The Daily Stoic

Latest Episodes:

This is What Winners Do | Ask DS Apr 13, 2023

Show notes

In April 1960, the writer Richard Whalen was trying to meet with Diane Nash and the sit-in students for a Time Magazine cover story. These young college students had suddenly become the focus of an immense amount of attention, not just from the press but from the police and politicians and the rest of the civil rights leaders (we have a great podcast episode on the Stoicism of the Civil Rights movements here with Thomas Ricks).

How were these kids going to upend years of stymied racial progress?

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And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions covering topics that include the top five Stoic habits that can improve your life, strategies for staying calm in difficult situations, how to find good books to read, and more,

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Don’t Suffer In Advance Apr 12, 2023

Show notes

There is a balance to Stoicism between awareness and anxiety. The Stoics want you to be prepared for an uncertain—and oftentimes dangerous—future, but somehow not worry about it at the same time. They want you to consider all the possibilities…and not be stressed that many of those possibilities will not be good. How exactly is that supposed to work?

The answer lies simply in the idea of presence.

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Timothy Egan on Extremism and Fear Apr 12, 2023

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Timothy Egan about his new book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, how and why politics and extremism often operate hand-in-hand, dangerous misconceptions about white supremacy in America, better ways to teach American history, the fundamental lessons that he has learned about people over his long and varied career, and more.

Timothy Egan is an American author, journalist and former op-ed columnist for The New York Times. His nine published books cover a wide range of historical topics, including most notably the immediate aftermath of the Dust Bowl with The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award in History/Biography. His other award-winning works include The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (1991), The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009), and "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" (2013). In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America". His work can be found at his website timothyeganbooks.com.

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You Must Make This Shift | How Stoicism Helps You Deal With Big Challenges Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

Marcus Aurelius ruled over millions of people, and he didn't care what any of them thought about him. Well at least, he worked hard to not care about what any of them thought of him. We see that throughout Meditations where we see him repeatedly talk about focusing more on his own actions than other people's opinions.

The accidental byproduct of this focus was that those millions of people loved Marcus.

This is usually how it goes.

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And today, Ryan puts his Stoicism to the test by taking on the challenge of running up the treacherous 8 mile road to the Cerro Gordo Ghost Town (@GhostTownLiving) in California. Watch the full video here.

🎧 Listen to the full Ian Happ interview here.

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Have You Read The Books? | Test Your Impressions Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

We say we want to get better. We say we want to learn about this or that. We say we want to make a change. We say we’ve decided to get serious.

But is this true?

The Stoics had an expression: Acta non verba. Deeds not words.

So it’s ironic that most of us say we want to make these improvements, but we can’t or won’t do the bare minimum.

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And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan discusses the importance of putting everything to the test in the same way that an assayer would test metals.

📔 Preorder your copy of The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love and Raising Great Kids and get lots of preorder bonuses!

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Seneca on Being Apr 09, 2023

Show notes

In today’s episode, Ryan presents an excerpt from audiobook The Tao Of Seneca, which is essentially a compilation of the best of Seneca’s Moral Letters, a seminal text of Stoicism. In this letter, Seneca examines the meaning of life itself.

📖 Check out the PDF of The Tao of Seneca for free and the Penguin Edition of Seneca’s Letters at the Painted Porch.

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Author Philipp Meyer on Channeling History, Philosophy and Failure into Art Apr 08, 2023

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Philipp Meyer about his novels American Rust and The Son, processing the morally questionable history of the American west through literature, how he battled through ten years of failure before his first success, the challenge of balancing ego with ambition, the philosophy that inspires his writing, and more.

Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer and novelist. American Rust and The Son have received considerable acclaim, including being included in the “Great American Novel” category, as well as being awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2009) for the former and the Lucien Barrière Prize in France as well as the Prix Littérature-Monde in France for the latter. He has also written five published short stories. Philip graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and many years later received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. He has worked many jobs throughout his life, including as a first responder, a derivatives trader, a construction worker, an ambulance driver, and nearly as a paramedic, and he has two unpublished novels and hundreds of unpublished short stories under his belt. In 2010, Meyer was named to The New Yorker's "20 under 40", its decennial list of 20 promising writers under the age of 40. American Rust and The Son have both been adapted for television.

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Are You Showing Them How To Be A Student? | Expect To Change Your Opinions Apr 07, 2023

Show notes

This is an excerpt from Ryan Holiday’s latest book The Daily Dad.

If you think back to when you were a kid, what appeared to you to be the best part about being an adult? No more school. Our parents didn’t have to carry around heavy books or do homework. We never saw them applying to get into this school or that one. It’s sort of sad that, by and large, we show our kids that education stops. That while adulthood is isn’t always fun, one perk is that you no longer have to go to class. That graduation is a final destination.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

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And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses why it is so important to recognize the malleability of your own opinions, biases and preconceptions.

📗 Preorder your signed and numbered first edition of The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kid before its May 2 release.

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Beware This Thief Of Time | Ask DS Apr 06, 2023

Show notes

Not long ago we talked about the Stoic view on punctuality. It’s a pretty simple one: Being on time is important. It’s a matter of respect, not just for oneself, but also for others. So what do you think the Stoics would have thought of Oscar Wilde’s intriguing remark that “punctuality is the thief of time?”

Perhaps they would have agreed.

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And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part 4 of an audio series in which he answers student questions at the Q&A portion of his Stoicism 101 seminar. The topics that he covers include writings by some of the less popular Stoics that you should read, why the Stoics persecuted Christianity, his ideas on using mental models to make decisions, and more.

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You Need To Cultivate People Like This In Your Life Apr 05, 2023

Show notes

Where did Marcus learn to be Marcus? Ernest Renan writes that Marcus was very much a product of his training and his tutors. But more than his teachers and even his own parents, “Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus.”

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