Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday
Uploaded: 2022-06-23T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-23. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1836 - Ryan Holiday

The Joe Rogan experience
Hi, nice to meet you man. Yeah, good to me. Happy birthday. Thank you. How old
are you? I'm 35. Wow. Do you feel 35?
I feel like after like late 20s
I just kind of like well, I got to check in every year to be like wait, how old
am I again?
You know, so I not really I guess
It's a strange time 35. Why cuz you're kind of middle-aged
Yeah, but you're young. Well, I was like successful pretty early in my life
So like I was always like the kid, you know, like I dropped out of college at
19
And so and I worked in Hollywood and so I was always like the the youngest
person in the room by far
Mmm, and so like that's it's not been part of my identity, but I like felt it.
You know, what'd you do in Hollywood?
Well, I dropped out of college. I worked at a desk in a talent agency and then
And I started signing new media clients and then very quickly it didn't work
out, but
you want to know I'd so sure so I I
Was working for one of the reasons it didn't work. I didn't work out because it
was horrible life and I don't know why anyone would want to have it
but I was
Working at this desk I was insistent and I was also a research assistant for
Robert Greene
40 dollars power guy sure by the way, I brought you
The new one from him. Oh great sign it for you. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah,
Robert's great guy
He's my favorite human being the whole world. All right, damn. I want to be
your favorite
Let's see
Well, no, so I I was working for Robert and I had the 40 laws of power on my
desk because I was working on it and one of the partners became like
Convinced that I was like up to shit
What yeah? Yeah, yeah, like he was like he just he got in his head that I was
like not a threat
but I was like someone to be suspicious of and
Because you had the laws of power on your yeah desk. Yeah. Yeah, it was the
weird too ambitious like well
Yes, yeah, it was Wow, and I remember one time the partner I worked for he like
never
like he was always gone
And he never liked to be on call so he had me on some call for him and I was
supposed to like be like feeding him
Info, you know, like when you're on the on the conference call I was supposed
to like type him stuff and
you know like you log into the call and
It's like you're the seventh caller, but there's only supposed to be like six
people on the call
Mm-hmm and so the partners like someone else is on the call like who was on the
call and I was like
Am I supposed to say something cuz like I'm not supposed to be on the call and
I kind of froze something like 20 and I froze and
You know who's on the call who's in the car and it was like too late to say
anything, right?
It's funny. I'm like feeling it like the nervous nerves really well
No, cuz it was so stressful. This is like, you know, this is like an artigolds
type, right?
Right and then all of a sudden I hear like footsteps down the hall and it's
like his assistant and the assistant is like
Looking through the door and you can see oh my gosh if I hang up the phone
Oh, you know, it makes the noise and then and then I hear like
stomping down the hall and he like bursts into the into the thing
It's like what the fuck are you doing? I knew you were up to something like I
saw you reading that book
you know, it's like this whole he's just like screaming at me and
and then like he could tell that I was like not scared enough and so he
I'll never forget he grabbed the door and he slammed it and then opened it
again and then slammed it and then opened it again
Like just pure like physical intimidation like a chimp banging sticks. Yes,
exactly
And so I just got up and left and then I never went back. Oh my god. It was
crazy
I dated a girl when I was like 27 and she was an assistant for an agent and she
would wake up in the middle of the night
Terrified that she fucked something up
She would just have these like fearful moments. She worked
16 17 hours a day for nothing
I mean she she got paid garbage money and the whole idea was that like you're
kind of interning slash working there and you were eventually
Going to get a career as an agent. So she worked for this guy who was just a
complete
Asshole just a fucking asshole to everybody who worked under him
It's the dumbest system in the entire world because like the person who is good
at being an assistant and I was so bad at it
And would put up with it for like five or six years is not the person that
anyone would then
Want to be their age? It's like filtering out for like pencil pushers and like
nerds and like like
You know, it's the craziest system
And that's why most agents are horrible is because they
Most people would get up and quit or just not be interested in it at all
It encourages abuse too because then you abuse if you ever get to that position
where you're an agent you get an assistant
You're just gonna abuse them because you were abused when you were an assistant.
That's just it's a hazing ritual
Yes, and people who were hazed are very on you'd think you'd be sympathetic to
people who were vulnerable
but it actually hardens you because
You're like well, I went through it. You have to go through it. How weird it's
awful
well, it's a it's a weird abusive system period from top down from producers
and directors to
Tarantino was on the podcast he was telling me about this famous producer who
kept a bedroom in his office
Where he would take the starlets and he would he would bang all the starlets
that power corrupts man. Yeah
But I think back then it was unchecked, you know now it's like
It's those same guys are like terrified now
Yes, like all those stories are resurfacing like that way that was the way
women got roles
Like you had to sleep your way to the top like you literally had to do that
It doesn't seem that hard to not be a piece of shit though
But does it in a world where everyone's a piece of shit like depending upon
what like there's different cultures of different
You know businesses and when you have a business like that where you know,
there's
One of the weirdest things about Hollywood is that there's literally people
that just decide to pick you and if they pick you
Your life becomes your wildest dreams. You're in the cover of Vogue magazine
You're starring in an action movie right next to the fucking the biggest a-list
celebrities in the world
You fucking made it you're at the Oscars accepting the award and thanking that
person who points at you in the front row
If they chose if they choose you, but if they don't choose you you're fucked is
not a meritocracy
It's just not you could see by like someone like Amber Heard
She's not a good actress
But if you you get into the right spot and you do the right thing and you
fucking make the right noises
you can become famous and successful well, I think any industry that has gatekeepers
is inherently
susceptible to being corrupted because those people have a certain unearned
power and
They probably deep down know
That they don't really do anything and that they're just like
guessing you know and
It's probably there's probably something in that too where you're aware of the
inherent bankruptcy like we don't make anything we don't do anything yeah
And it probably goes to your head and you need distractions and stuff well
I think that's this is an interesting jump-off point to talk about your work
and your your fascination with stoicism because
What you're talking about there is like a truth like you're talking about like
this
There's a reality to that job is that these people who are the gatekeepers like
there's a lot of people that work in Hollywood
That work as executives that are really not talented people and I've known them
forever and I've seen them fail upwards
Like I've known them since I've been there so it was like 20 30 years ago and
they're still around and they were retarded then and they're stupid now
That's like they're the same person. It's like
there's there's a reality to that and
one of the things that I think you're really
that you highlight very well is the importance of
reality of
Dealing with things and of finding
positives in any sort of you know the the title of your book the obstacles the
way it's a great title because
Obstacles are very important and although they don't seem like they are
When you know you're there they they don't seem like they're beneficial they
seem like it's just like at the end of the world
And this is gonna be horrible, but there's some great benefit in
Difficult times and difficult things well, yeah, even when I was in Hollywood
right, so I I have to walk out on this job
I'm like fuck this is what I dropped out of college to do like this is not good
My entire life would have been different had that not happened to me. What did
you want to do?
I wanted to be a writer, but I got this really good advice
From a writer and he said writers live interesting lives
So you have to like go do stuff you have to be around people or in a you have
to go get you have to go earn having a point of view
You can't just like look you can't just get good at the craft of doing the
thing
Obviously, that's super important and that's why I learned from Robert as a
research assistants like here's how books come together
Here's the art of doing the thing, but like if you don't have anything to say
Uh, right, you know, and so I was just I was like, okay
I had this thing to chance to do this and then I went from there and I worked
at I was the director of marketing at American apparel
So I did like weird shit and I was around crazy
Crazy people but all of that ultimately informed, you know what I talked about
But I knew I knew I didn't want to be a person who's just like taking a
percentage of what other people do
I wanted to make stuff like I wanted to actually produce and create things
So I knew I wanted to be a writer and when I first read the stoics
I was just like shit. This is it like when I read meditations for the first
time. I was 19
I was sitting in my college apartment and I was just like not only have I never
read anything like this
I've never even heard of anything like this because you have the most powerful
man in the world writing notes to himself
That he never thinks are going to be published like pretty much every other
book ever written was like a writer
Writing to an audience. Yeah
And meditations is was never intended to be published. He'd probably be mortified
that we even have it
And so it was just a kind of philosophy and a way of thinking that I hadn't
heard in any school
You know in any class from any adult in my life and I was like I want to tell
people about this
Marcus Aurelius
One of the more interesting things about the stuff that he writes is how
relevant it is today
Like when when you read it you wouldn't imagine that this is being written by a
man like how many years ago was that?
Eight nineteen hundred two thousand years ago. He's writing in like the mid
150s 160s AD
it's
Very relevant like the way he writes the the amidst the language is incredibly
familiar
It's the same, you know, it's one of the things about
You know, we always make fun of the way people talked a long time ago, you know,
where far thou like there's a there's a way of talking
That we don't communicate like today
But when Marcus Aurelius writes and you like you read meditations, it seems
very
Current well, it does depend on the translation, right? Because like if you are
reading
And people do this and I'll recommend Marcus Aurelius and they'll just like get
what's free on the internet or whatever
If you're reading a translation from the 1850s or the 1600s, it's gonna be in
Shakespearean English
Because oh interesting right because they're translating
It into their
Yeah, and so the the right translation is key. Do you remember which one you
read? I don't
I like that there's a Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library
Which I think is the most like lyrical and beautiful of all of them. That's the
one that I randomly bought on Amazon and had no idea
That i