In May of 2019, AT&T did something that, at the time, must have seemed a little ridiculous to even some of its own employees. The company, as The Atlantic reported, “ran an internal war game on how a pandemic would affect its ability to keep phone and internet service running. The company does these exercises routinely to try to get ready—to build teams of people and their reflexes.” For the last five years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge —a set of...
Dec 11, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1930
On this weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan takes the stage to address 200 senior leaders from Herzog Technologies, Inc ., a distinguished and leading rail and heavy highway contractor spanning across North America. Renowned for his profound insights into Stoic philosophy and practical wisdom, Ryan shares his invaluable thoughts on the transformative power of disciplined habits in achieving unparalleled success. ☎️ Herzog Technologies Inc. Twitter / X Instagram ✉️ Sign up for the Da...
Dec 10, 2023•54 min•Ep. 1929
On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street Shane Parrish on Why people who are popular on social don’t succeed when they write books, The mark of wisdom is looking downstream and seeing how a decision affects your life, Delaying gratification isnt easy but is important to learn and his book Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results a must-have manual for optimizing decision-making, gaining competitive ...
Dec 09, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 1922
It’s hard to keep a Stoic down or hold them back. They push through. They see obstacles as opportunities . They are not deterred by difficulties or criticism or friction. Like the old motto of the Royal Air Force, the Stoics believed that perseverance and determination were key. Per ardua ad astra –it reads– Through adversity to the stars. This way of thinking makes someone a winner , it makes them a great leader. It can also make them dangerous. To themselves and others. The author SC Gwynne, r...
Dec 08, 2023•7 min•Ep. 1928
People spend a lot of money to buy nice land. They want to be in a good neighborhood with good schools. They want to have a beautiful view. Just look at what happened during the pandemic when people rushed to outbid each other for houses outside of major cities–because they wanted safety and space and change of scenery. For centuries, armies have clashed over territory–some of it valuable, some of it not–willing to pay in blood for control over a piece of dirt. Meanwhile, some of the most valuab...
Dec 07, 2023•15 min•Ep. 1927
On today’s episode of the Daily Stoic podcast Ryan speaks with author Kate Flannery on how having worked for American Apparel gave Kate a bad reputation, It’s hard to get someone to see something that their salary depends on them not seeing, the difference between quitting and getting fired along with her first book Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles. Strip Tees is her first book where she details her experience in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cult-li...
Dec 06, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 1924
We know the world throws a lot at us. We know it’s noisy out there, and there are competing influences. We know we can be pretty forgetful too. How are we supposed to remember the most essential and important Stoic truths and principles for life? By simplifying. By repeating powerful and key ideas time and time again (with both words and actions). ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, ...
Dec 06, 2023•2 min•Ep. 1925
Wisdom isn’t just what you seek out. In fact, much of the most important wisdom we learn in life seeks us out. The piece of unsolicited advice from someone who has been in our position. The painful consequences of a bad decision that become undeniably clear. The feedback from the audience or the customer after all those years of work. Epictetus said we can’t learn that which we think we already know . Zeno reminds us that conceit is the impediment to growth and change. If you’re not willing to b...
Dec 05, 2023•16 min•Ep. 1923
It doesn’t feel like much. It’s just a perfunctory part of the morning. A little bit of tidying up, a way to get a little dose of inspiration. A way to keep track of the date. But as you tear the page of that little calendar that sits on your desk– the Daily Stoic version perhaps ?!?–it hardly occurs to you what’s happened. You miss it, but it does not miss you. A tragedy has occurred. A death…yours. For an easy way to start the day with a good quote, check out our Daily Stoic Page-a-Day Calenda...
Dec 04, 2023•11 min•Ep. 1921
Marcus Aurelius was chosen by Emporer Hadrian to be his eventual successor. In 161, Aurelius took control of the Roman Empire along with his brother Verus. War and disease threatened Rome on all sides. Aurelius held his territory, but was weakened as a ruler after the death of his brother Verus. His son Commodus later became co-ruler in 177, only three years before Aurelius died on March 17, 180. Today, Ryan reads from his book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius ...
Dec 03, 2023•42 min•Ep. 1918
On today’s episode of the Daily Stoic podcast Ryan speaks with author Kate Flannery on Dov Charney and their early journey at American Apparel, the evolution of feminism, imposter syndrome vs being qualified and the difference between quitting and getting fired along with her first book Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles. Strip Tees is her first book where she details her experience in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cult-like devotion to the unorthodox ...
Dec 02, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 1920
On his way to work each day in Boston, John Adams would hear a man singing. As his great biographer David McCollough writes in John Adams , it was a beautiful, almost joyful song that inspired him as he headed to his law office in the mornings. One day, Adams decided to track the source of the music down. Inside a single room house, packed to the brim with a large family, he found a poor shoemaker. Sensing that the man was struggling, Adams ordered a pair of shoes as a gesture of charity. As the...
Dec 01, 2023•8 min•Ep. 1919
In Book 7 of Meditations , Marcus writes to himself (as the Gregory Hays translation, which you can grab a special edition of here , has it): "Take care that you don't treat inhumanity as it treats human beings." What does that mean? What exactly does Marcus mean by “inhumanity”? Hurricanes are inhuman. ChatGPT is inhuman. They might be ruthless forces of nature or technology, but they’re not out to get human beings. Does it matter how you treat them? With a passage like this, it is helpful to, ...
Nov 30, 2023•20 min•Ep. 1917
People say they love learning. And sure, they pick up books and go to museums and watch documentaries, and yes, they sat through their college courses. But this is only superficial evidence of a true student. There’s a joke from Churchill where he said that yeah, he likes learning, but he hates being taught. Most of us are like that: We like learning when it’s easy, when it doesn’t challenge us. We like it when it comes neatly packaged in a book or in a YouTube video . But everything else? We ig...
Nov 29, 2023•2 min•Ep. 1915
On today’s episode of the Daily Stoic podcast Ryan speaks with Whitney Cummings, comedian, actress, writer, producer, director, entrepreneur, and host of the hit podcast “Good for You". In part 2 of 2 they discuss having no sense of what life is because you’re not living one, discipline is really important in the beginning but it’s important to know when to update, Rerouting addictive behavior and her latest uncensored stand-up special "MOUTHY" on Only Fans TV (OFTV). IG, X, and Tiktok: @Whitney...
Nov 29, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 1916
Unfortunately, it’s been happening for a long time: People doing horrible things to each other. Marcus Aurelius was betrayed . Seneca was exiled on trumped-up charges. There were Stoics who were cheated on. There were Stoics who were persecuted . Stoics who were tortured. How did they get over it? Did they get even? Get justice? The great Dr. Edith Eger (whose books we highly recommend and has been on The Daily Stoic Podcast twice ) endured the Holocaust at Auschwitz. She was a victim of one of ...
Nov 28, 2023•23 min•Ep. 1914
We got together with family. We reminded ourselves what was important. We enjoyed the bounties of the Earth. Perhaps when we took the rolls out of the oven we noted, as Marcus Aurelius did in Meditations , the way the bread cracks open on top, a nod to nature’s inadvertence. We gave thanks. And then the next day, what did millions of people do? They rushed out to get a deal on a flat-screen television or crowded into department stores to take advantage of Black Friday deals. Then today, they sat...
Nov 27, 2023•9 min•Ep. 1913
In today’s audiobook reading, Ryan talks with 150 Local Business Leaders and Marketing Directors who are Twins Brand Partners about Challenges we face, Overcoming adversity in leadership roles and work life balance. ✉️ 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 Californ...
Nov 26, 2023•46 min•Ep. 1912
On today’s episode of the Daily Stoic podcast Ryan speaks with Whitney Cummings, comedian, actress, writer, producer, director, entrepreneur, and host of the hit podcast “Good for You". In part 1 of 2 they discuss having no sense of what life is because you’re not living one, discipline is really important in the beginning but it’s important to know when to update, Rerouting addictive behavior and her latest uncensored stand-up special "MOUTHY" on Only Fans TV (OFTV). IG, X, and Tiktok: @Whitney...
Nov 25, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 1909
Marcus Aurelius would have recognized the feeling you feel right now. So would Seneca and Cato and many of the other Stoics. The Romans, like Americans, loved a good feast. They loved wine. They loved breaking bread with family. We know this because their writings abound with descriptions of overflowing tables and dinners that went long into the night. But you know what doesn’t appear in their writings very often, just as it does not occur to us often enough? How some people don’t know this feel...
Nov 24, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1911
It doesn’t seem that way of course. The economy is a mess, the government is dysfunctional, the virus is still there, screwing up plans and making us sick. People are annoying. People are frustrating. Your co-worker is a jerk. Your kid just broke his arm. Everything is expensive, so expensive. This isn’t how things are supposed to be is it? Well, it’s pretty much how things have always been. Look at Marcus Aurelius, in his reign and life, he knew all those things intimately, plus many other trag...
Nov 23, 2023•15 min•Ep. 1910
It’s not that the Stoics didn’t love. It’s not that they didn’t like the nice stuff that they had or the jobs they had worked hard to earn. Of course, they liked these things and would have preferred to keep them, would have preferred a world in which fortune was less fickle, where everything lasted and no one ever grieved or missed or regretted. When Richard Feynman was in high school, he fell in love with a woman named Arline Greenbaum. They had a lovely, youthful kind of happiness that seemed...
Nov 22, 2023•3 min•Ep. 1908
Ryan speaks with assistant professor and MFA program at George Mason University, Timothy Denevi The economics of a book being different than the media, How much do you internalize the tumult and danger around you as a journalist, Fundamentally journalism is a form of lying and an act of aggression and his book Freak Kingdom · Hunter S . Thompson's Manic Ten - Year Crusade Against American Fascism . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Sto...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 1902
We have a false picture about how success happens. We often only see the results and almost never the process of things, so we tend to think that the finished product—a book, being in shape, being wise—is impressive, and therefore the process by which that event was created must have been equally brilliant. In fact, it’s not. All success happens the same way: “action by action,” as Marcus said. Just after the release of Metallica’s eleventh album, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich explained the simple sec...
Nov 21, 2023•17 min•Ep. 1907
Amazon tells us that’s one of the most highlighted passages in the digital version of Stillness is the Key . It’s an idea that’s impossible to disentangle from Stoicism. Epictetus said there were things that were up to us and some things were not. Ok, but then what? Remind yourself, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations , that the past and the future are not in our power, only the present is. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Sto...
Nov 20, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1906
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. ✉️...
Nov 19, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1905
Ryan speaks with assistant professor and MFA program at George Mason University, Timothy Denevi on mastery in learning the entire playbook so that you can throw it away, How the information makes us blind to the facts, Fundamentally journalism is a form of lying and an act of aggression and his book Freak Kingdom · Hunter S . Thompson's Manic Ten - Year Crusade Against American Fascism ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for ...
Nov 18, 2023•59 min•Ep. 1901
Oscar Wilde was the victim of a terrible tragedy and a terrible injustice. At the height of his artistic powers, he was thrown in jail–an awful prison which contained the germs that later killed him. It was intolerance and tyranny, plain and simple. Everything he cared about was taken from him. His family. His freedom. His work. As he sat in that dark cell, rotting, festering, angry, he had a kind of slow but life-changing spiritual awakening. Coming out of his resentments and fear and despair, ...
Nov 17, 2023•9 min•Ep. 1904
A man walks through a field of flowing grain, the grass bending low under its own weight. The wind blows softly on a cold day. He looks and sees a small bird sitting on a branch, the steam rising off the ground behind it. The bird takes flight and he follows it with his eyes, smiling at the beauty of nature’s inadvertence. But when the man turns, you see that he is surrounded by darkness–uprooted trees and thick mud. An army marches to get behind thick, sharp palisades. Weapons of war are being ...
Nov 16, 2023•13 min•Ep. 1903
Marcus Aurelius spent 14 years at war with the Marcomanni. It was a brutal, grinding campaign which he eventually won at great cost and risk. His victory was celebrated as a triumph, immortalized in a 97 foot tall marble tower which winds upward, showing in brilliant detail, "the heroic emotion and despair of Roman soldiers along with the unwavering leadership of Marcus Aurelius." And some 19 centuries later, this monument to his accomplishments still stands, disproving, you might say, Marcus Au...
Nov 15, 2023•3 min•Ep. 1900
