The Daily Stoic

In today's audiobook reading, Ryan presents the biography of the great Stoic philosopher, boxer, and successor to Zeno of Citium as the second head of the Stoic school of Athens, Cleanthes. Written by the prolific biographer of the Greek philosophers Diogenes Laertius, this text covers Cleanthes’s early life, the inspiration he took from Zeno, his strong work ethic, and more. ✉️ Sign up for the Da...

Ryan speaks with Sarah Bakewell about her new book Humanly Possible: seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope , how growing up surrounded by books shaped her philosophical mindset, the philosophical principles that she applies to her life, and more. Sarah Bakewell is an author and professor whose work focuses on existentialist philosophy and biographies of adventurers and ph...

Three years removed from those eerie and strange days of the early pandemic, one thing that strikes us is how much time we seemed to have then. People were picking up hobbies, slow cooking elaborate meals on the groceries they could get. People found their jobs that used to keep them late at the office could be finished in a couple hours. People were reading philosophy and zipping through books. T...

One gets the sense that  Seneca , like many smart and active people, was often frustrated by other people . It is inevitable that someone like him—someone creating art, actively participating in government, managing properties, etc—would have regularly found his interest and his will thwarted. Perhaps a neighbor opposed some changes he was making to his land. Or an intriguing enemy at the pal...

Ryan speaks with Katherine Blanford about her earning things throughout her comedy career, her Catholic upbringing, why the funniest moments come from a dark place, how her mother influences her comedy, and more. Katherine Blanford is a comedian, writer, podcast host, and YouTuber based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has opened for many renowned comedians, including Jeff Foxworthy, David Spade, and Ron...

T his is an excerpt from Ryan Holiday’s latest book  The Daily Dad  (which you can  preorder signed copies  of now!). To Have A More Peaceful Home, Have Fewer Of These “These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.” -Marcus Aurelius At the core of most of the conflict between parents and children—and so often spouses—is one thing: judgment. We have opinions...

Marcus Aurelius certainly hoped his reign would be peaceful and prosperous –as the fates had blessed his mentor Antoninus for 23 years. Certainly, he dreamed of growing old with all his children around him. Never would Seneca have asked for exile and loss , for Nero’s descent into cruelty. Epictetus , like every child, would have hoped for a life of fun and lightness. Stockdale, as he left his fam...

It's felt like things have been a little off lately. You have been irritable . You have been stressed. You have been easily rattled by external events, you have been focusing on things outside your control. You have been a little caught up in projects at work, in getting ahead, in getting what you want. You haven't been the role model you aspire to be at home. What's the source of all this? Well,...

In the year 33, a philosopher was executed by the Roman authorities. This was not an uncommon thing back then. But this man, referred to as Christus in Tacitus’ writing, l was first beaten and then after being forced to carry the weight of the tools of his annihilation to the site of his ultimate demise, was brutally crucified on full display. But then, after he was entombed–and this is where his...

Ryan speaks with Molly Bloom in-person at the new Daily Stoic podcast studio in the second of a two-part conversation, the first of which was conducted virtually. Today, they discuss the power of understanding and utilizing self-interest in order to connect with other people, how to improve at something every day by committing to the beginner’s mindset, what raising children can teach you about fi...

This is an excerpt from Ryan Holiday’s latest book **The Daily Dad . ** “Even though you have these powers free and entirely your own, you don’t use them, because you still don’t realize what you have or where it came from. . . . I am prepared to show you that you have resources and a character naturally strong and resilient.” -Epictetus Oh, how you wish you could guarantee the...

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 mov...

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 car...

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...

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 M...

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. --- And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan...

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 . ✉️  Sign up for the Dai...

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...

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...

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. --- And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part 4 o...

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 an...

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.” ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired produc...

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...

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 b...

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...