Virtuous Living, America’s Responsibility Problem, and Developing Your Moral Code — with Ryan Holiday

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Ryan Holiday: Today.

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Ryan Holiday: Go

Scott Galloway: go go. Welcome to the 107th episode of the property pot. It felt strange to have an opening that wasn't profane or somewhat pornographic. Oh well trying to push the limits or the boundaries of our comfort zone and go from NC 17 R. To PG 13 Crazy crazy town over here. In today's episode, we're joined by Ryan Holiday for a conversation around his latest book. Courage is calling fortune favors the brave. Ryan is writer, media strategist and blue Flame thinker. We last spoke with Ryan in March to hear thoughts on stoicism and today we discussed virtuous living over virtue signaling why America has a responsibility problem and how to develop your moral code.

Scott Galloway: Okay, okay. What's happening? What's going on?

Scott Galloway: We're taking a trip down carcinogen lane and that is how fraud is plaguing digital advertising, an industry that accounts for nearly half of all ad spend in the U. S. So while we know the digital advertising produces the ill effects of algorithmic engagement bias. Ad fraud has poised itself as the second Externality for companies using this revenue model between the platforms, agencies exchanges and other middlemen, 89% of dollars are spent on programmatic advertising or more specifically ads bought by algorithms. A study by MIT Professor Kathryn Tucker found that targeting something as basic as gender was unsuccessful more than half the time, meaning it was worse than just guessing. Furthermore, a Nielsen analysis of a household income adjusted ad campaign found that only 25% of its ads were reaching the right households and as much as 65% of location targeted ad spend is wasted plaintiffs in a class action suit against facebook have alleged that it's targeting algorithm accuracy was between nine and 41% and quoted internal facebook emails describing the company's targeting as open quote, crap, close quote and open quote, abysmal, close quote. And speaking of facebook, a new chart released by the company shows that there is no correlation between the click through rate versus return on ad spend. You heard that right? No correlation between click through rate and return on ad spend. So what can be learned here? If you're a small to medium sized retailer, you should rethink how much of your budget is spent on digital advertising and make sure that the platforms you're partnering with are providing with legitimate and audited insights into the efficacy of that advertising. Secondly, it's evident that a shake up is coming to the digital advertising complex due to the various updates we're seeing from the big tech gatekeepers, the Apple IOS 14 update, which went into effect earlier this year, requires abusers to opt in to whether they want their activity tracked. And Bloomberg reported that users are giving apps that permission only a quarter of the time. In addition, google plans to eliminate third party cookies from its chrome browser by the end of 2023 cookies of course track your internet activity as you move from site to site and or something. Digital advertisers heavily rely on. We're already seeing companies make moves to get ahead of the shakeup twitter, for example, recently sold this mobile ad unit mo pub For one billion mo pub is a mobile ad company that provides in app monetization features for app publishers twitter, CFO told Reuters that the purpose of the sale is to concentrate more of the company's efforts on ads on the website and in their apps. Put another way do away with ads served by an algorithm and move towards contextual advertising, contextual advertising works similar to the way you would place an ad in a print magazine. It's relevant to what you're looking at and then your targeted essentially any company that relies on digital advertising is going to be vulnerable to the externalities that are bound to play out when google eliminates cookies and apple continues on its privacy crusade. Now, where do we go from here? How do we take the carcinogens out of the digital ecosystem? We need to externally imposed and enforced industry standards on transparency and advertising expecting these conflicted middlemen to self regulate. It's just naive and we should consider taxing algorithms that serve ads and content. We tax cigarettes and alcohol to suppress their use and fund policies to address some of their externalities. Why wouldn't we tax um media or ads that has served algorithmic lee we know it's damaging. We know the algorithms ultimately tap into our worst instincts and start serving content that enrages and divides us. So why wouldn't we tax it and then reinvest those proceeds and something that helps manage that in addition.

Scott Galloway: And I hate to say this, but is this to say that digital advertising doesn't work and then you should stop advertising on facebook or google. Yeah, I don't think so. I think that as bad as this ecosystem is and it is bad and there's rooms for a ton of improvements by some estimates the kind of the digital ad fraud and supposedly there's a lot of links to organized crime with this with these fake fake fraudulent clicking. It's supposed to be one of the biggest businesses run by organized crime. So there's some real negatives here. The thing is digital advertising is less shitty is less ineffective than offline analog advertising. And I hate to also say this, but facebook and google Are the best of a sorry lot. And that is with 80-90% share of digital marketing. And the fact that they have first party data, they have enough data such that they don't need tracking, they don't need cookies because they get enough signals within their own ecosystem that they can they can implement fairly sophisticated tracking. So to a certain extent a cookie less world is disarmament except for china and Russia who begin to basically put everyone else out of business because they have enough capital to build their own weapons or I don't know what the analogy would be, but I think this consolidates power around facebook and google. I run an online Edtech startup. And someone correctly pointed out that I advertised on facebook, despite the fact I rail on them all the time. And here's the thing, if you run an online education firm, you have to acquire consumers online, you're not gonna run billboards, you're not gonna run, you're not gonna run a print ad, you're not gonna put ads in the newspaper. And so you, if you want to have an online business, you gotta advertise, wait for it online. If you want to advertise online, 80-90% of the traffic in the action comes through to platforms google and facebook and they are the best at it or the least bad. And so as much as I hate facebook and this is what I tell entrepreneurs who say, should I advertise on facebook? I don't agree with what they're doing at this point. You don't have any goddamn choice and this is the problem, They should be broken up. I would love to not advertise on facebook. I would cherish the moment where I no longer have to send any money to google. But that's saying, hey, uh I don't believe, I believe climate change is a problem and I don't support coal, fire power plants. So I'm not going to turn on my lights. Well, yeah, good luck with that. We need to break these companies up, We need to create more options such that someone can have an online startup and advertise across a more robust ecosystem and put some pressure and some competition on them such that they are motivated to invest in things including checks on ad fraud. But the bottom line is the bottom line, digital advertising is still a lot better despite the fraud and I hate to say this facebook and google.

Scott Galloway: They got us, they got us. You want to build an online business? Welcome to facebook. Welcome to google. Stay with us. We'll be right back for a conversation with Ryan Holiday. You know how people say it's not good to put all your eggs in one basket. Well the same applies your investment portfolio when it comes to diversification. Consider adding private market real estate with the help of fund rise fundraiser makes it simple to build, grow and manage a portfolio of premium real estate because it's generally in correlated to the public market real estate shows historically consistent returns with lower volatility and more annual income than other investments, meaning your money is less at risk. Plus whether you put in $10 or 1000 fund rises team of real estate professionals vet and oversee all of their projects. So you can feel confident in your investment. Of course, you can check in anytime on their easy to use website which lets you track your portfolio's performance and see what new properties are acquired. Spice up your. Mix of stocks, bonds and mutual funds with some new assets joined over 150,000 investors building a better portfolio with private real estate. Go to fundraise dot com slash property today. That's F. U N. D R E S. D dot com slash property.

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Ryan Holiday: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Mm mhm Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ryan holiday, the author of courage is calling fortune favors the brave Ryan. Where does this podcast Find you?

Ryan Holiday: I am in bastard texas right outside Austin.

Scott Galloway: Nice. So a big theme of your latest book, Courage is calling is how to choose virtuous living over virtue signaling. Can you walk us through what this looks like, especially when our political ecosystem and is so divided in our discourse is so of course,

Ryan Holiday: yeah. You know, virtue signaling is a tricky thing because first off, it's the perfect word to capture a thing that definitely exists right? Like there's definitely such a thing as virtue signaling and it's obnoxious and annoying and uh, certainly a lot of people are guilty of it. But it's also this weird thing now where like I would argue particularly on the right end of the spectrum, it's now just an epithet that people use to dismiss anything they don't like or anything that would demand, not being a horrible person from them. You know, like vaccines or virtue signaling mass or virtually everything. That's not virtuous signaling, which of course is not the case. Some things actually are, you know, virtuous like virtue is a real thing, um, that the stoics demand that we try to live by. I don't think anyone is perfect at it. But I think the idea that um, you have a certain code or set of values that you live by and you try to adhere to them even amidst the temptations and distractions and frustrations of life. To me. That's that's the that's the whole journey.

Scott Galloway: It also strikes me that it's become very, you know binary. And that is you either need to constantly virtue signal and reward virtue signaling on the left or on the right. You need to constantly gaslight and you know, call out people's political correctness and think of yourself as an irreverent truth teller who's practical and roll your eyes at everything on the left and there's no, there's absolutely no room in the middle. And the thing I don't get is the far right goes after the near far right and the far left goes after the near far left. We write each other off, We don't even deal with each other. They're infidels. But we on the far left we can save the near far left by throwing them into the purity fire, oh you're not, you're woke but not with a capital w. You're just not woke enough. And on the right you can be Liz Cheney and say okay I'm not signed up for everything here including donald trump. I'm just a deeply conservative woman. That's not enough. Let's throw it to the wolves, is it? There's something about the spectrum of the polarity of it and the fact that on either side, we go after each other more than the other side of any thoughts.

Ryan Holiday: Yeah. I mean, I think especially on the, on the left where like if you look at things like me too or you look at some of this political correctness stuff or the sensitivity stuff, it's almost more potent when used on people who you largely agree with because the insult or the criticism actually matters right. So it's like if you accuse someone on the right of being, I don't know, transphobic or something and they reject the premise entirely, the criticism doesn't land. But if you are taking someone who is generally sensitive and in agreement that these things are important and then you accuse them of one of these things it lands because they are agreeing that That the issue in question is an important one. There's almost this sort of self destructive component to it. It's like because we'd like to hold the other side accountable but can't we instead eat our own.

Scott Galloway: And I remember you you were talking about you, you wrote a piece for the economists to explain how the pandemic revealed some stark realities that in our nation we don't have a freedom problem. We have a responsibility problem. Can you say more about fostering a sense of responsibility? What does that look like in practice? I'm reminded of? I remember the Republican convention and I think it was 88 or 92. I've had his name, a Republican congressman who was a quarterback and he quoted his dad, he said character is doing the right thing when no one is watching. And I thought that was, I thought that was a pretty good definition.

Ryan Holiday: No, I totally agree. And what I was saying is I was basically, um, in the 1950s Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust Survivor proposed, uh, counterpart to the statue of liberty to be put up in San Francisco. So on each coast, a statue of responsibility, which I, I love the idea and certainly with the work that you've done, you know, as a sort of a cultural critic of some of the excesses of Silicon Valley culture. Although now it's not really isolated to Silicon Valley. The idea that with with great power comes great responsibility. Silicon Valley of all the sectors of the american economy seems to have abdicated that role. Uh, most egregiously, but um, like for instance, I'm actually not, I wouldn't identify as far left or even particularly leftist. I'd like to see myself as a, as a centrist or even center right on some issues. What I found really interesting about the vaccines. Like there is part of me, for instance, that doesn't like the idea of a vaccine mandate. There's something a little uncomfortable about the idea that the government's like you have to go do this, you have to go do this right now. But the solution to not having vaccine mandates is not that nobody gets vaccinated. It's that people should go voluntarily get vaccinated because it's morally the right thing to do. It's your duty as an american and you should not want to die of the coronavirus. Um, so it's interesting to me that the party or the part of american life that is the most in defense of freedom, like where I live in texas, the governor of texas has basically said the solution to covid is personal responsibility. I would totally agree except he's followed it up each time by insisting that the people of texas have precisely zero responsibility or obligation to each other to stop or slow the spread of Covid. So if you want to say that liberty comes first, I'm right there with you provided that the next words out of your mouth are about the expectation of personal responsibility. That follows that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah,

Ryan Holiday: it's

Scott Galloway: um, it definitely feels like we've conflated liberty with selfishness and the strange thing here is that I mean we just screwed up so badly politicizing these vaccines. There are, I mean, we asked people to take their who want their kids to go to public school, but I think to take nine vaccines by the time they're in the sixth grade and somehow that didn't didn't get conflated with violating people's liberties. It just feels so

Ryan Holiday: don't you think that's going to be the real legacy of the trump presidency, not just that he funked up Covid, not just that he screwed up this vaccine, but don't you think all vaccines are now politicized And, and I think you're going to see like if I was trying to think about this, if you zoom out like 20 years and you look at like how did we get where we are In 20 years from now if this vaccine, hesitancy refusal, politicization doesn't end the public health consequences that are going to be enormous and immense. And I don't see how that doesn't get laid at the doorstep of a very specific strain of the Republican Party.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Uh, we're gonna need a bigger boat. Uh, it strikes me that and I bring everything back to big tech. I think that there's a few, I think if there's real genuine attribution analysis, I think it will be difficult to find the trifecta trump facebook and Fox. Uh, there's very few three party organizations that have done levy more death these disease and disability on America and its short of time because we just didn't need to be here.

Ryan Holiday: What do you think it is that's made them decide vaccines? I don't know.

Ryan Holiday: It seems like a not a totally solvable issue by technology, but it does seem like they decided not to address it technologically at all or way too late. And I'm not quite sure what the business case for that was.

Scott Galloway: Well, the business cases is fairly straightforward and that is as a primal species and then lately our enemies we've identified ideally you have a common enemy that's outside of your borders, the Al Qaeda or Nazis and we all bind together to fight that common enemy when there's no kind of existential threat from foreign shores that we can easily identify and label. We go after each other and now Democrats have decided Republicans are their enemy and vice versa and something like 40% of each party thinks the other side is their mortal enemy. And then facebook and the algorithms decide, okay, we can tap into that tribal rage where the research shows that you'd rather your opponent missed the goal, then you make a goal and we can pit people against each other which creates engagement, engagement. More Nissan adds more shareholder value. But more than anything it goes to the things you've talked about and that is some of these organizations have, have demonstrated an incredible lack of courage and character and that is, they know what the right thing to do is. They know the damage they're doing. But in a society where money buys you love access to more mates, financial security, better health care, more opportunities for your kid. You start talking yourself into this lack of character or you trade off character in the short term, such as you can be wealthy and then demonstrate a lot of character when you're older and philanthropic efforts are taking care of people. It strikes me that the system has created very perverse incentives that absolutely chip away at people's character. And one of the things that you gave me this is your second time on the pod. I have, I've really because of you been doing a lot more research around stoicism and um it strikes me and I'd love if you have certain practices that we, I'll have a role, we can blame the algorithms, which I do a lot, but we all have a role in making our discourse less course um and being more kind and showing more disciplined and more strength and being warriors that leave their sword in the sheets. Can you tell us, can you bring this sort of these problems and solutions and hacks back to stoicism?

Ryan Holiday: Yeah. You know, I struggle with it myself too, especially the way you just phrased it, which is um there's a great line from Jeff Bezos, he said he learned from his grandfather, he said um it's easier to be clever than kind um I find it very easy to drag, you know, to dunk or to criticize or especially when the people you're talking about are advancing a viewpoint that's not just morally important, like in the case of vaccines or something, but just so preposterously incorrect. Um so I've struggled with it. The other thing that I've struggled with that I think stoicism has helped me with is like I've been disappointed and surprised that the number of people I know with large platforms or audiences or running large companies how little they have actually done with those assets. So like I was reading the Michael Lewis book about the pandemic. It was interesting to see how integral the chan Zuckerberg Institute was in some of the early covid response. So it's like they understand that and then as you're saying, sort of decided to do next to little algorithmic lee. But I've also just been interested at the number of authors and public figures I know who are just like, well I don't want to piss off 30% of my audience, so I'm just not going to talk about this. which of course is in some ways an endorsement of the status quo.

Scott Galloway: Oh Ryan, I mean if you're, I call myself kind of right of center left, but if you don't surrender to the dogma and the narrative on the far left of the far right, you're the enemy and people want to engage in a fight with you and are constantly looking for ways to make a caricature of your comments, dunk on you, embarrass you call you out because they get some sort of fame and twitter and facebook absolutely love when that happens or like a tyrannosaurus rex drawn to violence and again, I now I am virtual virtue signaling, but I have talked myself into believing that if you are blessed with people who love you, you have really strong relationships and more importantly, um not importantly a second, you're economically secure, you sort of have an obligation to speak up, even if it involves risk to your, you know psyche because there's too many people that can't afford it. There's too many people that are mid level managers that if they make the wrong move, they'll get fired or they'll get shamed. So I feel as if we have an obligation to occasionally say, oh, as someone who considers themselves on, if you want to call it woke a progressive, I don't buy this. I don't, I think we've taken it too far here. I think um, you know, cancel culture being called consequence culture. Well that's fine. But we have to look at whether the punishments or the consequences are proportionate to the actual infraction here and sometimes I think they are not, but there is the absolutely the easiest thing to do. And I think it happens to millions of voices out there whenever I see a ship that's slightly off color or I push back, I get so many emails and text messages from people saying, yeah, I agree with you word, you know, but no, but people feel like they can't, the, the, the downside is so much greater than the upside. It's like either surrender to the far right or surrender to the far left or you are the enemy and it is absolutely killing discourse. It's okay to be wrong. It should be okay to be wrong and learn from it and be willing to evolve in our society is like, nope, you're wrong, the wrong thing at the wrong time, let's go after him or her, Let's shame them. Let's try and go after their livelihood, even if this person is probably let's disappear al Franken and what do you know, fewer Children get up with food stamps, fewer girls are going to end up where women are going to end up with, with family planning and reproductive rights. But we showed the near left, I just don't, I absolutely think it is all going to a very dangerous place. Uh, and it's, it's, it's um,

Ryan Holiday: what's the two trends, right? There's like the nihilism of the sort of destructive nous that you're talking about, that just like we don't care about the consequences. We can't understand trade offs, We don't, we don't understand sort of how politics or change work, so we'll just destroy anyone who makes the slightest transgression. And then there seems to be this whole host of people who have like large platforms or podcasts or brands or social media followers who are so intimidated by that they just won't say anything. And I guess I just come back to the idea of like, what the hell is the point of having the audience if then you let the audience decide what you're willing to say. It's like, does the audience have you or do you have the audience? And I think I've had to think, and I know it's cost me like hundreds of thousands of followers. But like to me, what is the point of having the audience if I'm not going to tell them what I think needs to be said, I'm going to only say what is in the spectrum of it's not even what's politically correct, but it's like, what won't piss some of your people off? Like, I don't care if you don't like what I have to say, are you unsubscribe if you're a fucking snowflake, like good riddance?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So I think that I I think you're more what I'll call psychologically fit are resilient than me. I'd like to think, I think that I run it through my mind. But this car, these constant barrages you get from people, I think most of our boats actually trying to undermine your authority and credibility or attack you because they don't like what you said about something else totally unrelated. You know, it wears on you, you're like, you know, I just don't need this ship and then people get mad if you don't respond and just no one's happy, no one's happy and you're like, why am I why am I going through this kind of mental obstacle course on these these fucking platforms and then you realize your own addiction and you kind of go down this, this rabbit hole. But let's let's pivot back to stoicism and I've learned a lot and gotten really into this because of you, um what what can stoicism teach people about dealing with adversity and their personal professional and political lives?

Ryan Holiday: Well, I think first off if we put stoicism in its context, right? The roman empire, like they would have been very familiar with the perils and the intimidating factor of the uh of the angry mob, the populist mob. And they would have been familiar with cancel culture too. I mean in the ancient world, cancel culture meant we're gonna send you to an island in the middle of the mediterranean, right? Or we're gonna we're gonna confiscate your property or first we might even execute you. So I think that almost all the things we're talking about today have their there roots in the ancient world. And I love that about stoicism, stoicism is this idea that the world is unpredictable, the world is chaotic. Marcus releases remind yourself is the first line in meditations, he says remind yourself today that the people you meet are going to be angry, jealous, surly stupid, backwards, covetous. You know, it just goes on and he's like, and you're going to have to deal with them and he says, to be surprised by that is on you and to be implicated in their ugliness is on you. And so I just love stoicism as a really practical philosophy, it's not theoretical, it's not abstract, it's not um you know, how do we know we're not living in a computer simulation? It's more like how do you deal with people when they're awful. How do you deal with the balance between ambition and a desire to contribute to society? You know, I'm fascinated even with the fact that most of the stoics were obscenely wealthy and they were having to wrestle with plenty amidst income inequality and struggle with balance and moderation inside an affluent lifestyle. To me, it's almost you could not design a philosophy more perfectly for the environment that we're in today.

Scott Galloway: Coming up after the break

Ryan Holiday: Marks releases the impediment to action advances. Action stands in the way becomes the way so we accept that a bunch of stuff is outside of our control, but instead of throwing up our hands and complaining about it, we say, well what can I do with this? What opportunities does this provide for advancement for growth? Even just for virtues like forgiveness or tolerance or endurance?

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Ryan Holiday: property.

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Scott Galloway: Can you give us two or 3 principles are our listenership is pretty young, two or three sort of principles that are sort of foundational or things to start with. If you think I'm attracted to stoicism, what are three things I can kind of incorporate into my life and my behavior.

Ryan Holiday: Was it the for Epictetus who is a roman slave? So I don't want you to think this is just a philosophy for privileged people.

Scott Galloway: Um

Ryan Holiday: Epictetus says the first job of the stoic philosopher is two separate things into two categories. What is up to us and what is not up to us. This is the chief task in life

Scott Galloway: within your control or not within your control. Yeah.

Ryan Holiday: And you just see how miserable people make themselves today about things that are totally outside their control and then how much control over things they have, which they abdicate to spend time tweeting out into the void, you know what I mean? Like for instance, were obsessed obviously with national politics and then you go to vote and you're like all these local positions are republicans running unopposed, right? Like we we focus on the, you know, the things that are outside of our control, often at the expense of what's in our control. I think that would be the first lesson, I just

Scott Galloway: Put a pin in it till I get to number two. But I didn't realize that I was adopting stoicism. I constantly quoted Brokeback mountain. You know, if you can't fix it, you gotta stand it. That's what he just says. I'm like that was I didn't realize it, but that was kind of an introduction to stoicism. I'm sorry, continue. Right?

Ryan Holiday: No. And the next one I would give you this. This is that obviously what I derived the title of my first book on stoicism about Mark's releases the impediment to action, advances. Action what stands in the way becomes the way. So we accept that a bunch of stuff is outside of our control. But instead of throwing up our hands and complaining about it, we say, well, what can I do with this? What opportunities does this provide for advancement for growth? Even just for virtues like forgiveness or tolerance or endurance. And and so so for the stoics, it's life's going to throw stuff at you and who we are is how we respond to that stuff. I guess the third is an easier easy slash not so easy one, which is just this exercise of memento mori. To the stoics. All the stresses and problems of life are put in perspective by a sort of constant meditation on the fragility and the shortness of life. Seneca writes a great essay with that title on the shortness of life, but he basically says life is not short. It's that we waste a lot of it and we waste a lot of it because we constantly take for granted the most precious resource in the world, which is our time and if you need evidence that time is a precious resource, this is why facebook and twitter and all these websites monitor how much time you spend on them every day. That's what they are optimized to exploit because they then sell this resource which is more valuable than gas or or diamonds, they sell this to advertisers and that's how they become the most valuable companies in the world.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's it's striking um you know, you are, you are where you're Sam Harris says you become where you, your attention is and if you're on twitter all day, uh and I noticed this about myself, you become more terse, you are drawn to kind of liking like short term comebacks to people, you don't want to be that thoughtful, you just want to be really pithy all the time and it's dangerous, but the attention, the attention economy is gone absolutely. I

Ryan Holiday: think it broke the brains of a whole generation of journalists and pundits and analysts there, like it's not that everyone is on twitter, but it's that the people who drive our culture are addicted to twitter and so instead of thinking, You know, in the way that the New York Times reporter 30 years ago would have thought primarily in terms of long form, heavily researched Pseudo objective law views on stories. Um you know, they think in 1000 words or 2000 words and they think about it over the term of a week or a month or a year, depending on the length of the investigation they were doing. That person is now thinking in terms of 240 character hot takes repeatedly throughout the day and then we wonder why they're so wrong on so many things it's there, they're not cultivating the long term view or the wisdom or just background necessary to know what the hell they're talking about on, on issues.

Scott Galloway: So we talk about being both physically and mentally strong, somebody how you think heroes should be both morally and physically fit. What is your strategy or advice for achieving kind of this perfect blend of mental and physical health?

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, I mean to me, the importance of the physical health is that it is something in your control. So like what people say about your writing is not in your control, whether stories are coming your way, whether all this stuff in the work world is largely outside of your control. But every time I work out every time I go for a run or a swim or a bike ride or I lift weights, Like there's a clear connection between work and rewards, right? And if I decide to do it and I do it, that's a win. And so to me, one of the really important parts of having like a physical practice is that it just gives you momentum every single day. It's like momentum on demand. It's validation on demand. So instead of going to Twitter and asking people to make you feel good about yourself, you feel good about yourself because you sweated for 45 minutes and I just think it's so important.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that this is not a, your, your body is not a rental, right? It's your home for the rest of your life. And if you don't invest in it every day it starts to collapse on you and raid on and emissions start popping up and it becomes a dangerous, a dangerous place and you can't leave.

Ryan Holiday: So I'm particularly bullish. Sorry, I just say I'm particularly bullish on swimming as an activity because it is impossible to have screens. I mean, I guess my apple watch is waterproof. Like what I love about good working out like when people are like, oh, I listen to audiobooks on three X speed or you know, even podcast, I go, look, I'm glad you're listening to my podcasts and there's certainly worse things you could be doing, but part to me of the physical activity is that it gets you outside usually and away from the noise and social media for like at least an hour.

Scott Galloway: I think that's why people find golf and yoga. So meditative is it's very hard to do either without being totally absorbed in it.

Ryan Holiday: And it

Scott Galloway: just takes you away from both those things. And I do. I used to a lot of both those things and I do neither. But now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have music on when I'm working out, aside from fostering the four virtues of stoicism, wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. So I think what what else do you believe can help people develop their moral code? And I think of my colleague at N. Y. U. Um, uh, should Nobel prize winner? I'm totally blanking um, on his name about growth theory, paul Romer anyways, he he said I asked him to come speak about economic growth to my students once and he started talking about everybody has to have a code. And he's advised young people as they have to decide what their code is. And can you give us some suggestions or exercises for trying to develop this moral code?

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, Marcus, really is, he talks, he calls them epithets for the self, like what are the words that you adhere to that generally describe your behavior. So I even have like, I have a four, I can't show you because it's on my computer, but I have a four by six note card with seven words written on it and they are honest, calm, fair, brave, generous father. And still those are like, I know they're not technically it's not really a code because they're more like evocative words, but to me, these are like statements of priority in my life and I'm not perfect at them and I fall short of them. But I want to constantly be thinking about them, checking myself against them uh and making my decisions uh, in light of them on a regular basis. So I think that really to me is what stoicism is about is a set of values or themes or virtues that you are just trying to keep in mind always in any and everything that you do.

Scott Galloway: I love that in my brand strategy class, The last class is, it's called the brand is you. And it's talking about applying these principles to managing your life successfully, both professionally and personally. And I do sort of the Cliff notes version of that and that as I say, okay, here's your tombstone, you get three words to describe your life and you're gonna put these three words and then we're going to reverse engineer back um how that alters your behavior or guide your behavior. But I love this notion of being able to say and you've been more thoughtful. I think seven words is probably much a much stronger guy. But I love that notion that just start with words and that that sort is a, you know, Hector's guide post guidelines are you since the last time we spoke to you?

Scott Galloway: Are you more hopeful, less hopeful when you see kind of what's happened with the pandemic? What is your, what is kind of Ryan holiday's view of the world as, as we sit here now.

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, I'm it's like I'm deeply hopeful and when I look for things to be hopeful for, right, Like when I look at, when you look at the fact that we invented not we, I don't want to take credit for it, but the humanity uh an accomplishment akin or greater to landing on the moon. You know, humanity pulled off in 18 months and it was an immensely collaborative and collaborative, not just in terms of different countries but collaboration between uh government and business. And then, and then, you know, I I had the experience of volunteering and a number of vaccine clinics out here to watch these operations spring up from nowhere with no experience and never done something like this as a society and watch them give out millions of shots to people all over all over the country. Um, and I watched, you know, sometimes the national guard was there. Sometimes it was civilians. Sometimes it was doctors to watch that happen. Made me deeply hopeful. And then, you know, it's it's almost as if were a championship team that has like one player, it's like we're the Brooklyn nets, right? We have all the things that we need And then we have a cancer in the locker room who uh and ironically Kyrie about captures, you know, one of five, it's like 20% of the team is just uh, egotistical, stupid, selfish, um, deeply entrenched in a toxic set of beliefs and putting not just putting everyone else in danger but tearing the team culture apart in the process. So I'm hopeful that we have all the pieces we need where I get discouraged or where I think we're struggling Is what do you do when you have a cancer in the locker room and unlike a team, you can't fire 20% of the population or 10% of the population, whatever the number is. But how do you drag along a percentage of the population that has decided to act, not just selfishly but in complete contradiction to the values and ideals that the country is founded on. I don't just mean that in terms of vaccines, but that seems to be the recalcitrant part of american society that I think we're stuck with.

Scott Galloway: Ryan Holiday is a writer and media strategist. He is the author of nearly a dozen books. His latest Courage is calling Fortune favors the Brave is out now. He's also one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and read by over two million people. His writing has appeared everywhere from the Columbia journalism review to entrepreneur and fast company. Ryan dropped out of college at 19 to apprentice under robert Green, Author of the 48 laws of power, he joins us from his home just outside of Austin Ryan.

Scott Galloway: Thanks for your time and stay safe.

Ryan Holiday: It was an honor.

Scott Galloway: How's your of happiness when to run two people want to run from them? I watched this great documentary on it was on Netflix, called 15 minutes of shame by Monica Lewinsky and it talked about cancel consequence culture, whatever you want to call it. And the thing that struck me was not, you know, the takeaways, there's some really interesting takeaways I think about council culture and the takeaway I had was that accountability or calling people out is very effective with companies and it's also effective with our elected political leaders who put themselves up for that type of appraisal. But this sort of shaming of individuals doesn't um, a, it doesn't, it's not usually very effective and be with platforms that engage in incentives to promote dunking on people. It oftentimes has unintended consequences, loses a lot of nuance and it's just a net negative for society. But that's not my key take away. My key takeaway is that there's something called schadenfreude and it's joy in people's misery, a german word. And this research shows that we'd rather see someone missed the shot And we talked about this with um, Ryan than make the shot on our team and I think something you want to start from your life is Schadenfreude. Uh, I kind of enjoyed it. I remember my little circle of fraternity brothers when something bad would happen to someone or they lose their job, you know, everyone would know about it. And here's the thing when someone fox up, it makes a mistake gets fired, says something stupid, has a substance abuse problem. It's just like, you know, deservedly or undeservedly, just in a bad way. It's easy to be allergic to them. Like, oh, you know, we're drawn to, people are successful. I want to be friends with people, I want to reach out to people who are killing it and be around them and kind of bask in their success and then we become, if we're not careful, allergic to people who are, you know, said something stupid or did something stupid? Here's the thing. Your friends and your family, they kind of don't need you when they're right and they're killing it, they're fine. They're killing it. Your friends and your family and even acquaintances or people at work that you don't know that well, when they need people, when they need support is when they suck up uh, is when they get fired something Michael Bloomberg said, that always struck me is that he always reached out to friends whenever they got fired. Like, hey, what's going on, let's grab dinner, how can I help? And that's something I've tried to do is that when I hear about people who are quote unquote, moving on, which means they've been fired. I reach out. I say I'm a big fan and I would like to how can I be involved in your next thing? Let's grab lunch. And it does a couple things. One people remember people remember who was there for them when they needed them and it's a great way to solidify relationships. It's also you feel good about yourself. That's what, that's what leaders do. They protect people when they're at their most vulnerable. And one of the things I really don't like about what's happening in our culture is that people get called out, they do something stupid. And then all of a sudden everyone decides, oh well, you know, they also did this, they start piling on, okay, let them do that on social media. Do not do that in your personal life when you see a fire run into it, nobody needs you or people don't need you. I should say they appreciate you when they're killing it, but when they need you, when they need you is when they fuck up, run into the fire.

Scott Galloway: Our producers are Caroline Children Andrew burrows. Clara Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the property pot from the Vox Media podcast network. We'll catch you next week on monday and thursday? Hey there it's Neil Patel editor in chief of the verge and host of the verge cast and decoder the verge's turning 10 this year and we're celebrating live in new york city on october 22nd and 23rd with an epic two day event. Of course, I'll be there along with other notable journalists on the verge and some incredible guests

Ryan Holiday: immersive tech in our

Scott Galloway: experiences all day DJs and great new york food and drinks. For a limited time. We're offering Vox Media podcast, network fans $150 off our standard ticket. Go to the verge dot com slash on the verge for tickets and enter promo code dollar sign 99. Now at checkout, I'd love to see there.