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The Daily Stoic

Philosophy Podcasts

For centuries, all sorts of people—generals and politicians, athletes and coaches, writers and leaders—have looked to the teachings of Stoicism to help guide their lives. Each day, author and speaker Ryan Holiday brings you a new lesson about life, inspired by the thoughts and writings of great Stoic thinkers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca the Younger. Daily Stoic Podcast also features Q+As with listeners and interviews with notable figures from sports, academia, politics, and more. Learn more at DailyStoic.com. New episodes come out every day for free. Listen 1-week early on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday and to all episodes ad-free, with Wondery+ or Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.

Location:

United States

Description:

For centuries, all sorts of people—generals and politicians, athletes and coaches, writers and leaders—have looked to the teachings of Stoicism to help guide their lives. Each day, author and speaker Ryan Holiday brings you a new lesson about life, inspired by the thoughts and writings of great Stoic thinkers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca the Younger. Daily Stoic Podcast also features Q+As with listeners and interviews with notable figures from sports, academia, politics, and more. Learn more at DailyStoic.com. New episodes come out every day for free. Listen 1-week early on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday and to all episodes ad-free, with Wondery+ or Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.

Twitter:

@dailystoic

Language:

English


Episodes

It’s Better Than A Grave And A Hearse | Ask Daily Stoic

3/28/2024
✉️ 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.

Duration:00:13:49

Finding Enough, Getting Sober, and Improving Your Life | Sam Parr PT 2

3/27/2024
Sam Parr is the founder of The Hustle, which is one of the fastest-growing media companies in the country, and Hustle Con - a one-day conference that teaches non-technical startup tactics. Sam recently co-founded Hampton which is a highly vetted membership community for entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs. Alongside his companies, he is also a prolific podcaster, hosting "The Hustle Podcast" and co-hosts "My First Million". With his diverse skill set, extensive experience, and passion for entrepreneurship, Sam Parr continues to make waves in the business world, inspiring others to pursue their own ventures and redefine the future of commerce. IG and X: @TheSamParr Newsletter: The Anti-MBA ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:57:45

You're On Your Own, Kid

3/27/2024
✉️ 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.

Duration:00:01:41

How To Make Zero Progress | Jocko Willink Reads Ego Is The Enemy

3/26/2024
Get a copy of Brent Underwood's new book from the Painted Porch Bookshop: Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:09:09

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once | Say No To The Need to Impress

3/25/2024
✉️ 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.

Duration:00:08:04

How Emerson Can Change Your Life

3/24/2024
On this episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, we're happy to bring you two excerpts from Lessons From An American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life by Mark Matousek. In this wise, illuminating book, award-winning author Mark Matousek reveals how Emerson's timeless wisdom can help us with the problems we're facing today. America's 'original Stoic' confronted many of the issues before us, from polarization to fake news, from crooked politicians and rampant materialism, to the scourge of racism. From the book LESSONS FROM AN AMERICAN STOIC: How Emerson Can Change Your Life, by Mark Matousek. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Matousek. Published on June 1, 2023, by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpted by permission. To grab a signed copy of Lessons From An American Stoic, click here. Purchase tickets to Ryan Holiday Live in Australia here. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:15:53

Balancing Purpose and Profit | Sam Parr PT 1

3/23/2024
Sam Parr is the founder of The Hustle, which is one of the fastest-growing media companies in the country, and Hustle Con - a one-day conference that teaches non-technical startup tactics. Sam recently co-founded Hampton which is a highly vetted membership community for entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs. Alongside his companies, he is also a prolific podcaster, hosting "The Hustle Podcast" and co-hosts "My First Million". With his diverse skill set, extensive experience, and passion for entrepreneurship, Sam Parr continues to make waves in the business world, inspiring others to pursue their own ventures and redefine the future of commerce. IG and X: @TheSamParr Newsletter: The Anti-MBA ✉️ 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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Duration:01:04:33

Which Approach Will You Take? | The Sign Of True Education

3/22/2024
✉️ 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, YouTu See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Duration:00:08:31

This Choice Can Change Everything | Ask Daily Stoic

3/21/2024
Get a copy of Brent Underwood's new book from the Painted Porch Bookshop: Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:19:37

How to be an Honorable Leader and Combat Imposter Syndrome | Admiral Bill McRaven

3/20/2024
Ryan speaks with Admiral Bill McRaven about the nature of being a Stoic, imposter syndrome when being a leader, and how resilience is sometimes enduring injustice. They also discuss McRaven’s two books, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple and Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe Even The World. Admiral Bill McRaven is a retired US Navy four-star admiral. He served 37 years as a Navy SEAL leading men and women at every level of the special operations community. During those four decades, Admiral McRaven dealt with every conceivable leadership challenge, from commanding combat operations—including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Phillips, and the raid for Osama bin Laden. Get a signed copy of The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple and Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe Even The World from The Painted Porch. Check out Admiral McRaven’s other books: Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare Theory and Practice, Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations, and The Hero Code: Lessons Learned From Lives Well Lived. ✉️ 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.

Duration:01:41:28

Solve The Problem First

3/20/2024
Yeah, it’s frustrating. Yeah, it was preventable. Yeah, you told them it was preventable, you warned them what would happen. They didn’t listen and now here you are. Yeah, it’s gonna be costly. Yeah, you’re pissed. But you know what you should do? You should solve the problem first. You can put your emotions about it aside. You can worry about blame later. “You don’t have to turn this into something,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations. “It doesn’t have to upset you.” He also writes about how easy it is to waste energy investigating the causes of things, taking things personally, extrapolating out what everything means. He’s saying: Just deal with it. Solve the problem, worry about ‘accountability’ later. Right now, you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do about the fact that your spouse left the keys at home. Right now, you’ve got to deal with the fact that one of your kids is hurt and crying—that your other one is responsible can be addressed later. Right now, you’ve got payroll to meet, you’ve got an order that’s late, you’ve got a boat to get on the trailer. Get your emotions under control, resist the urge to argue and fight about the situation you’re in. Deal with the fact you’re in the situation first. You can deal with the rest later. …and you just might find, after you’ve solved the problem, that you don’t much care about whose fault it was anymore. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:02:27

You Can’t Change What Happened, But… | 13 Ways A Stoic Challenges Themselves Every Day

3/19/2024
With a business partner, some investors, and his life savings, Brent Underwood bought the abandoned mining turned ghost town, Cerro Gordo, in 2018. The plan was to bring the town back to life, to turn the 336 acres and 22 buildings into a historical destination. That plan largely revolved around the American Hotel, the literal and metaphorical center of town. But then on June 15, 2020, 149 years to the day it opened, the American Hotel caught fire and burned to the ground. “It was probably the most devastating day of my life,” Brent would recall. “You are literally watching your life savings and hopes and dreams burn in front of you.” As he stood atop the ashes, the town’s previous owner put his hand on Brent’s shoulder. “You can’t change what happened,” he told Brent, “but what happens from here is up to you.” More than just providing comfort, Brent wrote, those words were “a call to action.” It’s a reminder that for everything outside of our control, we retain—at the core of our being—an incredible power: The power to choose what we do with what happens to us. The power to decide what role an event will play in our lives. The power to write the end of our own story. No one can take that away from us. People can hurt us. Money can be lost. Jobs can disappear. Cars can crash into each other. Stoicism can’t change what happened. No philosophy is a time machine. But what we can do, what the Stoic practice is meant to help us do, is to prevail over what happened, and decide what comes next. You can read about what Brent did after the American Hotel burned down in his new book Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley. It’s just one of the many lesson-packed stories in the book about Brent’s time at Cerro Gordo. From facing isolation and the challenges of preserving historical integrity to confronting physical dangers like mine shafts and the elements, Ghost Town Living is story of adventure and tenacity, as well as a call to chase after audacious dreams, defy the conventional, and devote yourself to your own the pursuit of an extraordinary life. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:17:10

Do This While You Can | The Portable Retreat

3/18/2024
It’s funny, over here at Daily Stoic, we do these challenges throughout the year (maybe you’ve joined one before). On the one hand, this name is probably bad marketing. People don’t usually get excited by the thought of being challenged. In fact, what they usually want is a secret or a shortcut or a hack. They want someone to solve the challenges for them. On the other hand, isn’t embracing life’s challenges what Stoicism is all about? So naturally, we couldn’t call the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge anything but that. It is a challenge. 10 days straight of them. Starting now. So yes it’s been a long December, but as the song also reminds us, there’s reason to believe that this year will be better than the last. And that reason is you—if you allow yourself to be, if you challenge yourself, if you decide to climb out of your velvet rut. A person who has never been challenged, Seneca said, who always gets their way, is a tragic figure. They have no idea what they are capable of. They are not even close to fulfilling their potential. “Stop wandering about!” Marcus Aurelius said to himself, perhaps on the eve of a new season just like this one. “Get busy with life's purpose,” he commanded, “toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue–if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.” And so as the seasons change, as the clocks change, we want to urge you one last time to join us and thousands of other Stoics in The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Because one of the best ways to cure anxiety, to deal with stress, and to become present is to really throw yourself into some means of self-improvement. Stop procrastinating. Break out. Break free. Get cleaning. Challenge yourself. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:12:29

It's Time To Get Clean | Kentucky Wildcats Basketball

3/17/2024
On this weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan talks with Kentucky Wildcats Men's Basketball Team in which he focuses on the timeless wisdom of the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance—Holiday adeptly tailored his message to the elite world of collegiate basketball. ----------------------------- Today is that day many dread—the day the clocks spring forward. Yes, in the middle of the night, you lost an hour that you’ll never get back. An hour of sleep, an hour of leisure, an hour to spend with your kids. You mourn that loss of time, wondering all the ways you could’ve spent it otherwise. Don’t fall into this trap and join us TODAY for the Spring Forward challenge. It starts March 19 and is set up to push you to examine your habits, your choices, and your relationships to move you closer to living your best life here and now. *A note on the audio for this episode: an issue with Ryan's live mic resulted in the discrepancy in audio quality that you hear. We apologize for the inconvenience. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:20:59

Seasonality and Understanding Pseudo-Productivity | Cal Newport PT 2

3/16/2024
Ryan continues his conversation with computer science professor and bestselling author, Cal Newport. They discuss how to be indispensable in your personal and professional life, the myth of busyness, Cal’s latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, and more. Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general-audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. He is the author of eight books, including Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. Newport is also a contributing writer for the New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast. Watch or listen to Cal’s podcast, Deep Questions. Subscribe to Cal’s newsletter, here. Listen to Cal’s take in The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide To Being Rich, Free, and Happy. ✉️ 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.

Duration:01:08:32

Every Day Is A Chance For This | The Present Is All We Possess

3/15/2024
That was the purpose behind Stoicism, behind the journaling, and the reading, and studying of this philosophy, behind the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge (which starts on Tuesday, the first day of spring)—to use each day as an opportunity to improve yourself action by action, step by step. This might not seem like much, as Zeno said, but it adds up to no small thing. Every one of us wants to improve, wants to be better, wants to have better habits, live better, think better. But most of us wait to launch that business, write that novel, develop that fitness routine, to do what we know is right. We’ll do it when we’re more secure, we say, we’ll do it later, or in the fall, or next year, when things get back to normal. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life, Seneca reminds us. It snatches away the present in exchange for some promised future. Every day is a new season. Every day is spring, whatever hemisphere you’re in. Every day is a chance for a new beginning. That every day we awake, we can choose a new life, a new way, to rededicate ourselves to becoming the best versions of ourselves. As we’ve been saying, this is a chance to begin afresh, afresh, afresh. And that’s what we’re all going to be doing in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. It’s designed to push you to examine those parts of your life, those habits, those choices that could move you closer to living your best life. You could have the good life, the life you deserve, right now! Participants will receive: ✓ 10 Custom Challenges Delivered Daily (Over 15,000 words of all-new original content) ✓ One live Q&A session ✓ Printable 10-Day Calendar With custom daily illustrations to track progress ✓ Access to a Private Community Platform It is a new season, and it can also be the beginning of a new you, too. Give yourself 10 days of improvement and a runway for true, sustainable change. Challenge yourself to spring forward to be the person you know you can be. Don’t wait any longer to live the life you deserve. Head over to dailystoic.com/spring and sign up NOW! - ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:11:22

Don’t Rush Through This | Ask DS

3/14/2024
Seneca makes the point, however, that what we are really rushing towards—with all deliberate speed—is death. That’s what he means when he says that we get death wrong. Death is not some distant thing in the future, not some one-time thing that looms ahead. Instead, death is something happening to you right now. It’s happening as you read this email (hope it’s been worth it!), it’s happening as you struggle to put your daughter’s shoes on so you can drop her off at school and then it’s happening still more as you sit down to that coffee meeting you rushed to even though you didn’t want to have it in the first place. It happens as you procrastinate, it happens as you distract yourself, it happens as you make bad choices, it happens as you worry and dread and whine. And that’s why we created The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. It’s a set of ten brand-new actionable challenges designed to push you to examine your choices, your relationships, and your day-to-day patterns and move you closer to living your best life. “Remember how long you’ve been putting this off,” Marcus Aurelius writes, “how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them.” He reminds us “that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.” Don’t rush through life, don’t rush toward death. Use the time assigned to you and sign up for The Spring Forward Challenge NOW at dailystoic.com/spring! Challenge starts March 19! ---- On today's episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with Kentucky Wildcats Men's Basketball Team in which he focuses on the timeless wisdom of the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. *A note on the audio for this episode: an issue with Ryan's live mic resulted in the discrepancy in audio quality that you hear. We apologize for the inconvenience. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:12:51

Slow Productivity and Anticipating Consequences | Cal Newport PT 1

3/13/2024
In the first half of this two-part conversation, Ryan talks with computer science professor and bestselling author, Cal Newport. They discuss the facade of hustle culture, understanding what really moves the needle in your process, Cal’s latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, and more. Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general-audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. He is the author of eight books, including Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. Newport is also a contributing writer for the New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast. Watch or listen to Cal’s podcast, Deep Questions. Subscribe to Cal’s newsletter, here. Listen to Cal’s take in The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide To Being Rich, Free, and Happy. ✉️ 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.

Duration:01:04:01

You Gotta Be Able To Do This

3/13/2024
Marcus Aurelius was, of course, an incredible man. He endured more than most people. He had more power than most people—and wore it more lightly. He did more work on himself than most people, understood people, and himself, better than most people. Was he perfect though? Of course not. No one is. In Lonesome Dove, the Texas Ranger Captain Woodrow Call seems almost superhuman, especially to the young cowboy Newt. Newt worships the ground the man walks on, believing he isn’t like the rest of them. And in a sense, he isn’t. The Captain can ride further and faster, is more principled, less afraid, tougher than everyone on the Plains. We know Marcus Aurelius made mistakes. We know he paid lip service to admitting error in Meditations, to not continuing in error just because you began in one. But how good was he in practice? It’s less clear. He was wrong about his son Commodus for example. Was he too proud to admit this? Here, or elsewhere, did he have trouble owning that he was just like everyone else? That he could screw up? That he had human urges and human flaws? We hope so but we don’t know. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:02:23

You Don't Want To See This | The Stoic Guide To Freedom And Power (From Epictetus)

3/12/2024
That obnoxious person. That contractor who ripped you off. That slow driver. That overly enthusiastic exercise instructor. That brusk receptionist. That clingy parent. That friend holding a grudge. That loud neighbor. They’re not exactly your favorite. They don’t exactly make your life easier. But you know what you need to remember? You need to remember that they are just doing their jobs. “Is a world without shameless people possible?” Marcus Aurelius asks in Meditations. No, it isn’t, he reminds himself. So why am I surprised to find one he says? Somebody has to be that person and this person is it. --- In the first century AD, few would have argued that Epictetus was the most powerful person in Rome. Few would have argued that this lowly slave possessed any power at all–in fact, the name said it all: Epictetus means acquired one. Most of us are born into this world closer in status to Epictetus than Marcus Aurelius. We are more lowly than we are exalted. Yet each of us, as Seneca said, has access to the greatest empire, ruling over ourselves. Will we seize this kingdom? Or will we trade it away for superficial, shiny things? We free ourselves through our freedom of choice, or will we hand that freedom over to the mob, to our urges, to our fears? Grab a signed copy of Lives of the Stoics and Courage is Calling from the Daily Stoic Store. ✉️ 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.

Duration:00:13:32