The Daily Stoic - Tank Sinatra - Meme King on how How Comedy Helps You Live

Episode Date: November 7, 2020

Ryan talks with Instagram star Tank Sinatra about his unique approach to comedy, the best way to use or deal with anger, what philosophy tells us about how to handle our emotions, and more.Tank Sinatra, aka George Resch, is a Long Island dad who runs one of the biggest meme accounts on Instagram. Since launching the original account @tank.sinatra in 2015, Resch’s Instagram accounts (which also include @influencersinthewild and @tanksgoodnews) have over 8 million followers, with even more on Twitter and Facebook. He is currently the director of influence marketing at Brandfire and has written a book, Happy Is the New Rich.This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Four Sigmatic has a new exclusive deal for Daily Stoic listeners: get up to 39% off their bestselling Lion’s Mane bundle by visiting foursigmatic.com/stoic.This episode is also brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.This episode is also brought to you by the Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199.***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: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Tank Sinatra:Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tank.sinatra/https://www.instagram.com/influencersinthewild/https://www.instagram.com/tanksgoodnews/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeorgeReschSee 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. You know, this is pre-serious podcast. You know, this is a pre-serious podcast. I mean, philosophy is a serious thing. We talk about life. We talk about death. We talk about, you know, what our obligations are to the common good. We talk about resisting tyranny.

We talk about ego. We talk about obstacles. I don't want you to think that stoicism is this lifeless, loveless thing. That's just the opposite of what it is. It may well be that the things we talk about tend to be the more serious things, and I think that's because the serious things are the more complicated and the more stressful and urgent, but I think the reason you don't

hear the stoics talk so much about joy and laughter or the purity of hanging out with friends or whatever is because these things are kind of natural or kind of straightforward, they're kind of obvious, but that does become sort of an important omission and you can get me to distortive view of the philosophy. And so I wanted to talk to one of my good friends today, Tank Sonatra, aka George Rech, as he calls himself, but I think it's true, the Michael Jordan of memes.

He's the genius behind some of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram, Tank Sonatra, obviously being one of them, influencers in the wild, Tank's good news. He just has a brilliant sense for, you know, distilling humor, but also commentary about the world down into, like, as few words as possible. He's got this brilliant understanding of popular culture, the zeitgeist, and he manages to communicate it in such an effective, hilarious way. Influencers in the wild, I think is a brilliant, ongoing art piece

basically about ego and the superficiality of today's world. Tanks Good News, to me is just a breath of fresh air amidst all the negativity and dysfunction and division. Mark's really talks about how the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. Tanks Good News is basically an Instagram account that just shows you people who are actually doing that. And we talk about this a little bit in the episode,

just like how oftentimes seeing what these people are able to do, what a little kid does, what a poor immigrant is able to do for someone else, it inspires you and it almost shames you into wanting to step up and do a better job. And George is a great thing or a great writer. Someone I love talking to, we chat and text all the time. He's also wrote a fun self-help book that's worth checking out. Happy is the new rich, which is a great expression, certainly, aligns with both Epicurianism and Stoicism, I feel,

if you're not happy, how successful are you, right? How rich are you if you don't like the life that you live? And so I think George and his success on Instagram is also just an interesting story in that sense, like how does one build a life around their passion or interest, even if that passion or interest is as unusual as making funny pictures on the internet? So George and I get way into it.

We do get a little serious, but I think we're talking about philosophically important ideas. Check out his stuff, it's great, and especially tanks, good news these days. And it should be said, if you're like, why would I wanna listen to this? George Tank is a really smart guy, he's been sober a long time,

is a really philosophical person, and has been a student of stoicism for quite some time. So this isn't a reach for me as far as an interview goes. I'm talking to a very light-minded person who knows their stuff. And as we say, you can find philosophers anywhere, and this one happens to make memes for a living. But that is the world we live in, the medium we communicate through these days.

And I think there's a bunch to learn from them, so check it out. So obviously, the reputation of the still, except if you think about what that word means, people think it means emotionless, which they would probably take to mean humorless as well. So it's been interesting for me as I've dug really deep in the Stoics who find that

maybe it doesn't support that, especially, there's this guy, Crasipus, who's one of the early Stoics sort of like the third in mind as far as the fanning of stills. But the rumor is that he died of laughter. He was sitting on his porch and a donkey walked by and started eating some of his figs. And he said this joke, which makes no sense to me. But anyway, he says the joke and then he starts laughing at his joke so hard that he ends up dying. I don't know, I'm just, I'm fascinated with the connection between Stoicism and humor, and I'm just curious as someone who's gotten into self-help and philosophy, clearly you don't think there's a conflict between humor and wisdom. No, no, I think that, you know, the so I find that people

that take their mental health or emotional health, spiritual health, whatever it is, seriously, tend to have a better sense of humor because they're free to enjoy life as it happens rather than, you know, David Goggins, who's somebody that I bristled and fought against liking just because he's so serious and so intense, the one thing that he said that got me to kind of break and say, all right, let me see what this guy's saying was he said that the less comfortable he was physically, the more comfortable he was mentally. And I think that that applies here because I do a ton of work on myself, like pretty much constant, like trying to figure out how can I enjoy my life better, almost to a point

recently where I was like, I think my expectations might need to be reconfigured because I'm expecting Nirvana and it's not likely for that to happen in my lifetime. But I find that the, I just take my life seriously so I don't have to. And I know that might not make sense, but it makes sense to me. It makes total sense to me. There's a... Santa Catox about the distinction in the ancient world. There's a philosopher named Democritus and a philosopher named Herodcletus and he's

saying, Democritus, look at the immense tragedy and stupidity and awfulness of the world and it made him cry. And he said, Herod clearest walked out in the world and laughed at it. And he said, like, if you want to be happy, you have to choose to be like Herod clearest. Like, to me, I feel like humor is actually a deeply stoic exercise, because if part of what stoicism is

is accepting what's outside of your control, if you have to accept all this horrible stuff and you just accept it without comment, I think it's going to eat it, you'll destroy you, but if you can accept it and laugh at it and make fun of it, then it's a way of coping with it and processing it. Yeah. I think that what you said in the first part about, you know, the misconceptions of what stoic means,

I mean, it wasn't, bro, it's 2020. Words mean different things than they did in the past. When I hear stoic, I still think of someone who's kind of like stone faced, unfailing, emotionless, but as you dive more into any kind of spiritual enlargement or philosophical stuff, you find that, you know, somebody said something to me

when I first got sober and it changed the way that I experienced life, because I was trying to get everything down to like a super manageable range of emotions because they were so unmanageable. The highs were so high, the lows were so low, you know, it was bordering on like bipolar where I was like,

either I was miserable or I was ecstatic, and that's just not a sustainable way to live. So he said, while you're trying to corral your emotions, just know that when you flatline you're dead, if your emotions look like a flatline, then you're not doing much living anyway. You're just, you're, he said, you just kind of have the wrong idea.

Obviously, you don't want to be ecstatic or miserable, but don't be so careful about what you're feeling that you don't allow yourself to feel anything. And I find that Stoics are some of the most emotional, but in a good way, like in a way that kind of gives you freedom to get angry, but not let it define you permanently because everything is temporary. Totally. I've been reading about the Spartans lately in Plutarch, which you would likely

as his book called on Sparta. And it's just mostly a collection of like sort of one liners and quips from the Stoke or from the Spartans. And I think what's funny about it or what's interesting about it is that these sort of like badass warriors who were often facing death, like really what survives to us is they're sort of like sarcastic, you know, wit, you know, like, I mean, famously, if you've seen the movie 300, this is, or red gate to fire, this line is in there, but like, it's actually funny if you think about it. So, so like the Spartans are facing this massive army and Xerxes the Persian invader, it goes, I'm gonna fire so many arrows at you that I will blot out the sun.

And the Spartan general replies, well then we shall fight in this shade. Like that's not just badass, that's also really clever. And I think you, and, and, but the clever is a coping mechanism for the fact that he knows that this is a kamikaze mission, right? Like that, that, that emotion has to go somewhere and it's going out through the humor.

So I think that's healthy. Yeah, I mean, I've always used humor to deal with, and not it, it's never been inappropriate. And I remember This weird badge of honor that I carry around with me that not like you know I don't define myself by it But I do remember when my friend might died it was I mean it was all Deaths close our tragedy for me. This was a huge tragedy because I had just gotten sober He died of a drug overdose. He was 23. He was so young.

It was like just so sad. And one of the things that made me feel great was the fact that I was able to make my friends laugh in the funeral home at the wake. Like there was no, and I wasn't like, I wasn't being clownish. I was just kind of telling stories and reminiscing. And I think that when you are a person who's free emotionally,

you give other people permission to kind of be them, they're true ourselves and people will love you for that. And you will love yourself for that. And I remember working with this one guy who, he was like this tough, we live in California, he was kind of like a bro. I don't know too much about him. All I know that is that every time he laughed, he stifled it and closed his mouth. Now, I don't know if

that was a physical thing, like it didn't like the way his teeth look, his teeth look fine to me, but it took for him, for me, I almost felt like he was ashamed to laugh because it made him seem weak, almost like somebody would treat crying. And I remember thinking that's so sad that this guy is not even like Comfortable enough to laugh at a funny joke and an inappropriate time, you know, so I enjoy Kind of wearing my heart on my sleeve not in Not in like an over dramatic way just like you know, I'm 250 pounds. I Remember being young and meeting huge dudes at like, you know, wherever.

My dad had big friends and I would be so surprised that they were nice because they don't have to be. Like if you're big, you can kind of like be, you can be however you want. Nobody's going to say anything. And that's what I decided I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember being at a funeral for, you know, somebody else. And I remember seeing this grown man cry. And I was like, that's amazing. Like, this guy is obviously comfortable in his own skin,

and that's all I've ever wanted is, I would much rather have somebody say, instead of, hey, nice watch or a nice car or your house is beautiful, I'd rather somebody say to me, you seem comfortable in your own skin. That to me is like the ultimate achievement in life. I love that. One thing I try to point out to people too,

is just because the Stoics didn't talk about jokes a lot or laughing or having fun or whatever, it doesn't mean that it wasn't important to them. Evidence of absence is not evidence of what was expression evidence of evidence. Absence of exit, evidence is in whatever. You get the expression, but the point is it may have just been that the importance of laughter and having fun was so obvious to say, market, like, I don't write in my journal, like, hey, make sure you laugh today. You know,

like, that would be so weird. Yeah, exactly. I don't say, make sure you laugh today. You know, like, that would be so weird. Like, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I don't say make sure you have a, you have enough calories today, because that's not an issue that I struggle with. Yeah. Although you brought up now two funerals, I'm curious like knowing a bit of your story, it does seem as is somewhat common for comedians, it does seem like there's a fair amount of pain beneath the humor and the laughter for you. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I think that, like you said with, for God's name, but the guy who, his way of dealing with certain death was to be clever and bold.

I think that for some reason, I remember in college, I asked my roommate, how many wakes or funerals he had been to, and he had been to none, and I had been to like 12 at that point. And I don't just go for fun. It's not like I love going to wakes. It's just so happen that people that were close to me died, and I experienced a lot of death, but for me, thankfully, it was always peripheral. It was never direct. It was never like my mom. It was my best friend's mom.

It was never my best friend. It was my friend's friend that, you know, got hit by a car when I was 11 and he was 13. Like, there was, I was just always surrounded by it. So, you know, I think that dealing with pain through laughter is probably one of the healthiest ways to do it, as long as it's done in an appropriate fashion. Like I would never make, it's hard to describe where the line is, but I remember reading a book when I was younger about the origins of laughter. And they basically pinpointed it to not a particular instance, but a scenario that primal, you know, beings

would find themselves in where they were out hunting, and if you were in a group and the leader went ahead and came around a boulder and froze because they saw a wolf, but then they saw that the wolf's foot was stuck in between two rocks. The laughter would break the tension and signal to the rest of the group. Oh, we thought there was a threat, but now there's not. You know? Oh, sure. So Colin Quinn famously said,

one of my favorite takes on comedy is, if you want to be a funny comedian, don't talk about stuff that you think is funny, talk about stuff that pisses you off, and in that relation, intention people will laugh, which is, I found to be totally, totally true. I wanted to ask you about that because we've talked about this privately a few times.

It does seem like anger is something that you struggle with. I sort of, I sort of have said like, you know, not everyone has an anger problem but anger is a problem for everyone. So I sort of, I consider myself somewhere on that spectrum, but it's certainly a vice and it certainly has probably hurt me more than it's ever helped me. What is the role of that in your life? What is the role of anger? Yeah, like it, what, talk to me about your, your struggle with, with that. So, you know, anger can come in the form of a million different things. Usually for

me, it stems from me not taking care of myself in some way, shape or form, which happens often. But like so recently, it's just been happening a little bit too much for my own liking. And it usually comes in the form of me being edgy or irritable or getting annoyed at things I normally wouldn't get annoyed at. It's not like it's so funny because my expectations for myself, I think are just way too high and I think that I should, if I do have anger, I should experience it perfectly. But that's the whole point of anger is that it's a messy emotion. And typically if you're in a state of anger, you've lost control. But then, you know, when I'm in a healthier state of mind, I know, obviously, that I never have control

over everything, you know, I, or over anything. And I have two young kids, we're in the middle of a pandemic. The civil rights movement has everyone on, I mean, razor sharp edge. These are all, you know, the civil rights movement is a necessary thing. I think the way people are handling it, handling it is making things a little bit messier than they need to be. The pandemic has thrown everybody for a loop. And I, you know, I'm someone

who, when this pandemic all first started, I said to myself, I can either be a little brat about this and why and then complain, or I can take it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend more time with my family than I ever would have prior to this. And while I've done that pretty well, I think being home all the time with my kids all the time is just taking a toll and that's normal. And I try and use anger as a beacon of some sort, like, hey, you're heading in the wrong direction, or something has gone wrong. You need to either turn or go inside and find out what's missing and inevitably Ryan, like, you know,

when I texted you about the books, I was like, I need some kind of help. That day I took action, and that day I got really, thankfully, I am very sensitive to stimulus where it's like, I'm so, you know, I hate to, I don't want to sound like an idiot, but I do a ton of work. And when I was in great shape, when I was doing bodybuilding competitions, if I didn't drink eight ounces of water that day,

it showed in my body. And it was like a parent that I did something right or wrong immediately. So with my emotions, I am very sensitive to, you know, being lazy about my emotions, but I'm also very sensitive to taking action on it. And it's like the first moment that I take action, I feel relief instantaneously,

but I need to keep up with it, you know, just like anything. Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Hey, everyone. It's no secret. We're big readers here over at the Daily Stoic.

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Scott Papi's the Barefoot investor, Mark Manson's everything this fuck. They even have books about stoicism including my most recent book, Lives of the Stoics. Blinkus is great. You can get summaries you're actually interested in reading and you do that quickly. And with Blinkist, you get unlimited access to read or listen to a massive library of condensed nonfiction books. All the books you want for one low price right now for a limited time. Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com slash Stilic. Try it free for seven days.

And you say 25% off your new subscription too. That's blinkest BLINK IST. Blinkest.com slash Stoic. Start your free trial today. You can just say 25% off. Only when you sign up at blinkest.com slash Stoic. I think kids teach you this really well. Not just that they're stressful and force you to deal with your own shit.

But like one of the things that's been great for me is it's like, oh, my son is not running around the house knocking things over because he's poorly disciplined. He's doing this because we didn't do a nap today. Well, he's doing this because it's 452, and he doesn't understand that we're gonna eat dinner in eight minutes and hunger just poured over him

and he's utterly overwhelmed by this. Or, you know, any number of things. Like, I've been, like, I heard this from someone I forget who they said, but it's like, your kids can't tell you what they're going through. And so I kind of keep trying to remind myself, like, this is a pandemic. One day, I just picked him up from daycare and I haven't taken him back in seven months. And, you know, he hasn't seen his grandparents.

That's why he's being this way. And so with kids, you're always able to go like, here's the underlying reason for the behavior. The bad behavior is just a symptom. If you treat the the the underlying condition, the symptom will go away. And then with other people, and then also with ourselves, we go like, I just lost my temper. I'm a piece of shit. Or we say, they lost their temper at me, they're a piece of shit. When if we could apply the empathy that we give our own children, we'd be like, oh,

no, no, I'm only doing, I'm only mad because I haven't eaten in seven hours and I'm angry or this person could have just found out that their grandmother died and that's why they're being a jerk. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you never know what somebody's going through and I, you know, I have a rule on the road, which has saved me from countless bouts of road rage, which I never really struggled with, but I did find myself the more you drive, the more you see dumb things on the road. And there have been times where I've done

dumb things on the road, and immediately feel embarrassed that I would not pay attention or do, or miss my exit or whatever. And anytime I see somebody doing something stupid on the road, I just assume it's their first time ever doing that and that takes a lot of the edge off. If I ever see the same car with the same license plate company off twice, then we might have a problem

but it hasn't happened in 20 years. There's this great Mark Sirilis Limerchef done before but he goes like, look, is it world without shame with people possible? No, he's like, so this person you just met is one of the people, right? And he was like, actually, you're crazy to think that you would never meet, you know,

if one out of 100 people are like X, Y, or Z, you're eventually gonna meet that person. And I use, he uses shameless in meditations, but I've come to just plug in like pretty much everything. And that's been helpful to me because it's like, again, you don't need everyone. We don't all need to be on the same page. And frankly, not everyone needs to be a good person, just for society to work in function, the majority of people need to be decent.

But you have to be able to come to terms with the fact that some people are shitty drivers. Other people could be good drivers. They're just shitty people and they choose to be shitty drivers. And so instead of going like, what is this, is the whole world falling to pieces? It's like, no, you just met one out of a thousand. And you're still, that's still a really good, like that's still really good odds, you know, and to take that personally is to expect the impossible. Yeah, my, a good friend of mine told me recently,

because I, you know, I just am so again, like, aware, almost like painfully aware of my mental and emotional state at all times, just because it's, you know, it's something that I've been trained to do. It's pretty much always a perception problem for me and now you know we were just talking about the state of things in in this country and in society right now and it's like I personally believe we're gonna get through it I personally believe that all of

this pain is not gonna be for naught I think that the people who are going to get through it, I personally believe that all of this pain is not going to be for not. I think that the people who are going to learn from it will help elevate themselves and those around us. But right now, we're, you know, as a country, I feel like right now we're on rep number 14 of a 15 set burn out with 20 30 sets into a workout. Like we're exhausted as a society. But it's not gonna last forever. And when we get through this, I really believe that a lot of perceptions are gonna change. And I hope that people are able to see things

for what they really are. Otherwise, we've taught him and I about just the radicalization of people in general. Because we both have addictive backgrounds. We've both see people go from on-depth door to knocking on the gates of heaven, like not physically, or just literally, like metaphorically, just killing it. And then all of a sudden, they're like, they're gone again. And it's like, well, what happened? It's always a prospective problem.

And we were talking about, I don't know why we were talking about this, but we were talking about like actual real terrorists. And I don't even, you might want to edit this out, you probably don't even want to leave this, but I get it. Like I understand, if I was five years old and there was just bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb dropped on my city, when I found out who was responsible for it, I would want payback. Now, not everyone becomes a terrorist, but if you become fixated on one thing,

that's when you get radicalized, and I can get radicalized by anything, which is why I need to focus on, like you just said, like the rarity of people actually being rude and inconsiderate, if you average it out, it is one out of like a thousand. It's so rare, but because it's so painful,

you can make that your whole world. And I just, I have made a decision not to focus on that, to wait it appropriately and to say, you know, all right, that person, I'm not, I don't even think people are bad people. I think people have bad moments. And if you get caught up in that, you can make that their whole personality. And that's just never the case.

I would never want to be judged by the worst of what I've done in this life. But it is hard. And when you have a large social media following in mind is a fraction of yours. And you have all these different accounts of millions of people on each one. It's like, if this scenario is one out of a thousand people is just, you know, awful or whatever, you end up dealing with

a lot of those people and it can break you. And I think weirdly, like, the deprivations from the pandemic, like financial, social, whatever for me, that it hasn't been that, like, oh, I can't go see my friends. It been that like, oh, I can't go see my friends. It's not like, oh, I haven't been traveling. Oh, I haven't been able to do X, Y, or Z. It's primarily been that some of those things have gone away. But then I have, I've, because of what I write about and I guess because of some, and some, some agree to my fans are, it's like, oh, you're really seeing a lot of those one and a thousand people, and they're very public about it.

And it's very hard not to become cynical and disaffected and even to give into despair. Yeah, well, you know, like what I think is happening with society, we're like, we're right at the point Yeah, well, you know, like what I think is happening with society, we're like, we're right at the point where we're like, we're almost done and maybe we're gonna get a breath of fresh air, maybe we're not, maybe, you know, maybe it's gonna be another four years or another five years,

but dealing with people on the internet has taught me a lot about myself. There's a line in the 12 and 12 that says, you know, basically it's a spiritual axiom that anytime we are bothered by something, we are somehow involved. And you've posted, um, yeah, that's epic to this something. Yeah, like the, you know, if you're complicit in the offense, if you're offended or something like that, what is the word anytime you're offended, realize that you are complicit in the provocation. Basically, it takes two to tango.

They said what they said, but you are choosing to let that offend you or affect you or penetrate your being. And I know that to be a fact, because there have been times where people have said horrific things to me in the DMs or publicly in the comments, and I laugh it off, or I actually feel compassion for them. And then there's other times where somebody said something that's not even as bad, and I fly off the handle, and I'm trying to find out their address

and find out who their employer is, you know what I mean? So it's always me, it really does have to do with the fact that there's not a whole lot of room for error on this journey that I'm on. However, that's what I signed up for. I signed up to be an exemplary human being so that I can live the fullest life that I could possibly live. And if I look around, it's obvious that it's working. My life is, I would never publicly complain about my life because I come from a world where I can't, you know, my

life is essentially the end of it's a wonderful life all the time where George Bailey's running down the street. He can't believe how good his life is. That's what I feel like 98% of the time, but the other 2% is, you know, it's just, it always serves as a reminder to me like, what am I doing? What am I missing? What's missing from my routine that I was doing that was helping? I think gratitude is a great antidote for that feeling. I think it's just, you know, it's like, there's just something fundamentally different about, like, hey, this person's a bad driver, whatever.

And then I think what the pandemic has brought up and then I like that you're calling it the civil rights movement because It's really what it is. You're seeing as you're seeing these issues I think it's it's like it's not just the mistakes of them are so high It's it I think for me. It's like the right thing is so obvious I'm not saying the solution is obvious or easy. I'm just saying like what sides you're going to be on is very obvious and easy, right? And so when you see people almost deliberately choosing the wrong side and then attacking you or other people in a way that's sort of vindictive or cruel or like there's a great Atlantic story from a few years ago that's sort of encapsulating that not just not the Trump presidency, but some of these very extreme

policies, whether it's sort of children and cages or making fun of disabled people or mocking dead veterans, you see people embracing the shittiness and you really like the headline of the article is the cruelty is the point. And I think that's just something we're not even though we understand there's always conflict even though we understand not everyone's good or the people are flawed. I think it's when you see someone acting malevolently or truly it just hits you in a soft place. And I think that's something I know I'm wrestling with. And I got a sense from when we were talking the other day

that like it's really kind of the stride and see and the meanness that you're seeing on the accounts that's hitting you where you would rather not be hit. I mean, yeah, I mean, Ryan, obviously I would prefer everyone was nice to me all the time. But there's this book, the roadless traveled, which I read many years ago, and then I read it again, then I read it again, like I can never get too many reminders. I don't know if you've

read it, but the first line in the book is life is difficult. And then the next paragraph goes on to describe, you know, what life would be like if things were not difficult. And then the next paragraph is like, would you even want to live a life that's not difficult? And then the next paragraph is, now why do you think you're the only person in the history of humanity that should be given an easy life? Like just get over the fact that life is going to be easy

or not difficult and relish in the, you know, like your book, the obstacle is the way. Like sometimes the obstacle is the way, but sometimes for me getting overpsicle is the way. Like sometimes the gopsicle is the way, but sometimes for me, getting over the obstacle is the achievement itself. And then the actual achievement pales in comparison to what I had to get over to achieve it emotionally, like when I actually achieve what I'm trying to achieve, I just, you know, I love the journey.

And this is all part of the journey to me. But what was, when you did my podcast, you told me about a book that you read that was about the Civil War. What was the name of that book? What book did I read about the Civil War? So remember what I... It's something that I have thought about every single day since this pandemic has started. And basically, the punchline was, you know, this guy is essentially a memoir and he's traveling around the country and he's having dinner with different people and doing different stuff. And then the punchline of the book is that it was going on during the Civil War and the

whole point of the book is that when you look back on the Civil War time period, you just assume from an outsider's point of view that it was just battles everywhere 24-7 and it wasn't. There was people making shoes, having dinner with their family. Like, when I'm off of the internet, I treat like, like this is my personal little like, respite in my home. Because if I look around my house right now,

my son is, you know, doing home school. My wife is probably doing something to push the house along and make sure that it stays in good shape, even though she just got home from work. I'm doing a podcast with somebody that I respect tremendously. I exercise today. I have food in the kitchen. Like if I don't go on the internet and I'm not, I've been accused a couple of times of

burying my head in the sand and it's so obvious that I'm not burying my head in the sand because I don't miss anything good going on. If my head was buried in the sand, I would miss all the good stuff going on. And I'm not. I'm just choosing. Well, I was going to, yeah, I was going to say that it's, you brought up perception or perspective shifts. Like it's bearing that your head in the sand is pretending that that stuff isn't happening. What you do with say, tanks, good news is choose to look at the good things that are happening and choose to find something to be pleased by or encouraged by,

or something that reaffirms your basic faith in humanity. Yeah, there was one point in time where I got a little discouraged and I almost shut the page down. Obviously I didn't do that and I probably wasn't going to, but when the protests first started, when the BLM protests were really at a fever pitch,

and they were in every city, and they were turning violent, and the police, there was protests against police brutality, and these police were brutalizing people, it was like, what the hell is going on? There was multiple videos or pictures of protesters and police officers trying to work together, and that's what I posted. And instead of pissing off 50% of people by taking a stand one way or the other, I pissed off 100% of the people because, according to both of them, I was misrepresenting what was happening there and being dishonest.

And my contention is that, you know, they were saying these are photo ops and these police are taking pictures with us. And then an hour later, they're tear gassing us. It's like, first of all, a lot can happen in an hour. There could be an entire shift change, the tide of anything could turn in an instant in a protest when tensions are so high. So I don't know what led to that. And I'm not, I'm not condoning police using tear gas on peaceful protesters, but don't tell me that picture wasn't taken and that conversation didn't take place. You can't tell me that that didn't happen because I've seen it with my own eyes and that's what I'm choosing to focus on because it's the only thing getting me through this day is the fact that some of the protesters and

some of the police broke off from their mobs and met together and said, guys, like you know what we're trying to do here. Both of them are saying you know what we're trying to do, you've got to work with us. And then it was like, all right, we're going to, you know, we're going to talk to our people, yeah, we're going to talk to our people, everything's cool. And then something goes wrong. And for some reason, people think that something going wrong negates what went right and I just don't believe that I think what went right went right and what went wrong went wrong. They're two separate things.

There's another part of that that I see where it's like you point out something that's wrong. Like let's say you decide that what's important to you is police brutality that that's something that you want to talk about or it's climate change, or you wanna talk about, you know, any injustice, right? And to me, it's essential that a stoic focus on injustice, the world is filled with it, but you gotta pick something and start somewhere.

Yeah. I think what's this weird impulse, and you see it online, is, so you point out this, and then someone, someone finds a way, like instead of that opening someone's heart or opening someone's mind, their immediate reaction is to point out another bad thing as if the existence of two bad things cancels each other.

It's like this is not a math equation. You have to, like I'm talking about this. If you don't want to have the conversation with me, don't have the conversation with me. But you don't get to cancel out the existence of this injustice by pointing out another injustice that by the way, you probably don't give a shit about either. You're just trying to say, but you're basically just trying to throw up your hands and say, no one can do anything. And to me, that is the root of so much of the, so many of the issues that we're having as a society.

Because they're not, they're frankly non-partisan issues, right? Like the police are not a part, should not be a partisan issue. Their job is to work for everybody, right? You know, police brutality isn't a racial issue. It's a, it's a human rights issue. And I don't mean that in all lives matter.

What I mean is like nobody should be pulled over and subjected to abuses, that's just not how it should work. And so there's this weird thing that's going on where people, I think it's because the things are so horrifying or so unpleasant, that they're like, well, I really can't deal with it. So instead of just owning it and saying, I don't have room in my heart for that right now,

they're trying to deny that it exists. And that's a really weird thing. Yeah, I've found and made peace for the most part with the fact that human beings just don't care about something until it affects them directly or until they decide it affects them directly and That's fine. I got I remember being I was walking down the street one day I'm in hadn't with two friends of mine and there was a breast cancer walk going on and we happened to be in the middle of it

And we weren't wearing pink we weren't wearing hats We weren't like with a group of people and a couple of women got like mad at us for being in the walk without... Like that episode of Seinfeld? Is that an episode of Seinfeld? There's an episode of Seinfeld where they're not wearing an AIDS ribbon and get tossed in by it. Yeah.

Exactly like that. And I didn't put two and two together when it happened, even though I watched that show 15 times through and through, but I remember saying to my friends, I was like, yo, I don't, you know, my mom didn't die of breast cancer. I've never had any experience with this before. I'm not, you know, I don't want to make, I have my issues that I feel strongly about.

I feel strongly about addiction and help for those with addiction and alcoholism. I feel strongly about organ donation and blood donation, but I don't make it anybody else's issue because I know what it's like to have my own issue that I feel strongly about, and people are just, they're so predictable. Like if someone is really forceful about an issue,

I know that 10 times out of 10, they have personal experience with it, and I don't, I think that's how things should be. I think that, you know, the Brady Bill launched by the woman whose husband was shot by the guy on the train on the Long Island Railroad. Who else is going to do that? That's, you know, when people say, don't be, don't politicize a tragedy or don't be reactive to an issue, good luck, dude, because that's how people have been since the beginning of

time. That's the only way we know how to operate because you can't stay ahead of the curve on every issue that might come up. You can only do the best with your life experience, which is another reason why I kind of personally softened up on people I disagree with in a big way because, you know, I've had multiple civil conversations with people I've vehemently disagree with politically, but when it comes down to the reasons and the wise, like, there's always a good reason. And I'm not saying a reason I agree with, but there's always a significant reason

why people feel the way they feel. And for me to say, your politics and your ideologies are wrong, is for me to say that the way that they've interpreted their life is wrong. And that might be true, but that's not for me to say, and that's for them to come to on their own. Like, there's multiple issues where I've had what I consider to be a wrong position on that has been changed either by an experience, or one sentence said by somebody one time, and I feel differently now. So, that's my life. That's my life experience. And that's the way that it's panned out so far. It's not that I'm not flip-flopping.

I just have new information and I changed my mind. Hey, it's Ryan got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Hey, everyone, I've raved about the Theragon a bunch of times. I really do love this thing. My kids love it. My wife loves it. I gave one to my in-laws. I'm just a big fan of this thing. I mean, it's been a crazy stressful year. I've been trying to use a lot of this quarantine time to work out more, to play with my kids more. And so that's obviously created some tension.

It's created some soreness. Sometimes, you know, when I'm sitting too much of my chair writing, I'll get sore or stiff. You can't go get a massage right now. The Theragonreness. Sometimes, you know, when I'm sitting too much in my chair writing, I'll get sore or stiff. You can't go get a massage right now. The Theragun is perfect. It hits you with this like carefully calibrated precussive force. It releases muscle tension, arms leg back. Theragun is great at getting your muscles to relax

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and all the power and force that you need. It starts at $199 bucks, basically a cost of like a massage and a half and you can go to Theragon.com slash stoic right now to get your gen for Theragon today. That's Theragon.com slash stoic THERAGUN.com slash stoic. I wrote about that a while ago. I was saying, you know, people think anger is this, like, they're like, how, how pure is your anger? How, how, how worked up are you about this? And my point is that anger is politically a really destructive emotion because, like, think about all the positions you've had that you were wrong about in the past. Did you have that because you were a malicious person or do you have it because you just didn't know better? Yeah. And in fact, you thought you were on the right or do you have it because you just didn't know better.

And in fact, you thought you were on the right side of it, right? So like somebody yelling at you would not have changed your mind. So anger towards those people is a totally ineffective, perhaps counterproductive emotion. And then, and I think you can stipulate that there are real bad people out there. And I don't just mean like enemies in far away lands.

I just mean like there are sociopaths and malignant narcissists and just genuinely sort of selfish awful people who find themselves involved in political issues. And it's precisely in though with those dangerous slippery people that you can't afford to be a bull in a china shop. You have to be very controlled, you have to be very delicate, you have to be very smart about the shots that you take. And so anger as a reaction to things, like if it's just to wake you up, sure, but it has to stop there really quickly

and you have to get to a place of calm and poise and understanding. If you want to have any hope of fixing the problem, if your goal is just to like, you know, have a catharsis about it, sure, and do whatever you want with the anger, but generally, I think it's a very inefficient emotion. It's, it's, it's, in my opinion, it should only be used by the person as a signal that something is off. It's not, you know, I feel like anger is an emotion and rage is a state and people that spend their time

in a state of rage, I don't relate to at all because for me, anger is very uncomfortable and because it's uncomfortable I immediately look to see what's causing it and try and remedy it rather than like it's not a luxury for me It says in you know in that in that same book the 12 and 12 anger is the the luxury of more dubious men like people that can actually handle it maybe I mean Sure, you want to be angry go for it. I personally treat anger like a broken bone or something. Like, it's just a signal that something's wrong.

And if I didn't feel any anger, that would be disconcerting to me also because how am I supposed to know how I feel about certain things. And that's only something that came as a result of me doing. It tons and tons of work and being fully what I would consider to be like fully realized and self-aware, not perfect, but my awareness is very high. And because of that, you know, my anger lasts, you said, how quickly can you get to calm? My last, my anger lasts maybe 30 seconds, maybe more like 10 or 15. And then the last 15 seconds are like, okay, let me regulate, like, let me take a deep breath,

let me calm my body down. Maybe I had too much caffeine today, maybe I am hungry, maybe I didn't sleep well. Like, there's always a reason and the only thing that I can do in that moment is not make things worse by allowing myself to dive into the anger. I don't know, you know, what even, what that would even feel like, but I'm not scared of my anger either. I just kind of like see it for what it is and use it as a tool rather than a way of being because that would be, I mean, that's terrible. Well, one last question on this sort of political stuff that I'm curious about, then I got one last wrap-up question for you. But I'm curious, like, I imagine you see this on Tanks Good News

or any time you post about something that you care about, there's this reaction when people go, oh, that's just virtue signaling, right? Which is an interesting phrase, and I get the virtue signaling exists. I also get that virtue is like the whole point of stoicism. I had someone say that on something I cared really about. I cared a lot about it. I was doing something about it. I'd posted about it or something and someone said, oh, that's virtue signaling. And I responded,

like, I'm sorry that someone told you that you can just say those two words and it automatically cancels something out. Yeah. There seems to be this thing where people think that if they just call something virtue signaling, whether it's somebody taking an impassioned stand on an issue, you know, somebody talking about what they believe it's right, someone feeling sad about something, that they can just say, oh, that's virtue signaling, and then immediately dismisses it. But it strikes me that there is a real place for something like

you do on Tanks Good News, which is not virtue signaling, me that there is a real place for something like you do on Tanks Good News, which is not virtue signaling, but it's demonstrating and rewarding and popularizing when people do good things. Yeah. There's this book that I've read and talked about on the page, it's called The Power of Kindness by Pierra Faruchi. And the whole point of the book, or the whole thesis of the book is that, so what I got from the book,

he doesn't say this in the book, but he might as well have, because people will say, oh, if you record a good deed and post it to the internet, it automatically cancels it out. Well, tell that to the homeless person that now has a thousand dollars and it's sleeping in a hotel room,

telling him if the bed is any less comfortable because it got posted on social media, I doubt he would say it is, but, and then now has a thousand dollars and it's sleeping in a hotel room. Tell him if the, ask him if the bed is any less comfortable because it got posted on social media. I doubt he would say it is, but, right. You know, I believe it's better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than to do nothing at all. And I find that people who point the finger and say, virtue signaling are doing nothing at all.

So I don't take them that seriously. But the book says that when an act of kindness is done, three parties benefit, the doer, or the giver, the receiver, and then anyone who witnesses it, right? Sure. So I remember giving money to a homeless person, and it wasn't like, it wasn't an astronomical amount, but it was enough for this woman to chase me down on the street and say, that was awesome. She like chased me down on 7th Avenue and like tapped me on the shoulder

and was like, I saw what you did. That was, you, I saw that guy's face. That was amazing. And I was like, oh good, like, you know. So I benefited already, because I gave him money, he benefits, because he receives, and then this woman benefited also. She definitely had a better day that day and felt more hopeful about humanity even if for a moment right so on tainsgood news

that third party is not one person it's two million people so i feel a real responsibility to highlight the best of what's going on and of course i get people saying negative things but again I get people saying negative things, but again, it's better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than to do nothing at all. And my assumption is that if you have a problem with someone doing the right thing, it's probably because you were doing nothing and you feel angry at yourself for not doing something.

So you're taking it out on me. That's the only way I can make sense of it. Because otherwise, I can't comprehend why somebody would be mad at somebody. Listen, if it's like, obviously, like, if the person in the video is uncomfortable, I get it, but there was this one story about a kid who saved up money to pay off lunch debts for kids in the area and bro, people were livid that lunch debt even existed. And my response was like, well, it does.

Let's focus on the kid. How do you think this kid would feel if you should have just systematically eliminated the system of capitalism that forces people to pay for meals? Or do you want this kid to do? Or done nothing at all? Would that be better? No, of course it's not better.

But people are very interesting. They really keep you on your toes, man. They really do. Well, no, so Marcus really talks about, he's like, look, when you do a good deed, you can't ask for the third thing. So he's saying that you give the money to the homeless person, you both benefit. You can't do it to hope that that woman chases you down and congratulates you. Yeah.

So you have to do it just for the right, that just do it for its own sake. At the same time, Marcus also talks about how, you know, nothing inspires us more than seeing virtue in the people around us. And so, I think it's important that we celebrate goodness and kindness and the, you know, the reconciling of differences and so on. So because it allowed, like, I know I'm inspired when I see those things and it forces me,

even if it's not totally for the right reason, it forces me to do the right thing because I go, oh, I can, if this child can do it, what excuse do I have? And I think, I think you're right, the reason people keep you on their toe on your toes, because they managed to, their cognitive dissonance, finds a way to always try to undermine something that under normal circumstances would have spurred them to make a change or put themselves out there or do the right thing. They're getting mad at the lunch debt thing because instead of feeling, hey, this child did something wrong,

I can do something right, I can do something right. They're saying, are you, they're going, are you saying this child is better than me? And you are saying. And so like they don't want to wrestle with that uncomfortable indictment. Well, when you signal a virtue and that one person doesn't possess that virtue, I'm sure it's uncomfortable.

But as we've been discussing, discomfort is not, discomfort is not something that some people are blessed with and some people are not. Some people use it properly and channel it towards positive, you know, output other people kind of let it go inside and turn it to rage. And, you know, I would imagine it's kind of like sitting on a couch, you know, eating Doritos and a six foot sub and seeing somebody with abs on the TV. Like that's going to be uncomfortable for you. And I'm sorry, but you know, Mary Ann Williamson, who's like kind of a whatever, you know, I don't know how I even I feel about her, but her quote, I mean, is really good about.

It doesn't, like essentially it doesn't do anybody any good for you to be a worse or smaller person so that they feel more comfortable. Like I say, let them be uncomfortable. And if they comment something negative right now, maybe two weeks from now, two months, two years, two decades, whatever, maybe they'll say, you know what, I think I'm inspired now.

Cause it takes time. Some inspiration is definitely time released. And at the time, it can be very uncomfortable. Like, my wife told me. She told me at dinner one night God bless her because it was so brave. I don't even know if she knew what she was doing. She goes I asked her something about how I looked and she goes well you've definitely gained a lot of weight since we got married and that word definitely and the other word a lot of weight since we got married. And that word definitely, and the other word a lot, stung, I mean, to the, like, as a fact kid,

as a recovering fact kid, it hurt more than, you know, anything she could possibly say to me, but guess what I did the next day? I got up and I exercised. And I knew that I was overweight, and I had, I brought, I gained more weight than she did when she was pregnant, but she lost it, and I kept it on.

So I already knew that there was an issue. I think what the point is, is that nothing can hurt unless you're already aware of it on some level. And if you're already aware of it and somebody says something that hurts you, maybe it's time to take a look at it and address it. Yeah, or when you're, when you're finally ready to. Yeah. Okay. to look at it and address it. Yeah, or when you're finally ready to. Yeah.

Okay, so the last question, there is on Reddit, and I follow it, there's a community of stoic memes, there's a subreddit of stoic memes. Yeah. As the creator of some of my favorite memes, I'm curious, how would you explain stoicism in the medium that you so naturally speak or what is your pithiest sort of funniest definition of a stoic? Do you have one?

Oh, God. And I'm putting you on the spot. My pithiest definition of a stoic, I don't know. I don't know what I would say. If I'll also say this and I'm not trying to deflect or avoid the question, but there are, like I'm a big believer in like there's a time for humor and there's a time not for it.

And we've just had one of the most serious conversations I've had over the past month for the last 50 minutes. I'm not exactly primed to say some funny shit right now. I don't know. I don't know if I would do that. Cause I just, there's things that I respect and I don't want to lampoon. Because I don't know if there's any benefit to it.

But I will definitely, if something comes to me, I will definitely let you know, maybe we can use it in the market. Yeah, you make one and we'll post it on Daily Sturt and we'll see what people think. It would definitely be some sort of juxtaposition of like a real world issue that people are over dramatic about with some super dry, almost borderline irrelevant comments from one of the Stoics. And listen, nine people in the world would get it, but it would be worth it.

And I'm gonna work on it. My favorite subreddits are the ones about really obscure topics. I love this one. It's just memes about William to come to Sherman burning himself. That like, you have to be a total civil warner to like even appreciate.

But you know, there's like thousands of people in this thing. So like it's weird. It's like obviously there's like, there's humor. And then there's the humor that comes when you really understand something where like we've really gone down into a rabbit hole.

And I think obviously most of what you do is like for an audience of millions and millions of people. And then I think sometimes there's just like the absurd like you wouldn't understand if you're not one of us kind of mean. And that's why I want to thank you for bringing that up. I know you want to wrap up, but I think it bears saying. No, no, I'm doing that. So over the years, I've been accused of being all kinds of things that I'm not. I've been accused of being a racist, a transphobic person, a homophobic person, just all things that I don't consider myself at all. And what you just said, my response to somebody once was like, you can't blamp in something that you're not on some level in love with

and curious to understand more about. I use humor to make fun of things, but whoever connected the dots between humor and hate is dead wrong. Like you cannot connect the dots between humor and hate. I've never met somebody who hated black people who was funny about it. There's just no room for it.

Hate is so all-consuming that in order to be able to make a joke about a topic, you need to be familiar with it and you wouldn't be familiar with it unless you liked it or loved it on some level. So I'm so glad you said that because, there's a certain requirement of attention that goes with being able to make a joke about

something that I think people miss and misunderstand and they think, oh, if you're making fun of this topic, you obviously hate it. I don't hate anybody. I love everybody. I just think this take would be funny if people thought like this. Like, I made that meme that I sent you of the kid who was furious. Where the fuck is my hunger management book? Like just the thought of somebody

flying off the handle and being rage filled about not being able to find their anger management book was funny to me. But somebody asked me when I posted it on meme data, they were like, why are you so angry? I'm not angry. Joe. No, you make a good point. It's often the worst people who are a totally humorist or the people who are most strong or totally humorless about it. And I think that was what was so hilarious about Tarantino's Django and Chain. Like he's making, like the KKK is preposterously lame and stupid and ridiculous. And that whole extended scene about like who made the hoods

and how they can't see through the eye holes and like the comic nature of it, that comes from the fact that finally someone is like taking it seriously enough to realize that these people are taking themselves way too seriously. Do you know what I mean? Like he was like, they couldn't, they think it's cool or not,

they think it's like powerful, but in fact, any normal thinking person would look at it and be like, what the fuck are you wearing? You look like an idiot. Yeah, yeah, this, I'm just, I'm happy you said that, and I'm gonna look into that Civil War meme subreddit, even though I'm not gonna understand anything sometimes.

I'm gonna send it to you. I love it. When people jokingly say, what do you get your news from memes? I don't get my news, my information from memes, but there have been plenty of times where I didn't know something happened. I saw a meme about it.

I Googled it. I found information about it. So, totally. No, it's an easy way to learn. And that's basically the premise of the Daily Stoke Instagram. It's like nobody thinks that you're going to teach philosophy in one Instagram quote a day.

But the point is people are already on this platform. Why not put up something that teases their interest and then they go do it. And I think that's the same with Tang's Good News. It's not itself doing anything, but it's people are seeing it and then going, oh, wait, are you telling me that there are kids who have a debt for their lunches? I can go do that in my town and I think that's where we use these mediums to create change. Hopefully. Dude, I love it.

I'm so glad we got to chat. Let's do it again. Dude, I love it. I'm so glad we got to chat. Let's do it again. All right, thank you Adam. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcasts, listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend.

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. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts.

Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.