Lessons from Ryan Holiday: How to Stay Grounded in Turbulent Times

Welcome to Assembly Required.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

We are going to continue today our discussion of our recommended reading by focusing on chapter 10 of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, and that chapter is entitled, Believe in Truth.

He says, quote, to abandon facts is to abandon freedom.

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so.

You see, one of the biggest challenges of the current political moment is the very seductive appeal of problematic theories that pose as easy answers.

And it's the way that autocrats and tyrants use all the time, every time, to tempt their followers.

They have this lure of common sense, which is often divorced both from reality and from logic.

But the seductive part is that it sounds like it should be right.

It sounds like it should be true.

Like the idea that slashing the taxes of the uber wealthy and that widespread deregulation will lead to some magical economic growth for us.

Or that a marginalized group is the primary source of all of your societal ills.

But we know from experience, we know from history that cutting taxes and polluting the air hasn't raised wages for the average American and that the Trump tariffs are not going to lead to some renaissance in manufacturing.

We also know that a transgender teenager is not a danger to our way of life.

And yet for years, conservative voices have amplified these theories, these lies,

so loudly that a right-wing media can then take an ecosystem and reinforce it and amplify those lies.

And they do it so often and with such intention that now they start to sound like the truth.

And that's the moment we're in.

That's the political space, the civic space, the public space that we're in.

And that is why we face the current epidemic of what Tim Snyder calls a hostility to verifiable reality.

Look, we cannot deprogram every friend or family member who believes the lies, but we can make the affirmative decision to believe in the truth, especially when the lie seems easier to believe and easier to live with.

In times of hardship and turbulence, it is normal to want to turn to something or someone to help make sense of the world.

And whether that is a faith tradition, it's taking action, it's seeking knowledge, it's having conversations conversations with friends or family members, or sometimes it's even looking to a public figure who seems to know something that we don't know and that we want to know.

It is easy to be lured into wrong, to be lured down the wrong path, but that's why believing in the truth is so essential.

Because when we believe in the truth, we start to harden ourselves against the seduction of lies, but we also create for ourselves the ability to withstand the assault on our reality so that we can find our way to truth.

Throughout history, there has been one philosophy that has been the go-to for leaders, for doers, and for thinkers, and that is the philosophy of stoicism.

It's an approach to the way we navigate challenges, the way we think about and consider opportunities, and the way we can confront the seemingly endless wave of bad news.

Now, I happen to be a Christian who follows the traditions of the United Methodist denomination, but I am also a firm believer in the practice of stoicism.

I'm also an adherent to the idea that we learn how to make it through by learning from those who've been there before.

So I read a lot of history, I read a lot of biographies, I read a wide range of books, and I do my best to curate and to cultivate as many stories and as many examples of what to do as I possibly can and what not to do so I don't make those mistakes.

And that is why it is such a pleasure for me to welcome my next guest.

Joining me today is author, philosopher, businessman, and the host of the Daily Stoic podcast, Mr.

Ryan Holliday.

His most recent book is Right Thing Right Now, which could not be more timely.

Ryan, it is such a pleasure to have you here.

I was saying earlier,

we we met a few years ago on your podcast, The Daily Stoic, where we had one of the most thoughtful conversations that I've had in a while.

And in that conversation, we really talked about the lived experience of stoicism and the random things I do with my life.

And I will say it remains one of my favorite conversations of the past decade.

And from that, you made me not only a buyer of your books, I've actually gotten a few of your books both in paper form because, well, I love books, but I also did the audible because

you're really good at talking about what you believe.

And now having complimented you as much as I think I can to open the show,

I would love for you to share with our audience what stoicism is as you see it and why you've centered your work around this practice.

Well, that's very nice of you.

I really appreciate it because I'm a huge fan of you as well.

And it's a good question, right?

What does it mean to be stoic?

And you and I first connected because you had very famously said that you were not going to be stoic about something.

And I remember hearing that and going, oh, I've got to talk to her about that because people do have this perception of stoicism

as being emotionless, accepting, passive,

resigned.

And

I think it's good that you were not all those things in

the light of that electoral loss because the whole future of the country might have turned out differently had you been.

I don't think that's what Stoicism is.

Certainly, that wouldn't have been the Stoics' conception of what it meant to be a philosopher.

The Stoics were active in public life.

The Stoics were ambitious.

The Stoics were...

were strong, were brave.

Stoicism as a philosophy to me is basically this idea that we don't control what's happened, but we control how we respond to what happens.

And I think that's actually the irony is that's what you were saying, is you were saying, hey,

I'm not going to take this lying down.

I'm not going to simply accept what I believe is an injustice.

I'm going to work to create a more just world.

And that's what Stoicism was.

Stoicism as an ancient philosophy, which starts in ancient Greece and makes its way to Rome, is built around these four cardinal virtues, which will be familiar to anyone

who has been in a Catholic church.

The four virtues are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom.

And so the idea is, how do we take what's happened and use it as an opportunity to embody those four virtues?

Well, I will tell you, based on the conversation that we had, I went out and started reading.

I bought meditations, which I read in high school, but didn't really pay attention to.

I have since purchased all of your books, but I've also continued

understanding expanding my understanding and really recognizing that it is a practice that I hold to be very central to how I operate.

And I give you great credit for helping me understand that what I thought I was just doing, because that was the way to navigate the world, that people had already written it down and I just needed to read about it.

And so, you know, one of the, one of your books that I, I picked up after our conversation that I go back to quite a lot is The Obstacle is the Way.

And you wrote an author's note for the 10th anniversary edition, and it includes the ancient curse, may you live in interesting times.

So why would you say that?

But more importantly, you know, in that, in the preface, you reflect that we are facing, quote, a steady drift towards fascism, unrest in the streets, and the failure of institutions.

And what I'd love for you to talk about is how you think about, you know, 10 years on from when you first wrote the book, a few months after the new version came out in October 24.

Just what do you, how do you relate the core principles of Stoicism to the turbulence that we're facing in 2025?

I was just thinking about our tendency, I was thinking about this recently, our tendency to sort of romanticize the past, you know, a drift towards fascism,

unrest in the streets, a failure of institutions.

I mean, Marcus Reelis is writing writing in what we now define as the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Cato, one of the great Stoics, is there for the fall of the Republic, right?

Rome's transition from a democracy to a not democracy.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, is writing as Greece is being torn apart by these wars after the death of Alexander the Great.

And personally, he is writing after this devastating shipwreck where he's lost everything.

And so the ancient world had just as much unrest and disruption and disaster and

difficulty as today's world.

I think we sometimes just assume that the norm is stability, that the norm is people doing right, you know, doing good things.

And it's not.

Things have always been crazy.

They always will be crazy.

But what I'm trying to say in the obstacles the way, and what I think the Stoics are building the philosophy around is this idea that

all that difficulty and disruption and all the ways that it's not the way you want it to be, that's also the opportunity.

That's the chance to be heroic.

That's the chance to make a difference.

It's also a challenge for you just to rise to personally.

I think

I've been thinking about how little we as individuals control what's happening right now.

Now, I'm not saying that we should just passively accept what's happening, but we control so little of it.

But

our major task, I think, is in a time of cruelty and

awfulness.

And you could also say a celebration of incompetence and all these other things.

What a challenge it is not to be sucked into that.

Like

to not go, oh, that's how a person should be.

I'll be like that, right?

To not let the assholes turn you into an asshole.

That's what the Stoics mean when they say that the obstacle obstacle is the way, that if everything was wonderful and everyone was doing the right thing, it wouldn't be that impressive for you to be happy and for you to do the right thing and for you to be decent and kind, right?

The whole point is that because it is swimming against the tide, it makes it

impressive, right?

And not that we're trying to impress people, but that's what makes it beautiful.

And so,

what I think I was trying to say in The Obstacle is the way is that when I wrote the book in my early 20s,

I was primarily thinking about how obstacles can make us more professionally successful.

And this is what you talked about in your entrepreneurship book: that we're always about how do we find how we move forward, how we grow, change.

And that is an important part.

I think my deeper understanding of these ideas and where I'm trying to position the book now is, you know, how does it make us better human beings?

And how does it challenge us to do what our obligations are as citizens inside this dysfunctional, crazy world that we currently occupy?

Well, you talked in February about preparing for the next four years, and you emphasized focusing on what you can control, prioritizing stillness, and investing in community.

And as you just described, his first few months in office have been even more chaotic and more reminiscent of the fall of the Roman Empire than just another four years.

Would you change anything about that list or would you add anything to that list and why?

Ooh, that's a great question.

Yeah.

I was trying to think about future proofing for the next four years.

And I was saying that, you know, I'm not going to buy a bunker.

I'm not going to move to Canada, but I do want to think about how I can handle what I think any thinking person would see as inevitably going to be a rough ride.

And I think the Stoics have a lot to teach us, you know, as I said, focusing on what you control,

not following every single outrage, but learning how to prioritize, finding where you can make a positive difference.

I would just add that I think sometimes

it is very easy to assume that there's some sort of floor on how bad things can get.

It can always get worse than you can imagine it can get, right?

And I think that's one, you know, people talk about how the study of history, you know,

helps you not repeat history.

I think one of the

one of the burdens of studying history is you always have a sense of how dark things can descend to and how quickly.

And so I'm trying to balance how

I live my life day to day and that sort of creeping dread or that awareness

can prevent, you know, can,

you know, that tension.

I'm, I'm, I myself am really struggling with that.

And how are you navigating that tension?

What are you, and what are you struggling with?

Yeah, I, you know, I, I read this beautiful book called Bomb Shelter by, by Mary Philpott.

And she's, uh, she was talking about how she learned later in life that her father, who, who had been a doctor in D.C., had a, had a top-secret job, and his job was to prepare the sort of senior members of the administration, including the president, during the Cold War for

a nuclear attack.

Like he was supposed to be the doctor that would go with the president if there was a nuclear strike.

And so she was talking about

how difficult it must have been for her father to spend all day at work preparing for something and then sit down and have dinner with his family, knowing that if his professional

work were to come true, they would all be evaporated, right?

Just this sort of tension of like, hey, I've got to get my daughter to soccer practice.

And also, I got to write that memo about what we're supposed to do if the Soviets attack, right?

That he's making preparations for an apocalyptic outcome.

And I think that is a very difficult thing that we're struggling with today.

Like, how do you, how do you deal with, you know, making my son's lunch?

And then also

my phone is telling me that, you know,

my retirement accounts, along with everyone else, has dropped, you know, in the double-digit percentage points.

And that, and that

this is not just par for the course, but this was done intentionally, right?

And that

the people who did it are not like scrambling to undo it.

They think that it's a good idea.

So, so that

accepting that powerlessness over a horrendous outcome is obviously a part of stoicism.

Seneca lives during the time of Nero.

Like we think Trump is bad.

Imagine Nero has absolute power over you.

And so that tension between accepting that, hey, I'm not driving this bus and the bus driver is drunk and deranged.

That I struggle with.

And then

how is that not mutually exclusive

with what I find so inspiring about your work and what's obviously necessary is how at the same time do you fight to change that and do something about it?

I think that is a tension that is not, it's easy to be all in one camp and all in the other.

And that's not reality these days.

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Well, you just talked about sort of how we meet these hard, terrible moments.

And, you know, one of my favorite stories that you tell is about the Roman general Belisarius

and sort of how he had to work for a despot and never get credit, but still do what was right.

And

I often use that as a guidepost and your conversation about Toni Morrison and sort of how she used discipline and then George Marshall and what he did.

I told you, I've read everything.

So this is blowing my mind.

No, because one of, you know, for me, one of the ways I've learned to navigate the world, I read biographies a lot.

Yes.

And what has been so revelatory about your work is the combination of biography, but also practicality.

And so would love for you to, you know, to talk a little bit about in this moment.

And you've mentioned, you know, Seneca, and I've given a few names, but who else, you know, can you give a couple of examples?

of who we should be modeling ourselves after or we should be learning from and use this as an opportunity to name check any of your books I haven't mentioned yet.

Well, one of my favorite Stoics, he's not super particularly well known, his name is Helvidius.

And I wrote a book called Lives of the Stoics.

That's more focused on sort of who the Stoics were as opposed to what they write.

And Helvidius lived in the time of Vespasian, which is one of the not-so-great emperors.

And he's a member of

what we term, historians later term the Stoic opposition.

There was a series of Stoics who were not just so politically engaged,

but by nature of their philosophical beliefs, just inherently at odds with these deranged emperors.

Their resistance is so

powerful that at one point, just all philosophers are banned from Rome because the emperors are tired of dealing with them.

But Helvidius is a member of what's called

the Stoic opposition.

And he's constantly criticizing the emperor Vespasian in his role as a senator.

So again, these are Stoic politicians.

And Helvidius is going every day into the Roman Senate and he's just haranguing the incompetence and the evil of Vespasian.

And Vespasian says to him,

stops him one day on the way in and he says, Hey, you got to knock this off.

I'm not going to accept this.

You need to stop.

And Helvidius says, well, you know, it's my job as a senator to say what I think is right.

And as long as I'm a senator, I'm going to keep doing that.

Vespasian looks at Helvidius and says, I don't think you understand.

If you keep doing this, I will kill you.

And

Helvidius looks at him and he says, okay, I'll do my job and you do yours.

And he ultimately is executed by Vespasian for continuing to do this thing.

And I tell that story, even though it doesn't have a happy ending, because in a sense, it does have a happy ending in that.

Helvidius did his job as a senator.

He did not think his job was to continue to have his job.

He did not think his job was to tell the emperor what he wanted to hear.

His job as a senator was to be, you know, to say what he thought was true, to speak out on for policies he thought were good, and to sort of do the job of a senator.

And I think we have a big problem here in America right now politically, where the primary job of politicians seems to be

first getting reelected and then second getting a lot of media attention and

actually legislating and then

doing a good job for the American people.

These are not even in the top five or the top 10 concerns.

And so, the idea of losing one's job in the course of doing it, or losing one's life in the course of doing one's job,

That's just not the calculation that our politicians are making.

And without that, you know, you might as well not even have a Senate or

a Congress.

Like, the point of them are to be co-equal branches of government.

And if they don't assert that prerogative, they're not doing their job.

No, I think that is such a critical point.

And, you know, we just watched Corey Booker do 25 hours of just talking and reminding people of what the job of the Senate is, what the job of government is.

But we also know that in tyrannical nations, that part of what begins when autocrats rise is that they also change what we know.

They change the news.

And you, at the start of the year, you wrote this article on Medium, want to make America really great again, stop reading the news.

And

you warned against this endless news consumption and you called cable news harmful and you aptly described social media as a cesspool.

And then in a lot of blog posts since then, you reiterated the importance of cleaning up our information diet.

Can you explain your thinking on finding this balance with news consumption and why it's so important?

Yeah, it is a challenge because obviously the role of a citizen in a democracy is to be informed as to what's happening.

I think the problem is that we, especially liberals, seem to have confused following the news with being informed.

And

there's almost nothing that Trump can do that's going to change my opinion of whether this man is fit for office.

Like, I already know.

I already know he shouldn't be in office.

He should be removed from office.

And if he thinks something's a good idea, it's almost certainly a bad idea, right?

Character is fate.

The past is prologue.

We know all this, right?

So

I've had to remind myself, hey.

You following the news isn't actually informing you of anything that you need to know.

It's just making you upset.

It's just making you miserable.

And in fact, you know, Trump doesn't want you to stop watching the news.

Trump wants you to watch the news, right?

He wants you, his whole media strategy, as Steve Bannon has outlined, is to flood the zone with shit.

It's to create the appearance of an overwhelming narrative, to repeat it enough times that it starts to feel true.

I think Gary Kasparov has said that, you know, the point of misinformation is to annihilate truth.

It's not to eliminate it.

It's to overwhelm it and exhaust it and to get you to go, I just don't really know anymore, or it's hopeless, or it's cynical.

And so I just had to understand that

the more I check the news, the more it actually makes me want to check out.

And the more that I read history,

and it doesn't just have to be ancient history, like I would just urge someone to, you know, go read Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King, or go, there's a huge

three-volume set on Gandhi that I would encourage people to read.

You know, read those big doorstop biographies, as you said earlier.

Read Doris Kern's Goodwin, right?

Read about people who went through similar things

and understand how they survived and how they made the world a little bit better in their time.

You already know that

change needs to happen.

You already know what's wrong.

What we need a lot more understanding of is how to get through it and how to do something about it.

And I think that's what history teaches us.

News is just, you know, information, a lot of which will be rendered irrelevant by

future events.

I think history and biography and psychology, you know, works about activists and activism, works about about strategy.

These are the things that we need to understand better

and we probably need less real-time information.

That is such,

I love the way you talk about it.

And I'm going to keep us on media for one second before we move to actually a few of the folks that you mentioned.

Because in your book, Trust Me, I'm Lying,

you offered anyone who read it a very damning look into the rise of social media.

But one of the reasons I enjoyed reading it was that I think it's a blueprint for not only understanding why we shouldn't be caught up in the news cycle or the social media cycle, but it's also a playbook for how to filter information.

And would love for anyone who's not going to listen to your admonition that we need to go read other things and they're still going to go onto their social media feed.

Can you elaborate a little bit on what we should know when we're there?

You always want to think about the incentives acting on the information that

you're reading.

Actually, there's a famous line from Cicero.

He said, qui bono, which basically just means who benefits.

So you have to be asking yourself whenever you read or consume information, you know, how did this come to be, right?

What incentives are acting on the person creating it?

What are the incentives of the person who leaked the information?

What are the incentives of the people who are quoted in the piece?

And so I do think we just have to do a better job.

thinking about why you're hearing about this and what what they're trying to get out of you.

You know,

the news, although many journalists are wonderful people doing yeoman's work that's essential,

as a business, the job of the news is to get you to continue consuming the news.

Like

they are not, the individual journalists might want to see change, but the news business, whether we're talking about MSNBC or Fox or

a social media company, their job is just to get you to continue to consume this information.

And so that incent

you understand why breaking news is so prioritized, because breaking news is ongoing, meaning it's not definitive, right?

Like a book, I'm selling you a book or any author is like, hey, here's something that I spent a long time thinking about that I am hoping will hold up for a long period of time.

Whereas a tweet or a news story, you know, they want you to keep watching and they wanted to stretch it out as long as possible because they want you to sit through the commercial break, you know?

And when you understand that, I think it should inform your media outlet, your media diet a little bit more.

You earlier referenced the compendium on Gandhi.

And in Right Way, Right Now, you dedicate your longest chapter to understanding the life and complexity of Gandhi.

And one of the parts that struck me was how he came to recognize his own hypocrisy in South Africa, that while he was fighting for the rights of Indians in that nation, he had joined the majority in the oppression of Africans who lived in that country.

And right now, we're in this place in this nation where our personal struggles often outweigh or overwhelm our ability to consider the needs of others.

What does stoicism tell us about Gandhi and how we should think about this moment, whether it's what's happening to transgender children or what's happening to immigrants or just anyone who's not us,

when we think we're doing what's right.

I'd love your thinking about how Gandhi would admonish us about how we're navigating today.

Yeah, that's the beauty of Gandhi's story is how he was constantly holding himself to his own standards, right?

Only sort of belatedly does he realize, like, oh, I'm a colonist of South Africa also, right?

I am both oppressed and an oppressor.

And that awareness, I think, was what made him great.

And then when he returns to India,

he sees that the struggle for independence is inseparable from

equality

for what were then called the untouchables.

He has this sense that it's not just about me getting my stuff, but that, as Martin Luther King was famous for quoting, that we're all sort of this mutual bundle of interdependence and that

the rights and the suffering of someone else

are inseparable from your own rights and suffering.

And that's a beautiful idea.

And we get the Stoics slowly coming to this idea as well.

The Stoics said that we're all born.

We're all born self-interested.

And then, of course, we love our families and we love our friends.

We love our fellow citizens.

And that they said we can sort of see the world as this series of concentric circles, right?

There's us at the center and then

bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now, unlike J.D.

Vance, who seems to have

decided that Catholicism is about excluding people from those circles,

which is very different than the Catholic church that I grew up in.

What the Stoics said is that the madness, they called it a beautiful madness.

They said the beautiful madness of philosophy is about pulling those outer rings inward, right?

That the whole idea was: how do you start to care about more and more people,

more and more people who are less and less like you?

That

that was what we were trying to do.

And again, I think there's a very different picture than people have of the Stoics, the idea of caring about people you've never met, people who don't look like you, people who live far away from you, and that you actually have to do work to do this.

One of the great realizations the Greeks have is that,

you know, do you know the, it's obviously not a super politically correct word, but do you know why the Greeks called people barbarians?

Yeah.

They called them barbarians because other languages sounded like bar, bar, bar to them.

That's where the word comes from.

That other foreign languages sounded like nonsense to them.

And Herodotus, one of the great classical writers, sort of realizes that Latin and Greek must sound that way to them, also.

That

we're all barbarians to each other, right?

Because

we're all foreigners to each other.

And so, this idea of sort of rising above these initial impulses or prejudices and trying to see yourself in the other person, that that is the work of Christianity, that's the work of philosophy.

It's also just the work of being a human being, that how do you sort of expand that worldview and

grow?

That that's what you want to do.

And to me, all the people that I admire

historically and in the present, and

what I am trying to aspire to myself, is that you should end up very far from where you began.

That

your kind of initial preconceptions

should feel very small to you as you go through the world because you're always getting bigger and more open.

You should write that down.

Okay.

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I want to tease out two other people that you've written about.

Dove Charney, the fashion industrialist that most people have never heard of.

And also, you know, in Ego is the enemy, you recount the fall of Howard Hughes.

And in both, you have these cautionary tales about ambition and people who start off right.

And to your point about where we begin versus where we end up, you talk about how brilliance and promise sometimes turns sour and bitter.

And we're in this moment where people who may have made a choice back in November are trying to figure out what in the hell happened.

Excuse my language.

But also we have people who we admire who are turning into people we don't recognize.

And I would love for you to talk a little bit about their stories and how we should understand this current age.

Yeah, out of college, I worked at this company called American Apparel, which was at that point, not just one of the fastest growing fashion companies in the world, but this kind of both transgressive company, but also this kind of liberal darling.

They were the largest garment manufacturer in the United States.

They paid their workers a living wage.

The factory was solar powered.

They didn't use professional models or Photoshop.

It was a really progressive and successful company

in so many ways.

I mean, I remember buying full-page ads in the New York Times supporting immigration reform, supporting gay marriage when Prop 8 was passed

in California in 2008.

So it was a wonderful company in many ways, but it was also run by a sort of an Elon Musk figure, a sort of singular kind of creative genius, but the line between genius and madness is often thinner than we would like it to be.

And Dove sort of collapses under his own mess of contradictions and demons.

And, you know, the company is no longer around.

I learned a lot from that experience, and I talk about that in the books.

One is just the perils of ego.

There's a reason the Bible said pride goeth before the fall, is that these powerful, successful people who get high on their own supply ultimately end up destroying themselves.

And that happened.

And I think we're watching that happen, not just

with Donald Trump,

but also with Elon Musk.

You know, when you have started a company that everyone said was insane and you

you turn out to be right, it's very hard for you in the future to listen to other people.

When Elon Musk started SpaceX, his friends had an, had a, had an

alcoholics anonymous style intervention.

Like they were like, you cannot do this.

It will not work.

And so, you know, on some level, I think it's very difficult for Elon Musk to perceive

or to

categorize criticism properly because people have been telling him he's irresponsible and reckless and wrong his whole life.

And more often than not, he has been right.

And so

what I try to present these people at is not just

put them in their proper context, but also to present them as cautionary tales, because

it can happen to anyone.

You have to protect your brain, you have to protect your sanity, and then you have to protect your soul.

And I think this is something that Gandhi talked about.

I remember my father saying it to me as a kid.

He would say,

you know, if you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart.

And if you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain.

And

I think about how sad

the wisdom in that expression is, because what that's saying is that you should stop listening to your heart as you get older, that your heart should harden and

your views should close.

And I think that's precisely, as I was saying, that's the exact opposite.

trajectory that I would like to be on.

I am working hard and I think we all have to work hard in a world that is disappointing and disillusioning to maintain our ideals and to maintain our openness and to maintain our empathy and

our love for our fellow human beings, even when it seems like maybe sometimes they don't deserve it.

Well, one of the ways we can do that is discipline.

And you talk about

in The Obstacles Away, you talk about John D.

Rockefeller, who entered finance during the 1957 panic.

And, you know, by studying chaos, how people would swing from exuberance to fear,

he resisted that urge and he stayed disciplined and he seized opportunities.

And you even connected this idea of discipline and chaos to astronauts who were navigating space, trying to make sure they made it home.

How do we cultivate that level of discipline in our own lives?

What does discipline mean in this moment in your mind?

Yeah, again, I don't think stoicism is emotionlessness, but it is being less emotional, right?

Like I think about what do your opponents want more than anything?

They want you to get emotionally invested.

They want you to get

ticked off.

They want you to get caught up in things.

They want you to be in the sway of your emotions, right?

You know, that expression sometimes people, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention, you know, and I agree there are a lot, there's a lot to be outraged about.

But again, part of the strategy is to deliberately provoke outrage.

And so you have to think about

what does the enemy want you to do, right?

And we're using the enemy loosely here, but

the purpose of talking trash in sports is to get inside your opponent's head, right?

To get them to overreact, to get them to make a mistake, to commit a foul, to take things personally, to get in their own head.

And so we have to understand that that's kind of what's happening.

And so what stoicism is to me is about

cultivating the even keel, right?

George Washington, you know, historically comes down to us as this sort of,

you know, figure of this great self-command.

But he was also an immensely passionate person.

These things were in tension with each other.

If you don't have a temper, it's not impressive that you don't get upset.

It's that you have this roiling temper that you do live in tumultuous times.

And if you can maintain an even keel despite that.

And so Washington's favorite expression actually comes from this play, Cato, which was sort of the, I like to joke, it was the Hamilton of its day.

It was this famous play that Washington actually puts on at Valley Forge.

But Cato's famous line in that play, Cato being the Stoke philosopher, is that we have to look at everything in the calm light of mild philosophy.

And that's what I'm trying to do constantly.

Again, this isn't to say that the house is not on fire and that bad things aren't happening.

They absolutely are.

but you freaking out only makes you less able to deal with that crisis.

Well, in a time when people can feel like not only are they in crisis, but they're not doing enough or they simply don't know what to do to help.

You write very eloquently about Anne Frank and Raphael Limken and Arthur Ashe, and you offer some very salient advice about meeting these challenges.

You talk about giving, you talk about mentorship, you talk about sacrifice.

Can you give us some examples of what we should be doing using discipline, putting aside ego, but more importantly, how do we contribute to the world that we want to be a part of?

Well, look, obviously this is central to your work, but at the most basic level,

people need to vote.

We wouldn't be in this mess if more people voted.

Like people, people go, oh, I wish there was something I can do, but I'm going to stay home in November because I don't like all the candidates, right?

We're just not participating.

And I think most importantly, we're not participating at the local level, right?

We could be in this mess.

We could have the exact same president, but if the states or if our local representatives,

if Democrats had been more involved in local elections, there would be more firewalls and more stronger institutions that would be able to constrain these things.

Like

I live in Texas, which is about as red as it can get, and

in rural Texas, in fact.

And so, like,

at the same time, one of my friends who's on city council,

the first time she ran, she lost by two votes.

Two votes, right?

Like, like, that's one couple that got home late from work and said, eh, we'll vote next time, right?

Like,

it makes a huge difference.

Voting is obviously the most important thing we can do.

I think people think, though, that like posting on social media is the second most important thing that they can do, you know, and

it's not.

So I would say post less, vote more.

As Obama said, don't boo vote.

I would leave us there.

But I would say

I'll give you something on the very far other end of the spectrum.

I live in rural Texas.

I live on this dirt road.

And

it's all maintained by us, the people who live on this dirt road.

And

some other citizens have have decided that because that's a dirt road not maintained by the county, that it's a wonderful place for them to dump their trash, right?

And this is, I think, you know, collective action problems are the bane of

human society.

And so, you know, every weekend, my kids and I, we get out there and we try to pick up as much of it as we can.

You know, I've spent hundreds, thousands of dollars of my own money at this point, taking tires to the dump and mattresses to the dump.

It's not what I love doing, but I do love in a world that feels like it's spinning outside my control.

I made a little difference.

We were coming home from doing it the other day, and my five-year-old said, I think we made a little difference.

And I said, That's exactly it.

You know, that's exactly it.

And honestly, making the difference environmentally is to me secondary to the fact that I am teaching my kids that when they see something that is wrong or they see a problem, that their job is to do something about it, that that's the responsibility and the burden of being a person in the world is to fight, you know, I think the Stokes would say, these losing battles even against these sort of overwhelming forces.

But it's not about winning, it's about doing it.

And I think each individual has got to find their own way of contributing in a small way, voting being a thing we could all do and make a big difference immediately with, but just how are you participating?

Where are you volunteering?

Who are you helping?

Just where are you making a difference as a human being with other human beings?

I think that's what we have to focus on.

Ryan Holliday, a philosopher, waste manager, author, small bookstore owner, and just all-around good guy.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

You've inspired me so much, and I I really appreciate it.

This is a complete honor.

And I hope you can keep being stoic because we need your example.

Look, I've been studying.

You can tell.

I can't tell.

It's blowing my mind, to be perfectly honest.

As always on Assembly Required, we like to give our listeners actionable tools for facing the challenges of today.

So here's this week's toolkit in which we encourage you to be curious, solve problems, and do good.

To be curious, I would love for you to check out the Daily Stoic podcast.

It is a fantastic way to start to internalize some of the practices of stoicism, and they give you a really thoughtful way to navigate the challenges that you face.

If you want to solve problems, as Ryan encouraged us, make sure we are thinking about the discipline of our news diet.

Focus on being informed versus being a consumer of information.

Let's make sure we're asking the question, who benefits?

And then lastly, do good.

As Ryan and I discussed, this is the moment where small things matter.

Yes, we want to do big, audacious things to fix the world.

And some of you were involved in protests this week and last week, but sometimes it's about doing the small things.

It's about picking up the trash.

It's about showing up at a city council meeting.

It's about giving of yourself so that you make the world a little bit better for someone who's having a hard time hanging on.

And if we can do those things, we can together make progress.

And now we're going to take some listener questions and feedback.

And here to help me with that is our producer.

Hi, Alona.

Hi, Stacey.

Before I read a couple of questions to you, I just want to point out that I was looking through all the comments, all the questions that people have been sending in.

Our audience really responded to Jen Saki's comment when we had her on directly after Trump's joint address to Congress about Democrats holding town halls and districts where Republicans maybe aren't doing it.

And, you know, I think that we've seen also with the recent hands-off protests that there are just a lot of opportunities out there for people to take advantage of this political moment, even though at times it can feel overwhelming or maybe like there isn't anything that can be done.

You know, there are always good ideas out there.

And now I'm going to read two questions for you.

Let's first start with this one from Josh.

Josh said that he listened to the episode from March 13th when we had Jason Kander on.

And he says, after hearing your conversations around the impact the current administration is having on veterans, I wanted to reach out looking for advice.

My dad is a veteran.

He served several tours in the Middle East when I was growing up and we moved around quite a bit.

Thankfully, he's now retired and no longer actively serving, but he does receive various benefits.

He's still on TRICARE and he's considered disabled due to his service.

So he does get added benefits from that.

Now we get into the question here.

Josh says that my parents are both on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

This is in stark contrast to my own identity and beliefs.

And needless to say, politics is not something that we frequently talk about.

In the times where we have discussed our political views, my parents always defend voting for Trump as a vote to protect VA benefits.

Of course, long before the election, I knew and tried to convince them that Trump is not out to protect anyone but himself, but that fell on deaf ears.

Now that we have empirical evidence that Trump and his administration not only don't care about vets, but are actively working to dismantle the benefits they receive, I truly do not know how to further that conversation.

My initial instinct is to run to them and say, I told you so, but of course I know that that won't actually do good.

So how can I do good in this situation?

Well, I, first of all, Josh, I am so sorry for the tensions that you're facing, but I applaud your intention.

I told you so it was never going to work.

People hold to what they think is true, especially when they're confronted with empirical evidence to the contrary, because then they have to admit that they made a mistake.

And this is a sizable mistake.

And they're watching the same story unfold that the rest of us are.

And it's not good for your personal relationship and it's not going to change their behavior.

But what you can do is offer to work with your dad to help other veterans.

Because whether he wants to admit it's Trump's fault or not, if he was willing to commit himself to the service of this country, it's because he cares about the people.

And so I would find ways to do something with him to support that so that he learns about it not from you and not from empirical evidence, but from lived experience.

So see if your dad will go with you to volunteer at a soup kitchen that serves the homeless veterans in your community, or talk to him about possibly volunteering with

a veterans hall.

But find a way that the two of you together can be in service for vets so he understands what they're facing.

And in particular, as Jason pointed out, making sure that you're in conversation with former National Guardsmen, with those who are reservists, who don't have access to TRICARE, who are losing their benefits, with service disabled vets who are losing their opportunities because of the anti-DEI behaviors.

But finding ways where it's not you saying, I told you so, but you learning together and serving together, I think can have a much better benefit, not only to your dad, but to you in rebuilding your relationship.

Thank you.

I think that is helpful for anyone, not just for Josh, because the instinct and desire sometimes to do the I told you so, you know, is very strong in all of us.

Okay, and so now I'm going to read a question from Mary.

Mary says, What was your experience when you first began making real asks of those in your personal circles to move toward action?

I'm well established in my community, but I'm struggling with knowing when to stop making email and text requests within casual social circles because sometimes people don't respond.

I want to be effective, so I don't want to be too much.

But this is who I am.

And if I'm considering running for a future political office, I want to identify as someone who's willing to come along on this journey.

So what strategies do you recommend for casually, collectively organizing?

Okay, so I love this question, especially in today's conversation about stoicism.

We can't control what other people do.

We can only control what we do.

My mom put it very differently.

Look, you can't make grown folks do anything.

But what you can do is provide them with information and opportunity.

But don't presume that a failure to respond is a failure to know.

You get emails sometimes that you don't do anything about, not because you don't mean to or because you don't agree with the information.

It's just not the priority for you.

But you eventually go back to it and think, oh, I'm glad I know this thing.

So if someone doesn't want to get your emails, they'll either tell you to stop sending them or they'll delete them.

But no one is making an ARIA Game of Thrones list of the people sending them emails they don't want to have.

So don't worry about that.

that but the second part is to make sure that you're leaning into those who want to be engaged and that you're continuing to share not only the invitation but the results a lot of times we're pushing information out but we're not following up with why activating matters so the next time you send out an email say Thank you to those of you who joined me and let me tell you about this experience that somebody had or this is this new thing that we're thinking about.

And if you have ideas, let me know offline.

So give people space not only to hear what you have to offer, but to offer something themselves without worrying that because they didn't go to this last thing, you're going to think less of them if they do show up.

Honestly, I feel like that ties really well with just what Ryan was saying about news consumption and being informed rather just knowing things, right?

Because it's easy for all of us to get so many texts and messages and be like, oh, yeah, this is happening, that protest is happening, but hearing stories, hearing motivation behind it.

I love all that.

Thank you, Stacey.

Thank you so much, Alona.

I do want to flag one other thing at the very top of our conversation.

If you did the hands-on protest, great.

But one thing Ryan said that I also want to encourage us to do, and I've said this before,

Congress is not the only politics in town.

We've got city council meetings, we've got state legislative meetings, we've got mayoral races happening, we've got school board meetings.

Anytime we show up in a civic space, we are telling those who are elected elected to serve us that we're watching and that we're willing to take action so if you don't want to go to a protest if you don't want to write your congressman again but you do want people to know that you demand more from those who serve you just show up You don't have to go every time, but every time we show up, we show that we care about our democracy, we care about our country, and we care about the folks we share this world with.

So just keep showing up.

Thank you so much, Alona, for the questions.

And thank you to each and every one of you who listens every week.

This is a reminder: we can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube.

And I'd love for you to tell others what you're listening to, what you're learning from these podcasts and from these extraordinary guests.

The more you share, the more folks can find us and the better we can do.

And so if you want to tell us what you've learned and what you've solved, send us an email at assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

Well, that wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Alona Minkowski and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilius Votopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Booser, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Herringer, and me, Stacey Abrams.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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