The Daily Stoic - As Above, So Below | How Seeing Earth From Space Changes You (with Astronaut Mark Kelly)

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

We need to take a step back from problems, arguments, and frustrations. To look at the bigger picture. Watch the full episode with Senator and Astronaut Mark Kelly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf-K7cEpuyICheck out Astronaut Terry Virts' full episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail--Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoicThis experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms.The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY.Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features.Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. As above, so below. From the window of an airplane, everything looks small. From the window of a spaceship, as two astronauts have told us on the Daily Stoic podcast, you can check out our episode with Terry Vertz and Mark Kelly. from the window of an airplane, borders and distinctions fall away. From the top of the Acropolis, where Marcus Aurelius once stood, you can see the rhythm and the interconnected of life.

As he says, herds and armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, noisy courtrooms, desert places, all the foreign peoples, holidays, days of morning, market days all mixed together, a harmony of opposites. This is the power of perspective. Seeing from above, we're reminded of what matters, what's made up, what we look like. But this is not just a trick of the eye. It is a truth. From a distance we can see more clearly than we can when we're caught up in it, what's actually going on below.

And that's why we need to take a step back from problems, arguments, and frustrations, to look at the bigger picture, to escape. the narrow lens through which we see when we're in the heat of the moment, we have to rise above it if we want to see clearly. And I seriously, I loved the interview with Terry Verts. I love the interview with Mark Kelly. I think both of them are really good. I'll link to those in today's show notes. If you're looking for something more in-depth on Stoicism, Mark Kelly actually kind of helped inspire this email because he pointed out that, you know, seeing things from a little bit of a view, it's only a fraction of what Marcus could even contemplate bird's eye view. He was saying, think of the view

from the space shuttle. So that's what inspired this, and I think you'll really like both those episodes. Every time you look at your phone, there's another chaotic headline. You almost feel like you have to be glued to your screen to keep up. But saving for your future doesn't have to be this hard because Wealthfront helps you tune out the noise

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Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks, and there's a link in the show notes. One morning I went for run, we were in Greece, and I got up sort of to the top of the Acropolis, and I'm looking down and you go, this is probably what he's talking about. Like, this, he's seeing so much of the civilized world. Is there any evidence of Marcus Aurelius actually going to Greece? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also traveled, like, I mean, he traveled a lot. He dies in Vienna, right? Spent a lot of time in Germany.

It's crazy. Like, when you realize how big the Roman Empire was, it sort of blows your mind. mind that one human being was responsible for all this, given the communication. And then he spent a lot of time outside of Rome, like on the road. Yes. And camps and fighting wars. Almost all of it. Yes.

And yeah, he said, there's another line of meditation. He says life is warfare and a journey far from home. And I think he means that literally and figuratively. Yes. But yeah, you get the sense like that bird's eye view that he's taking. I mean, how high up could he have really ever gotten? Like, not that high. I mean, probably some mountain.

Probably some mountain in near Vienna, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Northern, what's now Northern Italy, maybe in the Alps. Yeah. What the ancients would have, how much it would have blown their mind to see like the blue marble photograph or to know that a human was on the, like, taking that view out of space. He probably didn't.

He probably thought the earth was flat. Maybe. Marcus Aurelius was almost certainly a flat earther. certainly his son was. Yes. She had some other problems. Yeah, he had a lot of problems. Yeah, so when, you know, I remember the first time I saw the Earth as a big round ball.

Yeah. Just floating there in this blackness. And the, you know, your initial reaction, I think for most of us is like, holy shit. Yes. I mean, we live on an island in our solar system and there's like, there's no place else to go. Yeah. You know, we're all not like. moving to Mars someday. That's not like the reality for any of us. Any of us that matters.

And yeah, I know like Elon wants to put this like thinks, you know, civilization is going to, human civilization is going to one day colonize Mars. You know, he said it was going to happen by 2022. That didn't happen. I think he believed he said it was no question it would happen by then. Yes. Yeah, no question. We're going to have people living on Mars and they're going to stay and we're going to eventually have an atmosphere. We're going to blow up nuclear weapons. in the Martian atmosphere. And by the way, we need this because a single planet species doesn't survive because that's the history of species on Earth. Well, also, nobody else, no other species, dinosaurs were not engineering themselves out of a problem. Yeah, what if we just didn't screw it up here?

Yeah, just don't screw it up here. It's always going to be easier to survive on Earth, regardless of what happens, including the big rock. Yeah. Or the, you know, the worst pandemic. It's always going to be easier to survive on Earth. Mars is a shit planet. It is not a place that we want to move to. We want to go and explore. We want to come back. Yeah. But you really do get this sense that kind of almost the insignificance of, you know, the universe is 13.9 billion years old, we think, by the way.

We don't know for sure. May have been around a lot longer. We're figuring out more all the time. about astrophysics, about the nature of existence. But my, you know, my four trips of space, I really, you know, kind of a deep-seated view that we have to do a better job taking care of this place. There's no other option. Yeah. And it's interesting because he talks about this as the emperor of Rome, this idea that we're all sort of citizens of this larger thing. We're all citizens of this world and we have these obligations and responsibilities to each other. Now, of course, as the head of

state of this thing, he has certain obligations and responsibilities and priorities. But you do get the sense that he's trying to, by zooming out, going like, these borders are made up. And again, you have a legal obligation to enforce them, but it doesn't mean that the person on the other side of that border doesn't exist or doesn't matter and isn't. Well, they might not have not also have, they might not have the same legal obligation either. And by the way, you can't see any of those borders in space. Yes. With one exception. Great wall? No.

That's a whole Chinese like to say. It's the only thing you can see from space. What is it? That's bullshit. The only border you actually see that's not a river is the southern part of Israel. Because on one side it's desert. The other side, you know, it's cultivated land. Right.

So there's a straight line. And that's the only place I can think of that you physically can see a border during the day. Yeah. And why I say during the day is because at night you sort of see. North and South Korea. Yes. And the United States and Canada.

I'm not looking at you. In the United States, you're like, I wonder if the Canadians need more electricity. But the reason it looks like that. Yeah. It's because most of the Canadian population live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. Right. Like all 20 million of them basically live on the U.S. border. Yeah, yeah.

Canada goes. It goes way up. It does. And nobody's there. Nobody's there. Yeah. Canada and Australia are kind of like that. It's wild to look at it. I mean, Chong Yang looks like an island in an ocean because there's nobody else's have lights in North Korea. And then you, you know, you fly over places like Times Square, fly over New York City, the brightest spot on earth. And I think second would probably be the strip in Vegas, and then in the middle of Tokyo would probably be my top three bright spots on Earth.