a into here and know you. thank you. >> the honors online. thank you note on. >> if you want to view other afterwards programs online, go to the website up book to be.org. type afterwards into the search bar and all previous episodes will be available. >> c-span, or history of staley. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today we bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and

public policy events in washington, d.c. around the country. c-span is brought to by your cable or satellite provider. [applause] good evening. welcome to the national press club. i'm angela the national press club president and editor of political. but the national press club where things happen. tonight's headline features the fascinating prolific author, ryan holiday. are here to talk about his latest book, conspiracy.

the book was just came out to fix the unlikely connection between peter, billionaire entrepreneur and hall cogan the aging superstar wrestler and internet publisher nick denton. a tale of sex, revenge, controversy, power and the new york times call that one hell of a page turner. holidays an interesting figure. the reviews focus more on you than on the book. what talk about both tonight but in addition to being an author ryan is a marketing strategist and spells proclaimed media manipulator. we can talk about that here at the national press club tonight.

so the two i mentioned are two of the seven books you've written by the age of 30. >> i think it's actually a include the journal. i don't know. i've lost track. >> even more impressive. were talking about the topic at the national press club. it's an interesting place to do this. peter to give a rare public appearance or at the press club on october 31 of 2016. those a week before the 2016 election. he talked about his endorsement of donald trump a big media spectacle. in the same room we have screamed the netflix original documentary about the case in which peter is very much the villain. we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. looking forward to a lively discussion.

i will kick it off by asking you how did the book come about? you got to spend a lot of time with peter teal and nick denton. how did that happen? >> it was not a book i was planning to write with that i would gets right. i watched these events happen like everyone else. i'm that there simply that a professional wrestler with a gossip outlet over a sex tape and i thought that was weird enough. the idea that it might be something more going on didn't occur to me either. so remember i was in amsterdam when it happened and everyone is very shocked by. it immediately struck me as being a montecristo ask story.

i've written about it critically before i was never a huge fan. they pioneered a lot of the more toxic trends in today's media. so to reached out to me and the late summer and early fall of 2016. he said average or stuff than like to get a drink sometime. so we ended up connecting. independently i heard from nick denton and we had another connection. the fact that i was talking to both of them was unusual. it on it allowed me to play one of the other. the clues were to talk to be about these things because peter was talking to me. peter kept talking to me because

nick was talking to me. but not only wanted their side to be heard but was fascinated with each other. they're so similar yet so different. part of what fueled the book would've been smarter for either of them to kill her involvement was once it got started it was hard to stop. >> at what point did you realize it was a book. >> pretty early. i just didn't know what book it would be. as a larger book about media in general is that a fact driven analysis of what happened. there's like 25000 pages in the document, you could write a whole second book.

there are pages of the surreal story of a dj stealing the tape seven another dj. there's so many subplots. i kept it wide open and vague for a long time. in my publisher refer to it as umb or untitled media book. and i eventually settled on the idea of it being a conspiracy. the idea that this deliberate conspiracy in many ways embodies all conspiracies. it was a book from the beginning. it should be a novel or movie or it's so cinematic and insane it was just what and are they going to take was the real question.

>> you decided to publish this is a dis- interested observer. people are very passionate on one side or the other and you tell it from both points of view but through the sides of the two different parties. >> what was so fascinating was the best reporters at the best media outlets have all taken a crack at. every major outlet has had someone cover the story. it was surprising to me as i read it how much had not been reported. but in talking to nick and peter looking at the case file i realize there is a very strong.

as soon as the involvement was revealed there is an intense biased that this is an evil billionaire, vindictive lee destroying a helpless guy. before that it was chaos. it was a professional wrestler in a media outlet and superficial in that level. the narrative was that no reporter was going to say what if he was right, it's not a journalistic point of view. i wanted to me this just read to me like epic history. it's a montecristo, the one of

many anecdotes from --'s life. like a shakespeare play. i wanted to tell morris history lessons judgment. think the shame of the reporting has been like since it's that occurred events everyone needs to have a strong opinion about it and that has missed a larger picture. that this is epic and unreal. >> did you find yourself sympathizing more than the other. >> i've written about a number of times so i saw why the jury made the decision. i thought i would've ended up less sympathetic. you cannot -- when i visited nick at his house he had like a

salon of interesting people but the future of journalism you can't step foot into someone's house that they were only recently able to move back into because they been forced out of bankruptcy proceedings. it and aj for instance, to wake up one day and have a 220 million-dollar home. >> the editor responsible. >> you wake up one day and there's a 200 million-dollar hold on your checking account, that make someone inherently sympathetic. even if you're not a good pers person. i think seen the human side of it softened it for me.

and realizing that i think a lot i think there's some overly bad actors that worked over the years and a lot was a culture that ran amok. is interesting to talk to nick that this machine had created something like a frankenstein monster. i was much more sympathetic than i thought i would be in the trump element looked at some of the motivations and puts a different shade on how you would like added. i came away being able to see both sides. >> to consider yourself to be a journalist? >> no. i would see myself as an author or writer for instance in the

book on the first person to reveal the character of mr. a. he basically comes up with the conspiracy that they engage in. i think a reporter would've had significant different responsibilities or obligations revealing his identity or not. >> but i feel like as an author i have a different i think my obligations toward the larger story and truth of what i'm trying to do is supposed to say a journalist at the new york times or politico. even how you cite things in books is how you different hi you'd have to cite things in a

newspaper article or something. i see myself more as a writer and storyteller. and how i told the story i was not necessarily trying to produce a beat by beat factual detail of what happened but to capture the larger essence and truth of what these events mean. >> even if you don't consider yourself a journalist, like there's obviously concerns among journalists about the precedent set in the silencing of media outlet, what is your take no that you've picked apart the pieces about the precedent that

was set. >> what they're saying is that the billionaire with media outlets makes a very nervous about what they are were not going to publish. i'm writing about a guy who just spent $10 million destroying someone, i've interviewed charles and spent a lot of time with him. he's the attorney that is hired as a once funny story is about two days after charles now represents donald trump and since the letter that michael's publisher he's like the book is coming out and i would love to see a copy.

so said no, you can see it when it comes out. he politely respected it and so far has not sued me. it's an interesting promoting the book that you can tell the stories are taking extra days because they're being double and triple checked by various legal departments because the elephants in the room is the peter teal factor. i think the precedent about what media can and cannot publish has been vastly overblown. because they didn't do anything new. rich people have been doing lawsuits for many years powerful people have been suing media outlets and they very rarely win because there's so many strong first amendment productions

against what publishers will publish. the differences most media outlets don't run surreptitiously run sex tapes into regular cease-and-desist letters. until litigate the case for many years. one thing i say in the book is that right after the verdict before the involvement. the new york times does a panel of experts about the precedent of the case. two out of the three say there is no real precedent. set other than you can't run stolen celebrity sex tapes. even the general counsel said it's not a big deal. silly when someone's involvement

a few months later's when the hysterical involvement ensues. so it is changed? the verdict is the same. someone paid the legal bills doesn't change that much to me. when he was here he said that hall called gun was only a single digit millionaire and that is a single digit millionaire could not have litigated this case on his own. you could argue that he might actually show that the plaintiffs have the uphill battle. so it is been slightly overstated. >> before the story started he was the biggest name and he was very much a big player. did you talk with him at all?

>> he actually texted me he called me and i miss the call. i think he said holiday brother -- holiday brother hogan mania, give me a call. it is seneca transcript of a set obviously this is just a cargo transcription of what occurred. so he was the most famous of all the characters. and that's an interesting irony of his actions. it's a violation of privacy and he spends money and time trying to protect his privacy and incipient famous and then hogan,

because of some of the comments that are leaked fades into the background of being maybe not such a big guy in that way. it's shakespearean for that reason. is less famous at the end, the one who's obsessed with privacy is now a public individual the gossett merchant is now the quiet and subdued compassionate one. it's surreal on every level. >> would you feel it's going next. other other targets out there? does peter care about media

anymore? if you gonna write a sequel for does it go? >> this story is even over. they are still litigating over who had the rights to . teal has bid on it, mike, right wing troll husband on it. they tried to launch a crowdfunding campaign. i think they raise like 15% of the money if teal buys it, 40 or 50% of the sale go to hulk hogan because he's the main creditor. but soccer doesn't wanted to sell to teal. it's strange and that is still ongoing. i don't know full see more libel or defamation against media

outlets, but i think this idea of silicon valley throwing its weight around and flexing its muscles is a new class of powerful people is here to stay for sure. i don't know if you see the photo jeff davis recently but he's jacked. and he's fat and he dresses great. so this sort of the arc of silicon valley they look at him from the early amazon days and he's like a not gordon or not in great shape. messing with computers in his this power player of physically intimidating in that way. it's a good metaphor for what we'll see with the billionaires coming out of silicon valley.

>> what about the reactions from the principals to the book. what if you heard? >> my agreement with -- was that he would not get to see the book until it came off the printers. so when it was officially printed. he saw the and we were supposed to do a number of talks together that fell through. i don't know if that means he's not happy with the. i think he is proud of it. he said in the new york times that he sought is one of the most philanthropic things that he has done. i think he thinks people should

do more things like this. not destroy the media a live but like here's the status quo and the individual has the power to change the status quo. he sees the need for more things like that. thank he is genuinely happy with the book. had some conversations with nick but i don't know. that's a question for them to answer. >> what about you next? if you're writing a book of year? >> my son was born in november others conversations about this mcafee on the same time. i remember telling my wife what do you think about me speaking a book in here the next two months. she didn't think that was the best idea.

i'm going to try to slow the pace down a little bit. writing is a great profession that you can do your whole life but i'm not sure how long that will be if you do a book of year. i might die of exhaustion. so i'm hoping to slow down. . . reporter congressional quarterly but more of a capacity as vice

chair of the press club's committee so we have been very electrocuted i think if that is a big word to say. they could find in favor of a lawsuit over the arrival of something of the sort. when you have a trend where the races are becoming politicized but they are not running the nonpartisan judges it seems like this could become a better concern for the companies can you comment on that?

>> to go even further with what you are saying on where the case ultimately ended up is that in florida subject is basically says you have to post the bond capped at $50 million, so the constitutional right to appeal is very in theory but it's a 50 million-dollar ticket to get on the ride so i'm not actually sure that is the case but if it is is somewhat alarmin it is sot you are getting a financial death penalty and don't have the right to proceed. that is an element of this that is underexplored or under talked about.

you had a very specific outlet that crossed the line. when they started this plan in 2011, they laid out all their options. a billionaire got unlimited resources. how are they going to go after, the court case is something that they settle on later but they could have stopped the companies and shut this down he doesn't want to look for the cases which is primarily where the process has been threatened in the past

and you argue with the first amendment allows or doesn't allow and i don't think it is bad unreasonable for a jury or judge or anyone to publish the truth as you see it it is not unlimited but perhaps it is con sensual in a private bedroom you can write about it but you can't show a video. does that mean that they can run

the tape and a public figure to fair game that sounds like a nightmare world to me but i think all of the concerns are valid and i share them and i follow on about them. i'm just not sure the case involved them in the way some of the more has been a. [inaudible] here in the capacity as a member of your reading list my question was related to whether it felt like an aspect of the book was bringing the writings also recall starting out with something like trust me i'm

lying just like telling a personal story with a love of segments of e-mails that you've clipped out and then writing several books on the philosophy and lessons for entrepreneurs did it feel like déjà vu to some extent or was it exhausting to the extent that you never want to do this again? >> guest: it was my personal experience with the leadership is nice because first of all the people are basically dead and i'm not having to tell it in a chronological fashion, so this definitely forced us to write in a narrative that was very difficult and being forced to capture the full sense of what happened so i felt like i agreed a lot with the writer and i

didn't know if i could have written a story outside overlapped some of my expertise i knew that characters have researched this stuff before and some other scandal that didn't involve. so in some ways it felt like it was a mind for this to happen. i am not with anyone, just myself. this is kind of off-topic but how do you view donald trump in the prism of the ego and

philosophy? >> people would say what is your definition and my answer was micro therapists have a medical definition obviously. i felt like this iteration this picture would be next to the word at this point so it personified in every conceivable way. getting back is t that is to bey dangerous as well so it is personified in every way and almost every day gives us a

hopeful blessing in the perils of the eco. the president is probably the hardest job in the world and we see how it makes it even harder. so i guess our book wasn't in this sense. >> if i can follow-up o follow t and get to your next you mentioned in the context of peter obviously he was the only supporter of trump and we have clearly seen the media. how do you link together these two things? >> when i was writing the book i interviewed him in his office sworsort of at one point right r

the access hollywood tapes have broken and coincidentally sidenote there was another person that experienced the reversal so that's an interesting. in the lowest moment of the campaign i ran for leaving the interview thinking it's all downside at this point and he's going to walk away. a few days later he announced the largest donation and then i remember jeff had said he's a contrarian you have to remember they are almost always wrong and so i e-mailed him the day after and said i was curious what you thought of that comment and he said it's true they almost always are wrong but when they are right they are really right and so that captures his in some

ways i think it was related to the case and he saw a different, he learned something different in america but he didn't know living in san francisco seeing the bees in florida and seeing the sort of disconnect between the media and the population. i think that it was a reminder to him the best are where the action is so i think he saw it as a risk if it paid off it would pay off in a huge way to him with a cost of course but it was a matter of dogs to be so

odds. support would be forgotten and the influence and access to uk as a result is an enormous return on investment and i think that was the part. >> i am the cofounder of the political communications at members of the press club. i was wondering you touched a bit on the philosophy of the silicon valley investors. he is used to always being on the offensive, always in that space where there is no law. he was the one having his privacy breached so i wonder in the discussions with him hell did he generalize it working

with law suits. the legal system was prevalent in our lives with too many lawsuits and then in this 11 of the pivotal moments in the conspiracy comes around the deposition phase they realize this is the first time anyone had been the deposed. they got many se seats and had never been taken to court and

realized this status quo is an untested status quo and so he says at the end when he gets the verdict maybe we don't have it, maybe there are more untested norms or status quo's that could be needed. so they'r they are looking for different lawsuits he always takes a different perspective on things. but he changed his mind and all the work that was to meet up with outside maybe perhaps this explains his involvement and maybe there are a lot of things that could be done inside of the system and that's where he's going now. >> right here in front.

>> i am an attorney and writer with the hill. you know where i'm going with this. he's questioned where do you draw the line and where is the responsibility he made the comment back you're no we are no publish tapes and you said in the book that is a joke or taking too far, taken out of context. what is your evidence for us? >> he's the one that ran the whole code tapes and asked is there a tape that you wouldn't run he doesn't want to be there and said i don't know of a chi

child. i don't think that he was explicitly say i would rob a tape and i'm pretty sure he wasn't but i think it was revealing is that although it is a bit of a moving target there wasn't a set of editorial standards so they would try to say over and over again in the document the handles serious stories. what are your editorial standards, why was your judgment was that it was on the right

side of the line and they were not able to come up with an answer because i think the truth was they caught sensational material gets only editorial standard was you run it if you get it. they were not in the business of holding back stories. the biggest you can connect, and he was the editor in chief of the biggest thing you could commit is not running the story because you thought it would hurt someone's feeling this. the reason they cost th a mind r a vast majority of people in the cases the reason they would cross the line so often as they didn't define the lines of they were not constrained by it and i think that the physician is accidentally revealing that they don't have a line.

>> right here. >> i have been a fan for a long time. as a writer to use your self entering into that and if you were a, who would you want to write about? >> i do love biographies. i don't know a fair amount. there is no great biography. there've been some wonderful biographies and seneca but i think i am a faster writer and i sort of enjoy editorializing.

i respect and admire that i'm not sure if i have what it takes. >> i am not a writer but i recently read your book. for marketing you should give all of your money away. do you think that in the dog's plan music video they took that advice? >> i remember everyone was freaking out about it. when i was in middle school or high school blink 182 did the same thing in a music video the same publicity stunts worked over and over again.

the second thing, right now the topic in the news is stormy daniels and president trump and it feels like there are similarities -- >> a lawyer at one point brokers the sale of the remaining tapes with conspiracy and to part two is the same lawyer that negotiate the first payout deal and this has not been reported on in this mind blowing to me and a little frustrating. he hates the fbi for some legitimate reasons but one legitimate reason is they

arrested six years ago the person who would then come in four years previous, the fbi had a man who would later extort him on the evening of the election so i think that it is pretty incredible. >> i would identify myself as a fan of yours and i'm curious about the writing process. you said you knew it was something that you needed to write so i'm curiou i am curioue sensation or the realization to get this out to everyone else. your other books have been successful so with that being

said how do you know the book you want to write will have success as well ask >> i felt like it was timely and current answer real, so i felt like maybe it was in a book i was in a unique position to write. some of my fans are a little skeptical. there are things i learned for this to write the book but it's different in some sense the job is to push myself and be better

at it and the reason i tackle the book is it wasn't a concern about sales but would i be a better writer on the other side. >> may be one of the things i learned is to keep the project secret but yes i know where i'm going to go next. >> my question is basically how the list goes to the fantastic folks we live in a thought bubble problem so how are you finding these unique but interesting the? >> i don't know how i find them

exactly. i like to ask people what is the book that changed your life. i asked my mentor and advisor and he was like there's a great chapter on conspiracies that i read about in college but forgot about into the night at the house and the book is on the shelf. so they also recommend this book from the 60s about intelligence and counterintelligence to g that go the invasion of normandy that ended up being super helpful so i get it out of recommendations that i pass along to you guys and then 50 or 60% of the books i read i found inside the books i was reading so i look at a

bibliography so i take that pretty precisely. i know it's weird because i'm here talking about a new book that i want to let time filter through. i have two questions. how do you define the status quo in a consistent manner. and if china wants to blow up pieces of the status quo what does he want to appear, put tha desert, a statue of himself?

>> key was defining it as a singular sociopathic belief and so the status quo was the media outlets that regularly crossed the line and went after individuals but in his case i don't know the orientation of any of the others and i'm not sure that it is anyone else's business. his definition was that he was a wildly out of control outlet that regularly hurt people. the other definition is that they have a homogenization of culture to make fun of anyone that was outside of the normal or did something and they are saying sthey'resaying so he fela form of political correctness that he disliked because he dislikes political correctness.

then as far as what comes into this place one of the points he made to me is he thought it was the source of a unique set of conditions with the early evolution of blogging. so 2004 or 2002 they sort of started to mix dining room table to become where it becomes and i think the crowd of funding campaign where they tried to buy back the domain used validation of the idea that we might have liked while it was here how much would we pay to resuscitate it and maybe the answer isn't as much as they would speculate people would be willing to pay.

>> what do you believe that most people don't agree with, so i'm wondering what are the most interesting answers to the question that you found and how does he approach the question to ask >> what is an important truth that very few people agree on? he loves sort of talking things through that way. the premise for this book is although we can agree or disagree whether they deserve the best financial death penalty i think what happens is the sort of coordinated secret delivered disruptive action is actually kind of a green sprout.

maybe we could use fewer changing of facebook photos and protests and more sort of deliberate actions to enact the changes people want. i'm not talking about assassinations or things like that but it was very much within the bounds of the law. he didn't tell people what he was doing while he was doing it and maybe that is an element of producing change. you tell people you are coming and they defend against it easier so that is the premise of the book and one truth for me.

>> we have time for one last question here. >> i am a fan of your book. it is the synonym of the conspiracy. so in answer i was looking for another one to describe but i also wanted to make my agent and his wife we were talking about the book and said this book is like an anatomy textbook for conspiracy and i thought that's

an interesting way so part of the premise of the book was the detailed conspiracy which we might not care about in the three or four years to make it greater and larger and how this teaches us about conspiracies as a whole. what was extraordinary to me about the case that was a conspiracy and here is where i went from start to finish and so i tried to documen document it e book and here is to the question earlier about some of the media coverage. i feel like it was so extraordinary a critical events of what happened and they wanted to get the facts down first and

then discuss. >> you have been a good audience. thank you all for being here tonight at the national press club and for those of you that are members thank you. those that would like to learn more, we are at press.org and have a couple of upcoming events. march 20 we will have christopher scully yet with the legacy of his father and we bought a headliner luncheon. march 29 in discussio 29th indie commemoration of world war i and finally on april 4 there will be a book event on a new biography othe newbiography of the formert lady nancy reagan and we can't conclude the night without presenting the guest with the national press club coffee and

let's give a hand. [applause]