The Daily Stoic

Ryan presents a compilation of highlights from interviews with some of his most high-profile, influential, and interesting guests about how they found Stoicism and what it has done to improve their lives. ✉️ 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 ,...

The Stoics stood out in Athens. They stood out in Rome. Whether it was Cato walking around barefoot or Cleanthes proudly doing manual labor. Whether it was Seneca practicing his poverty or Marcus Aurelius reading during gladiatorial games, the Stoics were different. It was obvious. It was intentional. If I wanted to be like the mob, Chrysippus once said, I would not have become a philosopher. ---...

It takes a lot of flying time to become a certified pilot. It takes years on stage for a comedian to learn how to command an audience. It takes time to get sober, time in therapy to heal a marriage. No book is written overnight , and few fortunes are made in one swoop. No, they start small and accumulate, the power of compounding interest working on them. All great things take time. You know this....

Ryan speaks with Kevin Rose about the pros and cons of his entrepreneurial drive, the calming effects of reducing the amount of stuff that you have, the overlap between Zen Buddhism and Stoicism, the dangers of social media, why being vulnerable is the hardest thing to do, and more. Kevin Rose is an entrepreneur, podcaster, and television host. Having co-founded the companies Revision3, Digg, Pown...

“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.” Over 10,000 readers have highlighted that passage in the Kindle edition of Ego is the Enemy . The reason it resonates is that the Stoics have been riffing on that very idea for thousands of years. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic...

What is the secret to happiness? It’s not an easy question to answer. And it might seem like the Stoics wouldn’t have a good answer either. Because it might seem like they didn’t have much fun, or experience much happiness. After all, they wrote repeatedly about the emptiness of chasing money or celebrity. They reminded themselves that fine wine is just rotten old grapes . But that doesn’t necessa...

We all have bad habits . Some of us procrastinate. Nearly all of us, as Seneca said, are slaves to something–food or sex or booze or ambition. We don’t work as hard as we should, or we work too hard. We’re too quick with our temper, we’re too slow to ask for help. It’s easy to be cynical about ourselves. We know, more than anyone, how long we’ve been struggling with things. We know how ingrained o...

In the spirit of sharing ideas and learning from cultures outside of one’s own, Ryan was excited when he was given the opportunity to speak to India-based fitness company Curefit Healthcare because it gave him a chance to further explore the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and relate it to the Stoic teachings. In this virtual talk, Ryan delves into how Stoicism and Eastern philosophy can be applied to...

Ryan speaks with Leonard Mlodinow about his book Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life , how physicists deal with imposter syndrome and egotism, whether there is truth in physics or just better theories, how his own personal practice of self-sufficiency aligns with the Stoic ideals, why science says that there is no separation between emotions and rationality, and more. Leo...

We know we want to go somewhere. We want to do something. We want to be successful. We want to win. We know we want to start something–a company, a creative project, a movement. Or perhaps we want justice, we want someone to make things right, we want to change and grow. We want to prove people wrong about us. We want to be happy. But what exactly? How? What does that success actually look like? W...

There are very few people who feel completely understood. Starting from a young age, our parents didn’t fully get us. Or maybe it was our teachers. Maybe there is some part of us apparently beyond the reach of our spouse or our peers. This is painful. It’s lonely. It’s rough. Epictetus said that there were some things that were up to us and some things that were not . --- And in today's Ask Daily...

Ryan speaks with Ann Wroe about her book Pontius Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man , what she has learned over her long career of writing obituaries, why death is the great equalizer, the intrigue and misunderstanding of Pontius Pilate and his life, and more. Ann Wroe is an author and columnist who has been the obituaries editor of The Economist since 2003. She has published several non-fic...

What we do while in the sway of anger we almost always come to regret . Whether it was the yelling or the impulsive decision to quit, whether it was the cruel words or the quiet revenge, with the passage of time, we come to see we were possessed by something–by our temper– and it took us somewhere we should not have gone . The Stoics wrote often of being wary of the passion of temper, but there ar...

One of the most timeless lines in all of the Stoic writings comes from Epictetus, "What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgements about these things .” It's a powerful idea. And it's made all the more transcendent by the remarkable fact that nearly every other philosophy has come to the exact same conclusion. --- And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan presents clips from...

It’s not that we didn’t have a reason. That we weren’t provoked. Or mistreated. We were. We had legitimate reasons to be upset. We had a legitimate grievance. And yet… our response was such a mistake . We come to regret the yelling. We regret the harsh words. How much better would we have been had we been able to, as the great play about Cato put it, look at things through the “calm light of mild...

As Epictetus said, “the philosopher’s classroom is like a hospital,” so, too, can Stoic philosophy help improve the halls of medicine and the people who practice there. This was the premise of a talk that Ryan gave to a group of doctors and surgeons in February 2023, during which he applied ancient philosophy to what they do so selflessly day-in and day-out. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: h...

Ryan speaks with Lieutenant David Carey in this second of a two-part interview about the bonds that he and his fellow POWs formed in captivity, why he feels no hatred to the guards who imprisoned and tortured him, his relationship with former cellmate Senator John McCain, how his experiences put daily life in perspective for him, and more. David Carey is a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander who ser...

Epictetus didn’t care what you had read. He didn’t care if you had made it through the densest writings of Chryssipus. Marcus Aurelius didn’t care what your job was, what your education was, what your authority was. What mattered was who you were–in your actual life. --- And in today's reading from The Daily Stoic , Ryan discusses the value of taking a step back to asses how privileged you really...

Every retail business knows about shrinkage–the percentage of goods shoplifted or stolen off the floor. Every manufacturer knows how to calculate their defect rate–because no production run is perfect. Every shipping company knows there will be an error rate, a delivery failure rate, even a disappeared-into-thin-air rate. Every credit card processor knows about fraudulent purchase rates and disput...

Ryan speaks with Lieutenant David Carey in the first of a two-part interview about his incredible experiences serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot and being shot down and captured by North Vietnamese forces, how 2,022 days in captivity led to him embracing the teachings of Epictetus, why the community that he and his fellow POWs formed in prison saved them from depression, how he has been using h...

There are so many things you don’t like. Bands you think are overrated. Shows that just didn’t do it for you. Actors who, for some reason, just bother you. People who you’d rather not see. Sometimes these dislikes are personal, but oftentimes it isn’t. The feeling isn’t even particularly strong, it’s just there. Some things are not for everyone, and this one is not for you. ✉️ Sign up for the Dail...

For years, you’ve worked. For years, you’ve sacrificed. You’ve risked. You’ve hustled. You’ve made tough calls, maybe even left a few knives buried in a few backs. But all of it was aimed at getting somewhere–somewhere you felt you needed to go, to do something you thought was important. And then you got there. And? And? It was a little disappointing, wasn’t it? Thus, it has always been this way....

Many of the Stoics were powerful and privileged. Marcus Aurelius was born to a wealthy family and then was given the throne and the empire. Cato came from an old and prestigious family. But not all the Stoics were so lucky–Epictetus was born a slave. His teacher Musonius was exiled multiple times. Admiral James Stockdale, whose heroics we’ve spoken of often , was from an ordinary American family i...

As a fan of the YMCA and avid user of its services, Ryan jumped at the chance when the Pennsylvania YMCA asked if he would like to come to their headquarters in 2022 and speak to a group of the organization’s Executives in order to help them navigate the shifting gym usage landscape in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ryan’s speech touches on a selection of the key Stoic ideas that he himself us...

Ryan speaks with his longtime friend fellow father Austin Kleon during a stop along his book tour for The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids . They discuss the life habits that they maintain in order to help fuel their creative success, why the most effective form of parenting is indirect, what parenting skills they are working on right now, how adopting a daily...