The Daily Stoic

It was anxiety inducing and scary, but there was also a stillness in it. Because you were forced, against your will, to truly practice Stoicism. Not just in the sense that you had to persist and act despite that fear—because people and things were counting on you—but also because it was so clear what was in your control and what wasn’t. You came face to face with undeniable reality , overwhelming...

Ryan speaks with Mick Mulroy in the first of a two-part conversation about the simplicity of Stoicism but the difficulties people have in practicing the philosophy. They also discuss Marcus Aurelius’ character and the traits we seek for in modern leaders, and more.  Mick Mulroy is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Middle East Institute senior fellow, retire...

It doesn’t always feel like it. Not when you’re regularly screwing up. Not when you keep losing your temper , not when you’re not as patient as you should be with people. Not when you keep doing selfish things. Not when you’re still dealing with scripts from your childhood . Not when you hear the things your ex says about you. Not when you compare yourself against the greatness of the people you a...

People are out of their minds and always have been . You get the sense in Seneca’s writings that Rome drove him crazy. You see the same in Epictetus’ writings, perhaps more so. Both men looked at what was happening in Nero’s court and were baffled. People were currying favor with Nero’s cobbler to try to get ahead in the world. People were bankrupting themselves to impress people they didn’t even...

We wrote an email over at Daily Dad (please subscribe if you haven’t!) recently which notes Robert F. Kennedy’s troubled childhood in the troubled Kennedy household. His family mourned the loss of his older brother. They put their hopes in his brother John. They fretted about his sister. His father thought that Bobby had little potential, that he wasn’t everything a young Kennedy should be, so the...

On today’s weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan reads a chapter from his book  Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave . This excerpt comes from one of Ryan's favorite chapters Preparation Makes You Brave . This chapter is about practice, training, and doing the thing over and over again. Grab a signed copy of  Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave   ✉️ &nbsp...

Ryan speaks with Mick Mulroy in the first of a two-part conversation about the simplicity of Stoicism but the difficulties people have in practicing the philosophy. They also discuss Marcus Aurelius’ character and the traits we seek for in modern leaders, and more.  Mick Mulroy is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Middle East Institute senior fellow, retire...

It’s easy for academics and critics to dismiss the Stoics as depressing or dark. They’re not wrong, exactly, because it’s true: There are some dark and depressing passages in Meditations . Seneca is not always cheerful. Both writers seem to dwell on death , they paint life as something that can be painful and tragic, they speak of Fortune as something not to be trusted—that the ground beneath your...

As John Adams (detailed in David McCullough’s amazing biography ) wrote in his own old age, “You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little. The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously inquire, the less I seem to know…” Yet, Adams, like Marcus, still found himself returning to a set of ageless, universal principles. They found themselves...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with economic and social historian Colin Elliott. They delve into the complexities surrounding the societal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing parallels with the ancient Antonine Plague. Elliott criticizes the lockdown measures and emphasizes the need for a nuanced and science-oriented approach. He highlights the decentralized nature o...

It’s interesting that these three great Stoics spent their final moments not as lone wolves but as friends, as fathers, as people who loved their fellow human beings . On a recent episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast (a great 2-hour episode you can watch on YouTube, by the way ), the comedian Christina Pazsitzky told a story of an experience that led to a related insight: “I broke my ankle two years...

So eventually a group of corrupt Romans contrived to have Cato assigned to a posting in Cyprus, a veritable hotbed of misdeeds and sin. It was a place where politicians got rich, where they had fun, where they lived the colonial high life. “You will come back from there a far more agreeable man and more tame,” one of them predicted to Cato. They weren’t trying to bribe him, they just wanted to exp...

Maybe you don’t see yourself as an artist, just like Socrates didn’t see himself as an athlete, but maybe you are. According to Mikel Jollett, the founder of the band The Airborne Toxic Event and the author of a fascinating and haunting memoir about his troubled childhood, we have to “take our pain and make it useful. That’s what it means to be an artist.” His own art came from growing up in a cul...

In today's weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan reminds us How To Plan Your Day Like Marcus Aurelius by the way of voice actor Michael Reid. Two millennia ago, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius penned his personal reflections in a journal titled "To Himself," not anticipating its widespread publication. Known as the last of the "Five Good Emperors of Rome," Marcus' enduring legacy lies...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan continues his conversation with writer, academic and associate professor of journalism, Evelyn McDonnell. Together they discuss the obstacles and how to get through them, the illusion of stability, how staying calm can be contagious, and her book  The World According to Joan Didion. Evelyn McDonnell, professor of journalism in the LMU Bellarmin...

We talked about this recently, but ruling the world is not great. The evidence bears this out. In Lives of the Stoics , we tell the story of a haunting meeting between Posidonius and Marius, when Marius, during his seventh consulship of Rome, was on his deathbed. Marius was powerful but pathetic, his success having destroyed his soul, stripping him of happiness and the possibility of peace. Marcus...

Then there is the stuff that does harm the community—a corrupt politician who tries to overthrow the rule of law, discrimination, violence, pollution. This stuff happens, it’s the definition of injustice. But again, anger is not the right response . Not because these things aren’t upsetting, but because they are bad remedies to the problem. When the community is at risk, with justice at stake, we...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with writer, academic and associate professor of journalism, Evelyn McDonnell. Together they discuss the resurgence of psychedelics, how will you deal with tomorrow, the job of the artist, and her book  The World According to Joan Didion. Evelyn McDonnell, professor of journalism in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, has been app...

Nobody wants to be criticized. It doesn’t feel good when people judge what you’ve done. We want the right people to like us , we want all people to like us. We want to be accepted, appreciated, celebrated. So we try to be like other people, like the people that everyone likes. Imagine if he had tried instead to conform to their expectations, to fit more clearly in the box they wanted him to be. Im...

Look, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and if in their opinion, that’s what Stoicism is in their view—God bless them. But the facts just don’t support it . There was literally a Stoic (Chrysippus) who laughed so hard he died, ok? What more do you need to know? Sure, Marcus Aurelius opens Meditations with some observations about how annoying and obnoxious people can be, but his personal le...

In the early years, there was an excuse. Nero was just a teenager when Seneca started tutoring him. The boy was timid and coddled. He had experienced tragedy and his childhood had been strange. Besides, for Seneca, the alternative to taking the job was going back to his unfair and lonely exile in the middle of the ocean. But the viability of Seneca’s excuse fell apart pretty quickly. The famous Ba...

In today's weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan pulls an excerpt from Colin Elliott's latest book, POX ROMANA: THE PLAGUE THAT SHOOK THE ROMAN WORLD. Learn how the Antonine Plague exposed the crumbling foundations of a doomed empire. Arguing that the disease was both cause and effect of Rome’s fall, Elliott describes the plague’s “preexisting conditions” (Rome’s multiple economic, soci...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan continues his conversation with one of the world's top high-performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance, Dr. Michael Gervais . Together they talk about living in the present moment, Austin Kleon's “people would rather be the noun than do the verb”, and the tension of virtue in Stoic texts....

Imagine the jealousy that they must have felt. Hadrian was gifting the purple—the job of the emperor—to a teenager he wasn’t even related to. In 138 AD, his succession plan involved adopting Antoninus Pius who in turn was to adopt young Marcus Aurelius so that he would one day become the most powerful man in the world. How many Romans hated Marcus for this? How many distant relatives of Hadrian th...

Maybe towards the end, it’s possible to get to that level. Maybe after a lifetime of study and practice, a Stoic can come to not just understand but to live up to the insight that Marcus Aurelius writes about in * Meditations —*that things aren’t asking to be judged by us, that we always ‘have the power to have no opinion.’ Maybe Marcus Aurelius got there himself. If so, good for him. But most lik...