Listen to the chapter here!
[Neil Pasricha]
Cool, thank you so much for having me. You know, I was thinking about how I met you on my way here, and I was like, you know what it really was, and I don't know if I ever told you this, but five years ago, I stumbled on an article you wrote called How to Read More, A Lot More, by Ryan Holiday. So I had to go sign up for your monthly reading club, I get to know you a little bit over email, you helped me launch the Happiness Equation, and gave me basic advice that was so valuable at the time.
You were like, hey Neil, you should start up an email list, and I didn't have one, and things like that. And I got sucked into this idea that someone so young would have a crazy passion for reading real books. I didn't know anyone else like that.
I used to like books, but I didn't, so you got me kind of back into it. You got me back into reading, because I was reading like five books a year, I don't know if you knew this about me, my whole adult life I read five books a year. Even as you were writing them?
Even as my wife, previously girlfriend, would come into my house and say, where's all your books? I was like, I don't got time to read. She's like, we're either going to break up, you're an idiot, or you've got to start reading.
So I talk about this in chapter one of this show, about how I got back into reading, partly because of you. And partly because of a few other things, like taking the TV to the basement, and starting up a reading list that I tell people about. I thought, two things.
One, I wanted to ask you for an extra book, because of your importance in forming this show to begin with. And two, I thought we could open with a bunch of quotes you've said about reading.
[Ryan Holiday]
Sure.
[Neil Pasricha]
Okay, now they're all over the internet from all different articles. Give me a comment, or an agree or disagree, or what you think.
[Ryan Holiday]
With my own words?
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah, because you might not agree with any more. Let's see. Here you go.
Here's Ryan Holiday, opening us up on reading. Here you go. I don't actually read a lot. I read like a person with a disorder. Binging with frenetic energy, and then a lull. And then attempts at normalcy until I revert back to my own habits.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, so I think, I don't tend to read, you'll talk to people and they'll be like, I read like 100 pages a day or something like that. I say I'm more of a binge reader. So when I travel a lot, I do a lot of talks and consulting and stuff like that.
So when I'm on the road, I'll read a ton. And then when I'm at home, usually I'm not reading unless it's something I cannot put down. So I tend to read in fits and spurts, but I'll read a ton.
I might read seven books in seven days and then not pick up a book for two weeks.
[Neil Pasricha]
That's amazing you'd read that. I know you read a tremendous amount because I see your monthly email list.
[Ryan Holiday]
I actually just, I was writing it all day. It goes out probably while we're sitting here.
[Neil Pasricha]
Really?
[Ryan Holiday]
Have you timed it? No, it just goes out at this time once Sunday a month.
[Neil Pasricha]
Oh, interesting. I didn't realize it was Sunday. I've been getting it for years.
I never even realized it was Sunday. Here's another quote from you. When I start a book, I almost always go straight to Wikipedia or Amazon or a friend and ruin the ending.
Who cares? Your aim as a reader is to understand why something happened. The what is secondary.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, so I just read, I didn't even know Shakespeare had a play called Coriolanus, which is, it's sort of the third in his...
[Neil Pasricha]
Ditto.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, I'd never even heard of it. I may even be pronouncing the name wrong. But I'd heard of most of the famous Shakespeare plays and then the ones that I was like probably, I'm not going to read Taming the Shrew or something.
And then there was this one that I'd never heard of. So I read an article about why the book was relevant. So I read it for the first time like a week ago.
And if it's a play I've literally never heard of, so I read the Wikipedia page. Then I read a bunch of articles. Then I read reviews of the movie because someone had recently done a movie.
The point is, I want to figure out what the hell is happening so then I can sort of savor the language and the phrasing and the plot points and all that. I don't want to be like, wait, what? I feel like I'm not smart enough to always know what's happening.
So I'd rather know what the ending is and then actually enjoy the experience while it's happening.
[Neil Pasricha]
I'm assuming that that means you read only beautifully written books. Would you read the end of Girl on a Train?
[Ryan Holiday]
I just wouldn't read Girl on a Train.
[Neil Pasricha]
Like a mystery. You wouldn't read the end of a mystery. The whole point is the plot.
You wouldn't read the end of that.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, but I just read Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy. And I was like, what is happening? And so I read it, figured it out, and then I finished the book.
[Neil Pasricha]
Have you ever read Infinite Jest? Working through it right now and consulted the Wikipedia entry many times.
[Ryan Holiday]
That's the definition of the kind of book I would do that to. And I would read articles that are supposed to kind of tell me why certain things matter and all of that. I like that.
It's good.
[Neil Pasricha]
And you know what you do there, because one of our values on the show is no book shame, no book guilt, is you get rid of this idea that people have to read front to back perfectly and you have to finish a book they don't like. So I like that you kind of just remove that from our thinking. A couple more.
Reading to lead or learn requires that you treat your brain like the muscle that it is, lifting the subjects with the most tension and weight.
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, I think that's the same thing. It's like if you're only reading books that are easy for you to understand, you're probably not getting any smarter. So I like reading really hard books that are, it's pushing me to get better.
And so, yeah, I'm trying to read things sort of, I think I have an article about this, but sort of reading above your level. If you're reading at your level, you're just telling yourself what you already know or what you want to hear. I want to read things that challenge me in some form.
[Neil Pasricha]
What about like beach read? What about like just chilling?
[Ryan Holiday]
I remember on my honeymoon, I read Gilgamesh, a book about the guy that discovered the existence of gorillas, like in Victorian England. Some other, I don't read beach reads. I just read things that are really interesting to me.
[Neil Pasricha]
Do you feel like there's something missing? I get what you're saying and I think the market agrees you read up, right? Yeah.
But what do you do? Then I guess we can get this later, but like then where's the, a lot of people read just to chill, like just to relax before bed.
[Ryan Holiday]
I watch TV to chill. So when I'm reading, I want to read something that makes me better. I'm not like a self-help nonfiction junkie.
Like I read novels a lot, but I just don't read, I try not to read trendy novels and I try not to read,
I don't know, there's this trend in modern fiction of just sort of like completely unlikable garbage characters. Like what? I mean, I don't know.
I don't know if I have a good example, but like, have you read Unbearable Lightness of Being?
No. It's just like, this guy's the hero of this book.
This guy sucks, you know? So I try not to read. I find most modern fiction to be very unenjoyable.
So I try to, if I'm reading fiction, it's going to be usually some sort of classic. Like there's so many great books. Why would I read Girl on the Train?
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah, exactly. Okay. There you go.
Last one. Reading is like eating, sex, and meditation. The whole point is that it's pleasurable and meaningful.
It's like listening to music. You're not supposed to rush.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. Well, people, you know, like this is now a trend with audio books where people listen on like 2X or 2 1⁄2X.
[Neil Pasricha]
Everyone's always bragging about how fast they can go.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, it's ridiculous. You wouldn't brag about how fast you can have sex. It's like the whole point, right?
The whole point is that you enjoyed it and that you got something out of it and it was a good experience. It's not like fingers like cramming in your head so you can move on to the next thing. So I am savoring.
I'm trying to read things that make me better and challenge me, but I'm also savoring the experience as it's happening. That's great.
[Neil Pasricha]
I like that. As David Sedaris told three books listeners in Chapter 19, I don't want my book read to me by a chipmunk.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]
There's that too.
[Ryan Holiday]
I don't want the book read to me at all. I want to read it. I want to actually go through it.
[Neil Pasricha]
That's an improvement.
[Ryan Holiday]
But yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
That guy picks up garbage for nine hours a day. He's going to have to do audio books.
[Ryan Holiday]
I know. I listened to him talk about that on a show, and I do the same thing. My son and I just went on like a five-mile walk on the road that we live on.
We were picking up trash.
[Neil Pasricha]
Okay, so you go by. When you say I do the same thing, I thought you were going to say nine hours a day.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, no, no.
[Neil Pasricha]
Okay.
[Ryan Holiday]
He took a nap. I walked because he hates sleeping, so you usually have to walk him to sleep.
[Neil Pasricha]
So that's the life. Cool. Well, thank you so much for giving us a little soundscape, a little contextual overview.
I like that. You are such a passionate reader, and you're such a passionate writer. You've written so many amazing books, so it's great to have your views on kind of how to read.
Before we get into your four most formative books, and I asked you at the beginning if you had a specific order. You said you read these three. I'm going to pound them.
Okay. Around the same time. Yeah.
So do you want to start here? Yeah, sure. Okay, so we'll start with.
[Ryan Holiday]
I reread it in anticipation. Oh, you did? Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]
Is it going to appear in the book club or no?
[Ryan Holiday]
Not this month, but this will be probably the fifth time I've read this.
[Neil Pasricha]
Wow. I can see. So you've got your dog ear cover.
So without further ado, I'll just do like a 60-second overview for people to know.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
It's called What Makes Sammy Run by Bud Schulberg, if I'm saying that right, printed in 1941 by Random House. It's a white book. It's got like a silhouette of a man presumably running on the cover down the sidewalk.
File this one, Dewey Heads, in 813.52, American Fiction in English, 1900-1944. The summary, written by Ryan Holiday on May 1st, 2007, on his blog says, Essentially, Sammy is the all-American heel. He's your airy gold without the slightest bit of human decency.
He rides through the ranks of Hollywood without ever writing a word. He is shadows and illusions, the ultimate power player. His story is told by Al Mannheim, his older and only friend, who is fascinated by Sammy's drive.
The title is Schulberg's chorus line that he repeats throughout the book and eventually answers in the final pages. Sadly, as Schulberg mentions in the introduction, the message has been perverted. Our society tends to see Sammy as a hero instead of a villain or at least someone to pity.
So tell us about your relationship. I should have asked you to read that. I'm sorry.
I shouldn't read you already like that. Tell us about your relationship with What Makes Sammy Run by Bud Schulberg. Am I saying that right?
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, Bud Schulberg. Yeah, for people who don't know, Bud Schulberg famously wrote On the Waterfront, the book and the movie. His father was the head of one of the now defunct but major Hollywood studios in the 20s and 30s.
My first job out of college, I worked at a talent agency in Hollywood and I had this sort of movie producer mentor and he told me to read this book. It's pretty, it's sort of, it's like this famous Hollywood book. They've been trying to make it into a movie for 50 or 60 years.
They can't seem to be able to do it. But it's basically the story of this sort of hustler, ambitious, like Horatio Alger kid who makes it, but he basically screws everyone on the way up. The Canadian version of this book is The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
It's basically the same book if you have read that or watched the movie.
[Neil Pasricha]
And there's a Mordecai Richler blurb on the back. Sammy Glick remains at the top of the Hollywood sleaze heap.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
The quintessential novel about the all-American heel.
[Ryan Holiday]
So, and it is interesting, when the book came out, from what I understand, it was much more controversial than it feels to us now because it was portraying this sort of, it was portraying a Jew negatively and some question of whether this was like part of the Jewish experience or culture. Now, I think when you read it, you just see him as an individual. But at the time there was, I think, a context.
So famously, I guess, Bud Schulberg was like approached by a head of a movie studio who'd read an early version who offered to like pay him to not publish the book because he thought it would be like bad for the business and for Jews and stuff. But I think what my mentor, when he gave me the book, it's sort of a cautionary tale about ambition. And it's like Sammy gets everything he wants in the end, but then he realizes how empty and awful it actually is.
And, you know, reading it now, there's also, I think, it's sort of a Trumpian element to Sammy.
He's this guy who, he has to beat everyone and can't give anything in and can't show a single sign of weakness. And he has, he stands for nothing except for the advancement of his own name.
And then there's this, it's fascinating because you watch him through the eyes of this narrator who's both sort of horrified, but also I think quietly jealous of it. And so it's just been, it's been-
The narrator is his boss at the beginning of the book.
[Neil Pasricha]
And he, of course, rises above him, steals his column in the newspaper, you know, as his assistant and then like takes off to Hollywood, eventually hires him. Like it's, yeah, there's a real kind of, there's the jealousy and envy and fascination is there.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, and the interesting thing is, so I read the book and sort of, I read it, liked it, it meant a lot to me. And then- How old were you? I would have been 20, maybe 19 or 20.
[Neil Pasricha]
You dropped out of college after a year and a half.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, after two years. And so I read it right before I dropped out. I'd gotten hired and then I had to wait for the summer to start, start the job.
And so I had like a list of books to read and this was one of them. And so I took, like, so I used to use like these little tabs. You can see all these tabs.
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah, you got all these tiny little blue stickers pointing out highlights and it's written.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, and I wrote a bunch of stuff. And then, so the interesting thing is if people read my book, Ego is the Enemy, I, as I was writing that book and I was finishing it, I was really struggling with the conclusion. And then I remembered, are we allowed to ruin the endings of books?
Yeah, sure. So the ending of this- Because it's not about the ending. It goes to, yeah.
So, but the ending of the book, basically Sammy marries this like beautiful heiress, the head of his, the owner of the studio's daughter and he has everything he wants. And basically she like cheats on him on their wedding night and he realizes, he has this instance, this instant where he realizes like that it's all empty and awful. And he's almost questioning himself.
And Al comes in and Sammy calls him, Al rushes over and they're talking. And basically there's this scene where Al says like, I was waiting, because Al had been, you know like when you have, you know someone who breaks every rule and you're just like, eventually they're going to get what's coming to them. And Al basically says like, he'd been waiting for that moment for Sammy his whole life, the whole time he'd known him.
And he says, I kept waiting for like karma or a cancer to like strike this person down, to make up for all the people that he'd screwed over and hurt and all the terrible things that he'd done. And then he basically realizes in that moment that that's not how it works. And that actually Sammy's life is the cancer.
That like, there is no moment of comeuppance. It's actually being him is the terrible thing. And so when I was writing the end to Ego, I realized that that was the argument that I was making against Ego.
It's not just that like, look, Ego is bad. Ego can imperil everything that you're working on. It could destroy your life.
But it's also that even if it doesn't destroy your life, it's a bad life. Like even if Trump doesn't get impeached, it still sucks to be Donald Trump. Like it sucks to live in Trump's head in the White House every day.
[Neil Pasricha]
You're saying it should or it does?
[Ryan Holiday]
It does. I'm saying like that scene with Al and Sammy is like if Trump, when Trump is frantically calling people at 3 a.m. in the White House because he can't sleep and his wife won't live with him and everyone hates him and there's these probably moments where he has flashes. That's what that's like.
But anyways, my point was I remember I went, so I was like, oh, I'm gonna talk about that in the conclusion of the book. And I went, I don't know where my notes are. But I realized I'd written, there's some stories at the end.
I'd filled, you see, I filled like pages.
[Neil Pasricha]
Ryan's flipping through the book and he's showing me that in the pages of the book he's actually written entire paragraphs of writing.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
Is that you writing what potentially became the ending of your own book?
[Ryan Holiday]
It's like notes to myself about lessons that I then completely forgot and then learned very painfully in my own life and saw other people learn, people that I admired and looked up to.
And then, yeah, the conclusion of the book sort of came from that experience.
[Neil Pasricha]
Well, I find that fascinating, Ryan, because it's like when you said I was working at a Hollywood agency, you know, the story's about a guy working at, kind of in Hollywood. And you also mentioned about the difficulty of getting this movie made. I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about trust here.
Because the book has like this, when you read it, people also have a recognition in it, like at least I do, because I worked at a big company for 10 years. You see people like that all the time.
That's why we watch House of Cards.
It's like fascinating. You're like, that's how people get to the top. You kind of damn them and you also recognize them.
Yeah, sure. So, you know, you interact with a lot of people from Hollywood, sports, writing, with your consulting, with your lecturing, with the work you've done and how popular it's become in those circles. There's something in this book about getting the honest story, kind of figuring out how you trust people.
And I was going to say, you have a very finely attuned kind of BS meter and you've done a lot of work on both sides of this kind of world. So what, you know, for people listening, the question I wanted to ask you that I was really interested in is like, how do you go about sizing people up like this or evaluating, because we live in a world where there's just so many people crossing our paths every time. How do you decide who to work with, who to let into your life?
You say from an integrity standpoint, it's not the Sammy Glicks of the world, but of course you interact with tons of people like that, like we all do.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
So talk to me about trust here and relationship building and integrity and how this works in your regular, in your kind of daily life.
[Ryan Holiday]
That's a good question. I mean, I don't know. I feel like, to me, the book is primarily sort of an individualistic, sorry, an individual moralistic sort of cautionary tale.
Like you don't want to be this person. But it is interesting, sort of time and time again in the book, people, there's a screenwriter who works with Sammy who he screws over. He basically steals his movie from him.
[Neil Pasricha]
Just gets the guy's script, puts his name on it.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, and then sells his second script to the guy. And there's actually this scene where the guy's wife basically is like, if you don't stop being manipulated by this person, I'm going to leave you, which is a really interesting scene. So that's like him screwing over the little guy.
But he also, when he's the number two at the studio, I'm forgetting the guy's name. Is it Feynman or Fireman or Firehouse? Yeah, the head guy.
He trusts, he thinks like, oh, I'm grooming this young person. And basically he sets Sammy up to like stab him in the back and Sammy steals his job. So it, I mean, it is interesting how, and I think we're seeing this politically a little bit right now.
We are not, and this will probably go into the, one of the other books we're gonna talk about.
We are not set up well as people to defend ourselves against malignant bad actors. Right?
Like both those people were taken advantage of by Sammy because they couldn't conceive thatsomeone would take advantage of them, that someone else was operating on a different level or a different set of principles than them. And so I think that was another reason he probably wanted me to read the book. It was like, open up your eyes.
This is how this world works. And if you go around thinking everyone is your best friend and has your best interests at heart, you're probably gonna get screwed over. There's a line from Ambrose Pierce.
[Neil Pasricha]
Who's that?
[Ryan Holiday]
He was a great American writer, but he's sort of famous for these epigrams, but he said like loyalty. So he wrote this thing called the Devil's Dictionary and his definition of loyalty was like, loyalty, the last thought of a person who's about to be betrayed. And I think there's an element of that.
Like everyone was loyal to Sammy and that was exactly what he was exploiting in them.
[Neil Pasricha]
It reminds me of like the Kevin Spacey character, like when he's vice president in the show as the seasons go on. You know what I'm talking about? Writing that letter to the president.
It's exactly that kind of story. You actually wrote in that blog post I was quoting earlier, you said, I might want what Sammy Glick has, but I don't want to be Sammy Glick. I think I wrote that in the back of the book, yeah.
I was just reading it, yeah. I might want to be where Sammy Glick is, but I don't want to go the way Sammy Glick went. As Machiavelli said, you can take power with skill or luck or cruelty, but there's no honor in that, or third with cruelty.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
No, it was, yeah, I did write that right here. Yeah, I think you read the book and he gets
everything he wants, but it comes at a terribly high, he gets whatever, everything he wants as
soon as he wants it, but to do so, he has to betray everything that matters. And if you read
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, he does the same thing.
And he gets more, in that book, he gets more comeuppance. Like in that book, his grandfather
told him like, you're only a man if you own land. And so he does all this shady stuff to get land.
And then when his grandfather finds out everything he did to get it, he loses like the girl andthe friend and the grandfather. And so it's just, you can get so caught up in a goal. And I think
that's what Sammy's thing was like, I don't want to be like my parents.
I don't want to be poor. I don't want to be a schmuck. I don't want to be taking advantage of
like my parents.
And so he was the opposite of them, but he lost the things that made them decent.
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah, it was a fascinating read. Who would you recommend the book for?
[Ryan Holiday]
Any young ambitious person. Because? I hopefully would, I mean, you could take the wrong
lessons from the book, but I would hope that it would, I think that the reason Bud Schulberg
wrote it was as a way to temper a thing that's important.
I think ambition and drive and wanting to prove people wrong or prove something is an
important force in the world, but it can become toxic very easily.
[Neil Pasricha]
Well, we wrote, we talked about reading the Wikipedia entry before you read the book. So I did
that for this book and it says he wrote it after his dad's story.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
And even in the introduction of the version I have, it's like, he's like, it was a composite of a
million people, but now it's known that it actually was his father.
[Ryan Holiday]
Oh, interesting.
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia, which you may or may not believe, because
anyone can edit that stuff. Shall we go to this book next?
I think so, because they're somewhat connected. Okay, so the next book, I'll do the same little
snippet opening, is The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, published in 1998 by Viking Press.
The cover's just like, it's a bright red book with like a vertical blue stripe down the middle with a
gold printed word of the word power in big font.File this one in 303.3 in your Dewey Decimal System. That's social sciences coordination and
control. The summary is from the back, the best-selling book for those who want, want power,
watch power, or want to arm themselves against power.
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive. This piercing work distills 3000 years of history and
power into 48 well-explicated laws. Some laws require prudence, like number one, never
outshine the master.
Some stealth, law three, conceal your intentions. And some, the total absence of mercy, law 15,
crush your enemy totally. But like it or not, all have applications in real life situations.
Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P.T. Barnum, and other
famous figures who have wielded or been victimized by power. So Ryan, tell us about your
relationship with The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.
[Ryan Holiday]
So I read this book probably the senior, my senior year of high school. And, you know, this is
not my original copy. So the funny thing is, I'll tell you.
Even though you're holding a copy with a bunch of dog ears. This is a very old, this is probably
my second copy. So I bought this book in high school.
I read it. I loved it.
[Neil Pasricha]
Had you saw it in a bookstore?
[Ryan Holiday]
No, it was recommended to me by someone. And I loved it. It's amazing.
I'd always loved history, but this like, was history like applied and made practical. And so I read
it and, and I took it with me when I worked at that talent agency. And I ended up also working
for Robert Greene.
He was my, one of my mentors. And I was his research assistant.
[Neil Pasricha]
He was on the board of American Appellate?
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. And, and I was his research assistant. And so as I was working at this talent agency, I had
this copy on my desk because I would have to refer to it for stuff that I was doing like on myown time.
And it actually happened that the, the owner of the talent agency or the main partner, not the
one I worked for, became increasingly convinced or paranoid that I was like, this, I was a
Sammy Click type. And then I was sort of plotting something while I was there. And he, he sort
of developed this intense dislike of me.
And obviously if I'd understood the laws well enough, I would have hid my copy of the book
because it's not a good thing to show that you're interested in power. That's like one of the laws
of powers. You have to conceal your intentions.
I, I didn't have any intentions, but I was accidentally telegraphing a very different intention.
[Neil Pasricha]
Um, yeah, it's like a certain, it's like someone sitting in the corner desk and saying, it's like how
to get the CEO's job.
[Ryan Holiday]
that's, that's what it seemed like I was doing. And so there's this huge blow up and I ended up
losing my job.
[Neil Pasricha]
Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean? There was a huge blow up.
[Ryan Holiday]
So, I mean, so he became so convinced I was plotting that he started, he started being
convinced. Um, I don't know if I've ever told the story. So he was convinced, he was convinced
that I was plotting and scheming.
So he would read into things that were, so like my boss, he hated, um, he hated like being on
like bullshit phone calls and meetings and stuff. So he, sometimes he would have me dial in and
pretend to be him on calls and just like listen in and then tell him what happened. And so, um,
or I would be on the line while he was on the line.
And then I'd be like messaging him, like things that I'd researched, like Googling stuff and
telling. And so I was doing this on a call, but you know, like you get on a conference call and it's
like, bing, you're the fifth caller. Well, there's only supposed to be like four callers on the line.
And so it was like, bing, you know, like you're the fifth caller when the, when the boss dialed in.
And so he was like, um, is there five people on the line? Like who's on the line, you know?
And, um, and, uh, so I didn't say anything. I was like so petrified. I didn't say like, Oh, Aaron has
me dialing in so I can, you know, text him things on the line, you know?And, uh, so I let it go. These are both internal people. Yeah.
These are both partners in the same company, uh, theoretically equals, but one is like a senior
partner. And, um, so I'm on the line, I'm on the line. And then you're doing what I'm supposed
to do.
And then he's clearly, clearly this is like eating at his brain. And then I'm in the office and he's
not in the office. And then all of a sudden I hear his assistant walk down the hall and pass the
office that I'm in, which you couldn't really see him, but there, and I see him looking and then
walk by.
And then, um, then, then, uh, who is on the line? Someone is on the line. I know someone is on
the line.
And now I'm just, I'm like 20 years old. I'm like scared out of my mind. Like, what have I done?
You know? And, uh, then I hear him coming. He'd like driven to the office or I've come up from
a different floor and I, I can hear this super loud, like, you know, footsteps getting louder and
louder and louder.
And I'm like, Oh shit. And I hang up the phone. Right.
But as I'm hanging up the phone, the door like bursts open. Uh, and he's like, what the fuck are
you doing? Like you're spying on my phone calls.
Like I knew you were a snake and you were like trying to, you know, I'm whatever he's ranting.
I'm like, seriously, what are you talking about? Like I was just, I was asked to be on this phone
call and he's so angry.
He, I remember he grabs the door and he slams it and then he opens it again and he slams it
and he opens it again and he slams it. He's like, just like trying to like physically and Tim, like I,
in retrospect, like at the time I was like scared chillis. But in retrospect, like the idea of like a
grown ass man, like a power player in Hollywood trying to like intimidate a 20 year old for being
on a phone call is insane to me.
But like, I just like packed up my stuff and I just got up and I just walked out. I never went back.
[Neil Pasricha]
No way. That's how you left.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, that's how I left.
[Neil Pasricha]That is fascinating.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, it was crazy. All cause I left this book on my desk.
[Neil Pasricha]
Wow. Um, that's one way it was formative.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. And then, then I ended up working at American apparel. I took a job at American apparel
from that.
They were, they'd already been like, they were already trying to poach me, um, through my
connection with Robert Greene. And cause Doug Charney, who's the owner there, he loved it.
He loved the book and he loved that.
I worked for Robert.
[Neil Pasricha]
I missed a step for you, but you bought the book when you were in high school. You're living in
California, Sacramento.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
Uh, you, you, someone recommended it to you. How did, how'd you go from there to his
assistant though?
[Ryan Holiday]
To Robert's research assistant. Uh, I was working for an author named Tucker Max who also
worked for, who worked with Robert, who they were friends. And so I was assistant to one
author and then I sort of got handed over as a research assistant to another one.
And then, must be really good at research. I'm pretty good.
[Neil Pasricha]
Everyone just said, I think so. Can I just do a little, uh, like a deep dive here? Why?
How, what makes you good at research?[Ryan Holiday]
I mean, I think what I did was I read this book and I realized like, Oh, people just read other
books. And not, not, that's where all books come from. That's how, but like, I think it was cause
Robert does it in such a unique way.
Like Robert's like kind of showing his work. Like even in the side, like there's the, you know, he
just has quotes.
[Neil Pasricha]
Right. Slipping over the, open the book and in the margin of every page or like little kind of
historical anecdotes saying, and it says, and they're credited, like which book that's from or
which a poem that's written from, from this, from, from this. And then, so you can almost see
the research when you're reading the book.
[Ryan Holiday]
And, and so what I had done when I read it, as I just started reading, I was like, like, um, you
know, like I was like Plutarch, who's Plutarch, you know? And I went and I read Plutarch and I
was like, Oh, this book is just an ancient version of the 40 laws of power. And I was, so I was
reading all this stuff.
And then, so I, I think by reading the book, I sort of learned that that's what an author did. And
so, um, but all of which was to say that I'd been in American apparel for like a month and
someone stole my copy of the 40 laws of power off my desk. And I've never seen it again.
So I lost like a book I'd had done for like several years, but all my notes, and it was like my
original time. So, um, did you, it's the only one I don't have an, my original one of, how'd you
feel when that happened? Devastated.
[Neil Pasricha]
You weren't like the guy who has, who's fired, who's factory burnt down with all, I was the
opposite of that.
[Ryan Holiday]
I was Edison.
[Neil Pasricha]
So Edison, cause you've, you've written about this. Tell us that story in your, in your feelings
there.
[Ryan Holiday]Yeah. There's a story in the obstacles of the way, um, where Thomas Edison's fire breaks down
and he, he basically goes like, he tells his son, like, go get your mother and all her friends. I'll
never see a fire like this again.
He's like, enjoying it.
[Neil Pasricha]
And in the building is all of his life's work.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
With no computer backup.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes. Well, I mean, he was, he was an 80 year old man or something when that happened. I was
like 22.
And, uh, and, uh, this was like my favorite book. This book is insane.
[Neil Pasricha]
Okay. Let's just talk because it's insane. It's so hard to explain why it's so insane.
By the way, check the Amazon ranking today. And it's like in the top hundred today, like 20
years later, this thing is like insane. And by the way, the audio version of this book, cause I, you
know, I'm, I'm, I'm wrestling.
It's daunting for me. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend it's not the table of contents. It took
me an hour to read.
[Ryan Holiday]
You're not supposed to read it cover to cover. Oh, well, why don't you tell me? I mean, you, you,
you can, I mean, I certainly did the first time, but the point is it's supposed it's in these, and it's
something that I've now taken in my own books, but you're supposed to read it in pieces.
You're supposed to like, cause the audio book is 24 hours long. Yeah. Yeah.
Of course. I mean, this book's probably 300,000 words, 400,000, but like law 15 is crush your
enemy. Totally.
It's like how you would deal with a sort of a conquered competitor or like law 13, which I think isone of the most important laws is when asking for help, always appeal to people's self interest,
never their mercy or gratitude. So this would be like, you're in some negotiation or you're in
some weak position in your business or your life. And this is like a lesson that you might review
or think about.
Like you, you should know at once you should read the book, I think cover to cover. But the idea
is that it's also designed to sort of meditate on certain themes and, and to be consumed in
pieces if you want.
[Neil Pasricha]
And like, so it's called the 48 laws of power. What is power? How do you define power?
[Ryan Holiday]
I think power, power is the ability to make people or the world do what you want them to do.
[Neil Pasricha]
So, because we, we live in the day and age now, I like that definition. It may affect change, you
know, kind of leave, lever up change. But we live in this world now where, where now I'm
obsessed with trust in case you can't tell.
But trust is at an all time low in business and media and government, everything. Yet there's
these words that keep coming up like influencer.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]
We're all the, I'm an influencer. You're an influencer. I'm an influencer.
We're influencing people, whatever that means. Um, so today, how, how do you build power in
this world where we don't trust any sort of formalization is people don't trust the degree you
have on the wall, which it used to mean a lot. They don't trust a little boilerplate.
That's like you, you grew up here or you're from X family. Like, so you, it's like we got a flatter
world, right today.
[Ryan Holiday]
You start with nothing. I kind of agree. I kind of agree.
But I would say it's not like sort of power in the abstract. This is a book for, um, you sell a book
to a publisher. How do you get them to support your book versus the other books?How do you, how do you win an argument with your editor over something where contractually
they get to decide it, but also if you're not happy with it, you're not going to promote it. And it's
a negotiation. That's power.
Nancy Pelosi deciding that Donald Trump doesn't get to do a state of the union because the
government is shut down and Donald Trump being the executive, but she being the, that the
leader of a co-equal branch of government, that is a power battle as a power struggle. And so I
think, you know, that's, to me, that's what power is about. And that's something that people
don't understand.
And I think particularly young people, particularly idealistic people, particularly good people
think that being right is sufficient and that, um, being on the right side of history is sufficient.
And if anything, I think the world we're in now is we are starting to realize rudely that power is
necessary. Power.
Isn't just, uh, something to be feared. Power is something that you also need to protect
yourself. That power is something you have to understand.
[Neil Pasricha]
Again, not, not only just to wield, but to under, to see it, to be able to see it as a lens.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. I think people are often manipulated. Like Robert talks about like that, that thing where I
got, I, I violated a number of laws, even, even though that guy was totally wrong and is a
complete asshole and, uh, ends up, you know, running his own business into the ground for the
most part, shortly thereafter, never should have done what he did.
I also put myself in a position to intersect with that, those traits, like, and the laws would be like,
never outshine the master was a good one that I probably violated. Law number one, law
number one, uh, conceal your intentions, which I forget what law that is. Um, you know, uh, I,
you have to understand those forces or you end up just getting completely knocked over and
having no idea why something like that happened.
And, uh, and, and so the book has been very formative for me in that sense.
[Neil Pasricha]
You know, um, you talked about Trump a couple of times, so I got to go there. Uh, law number
six in this book is court attention at all costs.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes.[Neil Pasricha]
You are quoted saying in the New York times, uh, Sunday styles profile of you, which is a great
piece. If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything. Um, in, uh, an earlier chapter of this
show with Mark Manson, we talk a little bit about attention diets.
The idea that in this economy where attention is this precious resource, a lot of people are
going to need to go on this. Like they're going to have to be more thoughtful and intentional
about how, where they put it. So how do you think about that?
Um, you sell work also to you, you're a seller. You're also a buyer. You can mean being that you
have an attention that you're spending every day.
How can people listening be thoughtful about spending their attention? Remembering that
people like Trump and law number six in this book say court attention at all costs. There's a war
for our minds happening right now.
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, that interview is interesting and I think it's, it's people don't often understand the power
dynamics. In a given exchange. And in that one, I messed up.
Right. So the reporter had asked me like, why do you write about stoicism? She's like, you're a,
you're a professional marketer, which is what I did previously.
Like how, why are you writing about ancient philosophy? And, and my point was like, look, if
you're good at marketing, you can sell anything. And I think I said something like clearly I didn't
choose stoicism, ancient philosophy, because that's where the money is.
Right. But the quote ends up being, you know, if you're shameless enough, you can sell
anything because like, they even inserted, he said of his marketing abilities. Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]
Which is like, no, I didn't read that out. But now that you're mentioning it, like it's totally out of
context.
[Ryan Holiday]
So, so the point is she's, she is a writer of, she doesn't care about me. She cares about what's
going to make the most interesting article. And I, I gave her the material with which she then
stabs me.
Right. And, and that, that's like cost me, right? Like I, that's something I have, I have to deal with
now.
It's a real thing. And so I think, what do you mean it costs you? Well, I look terrible in that quote.Like, I look like I write about the thing that I wrote about because I'm willing to sell anything.
It's the exact opposite of what I'm doing, but that's how I came. And, and I, I gave her the rope
that she hung me with.
And, uh, and so what I think you, you always want to know the dynamics or the incentives or
the, the diverging interest. We're not all on the same team. We're not all wanting to help each
other.
Like sometimes we are, but a lot of times we weren't and you got to know how that's working.
And so I think like to, to go to your question about like to news and attention, it's like, CNN is
not your friend. CNN's job is not to inform you.
CNN's job is to glue you to a television. So then when you're here, they can call as many
advertisers over as they can. Like Fox news, especially if you look at the ads on Fox news,
they're all for scams.
They're for like reverse mortgages and gold and all these other weird, scammy products. Cause
their, their job is not to, their job is not to help conservative politics. Their job is not to inform
you.
Their job is not to make you healthy or balanced or know about what's going on in the world.
Their job is to get as many marks as they can humanly get glued to the O'Reilly factor or Tucker
Carlson, and then sell them as much bullshit as possible.
[Neil Pasricha]
I mean, I've heard you quote Les Moonves who ran CBS saying, you know, Trump, when he
was, before he was elected president, like Trump is bad, bad for the world, but good for CBS.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah. Look, and the same is true for MSNBC. Like MSNBC his job is to get as many liberals glued
to a television to then sell them, you know, Subarus and stuff.
Right.
[Neil Pasricha]
And like that. Nice. I have a Subaru.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, no, but that, that's the idea, right? It's like that you have to know the dynamics or the
business that people are in, or you end up accidentally being manipulated or controlled by
them.
[Neil Pasricha]So we're in a war for attention. We live in this world and ads take over everything and they
swim to wherever we are. Now, what do we do?
So give me, so the law six is court attention, all costs. Everyone's doing it these days, but we're
humans. We're like precious little animals that we should, we should have been in the forest.
How do we save ourselves? I mean, war other than listening to three books, which has a
hundred percent, no ads, no sponsors.
[Ryan Holiday]
You should, you should watch as little news as possible and read as many books as possible.
And ideally the, the older the book, the better because the, the, the, the higher, the chance that
it is stood the test of time. And so this book is 20 years old.
Machiavelli is 500 years old. Sun Tzu is 2000 years old or whatever it is. Right.
So like one of the, like, uh, what makes Sammy run is 50 years old.
[Neil Pasricha]
You must love the tank amendments.
[Ryan Holiday]
I must be able to go to, they've done pretty, they've endured pretty well over the years.
[Neil Pasricha]
First mystical.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes. So, so I think, I think focusing on information that has a pretty decent half life is, is, is a, is a
good way to, uh, to, to spend your attention wise.
[Neil Pasricha]
I say in interviews all the time, turn off the news, never look at it again. You don't, people say to
me back, they say, well, isn't that, isn't that totally like a, how can you, how can you be a global
citizen and not care about what's going on? There's people starving, you know, and then there's
wars like you're, you're, you're ignorant or, or, or like you don't care about stuff.
Do you, what's your comeback there?
[Ryan Holiday]
Uh, that jives very nicely with the bottom line of the news business, right? That logic. Um, Ialways ask people, what do you do with this information?
You know? And the answer is really nothing, you know?
[Neil Pasricha]
So, um, uh, the other argument I have, by the way, is in a world of 7 million people, there's
going to, someone's going to die in a fire every day.
[Ryan Holiday]
Like there's going to be a bad news.
[Neil Pasricha]
Of course you go where it goes.
[Ryan Holiday]
The important news comes to you. Uh, and, and, and I think the irony is when you read or
there, there is nothing there's, if you're trying to understand how our political system is
working right now, a book like the 40 laws of power will tell you a lot more than a hastily written
1200 word New York times piece. You know what I mean?
So that's what I would think about.
[Neil Pasricha]
Uh, and, you know, part of the problem when I went back into books, partly because of you, as I
said at the beginning was I found that my own attention had been so perverted by this, the list
and the, and the stuff I'd been reading that I no longer had the intellectual stamina to read a
book. Sure. Like I was like, I had to, it's harder, it's harder.
It demanded more of me. So I couldn't just break into it. So it's almost like we need not only
attention dice, but attention exercises.
Yeah.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
Like think about one thing for 10 seconds. Yeah. You'd think that'd be easy, but it's not.
Can I ask you one more law, law 10, avoid the unhappy and unlucky.[Ryan Holiday]
Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]
We're people. Uh, you surround yourself with a lot of happy and lucky people and a very
successful people. I won't name names, but you, um, you have a great network, Ryan around
you, around you.
At the same time, you also have friends and family like I do, like everyone does. And a question
I often get asked is, Hey, I take care of my aging parents or I, um, my boss at work is a, is a
terrible time, but I can't quit my job. So when you aren't able to surround yourself with people,
you know what I'm saying?
Like, what is the solution?
[Ryan Holiday]
I'm not sure that's true. I think people have a lot of excuses for why they stay in crappy
relationships with awful people, you know? And, um, I think what Robert is talking about is he's
saying those that it's not like, Oh, I'm just going to endure this person's bad, you know, that
that person is going to screw you at some point, or you're, there's a, there's a hidden cost to
that relationship.
It's not just the unpleasantness. Um, and, and so I, yeah, I think, I think if people aren't making
you better, you should question why they're in your life. Um, I'm not saying that you, you,
you're uncharitable or you're cruel or, or you're selfish, but it, but it is, are, are you, you know,
what's that line?
You're the average of the people you spend most time with.
[Neil Pasricha]
I was just about to ask you that, that law of five, you know, there's that book connected. I think
Nicholas Fowler based on a famous New York times article called, do your friends, friends make
you fat? And the answer is yes.
Even if you haven't met them, the point being that you're, but, but the, the takeaway from that
argument I was here, which I've always been a bit uncomfortable with is like, well then ditch
them. Like, you know, like get, you know, remove the, I don't know if it's more like associate
with better people. Okay.
And the other things sort of fall away. Thanks for correcting that, that, that place I was going on
my brain. That's good.That's better. That's a more polite way of saying it. Can we go to your next book?
Yeah, let's do it. What are we doing next? Well, I'm not, I'm not going to ask you, which one do
you want to go to?
[Ryan Holiday]
I'm fascinated by this.
[Neil Pasricha]
I was hoping you said, I kind of wanted to start with that one cause I was, I was convinced. I
haven't read this in a long time, but, um, okay, let me, let me see if I can give a quick summary.
Um, so this book is called, I was going to say Toto Chan, but I guess I was saying, I don't know
how to pronounce it.
Toto Chan, the girl at the window, by Tetsuko Kurayanagawi. Uh, I'm totally butchering that
name. Came out in 1981 in Japan.
Uh, the title there was Motogiwa no Toto Chan, where it sold 4.5 million copies in its first year. It
was then translated to English in 1984. The cover is this beautiful little line drawing of a
Japanese girl in a white puffy coat and a brown hat.
You have two choices in the Dewey Decimal System here, guys. 791.53, because the author is a
television star in Japan for decades, or under 372 as probably where I would go that of course,
is elementary education. um, nonfiction memoir painting a series of childlike recollections from
a unique school in Tokyo during world war II that combined learning with fun, freedom and
love.
The unusual school had old railroad cars for classrooms. It was run by its founder Kobayashi,
who was a firm believer in freedom and expression. The New York Times called it a quiet
indictment of sterile education.
Tel us about your verdict. relationship with Toto Chan, the little girl at the window.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, she was sort of the Marie Kondo of her time, like one of these massive books in a small, I
mean to sell. Nothing about tidying up though. No, no, no, but I mean to sell, like Marie Kondo,
it's all, is she from Korea?
No, Japan I think. But sometimes what happens, a book will be a huge sensation in a small
country, like sell like an insane amount of copies and then sort of it crosses over and that's like.
I'm from Canada, so Japan's huge to me.
Yeah, I mean but to sell 4.5 million copies of a book, period, is a lot. To sell 4.5 million copies ofa book in Japan is insane. With a quarter of the population of the U.S. Yes, that's, and to do it in
one year in like 1980, it's crazy, right? So I heard about this book from my late friend, Seth
Roberts, he was this interesting scientist, he was a psychologist at Berkeley and then he was a
professor in China, I'm forgetting the name of the university, but he was this sort of interesting
character, sort of a Tyler Cowen type. Who's Tyler Cowen? Oh, Conversations with Tyler?
Yes, and Marginal Revolution.
[Neil Pasricha]
I've been on that podcast. You have? Yeah.
You were on Conversations with Tyler? Pretty sure, I think.
[Ryan Holiday]
I don't think so.
[Neil Pasricha]
Oh, is it only really smart people? It's like really well-known people. Oh, sorry, the reason I know
that show is because chapter nine of this show was with Dave Barry, one of my favorite comedy
writers when I was a kid.
Yes, he's on. So I researched that show, I listened to the Tyler episode with Dave Barry. So I love
Tyler Cowen.
Sorry.
[Ryan Holiday]
I think I found out about Seth.
[Neil Pasricha]
I like how you just called me out, you're like, no, you weren't on that show. I mean, I don't know
anyone that's been on it.
[Ryan Holiday]
It's all been like very well-known people, like very well-known people, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
and Dave Barry and stuff like that. Anyways, Seth Roberts told me about it and he was like, oh,
this is one of my favorite, weird, and I think he was doing an article where he was talking about
books that he liked that people didn't know about. And I've always, so I bought it and it was not
what I expected.
[Neil Pasricha]Sir, how old were you?
[Ryan Holiday]
25, 24.
[Neil Pasricha]
A friend of yours told you about this book.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
It's about a 1940s Japanese elementary school memoir of growing up in.
[Ryan Holiday]
I don't even know if he told me what it's about. He just said it was one of his favorite books. And
whenever someone tells me, I mean, I think that's why your podcast is so great.
It's like when someone says like this book changed my life, it almost doesn't matter what it's
about because there's clearly something special to it. And I feel like most of the great books
that I've read, I've heard it's recommended in similar terms.
[Neil Pasricha]
If someone says it's their absolute favorite, by definition, it's something that will be interesting,
at least minimum interesting to me. Yeah, it's very unlikely it's gonna be like, oh, this is a pretty
good book. Did I ever tell you how I ended up reading East of Eden?
No. I'm at a bar in Toronto, two years ago, at like midnight on a Tuesday. A guy, I was talking
about favorite books, a guy pulls down his shirt and he's got the tree from East of Eden
tattooed on his chest.
And as he does that, which I didn't know what it was, it's the cover of East of Eden, the
bartender, it's a woman, she's like, oh my God, she runs over, she's like, look at my arm. She
had the same tattoo? She had a quote from the same book.
That night, there's a bookstore near my house open until midnight, I go over, I buy it that night
and start reading it because of the double tattoo.
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, and you gave me a book that you said was one of your favorites and it was really good.
What was it called? How to Write a Sentence?Or How to Read a Sentence? Oh yeah, Fishman. Yes.
So when someone says like, this is my favorite book, like I feel like people are like, what book
should I read? And it's like, you should go to people that you respect or admire and go like,
what book changed your life? And just only read those books.
And that would probably be a pretty good hack to like only reading great stuff.
[Neil Pasricha]
Threebooks.co slash thetop1000 was every book mentioned on this show.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, so that's what he recommended. And I just love, it's so innocent and sweet. And she's this
sort of precocious, different child.
And instead of that being stamped out of her, there was this school principal that nourished it
and rewarded it. I mean, my favorite part, doesn't she have like a dog that like walks her to
school every day and takes the subway with her?
[Neil Pasricha]
There's a dramatic scene where the dog bites off her ear.
[Ryan Holiday]
It bit off her ear?
[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah. Okay, I don't remember that. Okay, yeah, it does.
But she begged her parents not to get rid of the dog. So she doesn't have an ear? Well, I guess
she was holding it when they came in, but they were able to stitch it back on.
[Ryan Holiday]
Sorry, I just read this thing last week. Yeah, yeah, I may have skipped over that. But anyways,
yeah, I just thought the book was so, she's sort of the Oprah or the Ellen of Japan.
Right.
[Neil Pasricha]
And she hosts a show called Setsuko's Room for over 20 years. It's the most popular show in
Japan. Yeah, so it was great.She's alive right now, she's in her eighties. Sorry, I'm not trying, I keep jumping in while you
talk, but what I'm trying to say is this book is a critique of modern education. The kids are free,
they all swim naked together.
Like this literally happens in the book over and over. The headmaster just listens to her talk for
like four hours. Part of what you're famous for is that you're a college dropout, right?
But yet you're so massively successful and you're also a dad.
[Ryan Holiday]
I should probably, the reason I picked it too is I kind of wanted to reread it because I now have
a young kid. I just remember just loving the spirit of the book. How do you think about your
child's education?
I'm very worried that mediocre people are going to squash all the specialness out of the kid.
[Neil Pasricha]
So how do you think about his home education and what do you do there with formal
education?
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, so we're sort of deciding because we have two places. Are we going to send our kid to
school out in the country where we have a farm, where the schools are not very good, but it
would be a different type of person and a different type of environment? Or do we spend more
time back here in the city and do we try to get him into a really good school here or a private
school?
And it's thankfully a little bit early to have the answer on a lot of it, but it's something I'm
thinking a lot about. And I mean, where I kind of come down now is like, I feel like even good
schools are awful. And so I think I benefited from going to regular public education, but then
doing a lot of learning on my own.
My parents were always taking us places, always reading. So where I'm sitting now is probably
somewhere like that.
[Neil Pasricha]
There's that famous Mark Twain quote, I never let my education get in the way of my learning
or I'm getting it wrong.
[Ryan Holiday]
He makes a distinction between schooling and education.[Neil Pasricha]
Yeah, and so I was curious because this book is about a very unique education system. Sadly,
the book ends with like the bombing of Tokyo and the school gets totally lost. An Edison-like
moment at the end of the book is terrifying, but the beauty in the school is really special and it's
unique.
I know in Toronto where I live, there's some private schools and elementary that are all inquiry-
based. And so my sister-in-law taught at one of them. She's like, it was both really fun and really
frustrating because the kids would be like, today I wanna learn about bats.
And like you had to spend the whole week fricking learning bat because like it's inquiry-based.
Interesting. So that's kind of what this school was about.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a balance, right? Like there's a sort of freedom and purity to it. But at
the same time, like I hear from lots of kids who are like, I'm failing out of college and they want
basically me to give them permission to drop out.
And my thing is like, I feel like you have to know how to, you have to have both. You have to
know how to navigate. Like the idea that college is somehow harder than the real world, you
know, is preposterous.
Like if you're failing out of college, like you're gonna have a hard time in life, you know? I'm not
saying that college is important or representative of life, but if you can't figure out a system and
how to take advantage of it, you probably need to read some of the 48 Laws of Power, you
know? So I think it's a balance.
[Neil Pasricha]
And it's great that you talked about your parents taking you on trips. There was a lot of reading.
I mean, maybe that's all there is.
Maybe they spend more time with parents than anyone else.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
Seth Gordon always says, it's like if you're doing a job as your parent, you're just with your kids.
Yeah. That's all it is.
Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, okay. Well, you think you've taken away some stress from me
thinking about the same things with my kids.There's this one scene in the book on page 72 where they go on a field trip to Tokyo. And I
guess the school's outside of Tokyo. And all that Kobayashi says, that the headmaster says is,
don't get lost.
That's the one sentence. That's the whole day. Meanwhile, they're in Tokyo, like the biggest city
in the whole world.
The kids are all perfectly straight lines. They all know how to like behave. They all hold hands
when they cross the street.
And I was like, at Walmart, we used to have this old saying that was like, the less rules, the
more order. The more rules, the less order. We live in a society now with tons of rules.
I just read The Common Good by Robert Reich. And he talks about how the income tax law was
used to be pretty simple. Pay 20% of your income.
But then people started cheating us and that had to get complicated. Then they cheated more
and had to get more complicated. And there's this ratcheting up of complexity in society.
How do we get back to simplicity? How do we get back to those more trusting and simple ways?
[Ryan Holiday]
That's probably above my pay grade. But I agree with the sentiment. No, totally, totally.
[Neil Pasricha]
You don't know the answer. You can't figure out society for us, Ryan. I was trying to challenge
you here.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, that's something I thought, my wife and I have spent a lot of time thinking about with our
kids, because we saw so many of our friends turn parenting into like a project or a job. And they
read like 8,000 books and... Keep going.
[Neil Pasricha]
Can I turn on the light?
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, do that right there. You know, they read like 8,000- The sun's set as we were talking.
[Neil Pasricha]
Now we're at the pitch black. There we go. Turn the light on.[Ryan Holiday]
They read like all these books and they just, you know, they're obsessed with optimizing
parenting. And I mean, my parents didn't do any of that. And I'm not sure most great people
came from parents like that.
And so we've actively worked not to turn our kid into a job.
[Neil Pasricha]
Wow. And is there anything you do?
[Ryan Holiday]
No, the point is you're not doing.
[Neil Pasricha]
But are you not signing them up for like after school stuff?
[Ryan Holiday]
Like, I mean, he goes to a swim thing and he goes, but we're not like, you know. Yeah. I'm not
obsessed about how much screen time or how little screen time, you know?
[Neil Pasricha]
It's just like, look, you're a kid. The goal is to not think about it, which is hard.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah.
[Neil Pasricha]
That's like meditation. Okay. Can we go to your last book?
Let's do it. Thanks for giving us four, by the way. In chapter one of the show, my wife, Lester,
gave us one book.
And then because I'm doing 333 chapters for 1,000 books total, I gotta make a couple up along
the way now. Okay. So your last book is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, written between 161
and 180.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes.
[Neil Pasricha]When he was between age 40 and 59 AD. The version I have is, why do I say copyright 1998?
That's obviously wrong.
So it's written 2,000 years ago and it's filed as under 188, stoic philosophy, written in Greek
without any intention of publication by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections
and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of
the universe. Tell us about your relationship with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
[Ryan Holiday]
So first off, I recommend the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library. You say as I
brought the wrong two here. The two that you bought, I would not recommend people read.
Usually I love Penguin Classics for just about everything, but I think this is the Gregory Hayes
translation is the most- Is that easy to find, that one? Yes. As long as you know what you're
looking for.
Yeah, just search Marcus Aurelius Hayes, but it's the most lyrical and I think beautiful and
accessible of the translations. The language can be a little stilted and hard to access in some of
the other ones, but we talked about this earlier, the idea of going up to people and asking them
for book recommendations. I was in college and I was at a conference and I asked Dr. Drew
Pinsky, who is the speaker at the conference. Who's that again? He's like an American television
personality. He's this really smart guy and I just, he was speaking, we were college students, he
was speaking to us and I said, hey, what are you reading, what should I read?
And he recommended the Stoics and I accidentally bought this edition of Marcus Aurelius and it
just hit me like a ton of bricks. And funny enough, I bought, I have a couple different editions of
this one and I was going through and I found the receipt in it, it was my wife's copy and she had
bought it like a month after we met or two months after we met. I kept it, I think I took the
receipt out, I don't think it's in this edition, but it's just an incredible, I think it's the- Because of
you.
Yeah, yeah, I was like, I read, it was like some lame dude thing where I read it and I was like,
have you ever read this book? And she probably did not want to talk about it at all, but she went
out and she bought it. And I think it's the most incredible sort of historical, philosophical
document ever produced.
It's the most powerful man in the world writing notes and exercises to himself about how to be
a better person that he never intended for publication, that he'd probably be mortified were
ever even published. And they survived to us thousands of years later and they read like your
own conscience, like they read- It's so fresh. I mean, book five in meditations, he opens with, I
mean, I can just read it.
Yeah, pull it up. It's incredible. It's one of my favorite, in terms of just like how relatable it is, buthe says, where is it?
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a
human being. What do I have to complain of if I'm going to do what I was born from? The
things I was brought into the world to do, or is this what was created for me?
To huddle under the blankets and stay warm. But it's nicer here. So you were born to feel nice
instead of doing things and experiencing them.
Don't you see the plants and the birds and the ants and the spiders and bees going about their
individual tasks, putting the world in order as best you can, and you're not willing to do your job
as a human being. Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands? So basically you
have the most powerful man in the world having a dialogue with himself about getting out of
bed in the morning.
Hitting snooze too much. Yeah, and there's another, so the opening in book two, he says, when
you wake in the morning, tell yourself, the people I deal with today will be meddling,
ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell
good from evil.
But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and recognized that the wrongdoer
has a nature related to my own, and none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in
ugliness. So anyways.
Is that the quote that Tim Ferriss has said he has on his fridge? No, I believe his is the one about
being jarred unavoidably by circumstance, and it's the sort of rhythm that you wanna come
back to. There's this one, my favorite, he says, eight, epithets for yourself.
Upright, modest, straightforward, sane, cooperative, disinterested. Try not to exchange these
for others. And so, again, like.
[Neil Pasricha]
But by the way, what I'm watching right now is astounding. You are flipping through to this
book like almost as if you have the whole thing memorized.
[Ryan Holiday]
I've probably read this book 100 times, 150 times, and I write about it constantly, and I've built
a number of my books off the back of it, but it's incredible. I mean, this literally has unlimited
power. Like, we know how power corrupts, right?
We've seen what it does to people. And here's this guy. His predecessors killed their own
families and put on spectacles in the Colosseum and went insane and did all these things.
[Neil Pasricha]I'm sorry to ask you this, because you're gonna laugh, but can you give us like a 30-second
summary of emperor of Rome?
[Ryan Holiday]
What the emperor of Rome was?
[Neil Pasricha]
The time period, he was the last one, I think.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, he's not the last. I mean, he's the last of what they call the five good emperors. So there's
basically five consecutive really good emperors.
[Neil Pasricha]
So Rome was running the world?
[Ryan Holiday]
Like, give me the background here. So Rome is a republic originally, and then Julius Caesar
makes himself basically a dictator, and then there's a civil war. So basically, there's the Republic
Rome.
Republic meaning like a country. But it's a republic, like there's some representative form of
government, and then it becomes an empire when it gets an emperor. And so basically, that
starts with Julius Caesar and then his successor, and then it goes all the way to Marcus Aurelius,
and then Marcus Aurelius's son.
It's like 1,000 years or so of this empire.
[Neil Pasricha]
From when to when, approximately? I know this is kind of real dumb questions. I'm just like
trying to get my brain contextualized a little bit here, because I'm so far away from, you're so
close to it.
Yeah. And I'm so far, you're almost too close to see it. I'm so far to see it.
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, so like here's an interesting sort of placeholder. It goes over zero, like over the- So Seneca,
who's like maybe three generations before Marcus Aurelius, one of the famous Stoics, he's born
at the same time as Jesus. Seneca and Jesus are alive at the same time.
And so like Marcus Aurelius, Christianity is a small sect, a controversial, potentially dangeroussect during Marcus Aurelius's time. And when he dies sort of close to the end of the second
century, his son takes over. But his son, so basically for five generations, Marcus being the last
one, the emperor had no son.
So he has to choose a successor. So Rome is a kingship, but it's not a hereditary kingship, which
we know doesn't usually work, right? So for five consecutive, the emperor has to pick who- Pick
some guy.
Pick the next guy. And Marcus is groomed from a very young age because of the potential he
shows to be emperor. But then the twist is Marcus has a son and his son is a shitbird and sucks.
[Neil Pasricha]
And- Who's that?
[Ryan Holiday]
His name is Commodus. Have you seen the movie, Gladiator? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I- Joaquin Phoenix is Commodus and does a pretty good job.
[Neil Pasricha]
And Russell Crowe is Marcus Aurelius.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, Russell Crowe is a made-up character. His boss was Marcus Aurelius, and that's who
Commodus kills at the beginning. You know the old guy, Joaquin Phoenix kills an old guy at the
beginning of the movie?
That's Marcus Aurelius.
[Neil Pasricha]
Thank you, because you just gave me, and it's in Rome. Yes. Roman Empire's in Rome.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yes. Okay, that makes- It's at that time, the most powerful, largest empire on the planet, maybe
ever. And so this guy, Marcus Aurelius, has essentially unlimited power.
He has unlimited wealth. He's literally the head soldier in the most powerful army ever. And
here he is writing notes to himself about, don't forgive other people, don't be jealous, stuff like
that.
Get out of bed in the morning. Amazing.[Neil Pasricha]
And so what did this do for you?
[Ryan Holiday]
I mean, I think this book is a way to live. It's just, it's like all the advice you wish your dad and
your grandfather gave you.
[Neil Pasricha]
Because, I don't want to keep quoting that same New York Times piece, but it says, if stoicism
has become trendy, you can credit or blame Ryan Holiday. Through his popular books, lectures,
and viral articles, he translates stoicism, which had counted emperors and statesmen amongst
its adherents during antiquity into pithy catchphrases and digestible anecdotes. And this guy, I
know there's a tone here, for ambitious 21st century life hackers.
We talked before, we've talked many times about how Stoic philosophy is really growing
popular. They say to credit or blame you, but it wouldn't have a resonance in society if it wasn't
for other things. Like, what is behind this growing Stoic philosophy movement right now?
What's happening here?
[Ryan Holiday]
I mean, look, it's existed for 2,000 years and been popular. It was popular with the most
powerful, influential people for almost that entire time. I think it's become more popular with
people who didn't think philosophy was for them.
And I think I'm proud to have been a part of that. I know when I got this book, I was like, what's
Stoicism? What's philosophy?
How could that possibly help my actual life? And I think that's what's so incredible about
Stoicism is that it is philosophy for real people. So I don't know, like, we don't really have any
numbers.
Like, so you can say it's growing in popularity, but like, it may be today a fraction of what it was
in the ancient world. We actually have no idea.
[Neil Pasricha]
And the confusing thing for me is that this word Stoic philosophy has no bearing to the way we
define the word Stoic.
[Ryan Holiday]
Yeah, so I mean, and the irony is we also poorly define philosophy, right? So Stoic means,lowercase Stoic has no emotions. Philosophy means like impractical, abstract meanderings of
college professors.
But I think capital Stoic philosophy is a sort of a resilient set of principles and exercises for the
real world and for real life for real people. And that's why I think it's resonating in a way that it
hasn't as much as it could.
[Neil Pasricha]
I think it's amazing. I think I love it. I've been reading a lot of Seneca on the shortness of life, the
Penguin Classic.
I'm obsessed with it, I travel with it. It's beautiful. So I read it like if I'm stressed, that's for a long
flight, I open it up.
And a big, you are repopularizing, helping repopularize it. And there's so many more questions
I could ask about meditations, right? And so many more questions I could, but really I think
what I wanna do now to be sensitive to your time as well is to say just a huge thank you on
bringing these four books to our list and ask you if you would be so kind as to give us a couple
more minutes to finish up with a fast money round.
Let's do it. Okay, how do you organize your books?
[Ryan Holiday]
Well, I showed them to you in the other room, but basically I organize them by themes.
Although like all these books are in a theme, a shelf I just call life. Like these are my life books,
like books you base your life on.
But I have like, you know, classic section and I have a fiction section and I have books about
animals. I have like little sections. And then in the section, I organize them by descending by
height.
Why? I like the aesthetics of it. I like, when I see people have organized their books by color, I
think that's horrendous and stupid and a complete violation of what books are supposed to be.
But at the same time, if you put, if you go like, hey, look, here are the biographies and here are
the history books and here are the music books. If they're not organized by height, it looks very
chaotic and unorganized.
[Neil Pasricha]
That's so interesting, because in chapter three of this show, Seth Godin, I was in, kind of like
this, I was sitting ensconced in his books when we did the interview. And he's like, a couple of
things he says, like I threw out 2000 books and I've always regretted it. Second thing is I've
always wanted, like it was a mess.And he said that. He's like, I've always wanted to organize it by height, but people laughed at
me. You've actually done it.
I gotta put, I gotta tell them, someone actually did it and they're doing it well. Okay, what's your
favorite bookstore, living or dead?
[Ryan Holiday]
I'll give you three that I like. I like Book People here in Austin, which is, I think, the best one in
Austin, maybe the best one in Texas. I like Book Soup in Los Angeles.
I like the last bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. And then, of course, I like The Strand.
[Neil Pasricha]
Nice, okay. Do you have a white whale book or a book you've been wanting to read the longest but never actually done it? Like a to-be-read-forever book.
[Ryan Holiday]
No.
[Neil Pasricha]
No, because you just do it. I just do it or I don't wanna read it. So logical.
If you could delete it from your brain, is there a book you would wanna most read again for the first time?
[Ryan Holiday]
No, but because I like that experience. Like one of the things I'm doing this year is I'm rereading a lot of books. And we do these like challenges for, I have this website called Daily Stoic, we do these challenges.
And one of the challenges this year, is you had to pick five meaningful books to you and reread them. So I'm in the middle of doing that.
[Neil Pasricha]
Well, that's great.
[Ryan Holiday]
Can I ask what those are? Yeah, so one of them was What Makes Sammy Run? I reread Julius Lennon's, Julius Caesar by Shakespeare.
I reread The Odyssey, the new Emily Wilson translation. And I'm forgetting the other two that I wrote down.
[Neil Pasricha]
That's okay. No, thanks for giving us a couple. I appreciate that.
What's your book lending policy?
[Ryan Holiday]
I do not, I have a no lending policy. I will buy people books. I do that often.
But I will borrow books. And by that I mean I'll steal books from people. But I don't, it's a one-way policy.
[Neil Pasricha]
You know what, I need to adopt that. Because I'm always trying to track where my books are and I never, and then they get lost.
[Ryan Holiday]
No, no, they stay here.
[Neil Pasricha]
And lastly, the final question of the entire show, you're an incredibly successful writer and in many of the things you do, Ryan, could you impart a final piece or two of wisdom you'd share with those listening who aspire to be writers?
[Ryan Holiday]
I think someone asked Warren Buffett once what was the best investment that he ever made? And he said it was buying Benjamin Graham's, The Intelligent Investor. And so this is a guy who's worth, what, like 40 or $50 billion.
And he picked a $15 book, or it's probably like 40 cents or whatever. That and like the $20 Dale Carnegie course he always talks about. Yeah, so he bought a book. That was his best investment was a book. And I'm like, look, if Dr. Drew recommended that I read a book about stoicism and I went to Amazon and I spent $15, and I can say for 100% certain that I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you had I not spent that money. So I've heard lots of other books from other people that were garbage and I wasted the money, but a book is like an option.
It's a very cheap buy, but it could potentially be worth an unlimited amount. And so if you hear books, if you're like, I never, like people go, oh, I've been meaning to read that. Like either read it or don't, you know?
Don't wait for it to come out in paperback. Or people go like, I'm number 178 for this book at the library. And it's like, dude, I totally get that people are in different financial straits but like you could buy a used copy of that book for $5 at the most, right?
Like steal it from the library. I don't care. You know what I mean?
Like, don't wait, either read it or don't. And that's been my policy. And I think it's certainly had more of an impact on my life than any sort of natural things I brought to the equation or any privileges I was born with.
You know what I mean? Like that policy, I think, is primarily responsible for where I am. Thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, thanks for having me.