 right on dude uh excited to have you on here yeah thanks we uh i've i've read let's see here obstacles the way egos the enemy uh i'm halfway through uh stillness uh i absolutely love those i didn't know about your earlier work i found you later on yeah and when we we were trying to get you on the show a while back when we were out in austin the stuff that actually which is funny because i had all these things that i wanted to talk to you about with stoicism and everything but when i actually started digging deeper into you i actually became really fascinating with the marketing side yeah and so for our audience uh i'd love for you to kind of share your early history and how you got into the marketing and sales side and then we'll go from there sure yeah i don't know where to start i mean it's weird it seems weird to say it now but so in 2012 i wrote a book about how fake news is made uh and everyone basically said i was crazy and a liar and totally wrong um the book the book weirdly like it was like everyone in the media saw the book and was like he's a bad person you know this book is not true and then sort of actual people in marketing and people in politics people had messages they wanted to get out um they have very different reactions and they sort of become were you like the guy giving away the the magicians tricks or whatever well no no it was more like people like oh that's how it works um and like some good people you know i've heard from people hey i use this to raise a bunch of money for this charity or you know hey like this is how i broke through as a musician and that's really cool and then it's also like oh hey i'm the guy that gave donald trump the idea for the wall and trust me i'm lying is my favorite book and you're like so it's it's a little it's it's it's it's sort of a strange book so like many years ago michael louis wrote this book called liars poker which is like sort of about the excesses of wall street and i remember reading an interview about it and he said people come up to me and they go you're the reason i work on wall street and he's like that's literally the exact opposite intention i had with the book that's sort of the react the the relationship i have with that book i mean i totally i feel like it stands the test of time i feel like it's right i also feel like it's a little bit of a sort of a piece of time in my life um but i think a lot of people miss that it was primarily a cautionary tale not a how-to book right what motivated you to write a cautionary tale about how fake news is made and how media's manipulator used yeah so i i'd been a marketer for a long time and i'd worked with a lot of really controversial clients and so i sort of saw how easy it was to like just create controversy and the tension out of nowhere um and i mean little things i remember when so even with the book i was like okay let me people aren't gonna believe me so i'll just prove that i know what i'm talking about so like for instance i just announced that i got a half a million dollar book deal which wasn't true uh and the next thing no everyone's talking about it right how did this kid from nowhere get a half a million dollar book deal no one bothered to go like was it true or not and then and then i leaked that it was a celebrity tell-all about like clients that i had which also wasn't true and then everyone's like what's the what what sort of scoops are going to be in the book so it was like this had this big prepublication buzz and then i did this thing you guys know what helper reporter out is it's like a basically it's like craigslist for lazy journalists like if you if you're like hey i'm writing about i'm writing a trend story about x i need an expert who will pretend to like who i need an expert who will tell me exactly what i want to put in my story i see so if i'm like you know most trend pieces are total bullshit and so it's just the reporter trying to be like oh this person says it's a trend and this person says it's a trend therefore it's a trend so there's a service that does this right you pay a membership i had no idea you pay you pay a fee to be an expert and then reporters go like hey i'm looking for someone to say that uh kids are having sex with yo-yos and then you go oh i'll give you a you know all shut up all uh work exactly well that's why you'd ask me to be an expert in your story and i tell you all about it but so so the point is i signed up for the service and i just pretended to be an expert about a bunch of things i had no idea what i was talking about i was quoting the new york times as an expert on vinyl records like i i learned from the new york times piece that i was quoted in what lp stood for like i'd never listened to a record in my life i'm 25 when this happened right so uh you know quoted i was quoted on the today show and date line and all these different outlets about you know like preposterous nonsense like how to winterize your boat and uh you know like how millennials are afraid of investing in the stock market just like ridiculous stuff uh every basically every major media outlet you could think of uh and then i like revealed i was like look guys this is how the sausage gets made like uh and people were like you're a liar why did you do this and i was like guys i'm not the problem here the problem is that you a lot that it would take two seconds for the new york times to ban their reporters from using the service they don't want to do it because they have to churn out so much content so the anyways the the book was supposed to show just how flimsy most of the information that we get from the media isn't how how the this sort of page mentality that we have and the sort of free news mentality that we have is responsible for a lot of just false information um and and the point was like look if i can do this for fun as an experiment you know what can russia do that's sort of the argument oh yeah now is this because this is a a symptom of the kind of unlimited bandwidth that uh new technology is created in the sense that now there aren't just a few national you know newspapers there's an infinite number that i can post that so i really don't care if i put bad stuff out or it's less that it's more like uh an example i have a job posting in the book and this is from like 2015 so i updated the book a couple times but like in 2015 the washington post put out a help wanted ad for a blogger to post 12 times a day like you just imagine the pressure of someone has to write 12 articles a day like after nine you're just like i don't care i don't even have time to think about this right so so part of it's the pressure the big part of it is like if you think about what yellow journalism was right going back to the beginning of the 1900s a city like new york had 20 or 30 daily newspapers and so you remember that idea of like a news boy like extra extra about it what was driving the crazy like uh excesses of journalism in that time was that the newspapers had to fight for attention on a street right well now we have that except for it's called google news and it's called facebook and it's called twitter so it's it's the systemic sort of uh structure of the media creates an environment where nobody has time to really do a lot of real reporting and nobody like people go like why why does the media give donald trump two billion dollars worth of free publicity in 2016 it's like because they they made money off the free publicity that they gave them so is this are you seeing in politics are you seeing each side uses to their advantage in the sense of for example i remember somebody shared some article with and it was uh it was a bash liberal you know article about like look at these crazy liberals and what they're what they're talking about and you're reading this tweet supposedly written by a liberal and you're like oh my god that's insane i can't believe that and then i'm like wait a minute i wonder if the conservatives are finding some crazy tweet sure that nobody really believes in but they're sharing it to show how crazy they are they definitely are and and look this is when when people talk about the russian election interference they think it was like hacking into these polling stations and that was a kind of part of it but mostly it was that like i think something like 1800 fake russian accounts like twitter accounts were quoted in media stories in the election 1800 yeah so so so when you think about like when i when i do this help report out thing and i'm you know pretending i'm an expert on vinyl records people go oh that's not that bad uh how could they catch well the problem is they shouldn't be using random fucking people on the internet as sources for stories because when you do that it creates vulnerability so then russia can like uh take a fake russia can have a person that that um like pretends to be an extreme liberal or pretends to be an extreme conservative and then it just widens the divide between people so like i don't really think like look i think there's a lot of alarming political things happening right now but i don't think that magically in the course of just a couple years everyone suddenly became racist and suddenly got all these super extreme views on either side i think it's clear that uh the the the more polarizing the information we get the more likely we are to share and react to it on social media and i think that's driving what feels or is perceived as increased polarization but like i don't know about you but like i don't get in any political conflict in my actual real life you know what i mean i have a lot of reasonable conversations with people that i have very different beliefs with but very rarely do i hear anyone say anything dumb or overtly racist or you know uh i i don't see anyone enforcing this extreme political correctness in real life either i think it just exists almost entirely it's such a small small small percentage of people i mean i was a kid there was a magazine called the inquirer and uh there was these other magazines that were at the newsstands when you'd go through in the line at the grocery store and you'd read about like wolf you know mother gives both you know birth to four wolf kids or whatever and after a while you you're like okay the whole thing is bullshit do you think we're heading down that path where everyone's gonna be like at first it's kind of getting us all wire you know all hopped up and now at some point we're gonna be like it's all bullshit well i think one of the good one of the good things is that people are starting to like since the election uh the subscription rates for the washington post the new york times the washington journal very different papers but from different ideological viewpoints have gone way way up people have realized like oh uh the news i get for free is like kind of worth what i pay for right you know and actually one of the i so i think one realizing you got to pay for quality but two i also think podcast like the the podcast the the economics of podcasting so much better than uh a lot of the you know then then the sort of the blogging world so like look people subscribe to this show uh you know you guys have literally hours it's long form it's long form podcast episodes don't go viral right like it's it's hey i'm gonna sit down and listen to these guys talk for 90 minutes like that's not simply think about 140 characters versus a 90 minute thoughtful meandering discussion with real people like just so fundamentally better bullshit tends to get aired out in long form you don't get those like short you know yeah or even talk radio it's like they're just trying to rile you up and then get you to stick around through the commercial break like you guys aren't doing that and and so i think podcasts are i think we are starting to see some technological some economical but then also some some cultural shifts that are maybe making things better i mean the big thing i talk about this in the new book like people need to stop fucking watching cable news like it is the worst worst thing for society for your health like for being informed like uh and and like watching the news is maybe one thing like if they were like hey this plane crashed and we are going to give you this information the problem is like 90 percent of the news is a bunch of morons sitting around a table telling you their opinion about the plane crash right like sports sports news is like shows shows it's really bad it's like i was watching a panel this morning i was eating breakfast because it was on in the place i was eating and there was like like antonio brown did x and then it's like what's our opinion about antonio brown doing yes that's not that's not news right that's that's like that's just people don't know what they're talking about telling you what they think is going to happen meanwhile they're never accountable whether they're right or wrong so that just like people need to if you want to be happier you want to be more informed you want to be able to think big picture and have good ideas like that's sort of what i call stillness like you need to stop watching the news i watch zero news and actually like when i'm in the airport you know cnn pays for their channel to be played in airports like any airport you're in there playing cnn they're not just like because oh this is the most trusted name in news they're this is a transaction really wow i didn't know that yeah and so so like i when i walk through the airport i'm like i'm not gonna fall for this you know like i'm not gonna watch this but but you actually have to it's harder to sit there and read a book than it is just go like oh what don trump said you know and so you got to get away what what do you think is is most alarming about all what we're seeing right now i mean i think the most alarming trend generally is like we all live in very different realities from each other right so instead like so some people think x and some people think y about a pretty objective set of events you know i mean so like are we getting further apart i think so because we just consume such which is ironic in a time where we are most connected yeah yeah sure we're literally connected but we live on different planets yeah you know something's crazy when you go and on these network news channels and there's some kind of an event and you'll watch cnn or and fox and it's reported completely differently i actually do this this is something that i try i learned this practice sometimes i learned this practice years ago from a client who had this client who was she was exceptional at arguing her position and she always told me the way that she does that is she learns the other side as well as as her side so what i started doing is i'd go i'd watch fox and i'd flip between fox and msnbc on the same thing and i could see like wow this is the same event but completely different perspective narrative yeah completely and it's just it's just siloing us into different silos yeah and look this is just reality television but way more boring than you know good reality television you know so it's just it's just really i mean think about like what donald trump is and again i don't think this is a political statement donald trump is the greatest reality television character and producer in history right and he managed to turn our political system into one endlessly fascinating riveting reality show of which he is the star and prime beneficiary and people can't seem to understand that if you just turn it off it loses most of its power yeah you have the power he's he's i'm not do you think he's beatable do you think he's beatable in the next reelection yeah he's got to be the best he seems like he's so so far ahead in that in that area well look he's a horrible politician he's a great uh he's a great acquirer of attention politician has to accomplish things oh that's interesting my politics is a is a is an art it's a profession it's a craft like how do you uh broker compromises how do you pass legislation donald trump has passed like precisely zero pieces of legislation uh well i guess he did the tax cut which i don't have a huge problem with uh but like um as far as politics goes actually the strategy is abysmal he's probably left a lot of easy gains on the table but what he is really good at is making the news cycle all about him um yeah i think he's probably beatable if if these people can can it's like the what i the analogy i make with donald trump is that donald trump is running like a no huddle offense um which every once in a while someone will bring to the nfl and it will kind of catch teams off guard and then they figure it out right and then it stops working but it's like we just see like liberals seem to not be able to figure out what he's doing and they just fall for it like every time yeah you know along the lines of media attention and uh you and talking about your book stillness is the key you know it was really interesting that was the most recent book that you read one of the things one of the messages that we give on our show all the time is the importance of digital wellness yeah we think that's going to be one of the biggest things talked about in the next decade can you kind of speak on that a little bit what you how important you think that is for us to maybe detox from all this have you guys had cal newport on not yet but i know i'm gonna listen yeah so the idea of digital minimal and just being intentional like what i the way i think about is like i want to use technology i don't want to be used by technology and i don't think people realize for instance we're talking about the news like the news is free because it's selling you they are creating a show over here and then when your eyes are on it they then go hey look we got these people and they're watching this great point they sell like the joke is like if you're not paying for it you're the product that's being sold and so uh you've you've got it you want to be using the technology not the technology using you so like deciding to be intentional about these things so like i don't have any social media on my phone on purpose it's not that i don't use social media it's that i don't carry it around in my pocket and have it at arms reach all the time um my rule is like i don't touch my phone or use my phone for the first 30 minutes to one hour of the day so i don't sleep with it in in in my room i don't try not to use it as an alarm clock so that means like i'm starting the day with like a nine hour no phone streak does that make sense yeah totally and and it's it's really important uh that like so what happens is people wake up and then they the first thing they do is touch their phone and then they start the day from a reactionary place they like start the day on the back on their back foot it's like and this morning was a great example i had to use my phone as an alarm clock i'm staying in a hotel and so like you know i go to turn off the alarm and then the first when you click the phone it's like all these things uh thankfully i don't have any notifications on my phone except for text messages like i don't get emails that way i don't let cnn tell me anything i don't let instagram tell me anything but the the point is like uh it was just business and friendship related stuff like so instead of waking up and going how do i want this day to go what do i need to do today what place do i want to come at from this day it's like oh so and so gave me bad news or like oh this got canceled or like instead of so as a writer it's really important that i enter my work from the right headspace and that i'm sort of driving things so that idea of just not starting the day with the phone is really important for me do you think that because of uh the the ease of distractibility today the you know the social media we're talking about tech and the way media is do you think that's why we may be seeing a resurgence of these ancient philosophies that you write so much about stoicism seems to be having a like a resurgence in popularity and maybe that's because i'm more aware of it or is that even true yeah i mean it's funny when i went out with the first book that i wrote about stoicism this would have been in 2012 no one was like oh this is so timely uh this is going to be a huge trend um in fact they were like what is this how is this going to help people they're very skeptical um so it's kind of interesting to see how things have panned out what i've really found is that as much as things have changed like human beings are still human beings and so when you read about the stoics they're talking about how like i i open the the the first pages of stillness is the key with the story of of senica who's in rome he's trying to sit at his desk and write something and the noise from the street and from the you know the floor below him and the room next door was like literally indistinguishable from the uh what i was hearing from fourth avenue in san francisco this morning right um it as it might be sirens as opposed to shouting um or you know it it might be like slightly like the the specifics might have changed a little bit but the fundamental reality it's really hard to concentrate when it's noisy outside remains the same and and the truth is we there's not really anything new you can discover about doing it there's just kind of some bedrock principles and practices that you want to follow that help you focus that help you you know clarify what you want to do that help you you know be your sure your best self why do you think it's become more popular more recently i mean i think it's a couple things one of the things i've really tried to do in the books is is be understanding of the fact that like okay i'm a nerd i love history i love philosophy so i wake up and go well let's study this or let's study that most people don't do that most people wake up and then go i'm depressed or i don't like my job or i'm scared about x y or z most people wake up and say i have a problem and they are not primed to think hey ancient philosophy from Greece and Rome or from China or Japan could be the perfect solution to that problem as far as they know you know philosophy is like some turtleneck university professor lecturing them using a bunch of words that they can't pronounce and so i've really tried to combat that and try to present philosophy actually as a practical set of exercises or ways of thinking i'm trying to actually make the case that no philosophy is actually exactly what you need and it's designed as a solution to your problem so i think that's a big i think that's that like meeting people where they are has has helped the other thing is i do think people are realizing they're like okay i don't go to church i don't believe you know what the media tells me i don't um i don't have a you know i'm not going to work at this company for the next 30 years i don't trust politicians i hate my parents or whatever like all the old sort of things that kind of gave you a sense for how to live have fallen away and then people are like oh well what should i do or not do you know what are good rules for living i think jordan peterson's book worked really well because he's like look here are some rules for living and people are like thank you i need some rules for living yeah how do you define stoicism um so look you could you could tell people hey this is what year it was founded in in ancient Greece and these are the big you know these are the names and this the way i describe it is that stoicism is a is a philosophy that believes we don't control what happens in life we control how we respond right and the sort of core things that the stoic wants you to respond to life with or the sort of traits to live by are courage justice temperance that's moderation and wisdom and so it's it's not it's it's hardly controversial right it's not like asking you to do anything you don't already agree with it's just giving you a sense like sort of a code for living and and i think these are the kind of bed rocks of bedrock values of a good life there's two of them that you mentioned their courage and temperance that i could see being extremely challenging uh these days courage because in order to be courageous you have to embark on something you're terrified of something that's very challenging yeah and we've just made life super easy and we continuously try to do that yeah yes and then temperance uh moderation i you know and we see this a lot in our space in the fitness and health space these pleasure seekers who are like you know if it feels good it is good keep pushing what is your opinion on some of that yeah look uh we we used to have this idea of sin right like don't do this so you're so you'll go to hell right right and that obviously was sort of repressive and you know uh if you're not religious like it's yeah because you don't believe in hell well then yeah so so the christian argument is like don't do things don't do these bad things or don't you know do things in excess or you will die and go to hell the stoic argument is like a person who has no self control lives in hell right that these things that you think are pleasures are actually uh like the worst thing i could do is give you everything that you want so for the stoics it's all about balance it's not it's not that you can't have it's not you can't take a drink or you can't have sex or you know you can't uh you know strive to be uh great at what you do it's just you can't lie to yourself and and tell yourself that that's uh an unlimited amount is okay and that it's going to mean anything in the long run to you right so you know you just see these people who who there's just nothing is ever enough for them right there's not any amount of money that's enough not any amount of accomplishment that is enough any amount of partying or sex or adulation or fame is enough and this is actually just a miserable awful way to live oh yeah as evidenced by the rate of depression and suicide you see among celebrities sure people who have uh almost all of those things all the time or whenever they want what happens is we think oh if i get what i want then i will be happy and then what we forget is that the mind insidiously just moves the goalpost a little bit further each time i mean i thought oh i only want to do is be a writer then i'll you know and it's like okay what does a writer do a writer has a book so then i did a book and it's like oh this got to be a best seller it's like actually now i need to do a second book and i want to get paid more for it and then you know you just go on and on and and it's like it never occurs to us like hey last time i told myself if i get this thing then i'll be then i'll feel good and then i didn't feel that good but we go oh it was just not enough i you know it was like i thought i needed a million dollars turns out actually it's 10 that's what addiction sounds like of course we were talking about how we interviewed um mark manson and he wrote his book and it crushed and he was depressed afterwards because of exactly what you're talking about no i uh mark's a good friend we i remember seeing him this is maybe 18 months after it had really popped we were hanging out and he was like he was i don't want to say he was like a shell of himself but you could tell he was kind of shell shocked by all of it like because uh it was so out of i don't think it was like i don't think mark was someone was like oh if i'm really a famous successful author i'll be happy i think he's he's way too smart and and wise to think that i think it was more like it was such a of an overwhelming amount of success that he was dealing with what happens like we're talking about when things are out of balance like it was like it just it took him a while to figure out how to balance his life out and you know i remember he was saying he was like he decided he was going to start eating better and working out and taking better care of himself and developing more of a schedule i think ironically throwing himself into the next book was probably the best thing he he ended up doing and that's something i've i've worked on in my career like when when the obstacles away came out it did well like it it didn't like blow the doors off it did well um but i'd already sold what was going to become ego is the enemy so it was sort of like um the fact that it you know it didn't it didn't pop like i didn't care i had like a deadline to meet you know like i had work to do um and then when it really blew up when it really started selling um it also didn't matter because like i still had to deliver this book right and so sometimes like the best thing is just to like go back into the work you know like and i think that's why you know you hear of like a nick sabin or a dabbos weenie who it's like they win a national championship and then they're like on a recruiting trip the next day something they can't enjoy it it's that they know um that that it's better not to sit there and pat yourself on the back too much i think they understand that it's the journey more than the destination of course and get right back on the journey again you're you're you're you're reminding me of um you know as you're talking about some of these philosophies and this non identification or not worshiping these things it reminds me of like the beatitudes and Christianity or the eastern religions and how they talk about you know detachment i feel like this this these lessons are echoed in all these all over the world which kind of shows that they're probably true but all of these teachings that have been around for a long time there's always a metaphysical aspect that's connected whether it's god or something outside of you know otherworldly can these these teachings or or understands can they be just as effective if you don't believe in the metaphysical if you're let's say you're an atheist yeah yeah so so the Stoics were not the Stoics come at this interesting point in history sort of as the idea of the gods are kind of falling away but like god it like the the sort of monotheistic god that we have in the west now has not sort of is not really taken hold the same way like Jesus and Seneca were born in the same year so like it it's kind of like these things are all swirling about at the same time which is why i think there's a lot of similarities but i think Stoicism and Christianity are making very similar arguments but i feel like Stoicism is arguing it more from a logical standpoint like a hey you're here right now do you like let's look at what works and what doesn't work and what what is sustainable and isn't sustainable and then yeah in Christianity there's there is more of like this is what god things you should do i'm not super picky and choosy about like how you get there i think it's just important that you get to a place where you're balanced and centered where you have a strong moral compass where you make good decisions where you don't take life for granted you know all where you treat other people well i think there's lots of ways to get there i think philosophy is probably the most robust and practical way to get there but like look if if if you want to go to church every weekend and that that's what does it for you like you know great or if you want to go to meditation retreats every weekend and that's how you get there cool good for you the point is that you're doing the work this this stuff doesn't just happen you don't just get to sort of enlightenment and inner peace and and sort of wisdom uh by playing video games right so glad just oh yeah did you have a specific code that you grew up with that um maybe like later on you found stoicism that really resonated with you but what what did that look like growing up in terms of you trying to figure all this out yeah i i in a way i almost wish that i'd had more sort of explicit stuff like i don't think we talk about these things enough um i don't know if i could have i don't know i knew the ten commandments existed i don't know what they were right we we kind of have this weird thing now i think particularly educationally where it's like we don't want to teach people too clearly right and wrong because it feels like loaded totally like i was thinking about you know the story of uh you know uh george washington chopping down the cherry tree i didn't learn that story i learned how that story is not true you know what i mean it's like they want they wanted to be like hey you know that story that we used to teach uh kids about why lying is a good idea and why it's good to be honest like yeah like that's bullshit right like just i i need you to know that's bullshit you know okay thanks yeah it's important it's important that you know that george washington was a liar and a hypocrite and they own slaves and then all the founding fathers sucked and uh you know what like so it almost like we've knocked down everything and then what's left is this kind of nihilism like people don't know what to do and what not to do that's what i've always not gotten about the outrage about jordan peterson people like oh well it's like they're a lot worse people yeah that like dudes could be listening to then then jordan peterson or joe rogan it's like would you rather would you rather these people be at you know alt right rallies like joe rogan is telling them to like read you know these these crazy complex books and he's getting them to check out these college professors and he's telling them to take care of themselves like what are you upset about right yeah that's so that's so absolutely true and one thing that worries me a little bit and you kind of touched upon this is the air of moral relativism that seems to be sure growing a little bit now where we're not it where it's like we shy away from teaching okay no this is objectively right and this is objectively wrong rather it's all from your perspective and it's all okay i mean how do you feel about that yeah like i don't think i don't think they used to think the george washington chopping down the cherry trees story was true i think they they were telling it because they wanted to teach a lesson a moral parable about you know i teaching through stories how people learn and sometimes you round the facts off to to make the point of the story clear and i kind of do that with my books too everyone's all people be like oh you know what about this or you know they'll be like oh you know john d rockfeller also polluted the environment or whatever and it's like that doesn't change the fact that he was very disciplined in this other aspect of his life and that we can learn from him so we have this weird i actually saw this is trust me i'm lying people wanted to go like oh well what about x this should invalidate his whole book it like we have this weird thing where we need like totally pure uh they don't exist yeah no it doesn't exist at all and and so when it's like we it's almost like the real cancel culture it's like we're almost actively working to just undermine everything that might be of value to people and then nobody's proposing anything like like look i for instance and look this is obviously easier for me to say because i'm not an oppressed minority but like yes sure there's way too many dead white guys in our history books and and we obscure all sorts of other voices i get this i do an email each month where i recommend books and people will go like where are the women on this list and i always reply what's a book you recommend you know don't just say that it's biased this way or that way like give me a book recommendation i have no like i would love we get that with podcast you guys should have more female i say send me one yeah of course send me one we'd love to have them on here yeah and and and look i also get it's it's my job to go be balanced and to explore i'm not saying that you should do my work for me but the point is like don't just tear things down also like uh i wrote my first book when i was living in new orleans was like i don't think there should be a robert lee statue in the middle of town like he's a fucking traitor like uh i don't care about robert lee but i think it's sad that they took the statue down and nobody can come up with any idea for what's that like who's a better person that should go there did you know what i mean like yeah like i'd rather see little wane up there like at least that's a person you know from new orleans who like could maybe inspire some people right it seems like um certain things matter more today than ever when they were when i was taught they weren't supposed to sex you know so your gender all of a sudden matters like crazy you know i had somebody um create this list and send it to me to to complain and say the top podcast are all hosted by men there's not enough female podcast there i can't why does that matter all of a sudden so much more whereas when i was the way i grew up was your it shouldn't matter what your gender is if you do a good job you do a good job or race all of a sudden it matters like great what's going on do you think that's a symptom of what you were talking about with the media that they're just catching at people's attention yeah i mean it's complicated because on the one hand you know people are like uh it shouldn't matter and we shouldn't be thinking about these things but people used to say that and then they kind of were also excluding people right like it's like uh it's like okay maybe there's some excesses in the me too movement but there were also some deficiencies in culture before that was allowing some of this shit to happen right like where were you like people like oh this is excessive and it's a miscarriage of justice it was also a miscarriage of justice that nobody did anything about harvey weinstein for three decades or whatever right so um i i think it's it's a complicated situation and it can be easy to be like glib about it but it is it is strange that uh all of a sudden like people's race and people's gender and people's background is now back to being the main thing about them that's what i meant yeah and and i think that's heading in the wrong direction um it's uh it's not weird i think it's i think it's more normal than we realize i think what it is is that and this has happened forever where we're extreme on one side there's an autocorrect the others that it swings the other direction now the difference today is the swings are harder and faster sure so that's what i really think it is i think and i think that we can be a little alarmist sometimes like oh my god fuck we keep heading this direction then we're all gonna die or everyone's gonna kill each other civil wars coming in in five years it's like eh i think i think we uh should give ourselves more of the benefit of the doubt that we're smarter humans than that yeah and a lot of this is just it's natural there is there was there was a time for us to be speaking about those things and there was definitely a time when a lot of people were being suppressed and i think that we definitely should have autocorrected it i just think it's a harder swing and faster now because of media and stuff like that that's what i really think it is well and and one of the things that's i think really core to stoicism is they're just like look you got to zoom out you can't you can't sweat the either swing because humanity has been swinging like this for that so i think when you read like someone like marcus real is he's just like he's like what were people doing three emperors or go they were doing the same shit they're doing now what are they gonna be doing you know uh three emperors from now they're gonna be doing the same shit and and i think one of the what i'm talking when i'm saying like don't read the don't watch the news or don't consume news i'm saying replace that with the study of history you know with with studying bigger picture things because it helps you relax a little bit so like i do think things are bad and we're sort of talking about where where there's problems but like i also don't like wake up every morning stressed out i go like look this things have been way worse than this right right to your point about uh history and stuff so you i actually um really enjoyed the podcast that you did with dr drew yeah and you're you're quite the historian thanks uh and is is there a historical story that you think more people should know i mean yeah i feel like every story in my book like uh in my books i'm like i think you should know this like here's a weird one like i talk about and frank and in the new book quite a bit i was reading the study there's more and more kids don't even know who that is right like there's people who don't even really under the holocaust was so long ago now it almost doesn't feel real to people and so a lot of these like conspiracy theories that are popping up are partly a result of the fact that like it's just inexplicable like it's nearly fantastic that that humans could have done such a horrible thing but but if you really study history you're like even the holocaust it's like not the worst thing humans have done to each like we are awful and and we allow horrible things to happen on a pretty regular basis and and so you history gives you i think what history gives you a sense of is like what to be worried about and what to be really worried about and so i think a lot of the things that people get outraged about today matter like this much and then what they're ignoring is the things that are really actually terrifying like you know i was telling the story of the cuban missile crisis in the book just how close we came to nuclear annihilation and how much rested on the single so so it's like you know people are like oh you know donald trump is corrupt that's why shouldn't be president or donald trump is this that's why i shouldn't be president and it's like i mean if you study what the temperament of the office requires historically it's like all of that becomes moot and and it becomes obvious why this is a bad idea for you know what i'm saying oh totally it's like um people get so mad with certain things about who's president i think to them i think to myself they shouldn't have that much power to begin with that's what really matters because when they have too much power as well yeah and have you are you familiar with the site human progress dot org no oh phenomenal site and it talks about all the statistics that are real like how it's the safest time in human history like how we've lifted you know billions of people out of poverty in the last you know a few decades more than we've ever done in all of human history but yeah you get the sense we're like about to all die yeah oh totally like like people think it's so tumultuous politically and like this is the craziest time ever just look at the 60s and 70s you had civil rights activists and leaders getting assassinated left and right it was no in in the 60s there was something like 2000 terrorist bombings in the united states by domestic acts of domestic terrorism mostly by left extreme left-wing groups but some right-wing groups it was like every almost every single day like ten years people were like throwing bombs and murdering cops and like you know the weather underground right that was a real domestic terror group that was doing crazy shit far worse than than it is today i want to go back to when you first were introduced to stoicism you were 19 yeah i think it wasn't dr drew right yeah it was dr drew now tell me about who you were before that and then who you became after that was it just a radical shift right away when you were introduced i don't know if it was a radical shift but i would say there was some transition where i went from being like just a kid to like um what i would describe as a man do you know what i mean like i think it was like oh this is what an adult does and thinks like this is how life is lived like this is what it means to take responsibility for yourself this is what it means to have some idea of honor or integrity or self-respect like i think it was just i just remember sitting i was sitting in the um the like the kitchen table in my college apartment and i was just it was like no one's ever talked to me like this like and then not that he's not that marcus reels is critical but it's more like he's like you know you have this power you have this responsibility like and it's incumbent upon you to sort of seize it and live up to it and and you're you dropped out of college i did not that long after that no wait did this play a role and you want to drop a little bit a little bit it was more like i was sort of on a track uh like i really wanted to be a writer and so i'd gone and i'd met these uh very successful writers through you know the fact that i was a journalist in college and just was like i was just looking for my shot and i got a couple of them and i thought i'm not gonna come i'm not gonna turn down these opportunities to go back to a classroom and have someone who knows less about that topic teach me about it that's a that's a big thing to understand at the age of 19 in college yeah and it's very scary was there a lot of pushback from parents and yeah i mean it uh i don't want to say my parents disowned me because it wasn't like a it wasn't that like clear but it was like uh it was a not pleasant time like a lot of forgiveness had to happen afterwards at what point were they like okay you made the right decision uh yeah no i i don't know if there was a an exact date but like it it took a long it took a long time for that to heal um how much was that a driver for you uh not not really i've never been that kind of person i try to talk about this in the book it's a real shitty way to live your life like i feel like anger or that sort of proving them wrong is a powerful fuel but it's very corrosive right so it kind of eats it whatever the vessel that's holding it is yeah most people that most people that recognize that though had to go through it first before they piece it together yeah i i maybe that's just not how i'm built or maybe i did go through and i sort of learn i don't know i just the problem is not only uh yeah they're not even gonna notice when you do prove them wrong right because they don't care but but it's not going to be whatever you think it's going to be um i think for me it was it was it was more it was more positive it was more like um so these people over here don't believe in me but these people over here do believe in me so i i i did try to go to the positive like i heard this from someone it sounds a little cliche but there it's like don't don't try to prove people wrong try to prove the people who believe in you right and and i i i definitely had uh some really great mentors and and people who took a shot on me that in retrospect it's like i don't know how they saw it because i i uh i didn't see it you know what i mean it's not like i was like i'm destined for greatness of course you're gonna take this bet it was it was more like like uh it was it was it was really selfless when i think about it like that they they were like sort of bet on me and cultivated me and and supported me but i think the way i was primarily driven by was like not letting those people down not thinking about the people who weren't supporting me do you remember like specific quotes or pieces of stoicism that like really like turned it on for you or something that you read and you're like holy shit that like just yeah i mean i feel like it's been a continual process of that like what's so awesome about stoicism there's this it's actually in meditations he says um like no man steps in the same river twice and what he means is that like you're changing always and events are changing so it's like it's been it's been really incredible for me that this book i read when i was 20 i've now read hundreds and hundreds of times is still teaching me new things and i think that's what really great wisdom does um but i mean at the at the core of that just that idea is like oh you don't control what happens you control your spawn is like just like a sort of a very core life lesson that's helped me in business it's helped me in relationships it's helped me in traffic you know it's like like getting upset about this does absolutely nothing and in getting upset i'm leaving the following other options uh to rot what in life challenges that for you the most like what happens to you in life we're like okay i gotta remember it's how i react and how i respond yeah that's a good question i mean uh that's a good question i mean i do try to remind myself constantly as a writer it's like i control the books that i write i control the time i put into like marketing them or positioning them or promoting them but like ultimately you can't make anyone buy anything and you can't make the new york times decide to recognize it or whatever right like you can only the there's two way too many people hand over their personal happiness to or they place it on the altar of like sort of professional success or recognition and i mean just think about how unfair the world is think about how many people have been discriminated against how many times nepotism got in the way of you know someone uh you know some other person who more deserved it think about all the really brilliant artists or you know visionaries who we made fun of you know like the world is not a meritocracy like at all and so if you go around and go hey i did x where's my reward for doing x you're gonna be continually crushed you're a father right yes yeah how does your your son i have a three-year-old and a four-month-old oh wow what have your children taught you i mean you want to talk about like what's not in your control is like chaos yeah it's chaos but it's it um it's just a reminder that like you're not you don't get to decide like i think i think especially as you become successful and you sort of become you know the driver of your own career whatever you it's very rare that you're not doing things the way you want to do them or on the schedule you want to do them and it's like hey we left the house at noon to go this thing at one um but then you know the kid fell asleep at 12 45 it's like oh actually the event starts when he wakes up not when we decide to go you know what i mean like like uh you're not in control like this small child is in control or you know you think this is fun but actually they want to play with this cardboard box so that's what you're going to do for the next like two hours you know what i mean absolutely it's been just sort of a constant reminder of just like just like going with it do you do you ever think to yourself like okay you know as my kids grow up because i think your oldest was held for three four three as as the as he grows up and you know becomes a teenager and the challenges get harder and harder do you ever think to yourself like okay i'm going to teach my kid like hey you know this is this is life it's how you react to it do you feel like what if he thinks i'm not being empathetic or you know how am i going to communicate this to no it's tricky i i started a site uh earlier this year called daily dad and i sort of look at it's daily dad.com and it's like try to take some of the same things i'm doing with stoicism but just sort of ancient wisdom apply the interesting thing is like people have been parents for literally as long as there's been humans right and yet we're kind of like we're way too focused on like what the latest parenting study says or what the latest educational practices what we don't think about is like people have been doing a pretty good job for a quite some time and so i think one of the things i'm i'm always looking at is like what is smart what if what did people smarter than me tend to do and what lessons can i learn from that and how can i sort of practice them and follow them and you know just remind myself of them can you share a some the some that you've learned um yeah i mean the the thing i was just telling you about not being in control i read this story i wrote an email about it when david brooks's son was born someone sent him a letter and they said welcome to the world of unavoidable reality and what they meant is like a lot of times like you get to avoid things you don't want like you know you get to decide and then it's like you don't get to decide you know you thought you were going on a wonderful beach vacation and then both your kids got sick you know two seconds after you got to the hotel and so actually your wonderful beach vacation is you sitting in a hotel room watching tv for the next three days yeah and i think that ties into another thing i learned jerry seinfeld was giving an interview and he was talking about parents always talk about this idea of quality time like i want to have quality time so that's like going to a museum or you know it's just me and you doing this and he's like fuck quality time it's like it's garbage time is the best time like he's like that weekend that you're stuck in a hotel room because you're all sick is not any less meaningful than you all being at disneyland and in fact it's like the forcing the moments you see those families and the arguments at disneyland because they're like we paid so much money for this you need to enjoy it you know and and that's something i've really tried to practice i don't have that much experience this is only three but just like no this is it like this is parenting parenting is not what you see in movies it's not these special moments it's just like i'm driving you to school and you're singing you know or like isn't that way for a walk this morning isn't that we're trying to highlight the most and steelness is to be able to recognize that those ordinary moments totally super present yeah i think people go people think like beauty is like looking out over the grand canyon or something that's like the easiest way to like be like oh isn't life wonderful can you say like oh isn't life wonderful as you're like sitting back in one of those crappy chairs at the airport because your flight's three hours delayed you know i mean like can can you can you like it's not like uh yeah it's not looking at you know your breath on a on a you know the top of beautiful mountain but it's just like noticing the way that the steam is coming up from the sewer when you're walking the you know down the block in new york city just like can you notice just ordinary things about life and can you appreciate them and notice them and and not try to it's like why are we rushing through all this right you know the stoics go like you know what's at the end death why are you why are you running exactly have you heard jordan peterson actually talk about this so he on on uh i believe it was joe's podcast that he did this broken yeah he he talked about and this like changed my life yeah hearing this this this statement he makes he goes and he's right along the lines of your time out with vacations and shit we got a disneyland trip plan next year we've already got a plan we've spent hours figuring the hotel out to look i mean and he talks about all this time spent for this seven the seven day or three day trip you're going to do a year later and he goes when was the last time you thought about the first 10 minutes when you walk through the door and you see your wife every single day yeah what you're going to do for the rest of your life and the total time majority of your time yeah that's that's more of your life sure that you will spend doing that than almost anything else but how often do you think about that 10 minute moment that you walk in what you say to her first how you look and i was just like fuck you know yeah no no people think oh i don't want him to watch this movie there's like cursing in her i don't like this i don't like this bad friend who's an influence and what you don't think about is like what behavior are you modeling they are watching you constantly and you're thinking about you know you're thinking about all these sort of big set pieces and you're sort of ignoring the day-to-day reality of who you are as a human being and and yeah it is weird though like we i see this with my parents it's like they'll come to visit and then it's like the important thing is like did they check in for their flight in time it's like you're here now you know like you're here now and you who knows how much how many more times you can do this why are you why are you ignoring it to get to remove some minor inconvenience in the future right it's a my daughter actually taught me a lesson in that we were driving a couple hours to go somewhere stuck in traffic and i was super irritated because we were in traffic and i'm visibly angry and my daughter's like why are you so mad and i'm like because we're not we're gonna be late for where we need to be and she's like well what's so good about where we're gonna go i'm like because then we can all be together and she goes well we're together now and i'm like oh i guess you're right totally guess school yeah totally totally blew my mind um what do your critics say about you do you have any critics of course if you don't have any critics you're not doing anything right what do they say what are the what are their main criticisms i went to craig silverman 2012 oh yeah he didn't like you very much he didn't uh but what do i care what he thinks you know right excellent uh yeah he had this weird he had this weird thing uh yeah i think he so he was one of the first people to write about trust me i'm lying and he wrote something it was like it was like uh i was saying like this is how the sausage gets made and he was like do you want to hear about it from the person who's making it was like yeah of course like who would you rather it was a weird thing uh but the the all all those people it's like uh where are they now you know i don't i don't think about that that much um i have critics on on all the books you know it it's important when you have critics one like so epic titus as a line is like when someone criticizes you you should think like if only they really knew me they'd be a lot meaner love that you know like i think that's really true um but but one of the other things i think about when i'm criticized is that go like okay for instance so people go oh the uh they'll say like oh an ego is the enemy or daily stoke or stillness is the key they're like ryan's not saying anything with the that he's not saying anything new and it's like thanks that's like you nailed exactly what i was trying to do it's like the point was i was supposed to take ancient wisdom and make it applicable for people they'll go like why not just read the original stokes and i was like i would love for them to do that like if you told me that nobody read my books but however many you know millions of people have read my books read the actual stokes instead and probably take that trade you know it'd be bad for me i find it'd be bad for me financially but good for the world right so you you gotta um you gotta think about so oftentimes what people are saying critically is actually just rephrasing exactly whatever your intention was you know um so like when you're saying like hey this is just popularizing stoicism it's like thanks you know that's exactly what i wanted to do that's the goal brian koppelman uh he wrote rounders and billions he was telling me one time i think he's talked about this in podcasts when he went out for the script uh you know um for rounders people were like uh it feels like this is all just a bunch of you know people saying cool things and diet like he was like there's too much they were criticizing exactly like he and his partner had set out to write a movie that was super quotable that was like a bunch of dudes like saying cool things to each other right splash the pot whenever the fuck i want that's right three stacks of high society see how good it was so he's like so so you have to know when you're getting criticism like just because they're saying it doesn't mean it's bad it might be exactly what you wanted to do and i think about that a lot and and obviously with books you have editors you have critics you have your friends reading one of the mistakes they see a lot of creative people make is that they take all criticism seriously rather than going like does this person one have any credentials they have any expertise in the subject matter and two do they actually understand what i was trying to accomplish because if the criticism helps me get closer to what i want to accomplish then i'll listen if the criticism is correct but actually reaffirms what i was trying to do then i don't have to listen right what books are you are you reading now or what are some books that you've read that have really been impactful for you um i mean i'm always reading uh i i tend to kind of have two different types of reading like there's like hey i think this would be cool maybe i'll learn from this and more like i'm studying this person for something i'm gonna write about i mean a really cool biography of uh douglas macArthur that that someone sent me right now and i'm fascinated in um i really i've mentioned david brooks earlier i liked his book the second mountain um i think david eppstein's book range is really good i'd recommend that um yeah have you read ecart toly uh yeah here in there yeah yeah he i mean he talks a lot about you know being in the present but again this is a message that's been echoed by of course i mean we're all he and i and all the people writing these books today are drawing from like the same 25 sources but we're not inventing any of this well that just tells me that there's truth there when you hear it from different cultures and different people and different truth seekers and that it sounds very similar just communicated in different ways which i think is important i don't think i don't think we can we need to appreciate how important it is that people communicate the same effective ideas differently because then it reaches more people sure you know i think that's an that's yeah we need to be reminded of these ideas i think yeah like if we just keep going on we forget like where the truth lies and so it's good to bring it back to the surface ryan are you money motivated in in what sense i mean i don't work for free right but are you driven by that or is that is that a major motivation for you and if not what is i don't i wouldn't say i'm driven by it uh i think it's it can sometimes be a proxy for like heading in the right direction but in other times it can be evidence of the exact opposite right so what the way i think like for me like autonomy is what i want i want uh so there are lots of things that i've done in my life that that got me more money but less autonomy and i they made me unhappy and then there's times i've turned down fairly large amounts of money or fairly cool opportunities that other people would have probably gladly said yes to that that got me further away so like i kind of think about like i don't think let i think less about like let me accumulate as much money as possible and i think more about like what do i want my life to look like and not like how do we make it here so then it could be here so then it could be here but more like day-to-day what kind of life do i want to live and then i think about and are the decisions that i'm making or the things i'm saying yes to are doing is it moving me closer to that or further away from that what do you think is that how you measure that you think it's like a time money thing for you is it like this cost me this much time in order to create something like this to make so much money which in turn you normally use to create more freedom anyways yeah a little bit i was talking to kasey nice that one time and he was like it's not a you don't make uh he's like you don't make art to make money you make money to make more art and so one of the things i think about is like if i am going to do something like my rule for my my sort of creative agency which has worked with a bunch of cool brands and you know businesses and authors and then when i'm like ghost writing or other projects like that i think like okay this is either something like if i'm weighing a project it's either like this something i'm really proud of or this gives me money that allows me to pursue work or things that i am proud of so um it's got a it's got to pass one of those tests do you have a like a writing process or is there a way that you get yourself in the space to be able to create what you create do you have like a formula for yourself you have to you can't like i think people think well i think people think writers are just like you know live in some fantasy life or that you sort of roll out of bed and just right yeah it's not it's uh it's it's a kind of like you have to have a routine i don't want to say you're like a monk or something but you you have to take care of yourself and you have to have really good habits because it's such a long process it's not you know the new book uh you know stillness probably took two years to write you know uh it's probably three years from start to finish on the whole thing from the thinking to the you know the the launch day a couple weeks ago and so that's not you don't you're not measuring three years in days like it's weeks or months right and so if you're just like winging it that's you're not going to get where you need to go you got to have it and what i think is like you have good habits you have good processes you have good discipline what comes out of that is publishable work so it's like i show up i do it every day day in and day out uh and then it out of the other side of that comes the stuff that i want there are some there are some things that you do for yourself that will help get you in that and that like do you do you have to like i know people who listen to music they have to go for a ride a bunch of bullshit that doesn't go anywhere you know just get it out of your brain some cigarettes yeah so so every every morning uh so i wake up early and then uh my son and i would go for a long walk don't take the phone long walk then i come in and i usually sit down with a journal and i spend some you know some time doing what they call morning pages just sort of like knocking stuff out and then i try to go just sort of right into the writing and i try to get as much of it done as early as possible um and that so i'm very protective of that space so my my assistant basically never schedules anything before noon um and even my other rule is like basically nothing no more than like three things a day obviously like being on book tours a little bit different but like like i remember i sat her down with my schedule and i was like look anytime you're scheduling things i'm not writing in that time and so your job is not to say yes to things but to say no to things so i can have space to do this main thing are you in the pro are you writing something now yeah i mean i so this one just came out and then god you have a book coming on you're writing another one always but i mean that's how you that's how you prevent the good and the bad from from getting from hitting you too hard um like uh so i found out yesterday i debuted at number one on the new york times list oh wow but you know this morning i was back at it and it was like hard you know and so it you don't have time to think about the the good stuff and it if it had you know been snubbed i would have i would have been too busy with the challenge to worry about the thing you know do you find the process of creating and writing because you've done it now so many times getting easier or is it getting harder it's it's easier in some ways because you you can predict where things are going a little bit right like so when things are really hard i know like things are always hard at this stage or whatever right there's a little bit of that um like i'm sure the first time tiger woods reinvents his swing he has no idea whether he's going to come out the other side with it and a better swing the second time he does it's probably a little less scary and the third time probably a little scary um so i'm sure it's the same with starting a company or you know skydiving or whatever it is um so i think that's part of it um but it never the blank page never gets any less blank yeah i was just going to say because i feel like the easier part would be well i've done this a few times the hard part would be i got to come up with more great ideas and more great books and i've already put out four or five or whatever nine no it's it's uh it's never it's never as good on the page as it is in your head and the expression is like your last book will never write your next one so you always are starting starting from scratch but it's like oh yeah it's not any good were any of the books good at this stage no you know so you just keep going it's so you have some you have some more context or experience that allows you to sort of think think about it differently because you've been doing this so much i mean you you write blogs you write i mean you're writing books all the time you're writing emails you're constantly creating content do you know like when you when you hit send are you like this is fire like see can you tell and it can you tell like we'll see how this goes yeah yeah definitely um you i wrote this piece a while back i i sort of to me like the the thing i'm chasing is like that sound of the ball connecting with the bat right like and i i you can just really feel it sometimes you're like i i really got under this one you know like i really got this in the right spot that flow state yeah and and sometimes i just i can just like i can just hear that sound in my head and it's sort of like a kind of like a mantra for me uh so you're not thinking about the results you're not thinking about where the ball's going you're not thinking the crowd you're just thinking just the connecting part um so yes sometimes you're like okay this this is this is gonna happen uh this i really did it other times you're like did i get it did i get there and then you're surprised other times you're convinced you cracked it and you know nobody cares so it's it's it's it's definitely an art not a science are you competitive with your last book or is it a completely new thing every time um you're competitive so i mean you're competitive in the sense that kind of benchmarks you a little bit but like you know so the launch of this one i think is like four times what you go was which is awesome but at the same time like i'm i'm what i'm really not interested in is like week to week like uh i care like or did i make something that's got a shot at still being here in 10 years or something like that i want to think longer term than and i i i had the benefit now of looking at the sales numbers of the other books and it's like oh launch week was less than one percent of overall sales so why am i going to put too much significance on launch week one way or another right right do you think that because since you do use it like a benchmark like that and one of the things i think about right away is the conversation that we had with mark manson and his subtle art of not giving a fuck yeah like do you think that's kind of almost a bad thing or would you it to be that early on in your writing career and hit something out that's chasing the damn bible it's like how am i ever gonna you're never gonna top that are you yeah so i think i have this quote in the book so somebody asked joseph heller uh he's the guy that wrote catcher into that some you know snarky critic was like you haven't written a book as good as catch 22 and he was like who has yeah um so like mark wrote a great book that's all the metric shit ton of copies like the idea that not doing that again is failure is just like right postures like so i think you know when you're in that position you got to come up with some reasonable objective measurement of what success i think that was in isolation i think it would be hard though don't you because it's like saying a baseball using the baseball analogy like you had a year where you hit 20 home runs you probably expect you're gonna hit 20 home but that's a great season it's an incredible season how many people hit 20 home runs that's really that that's why you have to always come back sorted to the present which is like not comparing yourself to the past not speculating about the future but just like writing the best fucking book that you can putting everything you have into the marketing not feeling like you left anything on the table or you were entitled i think the i think what you tend to see is like all the good habits that went into the one level like early success whether it's in sports or writing or whatever people abandon the second go around because they think they don't need to do it anymore you know what i mean so um pat riley says like the disease of me like he says the team has the innocent climb that's early on and then the disease of me pulls them apart the second when you try to repeat championships yeah so i think you know i think mark did a good job i think i've tried to do a good job it's like it's not how many copies it's not it's not like how many copies of the last book sell but like what were the what were the principles that went into making it a success because ultimately that's what you control like look that book is such a monster hit obviously some of us to do timing and you can't recreate timing and there there are moments that i've had with my books like oh this promo you know worked out better than expected because of some freak timing things and there's bad things that have happened that were not my fault either and so i gotta tune all that out and go like what were the things i controlled as part of the process that i can replicate in rounds two three four five you had mentioned earlier that you really valued autonomy yeah quite a bit do you think this is like one of the the prevailing traits among all authors and maybe even entrepreneurs that we just value autonomy so much so we're like hey i don't want to work for someone else i want to be able to do my own thing yeah i mean just like not wanting to go to an office is probably a bad reason to be an entrepreneur but like you know and i think i think some people do do do it that way i think it's more like it's like no i i want to be in control of my destiny i don't want other people telling me what i can and can't do like to me what i love about being an author is like if i write something more or less the way i wrote it is going to be how it comes out then i talk to people who um you know work in hollywood they get paid it's bad if you can if you make it to like whatever my level is as an author translated to to being a screenwriter would be you know a considerable pay increase but you know people spend two years of their life writing a script and then some studio execs says nope not or they you get fired off your own project yeah so so ultimately i like being in control of the destiny more than i like some of the other things has this been a trait of yours since you were a kid i think in retrospect yeah yeah were you a good kid were you i was a much better kid than uh i think people thought i was like i think people thought i was you know somewhat difficult to manage or whatever but in retrospect it's like that could have been a lot worse you know what would your parents say is the biggest pain they asked about you that's a good question i don't know probably the that's what i mean probably the autonomy thing but it's like it's not like i wanted autonomy so i could go do heroin you know it's like i want to write books mom yeah right well excellent well one last question i gotta ask you uh you know book crushes it uh big paycheck comes in the mail goes in the check or in the in the bank account what's the first thing you go buy or spend money on yeah i was actually so i i just sort of worked out a deal for what my next book will be and and it is like a pretty considerable check don't lie to us what i said don't lie to us what do you mean how much it is a half a million dollars right yes right right right now uh more than that uh but uh but it i was i was marveling to my wife that it's i don't think it doesn't really change anything i think we've got like we we have our life the way we want it we mostly do the things i want to do like i i try to i've tried to set out my life and live from a place that there's not a lot of craving in it like there's not a lot of like if only i had x then i could do x um if i really want to do something i'll find a way to do it i don't think money is like the best way to get there so yeah like uh if i had a if i had a hundred million dollars i don't think it would substantially change my life that much if i lost you know 90 percent of my net worth it wouldn't change my life that much right that's kind of what stoicism is about it's about getting to a place where it's really hard to rattle you because or or that you can't you can rock the boat but you can't capsize it and so that that's not an easy place to get to and it's taken some work but um no guilty pleasures though not really no really yeah oh that's cool you know like an iron maiden concert front row vip back seat like nothing like that no i so it's funny so i spoke to the san antonio spurs uh like two weeks ago and uh they they were like hey this is the offer this is the thing i said look uh the night before the talk iron maiden is playing at the atn t center uh all come but i want to show that's great they they like totally like yeah no problem the best the best seats it was amazing that's right that's awesome very cool well it's been a pleasure talking to you man yeah thanks yeah we really appreciate the books you write we think you're doing good work man yeah yeah man what the link up when we're out in texas we're out there all the time so what do you guys go out there for uh we well so we know the crew it on it uh really well i just talked to arbor this morning oh did you really yeah yeah so we which is we are actually talking about that even because i know that some of the study i saw your interview with him and he we kind of tease him of being like the pleasure seeker all yeah yeah and so it was interesting that you guys that you guys connected because i feel like stoicism is kind of the opposite of that philosophy right yeah a little yeah you could say uh do you razzle about it or what a little bit i mean arbor is a bit of an epicurean or you know rather than a stoic i'd say in in that element of it but the other i think the core part of stoicism too is that it's like mind your own fucking business you know like arbor is a cool dude he's smart we connect over the things we like like what arbor does in his personal life as no you know i i'm not going to judge it it doesn't bother me it doesn't affect me just like the fact that mine's very different from his has never been an issue that way so i think that's one of the weird things about our society too is like people seem to give way too much attention and energy towards like things that are really noke meanwhile to go to the parenting thing meanwhile they're sort of neglecting the stuff where they really do have influence it's a weird so we're giving too many fucks about the shit they shouldn't exactly yeah yeah and not enough fucks about their own shit that's right all right man well thanks for coming on again great shats of rough