases or all that? Why is that? I don't, because it's all my baby, Franny.

Like she was in the videos until I see turned 11 months old. And they just stopped. Because she was like waiting there. She's all the same and now she she started to be recognized more over. But I started to not have any following. So it's like, you know, you don't appreciate it. My mother-in-law doesn't understand why she can't put pictures of our kids on Facebook.

But I just think we none of us understand what the implications are. And when I see big celebrities, you know, pushing their kids out or posting pictures of the kids, I fucking judge, I judge them them because they don't understand. But at least they're getting paid, right? The rest of the people that are doing it are doing it to get the... That's a reward.

And it's a big broser. But see, I would say like, you know, maybe the kids will inherit that money at some point. It's different than an average person who's just hooked on the algorithm. You're kind of person that thinks it's okay to exploit their children is the same kind of person that doesn't put the money away for their college fund for sending it out in handbag. I hate it. And I hate that YouTube doesn't have anything protecting

YouTube or social media, or the US government, or whatever the fuck should be legislating this. There are nothing. There are no rules protecting kids. Family blogging is the grossest thing that has ever existed. With like, if you're a parent, you know, it is fucking hard to get your kid to behave. To get your kid to do those performances and act happy all the time, for every smiling kid like we probably are kids of Disney World. For every one of those videos, there's fucking six hours of the kid crying and screaming and the mother cutting all that footage out. And you see these horror stories again and again and again about like the abusive tendencies

and the money and the exploitation of kids like I think that's self so personally. So no I live at the other end of that like we try our best and like my daughter doesn't understand when people come up and ask themselves why she's not allowed to be in it because she loves the attention. That's so great. And they're like, hey, can I get a picture? And she's like, oh, be in it. She's like jumping up and down,

like half the selfie people day with me have my daughter's forehead in it. But no, I don't think it's okay. And I think that anybody who thinks that they understand with the long-term implications of putting your kids like the internet is written in ink, it will never be deleted. And when they turn 18,

he's going to tell how they want. And when I start making movies with my son, he was holding up to sort of consent and understand. And he's 25, I don't know, we don't make videos anymore. And I'm like, you're in fucking Australia. But for children, for babies, I take that stuff super personally. And no, I don't. But if you do, that's fine. No, no, I don't. I don't at all. Thanks. personally and no, I don't. But if you do, that's fine. No, no, I don't. I don't at all. Thanks.

I don't for the same reason. So I think of you, because people ask me to sign, people give the Daily Stoke as gifts all the time. People ask me to sign it, and they'll be like, it's my friend's 40th birthday. And I usually write, I usually write happy birthday, the Mento Mori, make it count, right? Like your famous video.

The idea that you sort of have one life, how are you going to spend it? And I thought famous video. The idea that you sort of have one life, how are you gonna spend it? And I thought we'd just maybe end on this sort of morbid note of everyone in this room is gonna die. And you only have so much time with your kids, how do you spend it and how does that? So maybe just talk to me about, take us home with some idea of making it count

and the fragility and the feminality of life. I just said this on a friend podcast, right? Never said it before. I think I realized it on the pipe. But it was like one thing that making a video every day of my life did is I needed to preserve my relationship with my wife. And my preserve, I don't mean the longevity of our marriage.

I mean that if she was mad at me for a day, it would mean I wouldn't get her to be in my team. And she's right. She's pretty, she's like funny, she's a reverent. I need her. I need to be my favorite cast member. So we get in a fight like you do with your significant other. Bullshit fights. I didn't load the dishwasher, that kind of thing. Instead of powdering, I'd be like, I gotta resolve this, so she'll be in my video. And I think at the end of all that, the reason why I sought resolution, which was a very narcissistic, very self-serving reason,

was irrelevant. The, what matters is that like, whatever bullshit it was that we were fighting about was meaningless. It had lightning struck, had something horrible happen, had a bus not stopped at a stoplight, and something horrible would happen to someone you love. Whatever little thing that Europe said about in that moment becomes meaningless right then and there.

So why not just cut the fat and realize that like the details don't matter? And if you're lucky enough to have someone in your life that you love, especially if it's a child or a partner that like to push the bullshit aside and I say that like I'm smart or wise. Or good at it. Or good at it.

My wife and I literally have couples there and each night that we re-schedule because I was like, let's just skip it. I'm doing the thing right and she's like, you know, fucking way. We are doing what we have couples therapy tonight that we reschedule because I was like, let's just skip it. I'm doing the thing right. And she's like, you know, fucking way. We are doing what we have. So I try to live that. And it was something that I learned

in the most back-ass, selfish, self-serving way. But it's something that I try to embody every day. Beautifully said, thank you very much. Appreciate it everyone. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery

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