Opinion
Holiday: Media dislikes Trump the most while giving him the most publicity
“You know, like, look, there's no one the media dislikes more than Trump, and there is no one who has gotten more free publicity from said media than Trump, right?”
Insight
Holiday: Media and algorithms effectively govern America by shaping public opinion
“Technology, different words is true then, or true now, but he was basically saying that, look, America is a company, is a country governed by public opinion, so what governs public opinion governs a country, and so these algorithms, the mediums that we use, so…”
Insight
Holiday: Society's virtue collapse stems from abandoning moral narratives
“The means by which society has been communicating these timeless ideas. Of course it's by example, but it's also by narrative and myth and the art that you have up in your house, the stories you tell them, the movies you watch, you know, the people you support…”
Opinion
Holiday: Cultural mess stems from tearing down classical ideas without replacement
“I think you can trace a little bit of the mess that we're in now to the tearing down of those ideas and the failure to replace it with something else.”
Assertion Supported
Holiday: Brown University students campaigned to remove Marcus Aurelius statue
“There's actually a protest at Brown University the last couple years. They wanted to pull down, there's a stat, an equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on campus,”
Insight
Holiday: Believing society is honest makes individuals act more honestly
“If you think you live in an honest society, you probably act more honestly than if you say a good guy, as you said, if I can't get ahead doing the right thing, that is a very bad word.
That is a,
That is a worldview, a vicious cycle that's hard to get.”
Insight
Holiday: Leaders need active physical hobbies, not passive meme viewing, to recharge
“The most important thing That a leader can have is a hobby. He says they have, they must have at least one or two hobbies. They have to be real. They have to be like stuff that you do. So watching memes is not a good enough hobby. It has to be something that h…”
Assertion Contradicted
Holiday: 60% to 70% of young Americans cannot join the military due to fitness
“What, like, 70, 60% of young people could not join the military if they wanted to because they're so out of shape.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Holiday: 2011 media manipulation tactics are now cyber warfare playbooks
“And so a lot of the things that I was talking about in that book are now part of the sort of like cyber warfare playbook or the media manipulation playbook.”
Insight
Holiday: Positive messengers must master the media tools exploited by bad actors
“The worst people in our society are the most adept at exploiting and using the media and or viral ideas and what we have, what people who have positive messages or real perspectives or lessons to teach people have to do much, a much better job of figuring out …”
Insight
Holiday: Stoics engage in public life by default unlike Epicureans
“The distinction in the ancient world, the two rival schools are Epicureanism and Stoicism. And Seneca, one of the great Stoics, is saying, like, an Epicurean will get involved in public life if they have to. And he says, a Stoic gets involved in public life un…”
Insight
Holiday: Building a better mousetrap fails without intentional framing
“There's that Emerson quote where he says, you know, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. That's not how life works. Like you have to create a compelling reason for people to be interested. You have to think about what their…”
Insight
Holiday: Modern society babies teenagers instead of teaching classical philosophy
“A seventeen-year-old is more than capable of reading a philosophical text, or reading Plutarch, or any of these, like, we baby our kids when it comes to books as if, like, for literally thousands of years, people, you know, your kid, your seventeen-year-old A …”
Assertion Partly supported
Holiday: Famous Revolutionary War slogans originated in Addison's play Cato
“Even like, even some of the famous lines, like, give me liberty or give me death. I regret I have but one life to lose my country. Those are lines from the play.”
Insight
Holiday: MLK effectively used Thomas Jefferson's own words to force progress
“Martin Luther King was incredibly educated, incredibly well-read, and he, what he did was he would study, say, a Thomas Jefferson, and then he would take Thomas Jefferson at his word,
Right?
And force people who liked Thomas Jefferson to try to live up to thos…”
Assertion Supported
Holiday: 'The Obstacle is the Way' approached two million copies sold
“You know, which is, you know, sold a million and a half, two million, on the verge of two million copies.”
Insight
Holiday: Stoicism centers on responding to uncontrollable events with four virtues
“Stoicism is built actually around the same cardinal virtues as Christianity, courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. And the idea was that we don't control what happens to us in life, but We can always respond to what happens to us in life with those vi…”
Assertion Supported
Holiday: Stoic Musonius Rufus argued for genderless virtue in ancient Rome
“Musonius Rufus, who's Epictetus's philosophy teacher, is like, He gives a speech on, he says, should women be taught philosophy? He says, is virtue the same in men and in women? And he makes this argument, you know, in Rome around the first century that virtue…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Holiday: Daily Stoic newsletter reaches over 500,000 subscribers every day
“Look, the Daily Stoic email goes out to over a half a million people every day. That is the, without a doubt, the largest collection Of people interested in stoic philosophy to ever have been assembled at one time in human history, right?”
Insight
Holiday: Doing manual tasks you're bad at prevents one-sidedness and generates ideas
“I'm doing stuff that I could pay someone to do, but like, the fact that it's hard, I'm bad at it you know, it's humble, you know, all these different things, that allows me One, I always get ideas that I take back to what I do, but it just, it makes me less on…”
Insight
Holiday: Difficult hobbies keep successful professionals humble and check ego
“It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. It doesn't matter how talented you are, how smart you are. It's hard, and therefore, Beneficial from an ego perspective, because it makes you realize you're not the master of the universe, even if you are profes…”
Disclosure
Holiday: Publisher cut advance by over half for 'Obstacle is the Way'
“They gave me, I think, less than half what I've gotten for my first book, for my second book about what became my second book, which is about Stoke philosophy.”
Ryan Holiday