Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic. Gregory Hays, one of Marcus Aurelius’s best translators (the one we worked with on our beautiful premium edition) , writes, “If he had to be identified with a particular school, [Stoicism] is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been ‘Stoicism’ but simply ‘philosophy.’” --- And with today's meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal , Ryan discusses why Marcus Aurelius vie...
Aug 28, 2023•8 min•Ep. 1811
In today’s audiobook reading, Ryan presents an excerpt from one of the seminal texts of Stoicism, the Discourses of Epictetus, read by Michael Reid. As a series of lectures given by Epictetus that were written down by his pupil Arrian in 108 A.D., these discourses provide practical advice to think on and practice in order to move oneself closer toward the ultimate goal of living free and happy. In this third section, Epictetus discusses how we should see ourselves in comparison with the gods. ✉️...
Aug 27, 2023•5 min•Ep. 1801
Ryan speaks with Christina Pazsitzky in the second of a two-part interview about what really matters in life, why studying history reveals how strange life is, enjoying what you have while you have it, how to navigate social media as a parent, and more. Christina Pazsitzky is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, host and TV personality. Since starting her comedy career in 1997, Christina has been known for her intelligent, thought-provoking, and hilarious takes on the realities of women’s iss...
Aug 26, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 1800
This is not another note about memento mori . It’s about a different immutable, inescapable law of human existence that comes to us from the Stoics through Heraclitus (one of Marcus Aurelius’ favorites): Character is fate. --- And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic , Ryan explains why the Stoics believed it was so important to honor the past, but not to live in it. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired p...
Aug 25, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1805
In matters of law, Cato was a stickler. In matters of principle, Cato was uncompromising. His opponents found him exhausting. Even some of his friends thought he was impossible. Yet as we wrote about recently, people who bumped into him in the street were always surprised. By how nice he was. By how low key he was. There was the man who struck Cato in the baths , not aware of whom he was fighting with, only to be unceremoniously forgiven by the great Roman he had assaulted. There were the local ...
Aug 24, 2023•16 min•Ep. 1807
Seneca, Cato, and Marcus Aurelius operated in the real world. They navigated within and around the halls of power. They had people working above and below them, and they needed to figure out how to motivate, influence, understand, and accommodate those people. And while virtue kept them from being too Machavailian, they had to figure out how to affect change and get things done inside a world that wasn’t so virtuous. So it’s an interesting question: What is the most Stoic law of power? You can c...
Aug 23, 2023•3 min•Ep. 1804
Ryan speaks with Christina Pazsitzky in the first of a two-part interview about her new Netflix comedy special Mom Genes , why she believes that comedians should go to college to study philosophy, how she balances her work and home life, why ego is a tool for survival in a comedy career, what the Stoics would have to say about cancel culture, and more. Christina Pazsitzky is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, host and TV personality. Since starting her comedy career in 1997, Christina has b...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 1799
You may well have said it yesterday, or overheard someone else saying it, “Oh, I’ll do it in the morning…I’ll do it after I wake up…I’ll get to it later…I just need to do this other thing first.” It’s one of the oldest, most insidious lies in the world. Yet it’s so common that we don’t even notice it. We don’t even realize that it is a vicious untruth that deprives us and the world of potential, of awareness, of understanding. --- And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares what habits...
Aug 22, 2023•9 min•Ep. 1803
An explorer at Jamestown in the 17th century. A London gentleman during the Stuart Period. An unidentified person with the initials T.S. who lived during the Renaissance. Another with the initials E.R. who lived sometime during the 16th century. We hardly know anything about them. They almost certainly didn’t know each other. But they have two things in common. First, they are dead. Second, while they were alive, they each reminded themselves every day that they would one day be dead. How do we ...
Aug 21, 2023•11 min•Ep. 1802
Known as the “Second Founder of Stoicism,” Chrysippus was a philosophical giant as revered as he was controversial. Today, Ryan reads from his book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius to share the winding and often confounding story of one of the most important figures of Stoicism, and to explain why he died laughing. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books...
Aug 20, 2023•25 min•Ep. 1797
Ryan speaks with Paul Kix about his new book You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America , how Ryan helped him shape his writing career after being laid off by ESPN, the painful realities of the Jim Crow south and 1963 Birmingham, and more. Paul Kix is an author, journalist, and podcaster whose wide-ranging work examines sports, politics, social movements, and world history. He is a former senior editor at ESPN Magazine, and has writt...
Aug 19, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 1796
In August of 1967, Lieutenant Dave Carey was shot out of his A-4 Skyhawk over Vietnam. Soon enough, he found himself a prisoner in Hanoi, where he would subsequently be beaten, tortured and placed into solitary confinement. For six years, he languished there, kept going only by the comrades around him and an occasional pick me up from the Stoics. As Carey explained on an incredible episode of the Daily Stoic podcast , fellow prisoners would tap, “Stockdale wants you to remember what Epictetus sa...
Aug 18, 2023•7 min•Ep. 1788
Life is unpredictable. Events are uncertain. What can go wrong will. Nice guys sometimes finish last, bad things happen to good people. So much is outside our control. These realities are all well-known to a Stoic. As Seneca said, fortune behaves as she pleases. So why did they try then? Why did they work hard on stuff when it might not work out? Why did they invest and sacrifice? --- And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions as part of the Daily Stoic Stoicism 101 course, addressin...
Aug 17, 2023•11 min•Ep. 1798
Ryan speaks with Greg Harden about how Stoicism influenced his new book Stay Sane in an Insane World: How to Control the Controllables and Thrive , the techniques that he has used to coach so many sports greats to the highest levels of success, the difference between confidence and ego, why Tom Brady likes The Obstacle Is The Way , and more. Greg Harden is a life coach, motivational speaker and executive consultant who is best known for his work with 7-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Br...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 1793
We all want more peace, right? More stillness. The quiet confidence that comes from being on the right path, as Seneca described it , and not being distracted by all those which crisscross ours. Well, how do you get that? It’s simple, Marcus Aurelius wrote . Stop caring what other people think. Stop caring what they do. Stop caring what they say. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, a...
Aug 16, 2023•2 min•Ep. 1789
Those shoes you’re wearing were likely made in a sweatshop by a child in horrendous labor conditions. That luxury handbag is a few dollars worth of leather and a fortune in deceptive advertising and branding. Those two politicians with radically different agendas are ladder-climbing friends behind the scenes, with the same corporate donors. Those big tough rappers whose beef you’re following are two poets laughing all the way to the bank. That fancy car will not only lose half its value when you...
Aug 15, 2023•17 min•Ep. 1795
It is not enough, of course, to simply tune out the noise around you. One can turn off social media. One can cultivate the quiet country life, as the Stoics did on occasion. One can ignore what is inessential, pay no attention to what makes no difference. And still there is noise. To get to ataraxia , or a place of stillness and peace , the Stoics knew that controlling for externals was not enough. We had to develop an inner calm too, an ability to recognize our own destructive thought patterns ...
Aug 14, 2023•7 min•Ep. 1787
In anticipation of their upcoming live discussion series, Ryan and Robert sat down to discuss where their ideas and interests converge. This casual conversation is a small offering of the type of discourse that they will be presenting in their discussion series: Strategy And Philosophy For Turbulent Times in Los Angeles on September 19 , and Seattle on September 21 . There are a limited number of VIP meet-and-greet tickets available, so grab yours before they sell out! ✉️ Sign up for the Daily S...
Aug 13, 2023•41 min•Ep. 1791
Ryan presents a compilation of highlights from interviews with some of his most high-profile, influential, and interesting guests about how they found Stoicism and what it has done to improve their lives. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. 📱 Follow us: Instagram , Twitter , YouTube , TikTok , Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy ...
Aug 12, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 1790
The Stoics stood out in Athens. They stood out in Rome. Whether it was Cato walking around barefoot or Cleanthes proudly doing manual labor. Whether it was Seneca practicing his poverty or Marcus Aurelius reading during gladiatorial games, the Stoics were different. It was obvious. It was intentional. If I wanted to be like the mob, Chrysippus once said, I would not have become a philosopher. --- And with today's excerpt from the Daily Stoic , Ryan explains the importance of prioritizing real ac...
Aug 11, 2023•7 min•Ep. 1786
It takes a lot of flying time to become a certified pilot. It takes years on stage for a comedian to learn how to command an audience. It takes time to get sober, time in therapy to heal a marriage. No book is written overnight , and few fortunes are made in one swoop. No, they start small and accumulate, the power of compounding interest working on them. All great things take time. You know this. You know where you want to end up, and yet, and yet still you have not started the clock . --- And ...
Aug 10, 2023•16 min•Ep. 1794
“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.” Over 10,000 readers have highlighted that passage in the Kindle edition of Ego is the Enemy . The reason it resonates is that the Stoics have been riffing on that very idea for thousands of years. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. 📱 Follow us: Instagram , Twitter , You...
Aug 09, 2023•3 min•Ep. 1785
Ryan speaks with Kevin Rose about the pros and cons of his entrepreneurial drive, the calming effects of reducing the amount of stuff that you have, the overlap between Zen Buddhism and Stoicism, the dangers of social media, why being vulnerable is the hardest thing to do, and more. Kevin Rose is an entrepreneur, podcaster, and television host. Having co-founded the companies Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk, and having been a venture partner at GV, Kevin’s work focuses on tracking and contribu...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 1783
What is the secret to happiness? It’s not an easy question to answer. And it might seem like the Stoics wouldn’t have a good answer either. Because it might seem like they didn’t have much fun, or experience much happiness. After all, they wrote repeatedly about the emptiness of chasing money or celebrity. They reminded themselves that fine wine is just rotten old grapes . But that doesn’t necessarily mean their lives were empty and joyless. By one definition of happiness, in fact, the Stoics we...
Aug 08, 2023•13 min•Ep. 1792
We all have bad habits . Some of us procrastinate. Nearly all of us, as Seneca said, are slaves to something–food or sex or booze or ambition. We don’t work as hard as we should, or we work too hard. We’re too quick with our temper, we’re too slow to ask for help. It’s easy to be cynical about ourselves. We know, more than anyone, how long we’ve been struggling with things. We know how ingrained our bad habits are, how hard it’s going to be to get over them . But we can’t give up. --- And with t...
Aug 07, 2023•9 min•Ep. 1784
In the spirit of sharing ideas and learning from cultures outside of one’s own, Ryan was excited when he was given the opportunity to speak to India-based fitness company Curefit Healthcare because it gave him a chance to further explore the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and relate it to the Stoic teachings. In this virtual talk, Ryan delves into how Stoicism and Eastern philosophy can be applied to physical activity, leading a large company, getting better as people and leaders, and more. ✉️ Sign...
Aug 06, 2023•27 min•Ep. 1781
Ryan speaks with Leonard Mlodinow about his book Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life , how physicists deal with imposter syndrome and egotism, whether there is truth in physics or just better theories, how his own personal practice of self-sufficiency aligns with the Stoic ideals, why science says that there is no separation between emotions and rationality, and more. Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist, mathematician, author, screenwriter, and video game develo...
Aug 05, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 1776
We know we want to go somewhere. We want to do something. We want to be successful. We want to win. We know we want to start something–a company, a creative project, a movement. Or perhaps we want justice, we want someone to make things right, we want to change and grow. We want to prove people wrong about us. We want to be happy. But what exactly? How? What does that success actually look like? What is this happiness we speak of? Well there, we have a lot less clarity. Law 29 of The 48 Laws of ...
Aug 04, 2023•9 min•Ep. 1782
There are very few people who feel completely understood. Starting from a young age, our parents didn’t fully get us. Or maybe it was our teachers. Maybe there is some part of us apparently beyond the reach of our spouse or our peers. This is painful. It’s lonely. It’s rough. Epictetus said that there were some things that were up to us and some things that were not . --- And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions during a Q&A session at the end of the Stoicism 101 course. Topics...
Aug 03, 2023•12 min•Ep. 1779
What we do while in the sway of anger we almost always come to regret . Whether it was the yelling or the impulsive decision to quit, whether it was the cruel words or the quiet revenge, with the passage of time, we come to see we were possessed by something–by our temper– and it took us somewhere we should not have gone . The Stoics wrote often of being wary of the passion of temper, but there are other passions to beware of too. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dail...
Aug 02, 2023•4 min•Ep. 1778
