BONUS | Charles Duhigg's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

0:00Ryan Holiday: Shopping at Whole Foods is one of the things I do in our family. Like the grocery shopping is my job. So I was glad to be able to do that even on vacation. And then, you know, being here in Hawaii, it was the same Whole Foods experience we're thinking about. But then also a bunch of regional stuff, too, that they only have at this Whole Foods. We love shopping at Whole Foods because there's always new flavors and foods to choose from whichever Whole Foods you are like, whichever Whole Foods you happen to be at. So save on regional flavors at Whole Foods Market, and maybe I'll see you at the Whole Foods in Austin sometime.

0:34Ryan Holiday: Three, four times a day, I reach over and I grab my wife's phone and I check something. Not social media. I check the Shopify app because Shopify is how I see how the Painted Porch and the Daily Stoic are doing. We've been using Shopify for almost 10 years now. It's great. And we're not the only ones using it. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and brands all over the world. They do 10 % of the e-commerce in the U.S., from household names to Gymshark and Allbirds to little brands just getting started and little things in between like Daily Stoic. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother.

1:17Ryan Holiday: And if you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer service, which we have used many times at Daily Stoic and with The Painted Porch. It's time to turn those what-ifs in to sales with Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash stoic. Go to shopify.com slash stoic, shopify.com slash stoic. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

2:00Ryan Holiday: Here, I'll give you this one, by the way. Oh, awesome. This is the ghost town one. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Let's see if I can find this Chinatown book. So this guy is actually living? Yeah, he bought, he was my assistant. Really? He basically spent his life savings on this, like 300 acres above this lake, above the lake from Chinatown. Oh my gosh. Really cool. So he's like restoring all these old buildings and, you know, he goes down in the mines. Really? Yeah. Is that not dangerous? You recorded the audio book for this at 900 feet below ground. Oh, my. Whoa. It's really cool. So he thought it was going to be this whole resort thing, and then it became a YouTube channel.

2:52Ryan Holiday: It's just popular as a YouTube channel. That's really interesting. Okay, so this is about Chinatown. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Because there's so many. You've got Robert Evans. Yeah. You've got Roman Polanski. you get jack nicholson like the the the directions you get to go off in studying chinatown it's pretty incredible well another thing is again because i was just watching it on the plane it's like there's things that they do that you can't do in mood like you don't understand what's going on for like the first 30 minutes yeah it's kind of got a raymond chandler thing yeah yeah yeah it's basically like sells itself on attitude and like atmosphere it's also insane that you would like make a hit movie about like stealing water yeah doesn't make any sense yeah there's a like the other one is like uh to think like um who framed roger rabbit is about the the building of the 110 freeway that's what that is it really the movie is about them ripping out the streetcar to replace it with a highway yeah i you know i did not remember that like great Like really great things have like sort of sublimated to it.

4:06Yeah. That's really fun. My favorite, have you read Ask the Dust? No.

4:11Ryan Holiday: My favorite L.A. book of all time is the novel Ask the Dust. Because it's a great historian. So John Fonte was this sort of struggling writer. He lived in Bunker Hill. Like all the big buildings in L.A. used to be these sort of Victorian mansions. Like San Francisco. Yeah. They tore down to build all those big buildings. Anyway, so he writes this beautiful novel. And the story is, the year it comes out, his publisher publishes an unauthorized, unredacted edition of Mein Kampf. Whoa. Because Hitler is like 33. So Hitler's this. It'd be like if you published Putin's book or whatever. But HMH, Accountant Mifflin, owned the copyright to Mein Kampf.

4:58Ryan Holiday: They were Hitler's U.S. publisher. And so they sued and bankrupted John Fonte's publisher. And so the book is lost to history until Bukowski discovers it in the Los Angeles Public Library. And Robert Town discovers it. And he's the one and he makes a movie of it like all these years later. Oh, this is awesome. He probably picked up the same copy of this obscure book that no one read. Yeah. My all-time favorite writer. And it's a novel about a writer. It's incredible. Oh, man. Thank you. This is going to be awesome. Can I ask you a question about, because I noticed you guys have all the LBJ stuff.

5:36Ryan Holiday: Yes. So do people, because you're in Texas, do people want to buy books about Texas? Is that like? Yeah. I mean, I've read a lot about Texas. I think Texas is fascinating. And those are three of the, what is it, four? How many are there? I think those are some of the greatest biographies ever written. I mean, it's just a master at work. But I noticed also the sun. Yeah, yeah. like it's good. Philip came out. He lives in Austin. He's great. Yeah. So we have some good, we have like Texas-y books that are popular, but I kind of, I sort of see like Texas, Mississippi, you know, with all that kind of stuff all together.

6:17Yeah. This is really fun.

6:21Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Thanks. So what was this before you guys, before you guys? This is like a Mexican restaurant. Really? This was built in the 1800s. These are three buildings. These were built in the 1800s. Huh. They've been a billion different things. That was a barber shop most recently. These were vacant for several years. But like, so there was a bar here. Oh, wow. And that's what this is. And this is the kitchen of the restaurant. Oh, really? Yeah. This is the kitchen of the restaurant. So did you guys do the run-o yourself? Yeah, sort of. I mean, obviously, we didn't do the construction ourselves. Oh, this is awesome.

6:58Ryan Holiday: Yeah, it was cool. And then actually, there was a bar from the 1800s, like a Brunswick bar in that building. I'll send you a link to it. But we moved it to the ghost town. Huh. Because that's when it dates to. Oh, wow. We put it there. But yeah, we just kind of, that tree fell down on my ranch. Really? And then. this is really cool and then how did you guys build this this is amazing I was noticing it in your studio this is amazing yeah these are just a bunch of books and then some of this one he cut a lot of them so it's not the full weight of the book okay stacking on top of each other it would be way too much yeah we cut a good chunk of them but they're this the fireplace is built so they're just they're just like just like arranged around them and then glued in place yeah yeah so it's what uh it's 2 000 books 4 000 screws six gallons of glue that weighs that's so cool yeah we just wanted something that kind of makes a statement and it's but yeah people just come in the first thing they want to do is take a picture in front of it oh really and so kind of yeah it's like so if you i think in the world of social media you want something that you share about the thing that you did yeah yeah that totally makes sense cats that run around too and like that they're probably like the second most you just want like things you know that's super interesting yeah well the thing that I like about it too is it's very um like unlike most instagram things where it's like pink background like it looks actually distinct yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's been cool and the fireplace doesn't work so it it which probably is a good thing yeah I mean it was it's like sort of you can't take it out and it doesn't work yeah we were gonna do have you been to the last bookstore in downtown los angeles no they have this cool and you walk up this flight of stairs and then it becomes like it's a they clearly just took like a metal bar and then drilled a hole in the books and slid it on there but it you walk through like a what like an arch tunnel yeah that's cool because it's over the stairs so we're gonna do something like that And then the fireplace sort of being there.

9:09Ryan Holiday: Yeah. That's awesome. What have you been reading? You know, I want to read Cal Newport's new book. I haven't gotten a copy of it yet. Oh, yeah? Where is it? Slow Productivity? Yeah. Is it good? No, no, just yet. It came out two days ago. Oh, did it? Yeah. OK. He was here the week before it came out. No, he's great. Yeah. You guys are both at the New Yorker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's such a smart way to come at productivity, too. Oh, he's the best. His deep workbook, I think, is incredible. Yeah. There's range, which you're talking about. Yeah. He's great. So what cells that's surprising?

9:50What's the thing? What cells? What are you surprised by?

9:55Ryan Holiday: Oh, that's a good question. I like to find, like, oh, there's probably this. Tolstoy wrote a page a day book. Really? Yeah. It was like the last thing that he wrote. It's just a collection of his favorite quotes and like sort of meditations on them. And then it was suppressed by the Soviets after his death, mostly because it's very religious. Oh, interesting. And so it was totally forgotten until like the 80s or 90s. And do people buy this? And it's probably like I loved it. So I started talking about it because obviously I read it when I was doing The Daily Stoic. just like other books and that's yeah and then yeah it's probably there's there's a handful of books like that where like we're like the one of the only places that's selling them right and so like the publisher's always running out like so okay so let me ask you because i am very curious because your books like your books are based on so much research yeah as opposed and i obviously do interviews but not like the same way yeah when you're doing yeah i don't know most of the people my books are dead so yeah so how do you structure like like how do you structure your time because i use the interview to basically help me material to get my material but also to help me know when i'm ready to start writing because i start hearing the same thing from different people i just so i just uh i'm usually uh i have like a theme or a topic and then i'm reading about it and researching about it for a long time and then are you like keeping note cards or like what do you do physical I use like four by six note cards.

11:24Ryan Holiday: Yeah, that's what I used to. So I have a table upstairs and they're all laid out. Like, so I've just started, I'm doing a series now on the cardinal virtues. Like a courage, discipline. Oh, interesting. Justice comes out next and then I just started wisdom. So that's why I have the chapter on questions. Right. Questions. So I wrote something down that you said about, like we were talking about like questions that get an answer that's not prepared. Right. Oh, that's great. So I'll write that down in a note card. That'll go in the tab of question things. And as I put together that chapter, it'll go in there probably.

11:53But like wisdom is so amorphous. Like how do you?

11:58Ryan Holiday: So like I wanted to write a book about humility. That was what ego was. But then I found out ego is the way in. Like what is the thing that makes it not amorphous? So the actual virtue for the Stoics is temperance, which they illustrated with a person watering down their wine. Well, that's a super boring idea. You can't write a book about temperance. No one would read that. Like even moderation, no one would read a book about it. Because most of what people want is the extreme. They want to be extremely successful, extremely rich, extremely powerful. Like, you know, it's like selling a book on body positivity.

12:32Ryan Holiday: It's going to be really tough. Right. Because like people actually want to be jacked. Yeah. Even though they need to be body positive. They want to be skinny and they want to be jacked. And they want to believe that if I give you the answer, like you can do it without mature. So you got to figure out what is the thing that's made. no one wants to read a book about a thing that they're not right inclined to do you know so so make i made that book about self-discipline which is a a rendering of temperance and self-control so so i for me it's all about yeah what is what it and i am still figuring it out because i haven't written the book but yeah what is the thing that makes that accessible and interesting and then also like compelling to share and that's super interesting because i think for me the um i do the same thing but it's this i have to find the story yeah like until i know what this the anchor story is the narrative that i can't actually figure out how to structure the chapter so for me it's what's the theme like in this case like i'm not i didn't decide i decided to do a book on the cardinal virtue or a series on the cardinal virtue so i don't pick the virtues i what's what's do I think is most compelling about it and then it's not what's the story I have to go like who are the characters and what are the main story so like the discipline book that I Lou Gehrig's the physical manifestation of discipline Queen Elizabeth is the like sort of temperament or emotional yeah and then the last one I talked about Mark Suriles who has unlimited power and you know uh it's sort of fusing the physical and the temperamental discipline together so yeah I For me, it's first what's the thing, then who are the guys?

14:12Right. That's super interesting.

14:15Ryan Holiday: Yeah. It's the best. Solving the puzzle part is fun, and then finishing is fun. It's the middle part. Yeah, yeah. And it's literally like the middle part of the middle where you're just like, you feel like you're turning the crank every single day, and you're like, am I getting closer? Yeah, yeah. It's like if you work on it enough and then you're like, oh, wait, when I put it all together, it's decent. Yeah. like uh yeah so which stage are you at right now are you at the oh uh so the justice one like i'm just i'll get galleys like next okay so that's like done done which is hard it's hard to be done done on one thing and then like deep in the shit on right thing like i'm i'm like the intro's half written the first chapter is half i'm doing i'm like all the easy parts yeah and then i have like i'll just have to go i'm mostly just like just trying to find a little tractor here a little attraction here.

15:07I totally, I have this basically a trick. So what I'll do is I'll, um, once I do all my reporting and I put everything on note cards, then I'll just sit down and I'll write my editor a letter explaining what this, how this chapter is going to work. And the letter is like four or 5 ,000 words long.

15:23Ryan Holiday: I read a lot. It's sort of my job. You can't write without reading for almost 15 years now. Once a month, I send out an email with my favorite book recommendations for that month, books that I've been reading, books that I've been going through, books that changed my life, that inspired me, that I think connect to what's happening in the world. And you can sign up right now at ryanholiday.net slash reading list.

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