WEBVTT - #135 Ryan Holiday: Make Philosophy Great Again 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:01.680 I'm my Boris and this is strike talk. 0:00:02.120 --> 0:00:04.760 So the idea of philosophy be this way of living, 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:07.800 this standard to aspire to strikes me. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:09.479 It's really interesting and really urgent. 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:13.360 Ryan Holiday, Welcome to strike talk. Might tell me right 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:15.200 back to when you first start thinking about this stuff. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:17.479 I was nineteen or twenty years old. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.159 If you had told me that philosophy was something that 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.040 would be interesting, I would have laughed at you. I 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:27.320 came to understand that wasn't this dusty, stodgy. 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:27.840 And practical thing. 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:33.440 It was ordinary and extraordinary people alike working to become what. 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:34.720 They're capable of being. 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:41.560 Courage, self discipline, justice and wisdom. Every situation in life, 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:46.600 big and small, is this opportunity to practice those virtues. 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:49.680 Ryan Holiday, Welcome to strike Talk. 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:51.559 Mat Yeah, thanks for having me. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:52.520 Where do you come to me from? 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:52.720 Now? 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:54.440 Where are we talking from? 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:56.560 Right outside Austin, Texas? 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:57.960 Wow, that's cool. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:00:59.720 Everybody wants to live in Texas eas day, I know, 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.200 almost living in life for some reason was going on 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.040 in New York and l A. Just emptying out into Texas. 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:07.720 What's the deal? Is it tax? Is it bed tax? 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.840 It's it's taxes, it's space. 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:12.760 You know, it's a it's a bunch of things, some 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.880 good reasons, some not so good reasons. But I'll tell 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.160 you I'm I'm very excited to get to Australia this 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.240 summer because most people I know that live here flee 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:23.479 Texas during the summer. 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:24.760 It's it's so freaking. 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:25.639 Hot as in your summer. 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.920 Yeah, yeah, I'm coming our summer. I guess your winter. 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:32.480 But it's gonna be uh. You know, last year, I 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.240 think we had one hundred days over one hundred degrees fahrenheit, 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:36.640 So it gets pretty hot here. 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.800 So when are you arriving in Australia and what's and 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:39.399 what's the deal? 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:40.640 Uh? 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.280 Middle of July? I think I'm doing it. I think 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.200 I'm doing Sydney the last day of July and Melbourne 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.520 maybe the first day of August something like that. And 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.040 this will be my first appearances there. 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:53.840 And what and what what are you presenting to us? 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.680 Like what's your program looking like? The thesis? 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.440 Well, you know, just to just to really get people excited, 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:02.640 I'm gonna do an hour plus lecture about an obscure 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.520 school of antion philosophy, you know, about as exciting as 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:06.080 it can get. 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.400 Well for me, that actually is exciting for me. So 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:12.359 I quite like, I quite like what we're about to 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.240 talk about. I mean, I've read the brief but and 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:17.600 you're only a young guy, which is pretty amazing. 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.960 It's funny. You know, many many years ago, I. 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:23.600 Used to talk about a concept of virtues, used to 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:25.720 go on talking tours in Australia to about virtues, and 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.640 a lot of young people, like the younger audiences, didn't 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.079 really know what virtues were. They don't even really understand 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.160 the word. I mean, and stoicism is sort of somewhat 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.400 related to that. Maybe you just take me back a 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:42.040 little bit, and you're already young, but take me back 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:44.800 to the period when you first started becoming interested in 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.200 concepts of stoicism. But probably more importantly from my point 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:49.760 of view, this concept of virtues. 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:50.560 What are virtues? 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.280 And you know, where's courage versus you know other things? 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.960 Those types of virtues take me right back to when 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:00.000 you first started thinking about this. 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:02.720 I think that's a great question because I relate to that. 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.360 You know, when I was nineteen or twenty years old, 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:08.520 if you had told me that virtue was something I 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.680 should care about, or if you told me philosophy was 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.160 something that would be interesting, I would have laughed at you, 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:16.520 you know. And so it wasn't until I read Marcus 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:21.480 Aurelius's Meditations in my college apartment that I came to 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:26.760 understand that philosophy wasn't this dusty, stodgy, you know, impractical thing, 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:32.080 that it was you know, ordinary and extraordinary people alike, 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.480 sort of working to hold themselves to higher standards, to 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:39.880 become what they're capable of being. If there's a line 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.320 in Meditations or Marx Shois talk, he says, fight to 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.880 be the person that philosophy tried to make you. And 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.000 so the idea of philosophy not being these abstract questions, 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.440 but this way of living, this standard to aspire to, 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.160 strikes me as really interesting and really urgent. 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:55.640 You know. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:59.720 I think when people hear the word virtue, they think, yeah, religion, 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.960 Like car if you say the phrase the cardinal virtues, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:07.760 people think of, you know, a religious figure, right, they 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.760 think of a cardinal. But cardinal comes from the Latin cardos, 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:16.600 which means pivotal, So they're talking about the pivotal virtue. 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:21.080 So that's the other thing. It's not virtue, it's virtues, 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.000 and the virtues to the ancient stoics were I think 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:32.479 pretty straightforward and pretty timeless. They were courage, self discipline, justice, 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.680 and wisdom. And the idea was that every situation in life, 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:41.839 big and small, was this opportunity to practice those virtues. 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:46.000 So if we think of every situation, instead of going 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:47.480 through the life going what can I do here? 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:48.240 What should I do here? 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.880 We think, well, what opportunity do I have to practice 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.560 one of these ideas or all four of these ideas? 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.520 What is philosophy asking of me? I think that's a 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.520 much more interesting way to approach these, you know, admittedly 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:03.479 very ancient ideas. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.920 How did you get the Marcuisraelis Meditations book? Because I mean, 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.920 I'm sixty eight and I more recently bought it maybe 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.680 a year ago, and I just look at it every 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.320 now and then. It sits on my bedside amongst seven 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:19.000 or eight other books, which I'm sort of reading different 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:20.400 books at different times depending on how I. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:20.880 Feel at night. 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.279 And you know, so I'm sort of relatively speaking advanced 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:30.920 relative to you when you're you're nineteen? Who who mentioned you? 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:32.919 Or how did you become a cross? Looking at a 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.800 book like Marcus Realist's Meditations? Because it's sort of fairly 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:39.480 dense for a nineteen year old. 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:40.160 That's what I think. 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:42.280 Yeah, I was. 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:44.240 I was at a conference and I went up to 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:45.919 the speaker after and I just said, hey, you know, 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:47.400 are you reading anything interesting? 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:49.120 And then that's how I got pointed. 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.160 To the Stoics. And I think, what was so great 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.760 about that? I didn't realize that at the time, but 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:59.800 this is how Stoicism has spread for twenty five centuries 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.920 that It's been this process of Hey, I got something 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:06.960 out of this. I think you'll get something out of 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:09.120 it too. And that's one of the interesting passages in 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.040 Mark Surrelis's Meditations. Marx rewis being the Emperor of Rome. 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:17.640 He's thanking his teacher Rusticus for having lent him a 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.920 copy of the writings of Epictetus, who is his favorite 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.040 Stoic philosopher. So if we can think of, you know, 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.240 twenty five centuries of people going, hey, check out this book. 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.080 I think it's good. You know, that's what Stoicism is. 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:30.400 You know. 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.719 I don't think people are doing that with Heidegger or 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:35.039 Kant or. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:37.280 Even Aristotle these days. Right. 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:42.560 The idea of philosophy being something closer to self help 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.440 is to me really really interesting and I think, you know, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.160 some people turn up their notes at that, but I 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:50.120 think that's wonderful. 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:54.200 Yeah, mean, a lot of people always searching. Some people 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.240 in their life, they're always searching. They don't really know 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.160 what they're searching for. Do you think that Macros surrealis 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.240 is because given that you mentioned earlier on it was 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:04.080 sort of going back to twenty five centuries. I mean, 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.520 we probably can go back to the original writings of Stoicism, 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:09.280 which I'm sure go back beyond this, but in terms 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.920 of what's available to look at, you can probably go 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.440 back to you know, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle back 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.720 in the five hundred BC six BC, and I'm sure 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:21.440 it goes beyond that. But this is just what's in 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:23.480 evidence in terms of what's written down. I'm sure there's 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.680 lots of other places. There's probably Asian cultures and Egyptian 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.760 cultures would go beyond that. But the thing that's most popular, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.880 but it was a bit, it was a bit sort 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.400 of complex, and sometimes this stuff could go on for 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.280 hundreds and hundreds of pages, especially if you're go and 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:41.800 buy some of the books, some of the writings of 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.360 these guys, the thing that I really just did is 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.240 that he made it pretty simple in terms of he 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:49.520 gave it to invite sizes. It was sort of like 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:54.480 a practical application of this little tweets. Yeah, that's perfect 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:56.720 nearly yeah, yeah, like little tweets. 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:57.080 Correct. 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.440 It's a mod version of tweets, an old version of 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.800 what is my version of tweets? So why do you 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:04.520 think that is important to people? Though? 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.000 Because? Is it because today. 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.200 We don't want to sit down and read Plato and 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.280 Socrates and Aristota would go on for hundreds and hundreds 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.120 and hundreds of pages and it gets very very complex. 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.240 Do you think today that we do only one of 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:20.960 digestings and bite size amounts? 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:24.880 You know what, No, I think Marcus Aurelius was doing 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.000 the same thing that I'm doing, that that people have 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:29.760 been doing for thousands of years, which is he was 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.640 taking ancient philosophy. And that's kind of a mind blowing 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.600 thing to think about. This was ancient philosophy to Marcus 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:41.440 aureli He's writing in the second century AD, and you know, 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.800 the founder of Stoicism was writing in the fourth century BC, right, 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.400 and so to him this was already stuff that was 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.839 thousands or hundreds of years old. Socrates to him was 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:57.280 older than Shakespeare is to us. Right, And so you 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.280 think about what he's doing is his reading this stuff 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:06.040 and then he's trying to digest it and make it accessible, 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:08.760 not to an audience per se. I think that's a 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:13.160 little different, but to himself. He's what meditations is. These 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.559 little bite sized sentences that you're talking about, they're they're 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:23.160 his summaries and re articulations of the ideas and the 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.040 things that he believes and the standards he's trying to 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:26.560 live up to. 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:29.080 That's what he's doing. 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:34.960 It's his private riffing on these you know, timeless ideas. 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:37.520 And so I think it's always been tough to go 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.280 back to the original sources and get exactly what they mean. 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:45.440 And so philosophy, just like music and art and uh 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:50.680 and and all the mediums, is this process of remixing 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:55.920 and rephrasing and re examining, and sometimes it comes out 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.760 very close to the original, and sometimes we come up 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:00.400 with something totally new when we do that. 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:05.040 It's interesting you just mentioned music, and music is one 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:09.520 way of conveying stories or important things to us. And 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.480 if I go back, you know, and I don't want to, 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:14.040 and I just. 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.520 Want to stop. We'll stop off because I don't want. 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.960 To sort of overload the whole discussion around this particular aspect. 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.800 But for me, if I go back and to the 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.400 stories of Homer, which predates all of the dudes, sure 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:33.600 Homer had this ability to talk about the philosophical things 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:35.640 that you're talking about, Like, you know, we talk about 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:37.600 virtues and ways of life and things that get us 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:38.840 get us closer to. 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:40.560 Being better human beings. 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.480 But I'm putting into stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey, 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.240 and by individuals within those stories, let's call them the 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.760 heroes and heroines. Usually they're heroes, but who were able 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.320 to endure in terms of endurance for example, and endure 0:10:57.520 --> 0:10:59.600 terrible outcomes just to get to a certain point in 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:01.920 their life. And the best one is the Odyssey of 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:06.000 Odysseus trying to get home to his wife. But how 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:10.240 important is it to either put this stuff in by 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:14.400 sized tweet sort of versions, or alternatively, how important it 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:16.840 is it because you're a writer, how important is it 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.800 to put this stuff into storylines and an add a 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.120 story around it so that people can become interested Because 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:25.400 it can be a little bit dry. Ethan know what 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:27.240 I mean to some people. To you and I we 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:27.800 think is great. 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:32.320 But well, I'm in the middle of reading the Artissey 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.520 to my seven year old right now, so I've been 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:35.560 thinking a lot about this. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:37.199 You're reading Robert Graves's version. 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.920 No, there's an American translator who's actually a biographer of 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.440 one of the Stoics. She wrote a biography of Seneca 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.440 called her name is Emily Wilson. She did a new 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.240 translation a couple of years ago, and she just did 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:54.000 the Iliad as well. The Rabert Graves edition is quite good. 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:57.880 Rapper Graves, I think the Fagels transition I've also read. 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:03.280 But the idea is to me, what I try to 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.040 do in my writing is take the ideas of the 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.160 Stoics and then demonstrate them through story or illustrate them 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.520 through story. So I feel like the Stoics already said 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:15.679 it as good as it can be said. You know, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.280 they've distilled it down to its absolute essence as an 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.680 idea or as a statement. But that's not typically how 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.160 humans learn things. There's a reason Jesus spoke in parables. 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.600 Abraham Lincoln probably the great you know, American communicator spoke 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.320 in terms of stories, right, he would, he would tell 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.760 anecdotes to make his point. There's something disarming about a story, 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:43.400 there's something memorable about a story. There's something about the 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:48.760 way we understand things that I think makes stories particularly powerful. 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:50.360 And so what I try to do in my books 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.839 is is take an idea from the Stoics, how they 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.240 treated obstacles as opportunities, and then I'll write a book 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:03.320 demonstrating that or or extrapolating that out in the form 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.240 of stories from men and women past and present. You know, 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:11.800 great and evil people who who who illustrated that idea 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:15.600 or illustrated the perils of not living that idea. So 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:17.560 that's that's what I try to do in all of 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:18.120 my books. 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.800 It it's interesting you just mentioned the word parables, and 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:26.000 you know, there's been many great storytellers who tell a 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:30.760 story about in parables. When I look at today's leaders, 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:34.719 and I don't want to let's just concentrate on some 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:36.800 two of your leaders in your country, one of the 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:38.679 biggest nations of the world. 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:40.800 They doesn't seem to talk in powables. 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.079 They sort of seem to me, and I'm not mean 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.800 to be mean, but they sort of speak in riddles. 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:49.600 It's actually they're just confusing. 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.520 They make a lot of statements, but they don't they don't. 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.360 Not only do they not tell a good story about 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:58.720 how they want things to go, but they tend not 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.480 to tell real stories. So they'll go I'm speaking of 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.400 Susie as uh uh, a single mother of three living. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.480 You know, they make up these stories about these fake people. 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.160 And and what the great leaders throughout history did was 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:20.480 draw on myths or commonly known stories and use them 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.280 as as a way of illustrating ideas or principles. So 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:28.200 so that that is a problem with the collapse of 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:32.520 the teaching of the classics, of the collapse of the humanities, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.320 is we we don't We no longer have the same 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:41.400 myths and ideas, you know. Like the last sort of 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.000 thing that kind of pierced the cultural consciousness was probably 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.880 like Harry Potter or something. And you can't have the president, 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.320 you know, telling a story about Harry Potter. 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:51.360 It just seems silly. 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:54.720 But you need you need a common you know, you 0:14:54.840 --> 0:15:01.280 need a common sort of shared consciousness of figures big 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:05.000 and small. Like that's what's so interesting the founding of America, 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:10.720 that all the American founders were steeped in these ancient 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:14.040 stories about the Greeks and Romans, and so they were 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.480 kind of almost play acting. And so when they would 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.760 say these things that sort of get written down in history, 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.960 people who knew their classical history understood, you know, the 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.760 plays they were referencing or the historical figures they were 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.560 alluding to, and it sort of imbued everything with this 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.760 kind of epic noss right, And we lack that today, 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.000 and I think that it makes it hard for us 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.760 to come together when we don't sort of share a 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:44.720 culture in that way. 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:46.560 And do you think it is that because the audience 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:51.400 lacks the general knowledge so much so that the person 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:53.320 speaking to them is no point talking to him about 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.800 these epic stories, which, as you said, like Abraham Lincoln, 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.440 his audience knew this history and generally speaking that we 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:01.560 was toward the stuff at school. I guess well, parents 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.400 talked about it. You know, parents probably told stories because 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:06.120 you know, we didn't have all the other distractions. 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:11.960 Do you think therefore it's impossible for current leaders to 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:12.640 be able to. 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.080 Do what say someone like Abraham Lincoln did and tell 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.080 those to have stories, And therefore our current leaders and 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.320 more talking about falsehoods and fakeness and all the short 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.640 term stuff that we generally get out of social media. 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:26.880 Is that the reason I don't. 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:29.080 Think it's imposs I don't think it's impossible. I just 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:31.680 think it's it's much harder, right. And so that's what 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:36.160 that's what demagogues do or populists do, is they they 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.000 they do tell a story which is like, they're those 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.400 people over there, and those people are bad, and those 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.240 people are the source of all of the problems and 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.760 evils of life, right, And that is a very timeless story. 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.800 The story of the scapegoat is a very sort of timeless, 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:54.000 uh you know, universal. 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:55.000 Sort of trope. 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:56.880 And so I do think we're seeing some of the 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.080 negative of it. But but I think it's been a 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.600 while since since any of the major nations had had 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:08.399 a really great leader who could tell a story about. 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:09.359 You know where we're going. 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.280 I mean even even even Trump. You know, Trump's saying 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.040 make America great again. He's saying, like, make it like 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.720 it used to be. He's not able to say, I 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:21.159 here's how I think it should be going forward. So 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.920 there there's just something there's something lacking about our ability 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:31.439 to to sort of share ideas or or aspirations that 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:32.440 I do think is a. 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:44.080 Problem if I if I got back, because I'm trying 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:46.280 to work out where you became. 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.320 Two things, you developed yourself into a great rata, and 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.560 that's a skill, thank you. The second thing is that 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.119 what you're write about you also had learned about. And 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.919 we've already you've already explained to me that NINETEENA started 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:09.399 with reading the Marcus Releases tweets. But how did you 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.680 become a great writer? Because that's a big skill. I mean, 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.159 what is the process if you go back to when 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.560 you're No. One in twenty how'd you start this process off? 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.560 What was you and what were your influences? 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:22.240 Well? 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:25.440 I was I became a writer in a very old 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:29.040 school way in that I was the apprentice to a 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.240 great writer. So I was a research assistant to a 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.040 writer named Robert Green, who's one of the great nonfiction 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.680 writers of the of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:43.640 And I learned the craft from him, and I worked 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.240 for him for many years. He showed me how books work, 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.200 he showed me how to tell stories, he showed. 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:48.680 Me how to research. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.240 I learned in that way and I think, you know, 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:54.800 today people think it's you know, you throw something up 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.560 online and he either finds an audience or it doesn't. 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:02.080 I wrote every day on line for you know, several 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:06.840 years between my first book and hitting a best selling 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.480 you know, hitting the New York Times bestseller list was a. 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:10.840 Period of several years. After that. 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.239 It was a It was an apprenticeship literally and then 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:18.600 an apprenticeship figuratively in sort of doing the thing over 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.520 and over and over again and learning not just how 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.640 to do the thing better, but also how to engage 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.320 and interact with an audience. You know, comedians talk about 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.160 you just got to get up on stage a lot 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:29.800 of times. 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.600 And that is one one advantage. 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:36.240 That the internet, you know, offers people is that it 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.280 is possible to get a lot of reps. And I 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:40.800 got a lot of reps in my twenties just writing 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.120 and writing and writing and writing, and you know, eventually 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:45.280 that I think that paid off. 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:47.879 It's pretty cool that you got to sort of deal with, 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:50.760 you know, someone write a book as powerful as a 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.119 forty forty eight Laws of Power, Like, I mean, that's 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.480 not necessarily saying that that book's are exactly my piece 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.960 of cake. But none it is a pretty it's a 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:06.480 pretty big deal and great a pretty successful person. Lots 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.720 of people always ask me questions about mentorship, so maybe, 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.840 you know, maybe you can tell us in a philosophical way, 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:19.040 the philosophy and the philosophy around seeking a mentor and 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:23.320 how you I don't want to use the word make use, 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.479 but how you take advantage of what the mentor has 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:25.880 to offer. 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:27.760 What does it mean? Mentorship? 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:34.000 It's a weird thing because a mentorship is something essential 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.000 and yet it is also something that's a little bit ineffable. 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:39.920 I sometimes I'll get emails from people and they'll say, hey, 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.160 will you be my mentor? They say, what's the How 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:44.920 can I find a mentor? And that's not really how 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:47.359