The Daily Stoic

Latest Episodes:

Edith Hall on Aristotelian Ethics, Intention, and Human Decency Apr 05, 2023

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Edith Hall about why she wants to open up Aristotle’s works to the world at large, how Aristotle defined what a human being is and how one can be happy, the importance of doing what you’re good at and enjoying what you’re doing so long as it’s good for the social good, and more.

Edith Hall, FBA is a British scholar and professor of classics at Durham University, specializing in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College, London, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research and writings have been influential in three distinct areas: (1) the understanding of the performance of literature in the ancient theater and its role in society, (2) the representation of ethnicity; (3) the uses of Classical culture in European education, identity, and political theory. She has written and been a part of many publications about Greek classics, including Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (2018), Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition(2009), and Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (1989).

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Try To See The World This Way | Why Facing Death Is The Key To Success Apr 04, 2023

Show notes

After serving as an officer in Vietnam, Paul Woodruff decided to dedicate his life to teaching and writing about philosophy. He’s been a professor at the University of Texas at Austin since 1973. He’s written half a dozen books. He’s translated the works of Plato, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Euripides. And as it happens, it all started when he discovered Marcus Aurelius as a teenager, after he was given a copy of Meditations.

Professor Woodruff told this story beautifully on the Daily Stoic Podcast recently and more helpfully, he explained how he has applied what he’s learned ever since. “What I find most helpful from Marcus Aurelius is something I still frequently apply in my own life,” Professor Woodruff said.

---

And throughout history, Memento Mori reminders have come in many forms. To most people this sounds like an awful idea. Who wants to think about death? But what if reflecting and meditating on that fact was a simple key to living life to the fullest?

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What Will You Choose? | What Can Go Wrong Might Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

All of our upbringings were different. Some were given two parents, others only one. Maybe it took a village to raise you. Either way, we didn't get to decide who our mom was, who our dad was, if they got divorced, if they were present, if our step-parents were a blessing or a nightmare. It was all outside of our control.

Yet every one of us, as Seneca said, gets to choose whose children we will be.

---

And in today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan discusses the importance of musing and meditating on the so-called "worst case scenario" rather than shying away from it in your thoughts.

📕 Visit www.dailydad.com/store to preorderThe Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids!

✉️ 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, including.

📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan Holiday on The Art and Stoicism of Digital Marketing Apr 02, 2023

Show notes

Today, Ryan presents a live talk that he gave in September 2022 to a group of business leaders about the art and business of modern marketing. He covers why competition is for losers, how to create clarity around what you are making and who you are making it for, the importance of doing work that addresses actual problems, and more.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lori Gottlieb on Changing Your Life by Changing the Story Apr 01, 2023

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Lori Gottlieb about the profound effect that stories have on our lives, why we are all unreliable narrators, how we can make real steps toward positive change by practicing self-compassion, understanding other peoples’ experiences by listening to their stories, and more.

Lorr Gottlieb is a physiotherapist, writer, speaker, and podcast host whose work focuses on the role that stories and storytelling take in shaping our mental landscape. She obtained an undergraduate degree at Stanford University and a Masters of Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University, and she is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She published the New York Times bestseller, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone in 2019, which she repurposed into a journal version in 2022 titled Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: The Journal. She also writes the weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column for The Atlantic and is the co-host of the iHeart Radio podcast "Dear Therapists." Her TED Talk was one of the top most-watched talks of 2019. Her work can be found on her website lorigottlieb.com.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your Standards Are For You | You’re a Product of Your Training Mar 31, 2023

Show notes

One of the things that separates us from other people—indeed that has been responsible for our success—is our ability to be strict and self-disciplined. Where other people are fine making excuses or taking shortcuts, we are not. Where other people wing it or do what’s easiest, taking the path of least resistance, we don’t. That’s really the essence of Stoicism and why those of us who have committed to doing the hard work have been able to get so much out of it.

---

And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses how and why the work that we do and the intention that we put into it defines who we are.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This Helps You Be A Better Person | Ask DS Mar 30, 2023

Show notes

Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington profited from slavery, but both knew it was wrong. Yet at the end of their lives, it was Washington who freed his slaves, not Jefferson, who had written far more eloquently about human equality as well as the eternal shame of slavery.

Why was that?

---

And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions in a virtual Q&A about how he gets interested in and inspired by new ideas, why the classics endure, and balancing the needs of the team with those of the individual, and more.

✉️ 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, including Discipline is Destiny.

📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Just Do This Daily | 8 Stoic Strategies For Controlling Your Anger Mar 29, 2023

Show notes

A successful day for a Stoic is simple. It’s not about making more money. Or getting more famous, or dazzling more people with your accomplishments. It’s whether or not you got better.

Specifically, it’s whether you get better at life—more prepared for the troubles, for the temptations, for the opportunities that lay ahead. As Seneca wrote to Lucilius, the prescription for this philosophy is simple:

“Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.”

---

And today, Ryan presents eight Stoic inspired strategies that can help you keep a cool head.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Don’t Make Assumptions Mar 29, 2023

Show notes

You don’t get a joke, so you say it’s not funny. You don’t like something, so you believe it sucks. You’re white, so you’ve always taken it for granted that the color ‘nude’ roughly matches your skin. You drive on the right side of the road, so it’s weird when you go somewhere and people drive on the left side. You love your job, so you have no patience for people complaining about theirs. You’ve been successful, so you can’t understand why other people struggle.

We assume…and we make asses of ourselves.

Our personal experiences make up a tiny percentage of the world, but a huge percentage of how we perceive the world.

🎧 Check out Ryan's interview with Champion Distance Runner Lauren Fleshman.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wes Larson on Respecting the Awesome Power of Nature Mar 29, 2023

Show notes

Ryan speaks with Wes Larson about how and why he dedicated his life to working with bears, the feeling of being alive that he gets when working up close with bears in the wild, what our inherent fear and fascination with dangerous forces can teach us about our relationship to nature, how we can better live with animals rather than dominating them, and more.

Wes Larson is a wildlife biologist and television presenter who has been studying and working with polar, black and grizzly bears for over a decade. During that time, he graduated with a masters degree from BYU where he studied wildlife conservation with an emphasis on both polar and black bear human conflict mitigation. His work has been featured by National Geographic, CNN and Al Jazeera, and he has published many scientific papers and presented research findings in various wildlife meetings around the world, including at the International Bear Association meetings in Ljubljana Slovenia. Wes is also the co-host of the Tooth and Claw Podcast, and his work can be followed on Instagram at @grizkid and @toothandclaspodcast.

✉️ 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 Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected