Ryan Holiday explores how courage takes many forms. He contrasts Reed Hastings' decision to shift Netflix to streaming with his later choice to pull a politically charged episode, arguing that true courage is tested when principles are on the line. Holiday says we need diverse role models like Florence Nightingale and Rosa Parks so anyone can see themselves as capable of brave action.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. Talk to me about, like, bravery versus sacrifice. I mean, there's so many aspects to courage as a big bucket. And you go into those in the book. It's actually very fascinating to not just think about it, but to say, well, here's what we've learned throughout the history for it. Which is why I like your work a lot, because you, you study it, you don't just think about it.
Well, so one example I have in the book is, and I'll say this as someone who is generally a huge Netflix and Reed Hastings fan, but you think about the middle days of Netflix, right? So starting a business is scary. Then you're successful. He starts this multi billion dollar business distributing DVDs by mail. It's very successful. But he gets this sense that the future is going to be digital. And Reed Hastings bets everything on transitioning from physical to digital. And he burns, essentially burns the boats behind him, walks away from one business to transcend, transform the business into another. That's courage. Now, I think that needs to be lauded and celebrated as an example of capitalistic courage. Let's say now, flash forward several years later. Netflix is international behemoth, one of the most powerful, successful companies in the world. And Netflix is distributing a show with Hasan Minhaj, who criticizes, rightfully, Saudi Arabia's murderous dismemberment of a dissident journalist. Right? And he talks about this in this episode. It's great episode. Brave stand for him to take as an individual. But suddenly Netflix is under pressure from its allies and investors in the Middle east who are like, you got to pull this episode. This isn't what we signed up for. We don't like this. And Reed Hastings does pull it. And he says something like, we're in the entertainment business, not in the truth to power business. And so I contrast those kind of those two moments, right? They both call for courage. In one, he does it, in the other, he doesn't. But the costs of that latter one are not so much financial as they are spiritual and ethical. And look, I'm sure he has his reasons, but I sort of, I think zooming out at the end of his life, is he going to go, I think he's going to think, why the hell did I become worth hundreds of billions of dollars, run one of the most powerful companies in the world to not be able to say or to stand behind someone who says, hey, chopping up journalists into little pieces is not cool with me. Right? And so it's often interesting how we can have lots of courage in one aspect of our lives or in one big moment, and then in another moment that same courage can falter. So when we think about courage, it's not just like, hey, is this going to benefit me or not? But I also wanted people to think about, you know, like, do you have courage when it really counts, when there's principle on the line and when, when you're the only one in a position to do something?
How do you teach that? How do I get my kids to be able to be that person if they so choose?
I mean, I think a big way to do it is by celebrating and making them feel a kinship to the people who did do that. Right. And I don't think shame is powerful, but I think also talking about moments where people fell short, right. Like, like Winston Churchill is a flawed person who did many shameful things and we should talk about those shameful things and learn lessons from them. But we should also be like, look, when the world fell to pieces, one guy was like, no, I'm going to do something about this. Right. One guy sort of put England on his back to and said, we're going to fight on. I think we can do this. And those, those are, yeah, those are, those need to be our heroes and these need to be a diverse cast of heroes. And it's something I think about in my books. It's why, you know, I very deliberately was like, I'm going to, I want to make sure I open this book not with a man and not with some sort of military courage. Because I. And so the reason I opened the book with Florence Nightingale is, is because I want people. One, I want it to be identifiable to all different types of people. But two, I want people to understand that it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, there's an opportunity for you to be one of those kinds of people.
Yeah, there's always Rosa Parks. And that kind of courage is actually a lot more important. It seems like all the movies, I'm diverging a little bit here, but I'll get back to. It seems like almost all the movies I can find on Netflix now, since we're talking about Netflix, it's just like a five foot tall woman wearing body armor with guns, shooting the crap out of everyone over and over and over. And it's just not entertaining, it's not interesting and it's not courage at all. It's just like rote violence. I'd rather see a movie about a man or a woman, whoever it is, like Doing something that matters other than, you know, just shooting.
I got an email from someone not long ago who'd read an. They'd read the book, or they saw an article about the book, and they were like, how could you put Rosa Parks in this book as an example of courage? She said, you know, she was a member of the end. The. The. She was a civil rights activist before. She was like, she wasn't just some random lady sitting on the bus who decided not to do it. It was planned. And I was like, how do you think that that makes it different? Not at all. I was like, you know, how do you think that. How do you. How easy do you think it was to be a civil rights activist in the 1950s and 60s in Alabama, as a.
They hung you from trees back then. That's what happened. If you're an activist, like, that takes big balls. I'm sorry. That's a scary time.
And the fact that it was planned makes it more. I mean, she willingly did this, right? She said, somebody needs to do something about this, and it's going to be me. So I think your point is a good one, which is that it's almost like we overstate physical courage and we understate the moral courage. Although, again, I would argue Rosa Parks is such a great example of physical and moral courage. They could have beat her. They could have killed her. They could have killed people who are close to her. She said, I don't care if you throw me in jail. I'm taking a stand on this thing, and then I'm going to fight the case until we bring about change. And that's what courage is.
