You’re Addicted To The Illusion of Control | Sebastian Junger (PT. 1)

Summary

The Daily Stoic Podcast: “You’re Addicted To The Illusion of Control” | Sebastian Junger (Part 1)

Date: November 26, 2025
Host: Ryan Holiday
Guest: Sebastian Junger (author, journalist, filmmaker)

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Episode Overview

This episode features a rich, philosophical conversation between Ryan Holiday and Sebastian Junger, bestselling author and journalist, centered on the Stoic concept of control—and the illusion thereof fostered by modern technology. Junger, who notably avoids owning a smartphone, explores how abandoning constant digital connectivity leads to deeper human engagement, greater creativity, and personal clarity. The conversation ranges across technology’s psychological impacts, historical anecdotes, near-death experiences, the fleetingness of life (memento mori), suffering, parenthood, and literary influences, all underpinned by a Stoic worldview.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Illusion of Control Through Technology

• Sebastian Junger’s Flip Phone Lifestyle

  • Junger only uses a flip phone and has never owned a smartphone.
  • “I can't do all this stuff that everyone gets sucked into. I can't get my email, I can't navigate, I can't book a taxi... I have to do it all myself as a human being.” (07:51)
  • He relies on physical ways of interacting with the world like hailing cabs or asking for directions, embracing minor inconveniences as opportunities for human connection.

• Addiction by Design

  • Junger asserts that smartphones are designed around addiction.
  • “With every other job in the world, you do half the job, you only have half left. With email, you do half the job, you have three quarters left... The less email you do during the day, the less you have to do.” (08:59)
  • He equates constant connectivity to a modern Sisyphean struggle.

• Inconvenience as Opportunity

  • Not knowing immediate answers or directions opens opportunities for spontaneous, meaningful interactions.
  • “For me, an inconvenience is an opportunity... I've just had a little human interaction.” (09:12)

• Technology Increases Anxiety

  • Junger identifies a paradox: while technology seems to grant more control and certainty, it instead heightens stress.
  • “There's a terrible stress of thinking you can control your life to the minute... smartphones increase anxiety by increasing the illusion that you have control. And you don't.” (10:39)

Notable Quote

“At the end of the day, you don’t [have control].” — Sebastian Junger (10:57)

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2. Humanity Before Modern Distraction

• Living Without Clocks and Mirrors

  • Junger describes tribal or pre-industrial life as “not knowing exactly what time it is, not knowing what you look like, or exactly how old you are. And that’s freeing.”
  • “The point of life is appreciating the moment with people you love, in safety... The problem with the phone is it deprives us of that.” (11:20–12:10)

• Missing Out Isn’t Missing Anything

  • Holiday and Junger discuss how he sometimes learns about significant events hours later than others—but it never changed the outcome, only their anxiety.
  • “Everyone else knew about this for eight hours…it didn’t change it happening or change what they did about it, but they just carried it for eight more hours than you.” (12:38)

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3. Technology, Addiction, and Societal Consequences

• Mental Health Crisis and Social Media

  • Junger links rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide to technological over-engagement.
  • He shares an anecdote about observing a young married couple, each watching TikToks separately immediately after landing, lamenting “what are you guys alive for?” (13:37)

• Creativity, Boredom, and Inspiration

  • Junger advocates for idle time (“brain in neutral”), which he finds is fertile ground for creativity.
  • “Those sort of neutral moments are way more productive in some ways…when I’m focused at my desk, that’s forebrain, cognitive. When I’m spacing out…those thoughts are intuitive and powerful.” (15:02)

Notable Quote

“You could endlessly distract yourself with things that don’t matter, that don’t endure, that don’t affect your life… it’s garbage. It’s garbage like fast food is garbage.” — Sebastian Junger (15:33)

• Intentional Consumption and Avoiding Digital Drains

  • Junger doesn’t use devices to listen to music outside the home, preferring to remain situationally aware, especially as a parent in NYC (16:10–16:49).
  • “Music… blunts [awareness]. And particularly with young children, I want to be switched on and observant.” (16:47)

• Practicing Boredom and Deep Focus

  • Junger shares how boredom and a lack of constant stimulation can lead to deeper intellectual and creative pursuits, such as reading or practicing music mentally.
  • “People that practice music in their heads…developed much quicker, much faster.” (22:13)

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4. Stoicism, Death, and Meaningful Living

• The Role of Memento Mori
  • Frequent references to Stoic reminders that death could come at any time.
  • Discussing the Dostoevsky mock execution story: in the face of imminent death, Dostoevsky decided to “turn each moment into an eternity.” (41:09)
  • Junger’s near-death experiences led him to question what is truly meaningful to do with his time.

Notable Moment

“Who do you want to be if you know this is your last 24 hours?” — Sebastian Junger (52:14)

“Would you scroll through social media in those last 24 hours? And if you wouldn’t, what the fuck are you doing doing it today? Because you don’t know.” (52:14)

• The Paradox of Time’s Value

  • Holiday and Junger debate whether knowing you have little time left makes it more meaningful or less—ultimately, both agree it should prompt deep focus on what matters.
  • “How do I fit a whole lifetime into today? Because it might be—that actually might turn out to be what happens.” (56:41)

• Parenthood and Presentness

  • Junger cautions against wishing away the difficult parts of parenting for an imagined easier future, at the cost of missing the present joys.
  • “Having an 18-month-old who's colicky and crying all the time—that is enough...just because something's hard doesn't mean you can't take meaning and pleasure out of it.” (58:14)

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5. Societal Critique: Tech, Power, and Media

• Tech Execs Protect Their Kids

  • Observations that Silicon Valley elites often ban smartphones at their children’s schools. (26:15)
  • “So, you know, that’s where Congress should…what legislation can we enact that would protect all the nation's children from the toxic effect of these addictions?” (26:29)

• Politics and Social Media

  • Social networks empower polarization and rage to fuel turnout and control.
  • “Social media increases political division and polarity...right now the Republicans particularly are invested in division as a form of political power.” (27:21)

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Literary Threads & Notable Influences

• Ambrose Bierce: Stories of war, death, and ambiguous reality (“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”), and his tragic fate as a mysterious disappearance/execution in Mexico underscores themes of reality, illusion, and the persistence of trauma.
• Dostoevsky: The transformative experience of facing (mock) execution—time’s elasticity and the import of presentness.
• Seneca and Marcus Aurelius: Stoic roots throughout the discussion (Memento Mori, closing the books on life, living each day as the whole of life).
• Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls: Compressing a lifetime’s meaning into a single night or moment of clarity.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On technology and control:

  “Smartphones increase anxiety by increasing the illusion that you have control… and you don’t.” — Sebastian Junger (10:45)

• On presence and awareness:

  “The point of life is appreciating the moment with people you love, in safety… The problem with the phone is it deprives us of that.” — Sebastian Junger (11:31)

• On meaningful use of time:

  “Would you scroll through social media in those last 24 hours? And if you wouldn’t, what the fuck are you doing doing it today?” — Sebastian Junger (53:16)

• On parenthood:

  “Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t take meaning and pleasure out of it.” — Sebastian Junger (58:14)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• [07:46] — Junger describes his flip phone and daily habits
• [10:39] — Technology's illusion of control and increased stress
• [12:38] — Missing events, carrying less anxiety
• [13:37] — Societal effects of screen addiction observed
• [15:02] — The importance of boredom for creativity
• [22:13] — Practicing skills mentally and the power of idle time
• [41:09] — Dostoevsky’s mock execution and embracing each moment
• [52:14] — "Would you scroll through social media if you knew you had 24 hours to live?"
• [58:14] — On parenting, hardship, and presence

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Tone & Language

The conversation is warm, direct, sometimes impassioned, and laced with Junger’s dry wit. Holiday and Junger move fluidly between dense philosophical ideas, sharp social criticism, war stories, and practical advice, all in a style that is deeply accessible yet intellectually rich.

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For Listeners

This episode is especially valuable for anyone reflecting on their use of technology, struggling with anxiety or the pursuit of meaning, or seeking to apply Stoic philosophy to modern life. Junger’s life experiences—ranging from war reporting to narrowly surviving a deadly medical emergency—are given as sharp, lived counsel: control is largely an illusion, but meaning is found in presence, acceptance of hardship, and cherishing each fleeting moment.

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End of Part 1. (Part 2 to follow in subsequent episodes.)

Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Stephen Hanselman]

Although here very shortly we're going to.

[Ryan Holiday]

Go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at 1.49a pound. If you have prime with organic birds at $2.99 a pound and they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials. Whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends, everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with conf. Enjoy. So many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Oh hey.

[Sebastian Junger]

Welcome to gift wrapping.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Whoa.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

So is Saldana.

[T-Mobile Customer]

Hey, can you wrap these please?

[Sebastian Junger]

Wow. IPhone 17s.

[T-Mobile Customer]

You splurged at T Mobile you can get four iPhone 17s on them. The new center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. It's the perfect gift for everyone.

[Sebastian Junger]

I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe.

[T-Mobile Customer]

Well, it's better than socks.

[Sebastian Junger]

So I have to trade in my old phone, right?

[T-Mobile Customer]

No AT T Mobile. There's no trade ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Incredible.

[T-Mobile Customer]

In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my Aunt Rosa.

[Sebastian Junger]

Forget that.

[T-Mobile Customer]

Aunt Liz will be jealous.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Sounds like my family drama.

[T-Mobile Customer]

Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with. Hey, where are you going?

[Stephen Hanselman]

To T Mobile.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

The holidays are better at T Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch plus four lines for just 25 bucks a line. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 month legal credits and four eligible board ins on essentials for well qualified customers. Photo Pay + taxes fees and $35 device connection charge credits and imbalance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Contact US Finance Agreement 256GB $830 required visit t mobile.com.

[Ryan Holiday]

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics of a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving break if you are in fact on one because you're listening here in America. If not, sorry. But it's funny. We were at sort of like a friends giving before we went out of town. I was sitting with some parents talking about things, eating, and Samantha, my wife.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

Walked by and I said, hey, could.

[Ryan Holiday]

You grab my phone? I think it's like somewhere on the other side of the house. And one of the parents was like.

[Stephen Hanselman]

What, you don't have your phone with you?

[Ryan Holiday]

They weren't like, oh, you're not watching.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Your kids because kids are there.

[Ryan Holiday]

They were like, how do you just not have it on you all the time? And I usually do, although I do try to actively sort of practice, you know, just like setting it down and walking away from. I try to spend less time on my phone.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

I've talked about this before. One of my rules is I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It doesn't always go that way.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sometimes I need directions or I'm listening to music or whatever. The idea is I'm not getting sucked into the phone right when I start the day. And we're all sort of amazed at different people who use their phones less or use their phones more. Most of us are just used to being on it all the time. Although I can imagine if you're from another time or if you've been to war or witnessed war up close or seen like some real shit social media, the things people are doing on their phone might seem ridiculous. I can also imagine if you've ever been shot at, if you've ever been lined up for execution as today's guest was, not just once, but twice. You're going to have a different perspective on social media. People scrolling their feed, people getting in fights, people chattering about stuff, people monitoring their followers. All that's going to seem, I think, silly to you, ridiculous to you, almost offensive to you in some ways. One of the stoic practices, right? We talk about this idea of Memento Mori and I think when you have experienced different things, when you've got that clarity that can come from understanding how quickly life can, can leave you, you know, it turns down the volume on some stuff, it gives you a different view on some stuff. And certainly today's guest knows all about that. Sebastian Junger, because he doesn't have a smartphone. And you know, you always meet people.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And you're like, what?

[Ryan Holiday]

How do you do this or that? And you just realize different people have different experiences. And from these different experiences they experience life differently. And we get so used to the paradigm, the lens on which we experience reality that it seems inconceivable to us.

[Stephen Hanselman]

That there is any other way. I'm like, I was to him, you.

[Ryan Holiday]

Don'T have a smartphone at all. And another parent was saying to me, you don't have your smartphone on your physical possession at all times.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But yeah, we're all, we're all different.

[Ryan Holiday]

And he talks about that in today's episode, talks about how technology gives us the illusion of control. We talk about one of our mutually favorite authors, Ambrose Bierce, and he tells some stories from his experiences as a journalist covering war.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But I have loved reading today's guest books over the years.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sebastian Younger is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont, War, Tribe Freedom, and most recently In My Time of Dying, which is one of my absolute favorites. He's an award winning journalist, he's a contributor to Vanny Fair, special correspondent at abc. He's won a National Magazine Award and a Peabody. He's a documentary filmmaker. You may have seen his form Restrep, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Just an incredible thinker, writer, philosopher. I really enjoyed getting to spend some time with him and I really liked this episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I'm gonna split it up into two cause we really got into it. You can grab signed copies of Sebastian's book Tribe Freedom and In My Time of Dying at the Painted Porch right now. And I'LL let you get back to whatever you are doing with your family. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So only a flip phone.

[Sebastian Junger]

Only a flip phone. It's all I've ever had.

[Stephen Hanselman]

How's it work for you?

[Sebastian Junger]

It's great. Yeah. Because I can't do all this stuff that everyone gets sucked into. Like, I can't get my email right. You know, I can't navigate, I can't book a taxi. I can't do anything. I have to do it all myself as a human being.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Do you actually book taxis or do you call someone and they book you an Uber?

[Sebastian Junger]

No, I wave my arm. I live in New York. I wave my arm and a taxi stops.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But what about, like, when you're traveling, you go places?

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, I just.

[Sebastian Junger]

I call it, tell the hotel, like the old days, hey, can you call me a taxi? Really? Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

That's funny.

[Sebastian Junger]

And I don't count on being able to just go anywhere whenever I want. Like, that's not part of what life is. You know what I mean? Like, it's just not my reality.

[Stephen Hanselman]

How do you think that change. Like, how do you think that changes your reality? Like, what does that give you that I'm missing? With my smartphone?

[Sebastian Junger]

Well, I mean, the problem with the smartphone is that it's designed to be an addiction. Sure. Right. And once I feel like once you crack that door open, suddenly there's social media in, you know, as part of your every moment of every day. Yeah, Right. And email is this weird sort of Sisyphean task where more email you do.

[Stephen Hanselman]

The more you get, more you have to do.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, sure.

[Sebastian Junger]

With every other job in the world, you do half the job, you only have half left. With email, you do half the job, you have three quarters left. Right. And so the less email you do during the day.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

The less you have to do. Right. So. And it's just peace of mind and the inconvenience. I mean, for me. And for me, an inconvenience is an opportunity. So I don't know how to get to the. Where's the restaurant? You know, like, so I'll ask someone, like, hey, do you know how to get to the Italian restaurant? You know, whatever.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

So I've just had a little human interaction. Right, Right. And then that's why it drives my wife crazy. But, like, she has a smartphone, but sometimes we don't know where we are. We're driving and I was like, listen, don't look at it. I'm just going to do this by the seat of My pants. The sun's over there. I know. That's west we're heading. I know. We're basically going south.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Sure.

[Sebastian Junger]

Like, you know, like, we're going to. We're going to, like, do this the old way. And it works. Like, it makes your brain engage with the world.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I was thinking about this the other day and I had some sympathy from my parents in, like, when I leave to go pick up my kids from school, I know how long it's going to take me to get there. Not generally, but that trip, like, it's telling me it's going to take 41 minutes. And so I can. And I was just thinking, like, how stressful. And, you know, like, oh, stuff happens. You get stressed. You try to pick them up on time, whatever. I think, like, they would leave work every day in the dark, not knowing, like, would they get there in time for. Right. And, like, just the stress of that, that I as a kid was like, you made me wait for one minute in front of the school and just going, oh, yeah, like, not that long ago, you would leave and be like, it generally takes 30 minutes, but it could take 90 minutes.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. I would say there's also a stress, a terrible stress of thinking you can control your life to within the minute also.

[Ryan Holiday]

True.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. And then when life doesn't accommodate that, it feels like everything falls apart. Right. So there's a. There's a. I feel like smartphones increase anxiety by increasing the illusion that you have control.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

And you don't.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

At the end of the day, you don't.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. And so the old way, it's like, yeah, it might take half an hour. It might take an hour. I'm going to bring a book in case I'm early. You know, they have a book in case I'm late, You know, like, whatever. Like, it's a. Yeah. And then that's how life is for humanity, for. And is still like that for most of humanity, you know? Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I mean, even just an invention as simple as a clock.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

How it changes your sense of the world. Like, you talked about in Tribe about what life must have been like for people who weren't constantly aware that it was 12:30.

[Sebastian Junger]

The clock in the mirror. Right. Yeah. I mean, you don't know what you look like, really, except in a very rough sense. Right. And you don't know how old you are, except in a very rough sense. And you don't know what time of day it is. And so if you're going to meet your, you know, the other Clan that you're, you know, at the summer gathering at the forks of the river. You know, you head there like a little after the time. Yeah, right, exactly. And then there's a lot of hanging out. But that's. What, what's the point of life? It's, it's. It's appreciating the moment with people you love, like in safety. Right. I mean, whatever. It's like, why? I mean, what else is there? Right. And so the problem with the phone is it deprives us of that in a weird way.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm just like, whenever someone is, like, living very differently than you.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It might not be for you, but it's always interesting to go, okay, what is. What are they getting out of that? And so I'm curious about how it changes your. Just your interactions with the world.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Probably more people focused, larger margins for air, less awareness of certain things. Like, you probably get home at the end of the day sometimes and find out big things happen.

[Sebastian Junger]

Oh, totally, totally.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You're like, oh, wow. But everyone else knew about this for eight hours. It didn't change it happening or change what they did about it, but they just carried it for eight more hours than you.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. And the truth is that, I mean, collectively rates of addiction and anxiety and depression, all that's. And suicide are just climbing and climbing and climbing. Right. I mean, it's. If the outcomes for society were good, I'm like, well, maybe I'm missing out on something. Right. And you know, I think antidepressants have helped the society quite a lot. But it's interesting that we need so many of them. Right. You know what I mean? But the outcomes look horrible. On the plane today, coming from New York, I sat next to a young couple who seemed to be married. Cause they each had a wedding ring and they were acting married. And the plane landed and they each took out their phone. And they were too young to have been married very long. They each took out their phones. And while we were. We were in the back of the plane, row 35. Right. So we had 20 minutes till. And so they didn't talk to each other. They each took out their phone and watched TikTok videos separately on each of their phones. And one of the video that the young woman was watching was of a man who was saying it was a wedding. And the groom was sort of like saying something to his bride to be. And he was saying it by reading it off his phone. What are you guys alive for? Yes, right. Like what? I mean, why Even bother with anything. And if you have kids, you're going to stick the kid on the screen as soon as you can so that you can get back to your screen. Like, let's just blow up the planet now and be done with it. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't understand it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But what did you do on the planet? Are you one of those people that, as they say, you raw dog a flight? Did you just sit there, stare at the seat?

[Sebastian Junger]

I had to get up before I am, so I slept the whole way, but. But I can sleep anywhere. But I have, you know, I have two books with me. Yeah, right. And I read or I just sit and I think, you know, I mean, one of the great things about not having a smartphone is that your brain winds up in this, sort of in neutral, in this idle gear. Right. It's idling and it's not. It doesn't have to do anything. It can't do anything distracting. And so you just sit there waiting for the bus and, you know, I make my living with my mind. And those sort of neutral moments are way more productive in some ways than when I'm focused at my desk. Right. That's a very forebrain, cognitive, like, you know, word oriented state of mind for me.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

But when I'm sort of spacing out somewhere, even driving, it was a minimal task. Driving or in a plane or whatever, walk. Yeah. Thoughts that come to me are intuitive and powerful and sometimes brilliant and totally essential to my work and I would lose all of that.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. I think most of the writing that I do at my desk is synthesizing and polishing thinking that I did elsewhere.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, exactly.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

And the problem with the smartphones is that you could endlessly distract yourself with like mundane.

[Stephen Hanselman]

This mundane time.

[Sebastian Junger]

And these are things that don't matter, they don't endure, they don't affect your life. Like, they're just. They're. It's garbage. I mean, in some ways it's like really is garbage. I mean, it's garbage like fast food is garbage. It just doesn't have nutrients, it doesn't sustain you. It just passes the time.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But it tastes good.

[Sebastian Junger]

But it tastes good and it keeps you from feeling hungry. Exactly. But I would say there's a great power in feeling hungry sometimes.

[Stephen Hanselman]

What do you do for music though?

[Ryan Holiday]

Do you also have an ipod or.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Do you just don't listen to music unless you're like sitting.

[Sebastian Junger]

I don't listen to music unless I'm at home.

[Ryan Holiday]

Really?

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, I have a CD player.

[Ryan Holiday]

I.

[Sebastian Junger]

Have an eight track. No, I have a CD player. I listen to music at home. Yeah, I never walk around listening to music.

[Ryan Holiday]

Really?

[Sebastian Junger]

No. I mean.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Oh, that helps me get in the vibe, like in the headspace that I find. Music unlocks my things.

[Sebastian Junger]

Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can. I can kind of see that. But, you know, the more you're injecting your brain with, the less you're.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You're turning off different sounds to listen to specific sounds. I. I would certainly.

[Sebastian Junger]

And I love music. I play music, I love music. Like, and our home is filled with music, but I just.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Not out in the world.

[Sebastian Junger]

Not out in the world. And, you know, partly I live in New York City. I live in the Lower east side. Right. Which. It's not like the 80s or something, when it was truly a dangerous place, but there's a lot of troubled people out there. And, you know, frankly, I want to be. I want to have my awareness about.

[Ryan Holiday]

Me, particularly not get hit by a car.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And particularly I have young children, so I'm like. I mean, it's not like I'm on combat patrol, but I do want to be switched on and observant and, you know, music because it's so lovely and, you know, it blunts that.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, hearing this about you makes. Gives me a little context. Cause one of my favorite stories about you, it's in the beginning of your.

[Ryan Holiday]

Episode with Tim Ferriss.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You're going to meet him to do his podcast. I think you get to his house early and you just start going through the book. He's like, he's not there, so he tells you to let him in. And you walked in and you started going through the books on his shelf and you had started reading Seneca. And you guys talk about this at the beginning, but that sort of little bit of extra time that not. Oh, well, I'll immediately go into my phone or I'll immediately go into work mode. It introduces a lot of serendipity and then a lot of time for reading. But that was, I guess, your. One of your introductions to the Stokes.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, you know, yeah, it was my introduction to the Stoics. Although I remember my dad talking about him. He was sort of classically educated in Europe. So, you know, all the. All those, you know, Greeks and Romans, you know, he knew them all cold. But yeah, there's a great. There's a great pleasure in. In that for me. And, you know, I have a flip phone that I can make calls and I could text. Yeah, right. Which is, you know, a great blessing, you know, particularly with young children.

[Stephen Hanselman]

A couple of years ago, I worked on this project that got nominated for a Grammy. And so I went to the Grammys and they were like, you know, it's from, like, there's two different Grammys. It was not the, the main musicians Grammys. It's all the jazz albums and the classical album. There's one where they, they get through all the awards and then the one on TV is a separate ceremony with like 10 awards. But anyways, they were like, hey, it's from, you know, it starts at four and then it's done at nine. And I was like, I'm not sitting somewhere for nine hours. And I brought a book. And everyone looked around and looked at me like I was insane. And I was like, I'm probably the only person walking the red carpet into the Grammys carrying a book. But I was like, what am I going to do for five hours? My award thing is going to be eight seconds if we're lucky. And also I'm just going to spend this whole time on my phone.

[Ryan Holiday]

What am I going to do?

[Sebastian Junger]

When I was a kid, when I was in college, one summer I got, you know, my dad was a reader. He's brought up in Europe. I had a great education. I just read all the time as a kid. I was a little nerd. And one summer after my freshman year in college, I got a job with the highway department in the little town that I lived in. And you know, there are a bunch of World War II vets in Vietnam. Vets, basically. Mostly white town. And there was a heat clause. And so if it was over, you know, 96 degrees or something, they couldn't see, send us out. But they couldn't send us home either. So we were stuck in the garage, right? The sort of maintenance garage with the bulldozers and the dump trucks and all this other stuff. And I just lived in terror of having eight hours to spend in the town garage on a hot day, right? So no matter what, I always had a book with me. And I was an anthropology student and totally enamored of anthropology. And I remember I brought. I don't know why they just didn't beat me up right then and there. But I brought Cloud. Levi Strauss, right, The raw and the cooked, I think it was. And I was sort of reading my way through that. And so there was one day, it was a heat clause day, and I sort of curled up in the, in the bucket of a bulldozer. Yeah, right, sure. A backhoe. And I sort of curled up, and the steel was nice and cool. And I was reading my French anthropologists.

[Stephen Hanselman]

He couldn't have imagined his book would ever be consumed in this setting.

[Sebastian Junger]

Exactly. And. Right. And this old guy, I mean, to me, old guy, he was probably, you know, my age now, 60. But he came over and he tipped the book up to see what I was reading. Right. All the guys were playing, playing poker and looking at, like, girly magazines and, you know, I mean, it was. You can imagine. And smoking. You can imagine. And he tipped the book up to see what I was reading and just sort of frowned. And I was sort of braced for, like, so, you know, I was the only college kid there. Like, I was braced for the inevitable comment. Right. And. And he nodded and he said, you keep doing that, kid, so that you don't wind up in a job like this. Yeah. And so that's the. That's the power of reading and. And the. And sort of the power of not having some other distracting thing to do, and it forces you to curl up with cloud. Bluffy Strauss.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Sometimes your life has to be like, look, it would be wonderful if every subject was riveting and every author was compelling, and they're not. And sometimes your life has to be boring to a degree that you could sit through things that otherwise would be too boring for you to sit through. Like, you need eight hours to sit through some dense tome if your life is incredibly stimulating or you have access to unlimited stimulation through your phone.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, that's right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It's an impossible ask to make someone read that book.

[Sebastian Junger]

Absolutely. And I, you know, and so if you don't have that sort of easy task of scrolling through your social media all the time, you have to develop things that are harder to develop, but they're more rewarding. So I play music, right. And so I've been in many boring situations. And I can practice music in my head because I can hear the notes in my mind and I can move my fingers in ways that correspond with the notes. And I literally can practice music. Like, if I'm stuck somewhere for an hour, I could say, okay, I'm gonna practice this song, which is I've been having trouble with. And they actually did a study, and they found that people that practice music in their heads, they took beginners and taught them guitar or something. And the ones who practice music in their heads were told to practice in their heads, developed much quicker, much faster. They learned much faster than the ones who did not.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

So if they just practice on guitar and didn't also practice in their heads, and they had a limited amount of practice time. The people that practiced internally developed really quickly.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I heard someone say once, it's very hard to be good at something that you don't think about in the shower.

[Sebastian Junger]

Oh, yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like if you're not. If it's not so captivating to you that it is filling that all the time, it's insatiable. You're probably not gonna. Yeah, you're just gonna. Well, you're gonna be beaten by the person who is thinking about it in the shower.

[Sebastian Junger]

And the unconscious mind works in really powerful ways. So there's any number of mathematical problems that have been solved when someone's asleep. Right. Or physicists have solved problems in their sleep.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Archimedes in the bath or whatever.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. But there's something about sleep that is very, very powerful as it unlocks the unconscious in ways that is so powerful and intuitive that it will solve problems that the. This sort of like slow moving, like forebrain doesn't just can't quite do. And you know what I found is that if I'm practicing a really hard passage of music and I can't get it, and I can't get it and I go to sleep when I wake up in the morning, my brain has worked on the neural pathways involved with that piece of music in the morning, I can play it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I don't think everyone needs to go get a flip phone. Not everyone's life is conducive to that, by the way. I think we have some freedom to be a little bit more eccentric than, you know, you're average person. But certainly you can decide that it's not gonna be the last thing you see before bed and the first thing you. You see in. In the morning. And that gives you space to take advantage of that subconscious working while you're asleep.

[Sebastian Junger]

And.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And yeah, I. I go to bed, I have some ideas.

[Ryan Holiday]

I write them down.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I wake up in the morning, that when you wake up in the morning and you're fresh and you don't know the awful things that happened in the world while you were sleeping, you didn't get any stupid emails from people yet. Toni Morrison talked about how she. She had to do all of her writing before she heard the word mom for the first time. But it's like there is something about that space, that there's virgin mental space in the morning.

[Sebastian Junger]

Absolutely.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And a lot of people soil it before their feet hit the floor. Yeah, I like. I have a friend who they go to sleep with the TV on. And I'm just like, your mind's definitely working all night, but you're stressed about whatever the CNN ticker is saying. So anyways, I think that fresh time in the morning, your mind has just done a reset. How much are you gonna stay in that freshness before you soil it? I think is really essential.

[Sebastian Junger]

And I hear you about some people have jobs that just require apps that do this and that, but there is no reason for all of us to be carrying around social media in our pocket.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Definitely I have no social media on.

[Sebastian Junger]

My phone and done like that. The smartphone is a real tool basically.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Music, navigation, a camera that I take lots of pictures of my kids with and yeah. Notes that I, you know, I can Google stuff or whatever. But for the most part I'm, you got the thing. What are the things that are going to make you use it? 10x more than you ordinarily would. Don't have those on your phone.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. And those, you know, those are the things were that were designed as addictions. And, and, and those addictions, the companies that develop those addictions have monetized your addictions to the tune of trillions of dollars. Right. You're trading your peace of mind and you're in an addicted life for their money. Right. And that to me is just like, I'm not doing that. Sorry. I'm just not giving you my money and you give me your disease. I'm not doing it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. If Steve Jobs was alive, do you think he'd have social media on his phone? Or do you think he probably would have created ways to like, this is a Zen sort of Buddhist dude.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like, I think it's interesting to look, the technology habits of the people who run these services, they're, they're telling you, it's like finding out the smoking execs don't, don't smoke or, or have, are upset if they catch their kids smoking.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, right, totally. Well, I mean, I haven't run this story down, but, but I heard that in Silicon Valley, all the, you know, the people working in those, in the tech industries that private schools that they send their kids to do not allow smartphones.

[Ryan Holiday]

Totally.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. So, you know, that's where Congress should sort of make some inquiries, like if you, if this is unhealthy for your children, you develop this shit. Right? Like, what, what legislation can we enact that would protect all the nation's children from the toxic effect of these addictions?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, look, we were about to ban TikTok which is the big one of the biggest social networks controlled by our primary foreign adversary. And we got to the 1 yard line and why didn't we? It's because the people in power realized, oh, by saving said social network, they'll probably tweak the algorithm to be more favorable to us. And since the political leverage of, hey, do you want to get rid of something that's bad for everyone or would you like the thing that's bad for everyone to be slightly more favorable to the messages that you want out in the world?

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah. And, and social media increases political division. Yeah, right. And polarity. And you know, there are both parties, but I think right now the Republicans particularly are invested in division as a form of political power. Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Look, the executives that he had in the front row. And again, I think this is less a political thing and more of a like, politics thing.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

The powerful billionaires that he had sitting in the front row of the inauguration were not, you know, munitions manufacturers or whatever, they were attention merchants. Right. They're not people who own, own casinos even. Right. They were the billionaires who control the social networks, who control what consumes most of our cognitive power as a society. Because those are the people that you have to have, have on your side or have, have properly intimidated to not fuck with you. Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

And if, you know, if you can generate sort of rage in people, right. You can get them out to vote. And social media is great for generating rage. Yeah. Right. So I, you know, I can, I can totally see in today's political environment, like, oh, we don't want to get rid of social media. We, I mean, that's the soil that our plant grows in.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like the opium of the masses also.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try.

[Ryan Holiday]

To remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids behavior.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

Especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

That's stoicism. But it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best selling author and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I love them.

[Ryan Holiday]

I've recommended them a million times.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

I've had her on the podcast and as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q&A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about.

[Ryan Holiday]

A year and a half ago.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her how not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind empathetic kids. And on December 15, she's hosting her how not to Lose it over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And daily Stoic listeners can join for 15% off with code STOIC15. You just gotta head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So in the book In My Time of Dime, you open with this story of you almost drowning, right?

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And you know what I thought of.

[Ryan Holiday]

When I read that?

[Stephen Hanselman]

I was like, is this a occurrence.

[Ryan Holiday]

At Owl Creek Bridge situation?

[Stephen Hanselman]

The first thing I thought of was Ambrose Spears.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And then it made me think, when you're talking about about the sort of subconscious, is this like how do you.

[Ryan's Wife (Samantha)]

Know if you're dead or not?

[Stephen Hanselman]

This could all be a flash of Fleeting existence. And I mean, I think that's one of the greatest short stories of all time.

[Sebastian Junger]

Oh, it's amazing. I remember I read in seventh grade, my seventh grade teacher told me that I would like it and I did. And so I wasn't thinking about that explicitly when I wrote that section, but I did. That story came out of the same question and fear that I had after I almost drowned, which was afterwards, you know, I sort of had heard somewhere. Sort of. It's a sort of urban myth, maybe, but that when you drown, like you can live sort of an entire lifetime. Yeah. Time slows down and you might have the illusion of living out the whole rest of your life.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

And then you drown and that happens in 30 seconds. Right. And I just started to obsess over the idea that I might have actually then I might still be drowning right now, but I think I'm 63, but I'm only 23 seconds into my 30 seconds of drowning. And how would I know? And I don't really think that, but I couldn't disprove it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, Richard Linklater, who lives out in Bastrop, he has this whole movie called Waking Life about that premise. The idea that you have these dreams and they feel interminably long and they can tell from brain scans. It actually only occurred over, you know, one second. You know what I mean? In the dream, everything is happening.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And. Yeah. What if that's your life? It's kind of this philosophical, mind blowing of a thing.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. And then you can sort of get into the quantum physics of everything, which is just, you know, it's equivalently surreal and unanswerable and bizarre and I find, you know, pretty terrifying.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You know, Ambrose Bierce's father's name was Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his. Oh my God, his uncle, his father's brother was Lucius Varus Bierce. The two brothers that are co. Emperors.

[Ryan Holiday]

Wow.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

That's amazing. Who were those parents?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, right. Somebody was a Roman history nerd. And then I'm fascinated with the. He's like, I'm going to give one of my sons the good brother's name and then I'm going to give my other son the shitty brother's name.

[Sebastian Junger]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like just the. The heaviness and the lightness of that I find fascinating.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, amazing.

[Stephen Hanselman]

He's such an amazing writer too. It's sort of similar to you. And there's a handful of these where it's like, I think a lot of his stories come out of the PTSD from his horrible Civil War experience. I mean, he's there at Shiloh, he's terribly wounded, and then basically never is able to fully reintegrate into society after this experience.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the things civilians don't get because war is in their mind and it is truly so terrible. Right. So you would think that coming home would just be a welcome relief. Right. And so I was talking to this guy who was in the Special Forces in Vietnam. He was a lerp. A long range patrol, crazy dangerous work. They dropped these guys behind enemy lines, really, outside of any air support, so their faces are painted and they just. If their position's revealed, they'll die. Right. And so he said that they would. At night there was only like six of them. Right. So they couldn't have a regular person on guard. Cause there's just not enough hours, you know, you need your sleep. So they would sleep, they would create with their bodies the spokes of a wheel with their heads at the center and their feet all sticking out like the spokes of a wheel. So if they were compromised and everyone sat up, someone would be facing the enemy.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right, right. And as my buddy who was in the platoon I was with said, it gives a new meaning to the word spokesman.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

So the problem with vets in the Civil War and on back for eternity, like the problem with vets is they don't get to come home. They're no longer spokesman.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

They're not part of a wheel anymore.

[Sebastian Junger]

They're not part of a wheel. You're by yourself, so you're in danger. Right. You're more in danger by yourself in a society that's at peace than you are as a LERP in Vietnam, like with your bros.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

That's what. At least emotionally, that's what it feels like. Right. And it's a very, very tough thing.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, with Ambrose Pierce, I think what's so interesting is he comes home. What was perhaps one of the most moral crusades of a war, it doesn't start that way, but it becomes that way because he fights for the Union. And I think that's one of the things that you sort of miss in that story is the guy that's getting executed is a shitty guy. He's a Confederate soldier. Right. Who is a spy. That's why he's being executed. But anyways, he comes back to what almost immediately becomes like Gilded Age America. And so it must have been. So, yeah, like the moral injury of the war, but then coming home to this decadent, corrupt, corroded society where these people who didn't serve in the war are now effectively billionaires because they hired a substitute and then they've. They've hijacked the government. You know, he. He starts in San Francisco, comes west as a. As a political reporter. So he's familiar with Stanford and. And Huntington, all these sort of. Of barons who have purchased the government effectively. And he's just like, do you know.

[Ryan Holiday]

What happens to Ambrose Spears?

[Sebastian Junger]

No, don't. Don't tell me.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Oh, it's a crazy story. So he becomes this sort of muckraking reporter, powerful sort of cynical guy who's, you know, tearing everyone down. And then at some point, he writes his sister, hey, I can't do this anymore. And he tours all the battlefields that he goes on. Kind of like your thing where you go on your walk, tours all the battlefields, and then heads to Mexico where Pancho Villa and the sort of revolution is happening. And he's like, I'm just gonna cover this. But he writes a letter. He goes, I'm probably gonna end up lined up. His last letter is, I'll probably end up, you know, put in front of a wall somewhere and shot. But if not, you know, I'll say, you know, I'll see you again. And then that's what ends up happening. He predicts his own death, and he's executed. Like, they can't. The Mexican army just can't wrap their head around this guy coming down to see what they're doing for the lark of it and suspect he's some sort of spy. And he gets executed and is never seen again. And he's kind of one of those first guys that gets killed that the rumors are maybe he's still alive somewhere, and so his legend lives on. But, yeah, he can't. He tries to reintegrate in society, and even though he achieves all this success and fame and, you know, reaches the peak of his purpose, he just can't make it work.

[Sebastian Junger]

There was a great journalist named John Reed, Jack Reed, who was down there at the same time as well. And he made it. He was just a kid, and he made it back. And he wrote a book called Insurgent Mexico. And there's a paragraph that describes the Tropa. Pancho Villa's troop coming at a gallop towards him. And it's an extraordinary paragraph because basically Cormac McCarthy took that paragraph and was like, I can do this. And his famous paragraph of the Comanche attacking The soldiers in Mexico. That is a famous paragraph, right, from Blood Marinia. Yeah. And I adore Cormac McCarthy, so I'm not dissing on him at all.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Right, yeah, yeah. But you can see the influence.

[Sebastian Junger]

You can see that. You could totally see the roots. It's extraordinary. Totally extraordinary. Part, even the cadence and some of the repetition and the attention to detail. The frock coat worn backwards, you know, like. I mean, just all this sort of Cormackian detail. I was like, oh, that's Jack Reed.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Sebastian Junger]

It was totally amazing. After I finished my book, in my time of Dying, I came across this amazing anecdote about Dostoevsky that I didn't know. So when he was young, he was sort of a radical, like, lefty sort of, like, radical. And he had some sort of lefty friends, and they would get together and talk about, like, ending serfdom, like freeing the serfs and things like that. Right. And the equivalent of, like, defund the police or something. Right. You know, and. And, you know, it got the czar's attention. And, you know, these are like sort of elite, elite society, you know, like intellectuals. And the kids were. They were rounded up, arrested and put in jail for eight months for speaking against the czar. Right. And wasn't a particularly serious crime. Right. They just needed their hands slapped, basically. And after eight months, they were released and loaded into a wagon, into a carriage. And they thought there were like six of them, and they thought they were going to be driven to the court and, you know, processed and discharged. Their families. Right, of course. And instead they were driven to a town square and tied to stakes, and a firing squad was arrayed in front of them. And the orders were given, you know, like, charge your rifles. Ready, aim. And it was a mock execution, but of course, they didn't know that. So two of the six men were insane for the rest of their lives. The last moment, a rider galloped into the square and said, the Tsar forgives them. So two of the six men were insane. It broke them psychologically. Right. Dostoevsky was made of stronger stuff, and he wrote about it indirectly in one of his novels. But what he said was that in that moment, facing the rifle barrels, right, like in that moment, he noticed sunlight glinting off the steeple of a church.

[App Store Announcer]

And.

[Sebastian Junger]

And he had the extraordinary thought, in moments, I will join the sunlight and I will become part of all things.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like the overview effect that astronauts talk about, he basically has there in that moment.

[Sebastian Junger]

That's part of everything. Right. And I'm about to Join everything. And he also had time to think, if I should somehow survive this, I will turn each moment into an eternity. Right, so that's what you were saying about, you know, when you're dream it like one second could last. Feels like it lasts an hour. So there is that sort of elasticity of time in these moments of like psychological extreme.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, two things. One, how fucking insane is it that we are still executing people by firing squad? Like that was brought back, like what does that say about who we are as a society? That that is a fucking real thing. That is deranged. But two, there's another Ambrose Spear story. It's called Parker Philosopher and and it's about a soldier who's captured and he's gonna be executed and he thinks he's gonna die by firing squad. And he's sort of very philosophical about it and he's sort of cribbing like some of the stoic stuff. He's like, you know, I knew I was gonna die when I was born. And he's talking with the general of the Confederates or whatever and he sort of, he's saying all the things that a philosoph. Seneca going to his death.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

He's doing it and then they have this long conversation and then the sun comes up and the general goes okay, take him out to be hung like a spy. And immediately he. All the artifice of it collapses because in his mind he saw himself getting, you know, an honorable death firing squad. And then the shift and then this whole not spoiler. It's a 200 almost 150 year old story, but he sort of freaks out and he in the scuffle, he grabs a sword and he ends up killing the general. It's this crazy story and. But I think you know, the meta ness that you find out that Ambrose Spears is killed as a spy is kind of mind blowing. But he has this sense that like hey, I'm gonna be able to meet my death bravely because I prepared for it. And then in the face of the overwhelmingness of it, it breaks him psychologically just like the Dostoevsky people were talking about. I thought it as Ambrose Spears kind of making this commentary of the. It's all well and good to talk about these things and then you don't know until you face your own imminent demise for real in that moment.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. Yeah. I've twice in my life as a journalist been in a situation where I thought I was going to be executed. Right. So it's not a combat situation, you know, but like there's Nothing I can do and it's going to happen. And I just. I remember feeling incredibly weak. Like, I mean, like, physically weak. Weak and numb and not entirely there. Yeah, it was really. And the psychological consequences later of that state of mind, even for an hour.

[Ryan Holiday]

What do you mean?

[Sebastian Junger]

Oh, I mean, the sort of trauma of spending an hour thinking, I'm going to be shot. It's like, lasts for years. Right. But it was really interesting. It was so frightening that. It wasn't frightening. It was just a form of sort of a profound muscular weakness and. Or just a removal.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like a disassociation.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, yeah. Just hollow, like. Yeah. Extremely unpleasant.

[Stephen Hanselman]

When you are under the impression you are about to be executed, where does the mind go?

[Sebastian Junger]

Well, I was. You know, in one case, I was told I was going to be. And I didn't quite believe them. Right. I'm like, I don't know. I'm in Nigeria. I was detained by this sort of rebel movement that accused me of being a spy. And this one guy walked up to me with a machine gun and said, when we kill you later, I'll be the one to do it. I was like, he's not the commander. There's a lot of reasons to be worried right now, but I'm not convinced this is going to happen. Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So is that a protection mechanism, you think, or.

[Sebastian Junger]

Well, I think it was both a protection mechanism, and I think I was right. Like, I was right. I mean, obviously, here I am, right, and, you know, they would have been executing an American spy, like someone from the US Military who was spying. US Government, who was spying. That's a big deal.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Sebastian Junger]

I mean, I sort of knew, like, okay, maybe there's nothing I can do about it, but this may be a bad move for you guys, Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You maybe have sense, other profound recklessness, if that's what.

[Sebastian Junger]

And I bet you guys know.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

And in the other, I was stopped by rebels in Sierra Leone on a remote road with a couple of government soldiers. And there's like, these 20 rebels stepped out of the jungle with machine guns and, you know, extremely bad situation. And, you know, they were like sort of. It's a little like Dostoyevsky. So. Leveled their right. Cocked their rifles, Leveled them. One guy shouted, no, no, no, don't shoot. You know, like there was. They were arguing about whether to shoot us. Yeah, right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And not. So it's not a planned thing. It's like, this could happen right now.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, it was an ambush, and they stopped us. And I was with government soldiers. They and there was. These guys were enemies, right? And. And a couple journalists. And, you know, that went on, the argument went on for maybe 10 minutes, and it was a long 10 minutes. But I. I just felt. I. All I remember thinking is, it's going to suck for my parents. I didn't have kids. I didn't have a family then, but it was going to suck for my parents. And I really hope it doesn't hurt. Yeah, I just remember that. I hope this doesn't hurt. Yeah.

[Ryan Holiday]

Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastow County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Thought, this isn't going to work.

[Ryan Holiday]

Stopped, parked. It walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation. It. It getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us. Not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven it across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids, who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota Adventure Detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn [e-mail] trucks adventure detours do you.

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[Stephen Hanselman]

In the book, you say that what a near death experience does is introduce you to death. Like you are now on nodding terms with this thing that's kind of an abstraction prior. And. And to basically everyone else who hasn't had that experience. Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

And my sort of psychological sort of defense mechanism was that all the other times that I'd come close to getting killed maybe three or four times in my career. Right. That it had always been in war zones. I mean, I was going to places that are dangerous. That's the deal. You're gonna go into a casino, you might lose some money. That's the deal. Right. And you might make some money, but that's the deal. Right. So I sort of knew that. So after my buddy Tim was killed in Libya, I made a movie called Restrepa with Tim. He and I shot it, directed it, produced it, the whole thing in eastern Afghanistan. And we were very, very close and went through a lot together. And after he was killed in Libya, I got out of war reporting. Okay, I'm done. And I had the idea, this delusion that now I've slid in the home base, I'm safe, I'm not going to war zones anymore. How could I die? I'm not gambling with my life. I got married, I had children and I just thought, I'm fine, you know, I'm, I was a very fit 50 something year old. Right. And I'm not a walking heart attack. I'm like, you know, I drive carefully. I mean, I sort of did checked every box you can check. And I'm not going to war zone, so I had nothing to worry about. And what I didn't know, of course, is that your human body is a huge liability. It can be a huge liability and you can be extremely healthy and still have something going on in it that.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Can be working on us at all times.

[Sebastian Junger]

At all times. No, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, I, of course I knew, okay, you get cancer and you know you're gonna die in a few months or a few years. I mean, of course we all know we're in that lottery. But what I didn't realize is that there's things that can kill completely healthy, athletic people. Yeah. Kill them. You know, a brain aneurysm.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure.

[Sebastian Junger]

Or whatever. Like you're dead by dinner.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Junger]

You know, you think you're Just having a normal Tuesday and you're not going to be here by dinner time. Right. And that really shook the foundations of my reality in a way that the war zone stuff didn't. And what I had was I had undiagnosed aneurysm in my pancreatic artery. And an aneurysm is sort of unnatural ballooning of the artery for various reasons. But I have a ligament in the wrong place. And it's a very, very random, freaky thing. Right. And it's extremely rare where I have it and extremely deadly. And, you know, in mid sentence, like literally in mid sentence to talking to my wife, I felt a pain in my abdomen and I was dying, like that quickly. I was dying and I had an hour and a half to live.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I was in Australia last summer. And you know the walk from Bondi to that walk along the coast there, there's this cemetery. I think it's the Bronte cemetery. It's the cemetery right on the coast. One of the, maybe the prettiest cemetery.

[Ryan Holiday]

In park the world.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And I'm looking out over it and I was just thinking, every single person here was surprised when it happened. Like they all thought they had more time. Almost nobody dies and goes, I'm past due.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right, Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like, even people who are old, even people who have cancer, everyone thinks there it's going to happen a little bit further in the future than it does. And here we are walking around our normal life acting like we're not that person. Like we're not going to be surprised by the thing that's obviously going to come too soon and surprise all of us.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah, I know I had this. As I sort of tried to process what happened to me because, you know, I barely survived. And the psychological consequences for me lasted way longer than the physical consequences of almost dying. And I had this thought, like, okay, if I was in prison and I knew I was going to be executed tomorrow morning. Yeah. And I had some books, I had a musical instrument. Like, I had, you know, whatever. The things that have given me solace and comfort in my life, I had them available. Would I play music? Would I read my history books? Right. Why would you? You're going to be dead tomorrow morning. Right. But then it's like, okay, but I'm going to be dead at some point tomorrow morning. Why do anything? Right? And so it was a real question, like, who do you want to be if, you know, this is your last 24 hours, who do you want to be in those 24 hours? Right, right. And that's where I come down against, like, smartphones, not to bring it around in smartphones. Like, would you scroll through social media in those last 24 hours? And if you wouldn't, what the fuck are you doing doing it today? Because you don't know.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, it's a tricky thing, right? Like the memento mori idea from the Stoics and from the philosophers. Like, someday you're going to die, right? Or Marx, Aurelius in meditation says, you could leave life right now, now, let that determine what you do. Insane thing now. If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, like there's something existentially obliterating about knowing that an asteroid is coming or, you know, you just caught an infectious disease that kills in seven hours, or what?

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

If you knew for certain you were going to die in a short amount of time, it's kind of. It's actually not that sort of morally and philosophically clarifying because everything becomes meaningless in some sense.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sense.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Especially if you don't believe in an afterthought.

[Sebastian Junger]

But the afterlife.

[Stephen Hanselman]

After I believe in afterthoughts. Yeah. Yeah, after. Especially if you don't believe in it in the afterlife. But I think it's more the. You could go in 24 hours, you could go in 24 years, whatever it is.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And it's not so much the certain looming of it, but the fact that the uncertainty of it, that's what provides, I think, the moral clarity of, like, hey, I gotta be pretty good about how I spend this time.

[Sebastian Junger]

Time.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I might have a lot of time. I might have a little time, but I do know it's a finite amount of time and will I have a good accounting for it whenever it runs out?

[Sebastian Junger]

Well, I mean, actually, I hear what you're saying. I think you could argue it either way. Right. So you could also say that the fact that I only have 24 hours left makes those 24 hours more meaningful.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, sure.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. So do I want to spend those 24 hours with my children? Yes, I do. Right. How would I be with you? Them? Would I be distracted and not paying attention? No, they'd be on my lap. I'd be holding them. I'd be telling them I love them.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yes.

[Sebastian Junger]

And that I'm going. But they, you know, we always with, you know, that's the parent you should be really, in some ways, all the time. Right. And so I think you could argue that it's more meaningful and less mean. And that's the irony of life.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Remember a couple years ago when there was that missile alert in Hawaii, and they alerted everyone. Like, what do you do?

[Sebastian Junger]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Like, obviously, I just mean, like, you basically don't do anything. You just do a couple.

[Ryan Holiday]

You just.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You make a couple phone call calls, depending on where you are, and then you kind of sit there and wait.

[Ryan Holiday]

For it to happen.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Right. So there's. I just mean there's something obliterating about that. And so maybe people are intimidated about thinking about that, but it's also for certain that it is going to happen at some point. And so thinking about how do you spend your life day to day and not eliminating the enormous inefficiencies and time wastes and anxieties, that I think is very helpful.

[Sebastian Junger]

Obviously, you know, for Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway and, you know, this sort of of like central drama of it is this the night before this military operation where Robert Jordan, I think his name is the narrator or the main character. He's pretty sure he's going to get killed, right. They're blowing up a bridge. They're blowing a bridge in the morning, right. And he's just met this young woman. And I remember this really struck me when I was young, I read this and he said they had one night to have a love affair. And he said, we have to make an entire lifetime together. We have to fit it all into one night. And so I think what we're both saying is true in different ways, but one way of looking at life is because, I don't know, how do I fit a whole lifetime into today? Because it might be that actually might turn out to be what happens when.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Seneca talks about, can you close the books on life each day? Can you go, this was a good life.

[Sebastian Junger]

Life up till this point, if it ended right now.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And then if you wake up tomorrow, you're with house money. And that, I think, is incredibly powerful and helpful. I've talked about this before, but I think about so many of the things we're doing. It's because, like, we're working on this project so we can get the rewards when it comes out. Right. Like you work on a book and are you miserable while you're doing it for the reward of having done it? Well, in light of the fact that you could die before it comes out, that seems like a bad strategy.

[Sebastian Junger]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So how do you. How do you make some subtle shifts so when you save the draft for the day, you're like, I am proud of where it is now. And I'm putting it out now when I'm saving it and I'M putting it out tomorrow when I save it and the day after. It's just that you're seeing this all as this kind of self contained thing and going, hey, this is good.

[Ryan Holiday]

This is.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I just try to think like, like this is enough. Up until here, this has been so much as opposed to I need tomorrow to make the shittiness of today worth it.

[Sebastian Junger]

Right. Well, you know, this, I mean, there's a sort of lesson in there for parenthood. I mean, parenthood is hard, right? It's really hard. And some, for many people, I think it's just about the hardest thing they'll ever do. And one of the things that parents tell themselves I think is, well, it's going to get easier later. Just get through this part. Yes, it'll get easier later, but you're cheating yourself. Right? Get through this part. What are you talking about? You have a two year old.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. You're gonna mourn that two year old.

[Sebastian Junger]

Exactly. I mean, just cause something's hard doesn't mean you can't take meaning and pleasure out of it. Yeah, right. Hard. This society is like allergic to things that are hard. I'm like, listen, life is hard. If that gets you to check out. If hardness gets you to check out of everything, you're gonna hope you get lucky. Yeah. And so you have to do is like, no, no, no. Having an 18 month old who's colicky and crying all the time, that is enough. That's what I want. That's enough. Yeah, it'll change, it'll get easier, but it won't necessarily get better. Right. This is it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes, that would mean so much to us and it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Would really help the show. We appreciate it.

[Ryan Holiday]

And I'll see you next episode.

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[Ryan Holiday]

Look, ads are annoying.

[Stephen Hanselman]

They are to be avoided if at all possible.

[Ryan Holiday]

I understand as a content creator why, why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well.

[Stephen Hanselman]

We have partnered with Supercast to bring.

[Ryan Holiday]

You a ad free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Deeper into Stoicism and support the work.

[Ryan Holiday]

We do here, here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to Dailystoic.com premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.