The Daily Stoic - BONUS: The Man Behind The Daily Stoic (Not Ryan Holiday)

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

It’s been six years since Ryan and his longtime editor and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman, first dreamed up the Stoic Virtues Series. In this bonus episode, they reflect on where the idea started, how each book built on the last, and why the four virtues are so deeply connected. Stephen Hanselman has worked for over three decades in publishing as a bookseller, publisher and literary agent. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, where he received a Master’s degree while also studying extensively at Harvard’s philosophy department.📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work📚 Get a signed copy of each of the books in the Stoic Virtues Series: Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, Right Thing Right Now, and Wisdom Takes Work 👉 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/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show, but not listen to ads. Well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic.

We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive

bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show of descriptions to make those ads go away. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailysteoic.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. There's basically one person to thank for this all existing. Not me, although I guess I deserve some of the credit. Not my wife, who's kept me sane and supported me and believed in me and indulged me all these years,

although, again, she deserves a lot of credit. I could thank Ms. Carr's and Mr. Delordo, my sophomore English and U.S. history teachers, who I think in the afterward of the new book, Wisdom takes work, because they were the first ones who saw something in me as a writer and a thinker about history and encourage me. Obviously, they deserve a lot of credit and I'm in their debt. Robert Green, of course, my mentor who taught me how to write, taught me how to think, taught me how to do this professionally. Lots and lots of credit to all of them. But specifically Daily Stoic, the podcast, the email, the book, it all traces back to a conversation I had with Steve Hanselman, my agent. He sold my first book.

Trust me, in mind. He sold the obstacle. closed the way. So my book on growth hacking. But it was Steve who came to me at some point in the middle of those books and said, hey, I published this book called The Daily Drucker when he was an editor at Harper Collins. And he said, I think you should do a book about Stoic philosophy that is a page a day called the Daily Stoic. And I said, Steve, I don't know about that. I mean, I've read the Daily Drucker, but who reads these page a day books? I just read it from cover to cover because that's like how I used to only think about books. And he said, you don't understand. and these are a way to live with the thinking of someone,

not just for a year, but over and over and over again. People dip in and dip out of it. And it becomes this massive and very accessible entry point into something. And I understood that because I had bought The Daily Drucker because someone had recommended Peter Drucker's writings, but he didn't have like one book that was like the main one. And I didn't want to get it wrong. So I was like, oh, this is kind of like a greatest hits album.

And so Steve said, look, I think you should do this book And he's like, I think it will be your best-selling book ever. And I said, well, that seems like something an agent would say. That doesn't seem like it would actually be true. But he turned out to be right. But before that, I said, Steve, look, there's kind of a problem. Whose translations are we going to use? The individual quotes might be fair use.

But you can't put together a whole collection of quotes from some the Gregory Hayes translation of meditations or, you know, the penguin random house edition of Seneca's letters. And he said, no, no, no, I understand. I'll do the translations. And I said, how? And he said, I went to Harvard Divinity School. I know both Latin and Greek. And I'll do the translations. And he said, were you holding out on me? I didn't know you could do this. So anyway, Steve is the reason that the Daily Stoic exists. That's why his name is on the cover of the book. He's been a wonderful supporter, patron, co-writer, collaborator, sounding board, advocate for my works over. the years. It's my John Landau, if you will. And it's been lovely and wonderful. And I owe him a lot. And I appreciate all of it. So I thought as a bonus episode, I would bring you Steve and I talking about this series, which Steve also sold, believed in more than anyone else, helped sell it for an amount that was life-changing for me and my family. I used the advance from the four-book series to buy the bookstore, which I am talking to you from.

So he has been an enabler in all the best ways to me over the years. And I can't wait for you to hear from him. We are sold out of the collector's set of all four virtues, courage is calling Discipline's Destiny, Right Thing, and right now. But you can buy a set of all four of them signed, and we can do that. We will be bringing a box set out at some point as well. Enjoy this conversation with Steve and I. It would mean so much to me if you could pre-order them.

new book, Wisdom Takes Work, or any of the books in the series, I'm really proud of this one. I can't wait for it to be in your hands. They should be shipping all over the world right now. You can grab it right now on Audible or e-books. All that, it is up and available, and I'm pumped to bring it to you. Talk soon. Thanks. It's been six years. That seems like an insane amount of time. Yeah, I remember you were out on a family hype. first called me with the idea for the series, and we both got so excited about it. And who knew?

Six years later, we're about to watch the last one. What did you remember thinking about the idea? You know, I thought it was coming at a great time. Obviously, the whole movement around the Daily Stoic and the sort of growing community, you know, and a lot of people sort of hungry for more information. And, of course, if you really want to dive deep with the Stoics, you've got to get into the virtues and into the whole subject of building character. What I remember is that obstacle, ego, and stillness had sort of come about accidentally. So this was the first time that I thought more than one little thing in advance.

Yeah, the virtues, of course, are central to Stoicism, and they were hotly debated from Zeno, you know, all the way through. but the four cardinal virtues were one of the great gifts of Stoicism to the whole Western culture. And of course, Christianity had its own riff on those. Do you think they came to them independently or do you think they took them directly from Zeno? Because when I was just in Greece, I was thinking about this, you know, St. Paul starts at the Stoa and makes his way up to the hill where he gives his speech at the Acropolis. So there was obviously some intermingling. Sure.

I mean, they were, Paul was a student of the philosophers. He was there on Marseille, on the Ariapagos, to debate the philosophers, even quoting the Stoics, you know, to the audience. Yeah, doesn't he mention or alludes to Cleanthes in that speech or someone, right? At Cleanthes, him to Zeus, some say it's Aratus who preceded, the poet who proceeded. clean at these, but, you know, was very stoic inflected, this idea that we all have a share of the divine in us, that, you know, we descend from this greater, from this greater power. He thought he was speaking to a friendly audience, and in fact, as Christian tradition has it, you know, he converted one of the elders there, the Areopagites, Dionysius, the Ariopagite.

really who is to this day the patron saint of athens yeah i have to i have to admit i thought that the cardinal virtues i just thought cardinal meant like a religious cardinal i obviously not having spoken latin i didn't get that it comes from cardos i just assumed that the the virtues were primarily christian in basis not that they preceded it well you know the christianity sort of came up in vigorous debate with the philosophers. And you can see the love that the Christian fathers had, you know, for the various philosophers. Sometimes I think Jerome said he worried that, you know, he loved Cicero more than anything else. So, and of course, Cicero was one of the best students of Stoicism and much of what we know about the tradition he preserved. So.

Maybe it's more of a throwback, but this is kind of an old school discussion to be having with your book agent. You know, we should be talking like deal points and stuff. Yeah. Well, that's what's been thought about working on all these books with you is that, you know, it's something that we spend a lot of time reading and reflecting on. And, you know, as the point of your new book, wisdom takes work, it's all in the application, the consistent, the persistent, the constant reapplication and refinement. of the ideas. It's like Epictetus said he was always admonishing his students who were bragging about how much Chrysippus they knew. Yes. And he was like, you know, I could care less,

you know, how much you know or how much you've read? It's like, how are you applying it? So, well, my favorite, doesn't he joke that he was talking to a student who was bragging about having read all of the works of Chrysippus, Chrysippus being a particularly dense writer and Epictetus says something like, seven hundred five books. Yeah, he says, you know, if Chrysippus was a better writer, you'd have less to brag about. Exactly. And, of course, he had his critics, too, foremost of which were the Epicureans who constantly berated Chrysippus as cribbing and quoting everyone else. But, you know, why get that criticism too? Well, it's steal like an artist, right? You're going to learn from the best. And, you know, you can't be afraid of stealing from the best.

if you can actually, if you're a musician, if you can get it under your fingers, you've really done something. Well, I also think, like, look, if I could say it better myself, I would have, you know. And there is this struggle, I think, when you get some of these quotes from the Stoics, you go, I'm not sure I could say it better. And if I tried, I'd really just be plagiarizing. You know, like I could put this in my own words and act like I came up with it. But I did. You know, Seneca or Marksurelius or Epictetus or Cleanthes or whomever, they just boiled it down to the essence of what it is and they said it about as well as you can say it. And I've got no problem just saying that they said it. Yeah. Well, it's, they're varied sources and they all kind of put

a different inflection on it. And, you know, you can learn so much just from pouring through it. What I love about your book here is that you've really done that hard work of going through it, but trying to make it relevant. And opening the book with the quote from Epicurus, I thought was brilliant. Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he has grown old. For no ages too early or too late for the health of the soul. Well, let me ask you, when I came to you with the idea for the series, where did you think it would go? I was looking at the proposal the other day, and there's some things I got, you know, I sort of predicted

exactly where it would go, and then others I didn't. I'm forgetting what I titled the last book in the series, but it wasn't Wisdom Takes Work for sure. How did you think the series would go? And then let's talk more about this one specifically, but I'm curious what your vision was for it and then how you think it went. Well, you know, when you're dealing with the four virtues, it's like where to start. Yes. And as I said, you know, it's such a debate within Stoicism. I mean, they just fought with each other, you know, are they different, or are they all one? Where does one begin in the other end? That's really the tricky part of the whole thing. Exactly. And they, you know, all the Stoics saw them as different sort of angles on knowledge,

different forms of knowledge. But how they interrelated and, you know, even how to teach them was something they debated fiercely. And as you know, in the early days, you had Aristo who was Zeno's great critic, who Zeno was, you know, calling a babbler and telling him to shut up, you know, half the time. Zeno, in fact, had a defender among the students who cited with him wrote books like sort of praising Aristo, who said that there was only one virtue and it was wisdom. Yeah. forget about all the rest of it. So, you know, it's where to begin with. It was a hard question, but I thought, you know, at the beginning, starting with courage was the right place to begin.

And it really, I think it resonated with the times. The interesting thing is that courage seems to be where, when they list the virtues, courage is always first. Then they sometimes shake up the order of the others. But courage always seem to be first. But the interesting thing about writing courage is that almost all of the examples of courage seem to involve justice in some way. Like there's very few examples of courage isolated from justice. And so there was this kind of problem to like logistical problem with the book, which is that you don't want to use up all the justice stories in the courage book. That was tricky. But it also strikes me that like certainly all the physical examples of courage involve

justice in some way. But then most of the examples of moral courage involve wisdom in some way, because what you're doing is seeing either through or further than everyone else, right? You're having to, like, if you think about, like, someone who's not racist in a time of racism or not sexist in a time of sexism, obviously part of this is just a sort of moral sense of right and wrong, but really there's some sort of fundamental insight at the core of that worldview where you are able to see something clearly that while everyone else around you has their judgment clouded by prejudice or, you know, close-mindedness or whatever. I think the idea of the interrelatedness of the virtues, I think that seems obvious to most people, but it actually is a logistical problem

when you're writing this series of books because you can only write them one at a time. Right. Well, I think, you know, in the case of courage, I think in any of the virtues, wisdom is always playing a role. It's like a care-taking role. And, you know, we talked about it when the book came out. I mean, just the history of Roman stoicism, it's involved in the political leadership. There was kind of a great crisis emerging, you know, within the Roman office holders. You know, there was such an impulse toward gaining the office, going out, showing your courage in battle so that you could gain all this windfall of profits, you know, from the provinces, part of which, of course, came back to Rome. But many of these guys were, you know, just

whining their own pockets. And it was, you know, during that period when the Stoics were really reflecting in people like Panaitius, who were engaged with people like Polybius, you know, they were really saying, you know, there's something missing here in the way we're talking about courage. We're missing the social dementia. We're missing the larger sense. And so they started bringing forward this idea of greatness of soul, megalosupis. which brought in the social dimension, not only courage for myself and what I can get, but courage for the greater good. And that became a very big topic from that period on. And I think it's a case where, you know, wisdom was coming to the aid of this sort of wooden form of

courage that was passing for civic virtue, you know, during the time. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I've talked here before. We've made whole videos about it. Therapy has been incredibly helpful to me. It's given me emotional awareness. It's helped me process my feelings. It's helped me deal with stuff as a parent, as a spouse,

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at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoke. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoke right now and support the show by saying you heard about it. indeed on this podcast indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply indeed is all you need courage for what like holding the office for what being brave in battle for what that's the sort of lingering question and and obviously justice informs that the interrelatedness between justice and wisdom i found really interesting you know i have a couple of

stories about sort of going and seeing how the other side lives. You know, Theodore Roosevelt deciding to go down to the tenements in the Lower East side and, you know, seeing how these people lived. Like, on the one hand, that's this sort of moral obligation. But it's also at some other level, like curiosity, right? Like, you can't know that something's wrong if you're not interested in finding out about how things are. And so there's this sort of interest. her relatedness, and then the courage he has to buck his party to sort of be involved in a social justice issue instead of a sort of lozai fair capitalistic stance, which is what the Republican Party had stood for at that time. Again, they're all kind of related, right? And

one informs the other, which forms the other, which, you know, in turn sort of brings you back to where you started. It's this kind of feedback loop. But wisdom, has to be the curiosity, the open-mindedness, the desire to learn, the ability to hear. You know, it's all of these things that I think are unfortunately not necessarily the default setting for most people intellectually. Yeah, and I think, you know, too often people think of wisdom, it becomes like this lofty thing. Yes. And the Stoics were very insistent that, you know, when they talk about, you know, when they talk

about it, they used the word phronesis, which was practical wisdom. It wasn't this theoretical thing for the sage or somebody sitting on a cloud. It was something we had to engage in everything that we do. In fact, Arius Didamus, one of the two Stoic advisors to Octavian, when he became Augustus, he defined it, yet Pronesis's practical wisdom as that which deals with appropriate acts. Yeah. So it was this constant idea that we're on the line. It's our choice, our decision, our moral character that's facing the test. We have to ask ourselves, what is an appropriate action? And so this practical knowledge, it was like a street intelligence. In fact, the translator of Arias didomis, that's actually the term he uses.

Treat knowledge? Intelligence. Yeah. And Arias Didimus defined this practical wisdom as containing all these things you were just talking about. Soundness of judgment, circumspection, things like shrewdness, like being shrewd, of being sensible, of having a sound aim, soundness of aim. Things like ingenuity were part of justice. I mean, ingenuity, I mean, the word for you, meconian. this sort of ability to skillfully fashion what is needed on the spot. Marcus Aurelius even had his own term for this. Hupaxiris, it was his reserve clause that he wasn't always going to think he had the right

decision in hand or the right conception of how things should go. He was willing to step back and reconsider if necessary. Well, that's the famous passage about if there's brambles and the path go around, if it's bitter, throw it out. I think people sometimes think wisdom and justice is this kind of purity. It was the furthest thing from road learning. It was not road learning. It wasn't like you've got this bag of shiny, you know, pristine virtues. And, you know, you're just going to somehow magically pull them out and use them in the right way every time.

Life is messy. Problems occur along the way. And the sort of working out of a virtuous life is much more involved. Yeah, I think sometimes people resent the fact that the Stoics don't kind of lay it all out, you know, do this, don't do that. Like, they don't really define the terms that well. And so there actually is quite a bit of work you have to do. And it's not relativism and it's not this sort of ends justify the means necessarily. But it is this idea of like, look, I told you what the virtues are, courage, you know, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom, figure it out. You know, like figure it out. It's on you. That's the work of it. Yeah. You've got a great chapter in part two of the book, the Change Your Mind chapter. Yeah. I just, I really love to quote there. I'm

going to read it. I wrote it down. I was just going through the book again because I got it yesterday. I know. Mine came too. I was very excited. Right after we talked, I got the UK edition first and then the U.S. edition after. I haven't seen the U.K. yet, but see, I've got this great couple of lines in there that wisdom is the ability to go through life ready to change your mind. Doesn't mean we abandon our values because they're inconvenient, but our thinking is supposed to evolve. We're supposed to grow.

New things are going to come to light. Feedback follows belief in action. We should create new beliefs and actions. Yeah, I mean, that's what I think is interesting in meditation. is how often Marcus Aurelius talks about taking correction, taking feedback, making mistakes. This is a guy for all intensive purposes who is believed to be a God. I mean, he is infallible. His word can literally mean life or death.

He can do whatever he want. He's definitely considered to be smarter and more informed than most people. He certainly is better educated than almost everyone. So it's pretty remarkable to see in his private journal just how much he's talking. talking about being wrong and changing his mind. That reproof from the truth has never heard anyone. Yeah. And we know he means this too, right?

He's not just paying lip service because we have in some of his letters, which I talk about in the book. You know, he gets this, he gets two letters on the same day from Fronto, his rhetoric teacher. And he's, you know, well past being instructed by this guy. I mean, he's an adult. But he gets two letters from one of his old teachers, one of which is telling him how great he is and, you know, how happy and proud he is of him. And then the other one is a pretty set of extensive notes sent unsolicited about one of Marcus's speeches. And Marcus writes back,

you know, I have to say the second letter I appreciated much more than the first. Because I have to imagine that very few people are pulling the emperor of Romicide and saying, you know, that wasn't one of your best speeches. Here's a bunch of things you could have done differently, or didn't you learn better? You know, it's really only this old teacher that can lay it out for him like that. And I think he, you know, it says something about what he tried to remain, that he stayed open to that. For sure. Yeah. It's definitely a resounding feature of his personality, the humility, the constantly going over the decisions he's made and and being open to the fact that he may have missed it. And look, I relate to that because this thing you and I have been talking about and it's

for people who want to know kind of the inside of the development of this book a little bit. One of the interesting things about, you know, even where I was in 2019 when I sold the series and then as the books have continued to sell and then as I got to this fourth book, one of the things that I've sort of subtly noticed is, you know, you get less and less notes. Now, some of that is, some of that is good, right, because it means there's less obvious things to fix. But I found it somewhat vexing that when the stakes are highest, you're actually getting the least amount of feedback and editing and accountability, right? It's like, you can think, who needs more a correction than the emperor of Rome, right? And then who needs the most edits? You don't need the

edits on your first book when no one is reading. You need the most rigorous edits on your, I don't even know what number this is, but I need the edits more now, especially out of the gate, because there's a bigger audience, right? And I know I've been, and I think we addressed it well on this book, because Julia, your wife gave an excellent round of very rigorous edits that I had to really shake out because I wasn't getting them elsewhere, but this idea of like, how do you remain a humble practitioner of what you do? How do you actively seek out criticism and feedback? You would think that that would just come along for the ride, but it doesn't. It's something you have to sort of actively cultivate. No. Well, it's, you know, you've got such a disciplined process that has been

honed over such a long period of time that the quality has, you know, definitely increased book by book. And I think we're, what, through 15 now? That's a remarkable statement in and of itself right there. Yeah, but, but they, they sort, it's like, it's like at the beginning of your career, you want as little interference and as much creative freedom as possible. That's what you think you're working towards, right? Like there's that episode of curb your enthusiasm where Larry is selling the show to Netflix and he just goes, just remember, don't give me any fucking notes, you know? He's like, no notes. And that is kind of the dream because there can be kind of piddly interference where people are second guessing you or trying to make it.

I mean, I definitely felt that on some of the earlier books, conspiracy most of all, where like, I know what I'm trying to do here. I need people to get on board with the vision that I have. But then, you know, then you kind of get that deference that comes along with experience and credibility and success in a weird way that deference can impair you because now no one's telling you that it's too long. No one's telling you where your argument is, is weak. No one's pushing you to tighten or improve. And so I did kind of feel on this one, I'm glad I waited for it to be the last book in this series because in some ways I think it was the hardest. But I also felt like for each one to surpass the last, I had to sort of really work to get those notes, which isn't a part

of the process I expected. Yeah, it's great to be here standing at the end of that process now and to know that you've done such a fabulous job with it. In the third section of the book, you're talking about Lincoln and Cleanthes. And it's just interesting the way you brought those two people together because, like, they're this powerful combination of learning slowly and being methodical and, like, you know, in Lincoln's case, you know, sort of having this cabinet of rivals and, you know, constantly challenging himself, you know, in Clienthe's case, he would often talk to himself as if he was an ignorant, an old man, you know, without any wisdom. but that's sort of, you know, seeking to challenge yourself always, you know, it does elevate the product. And in the case about, you know, well, certainly in Clianthe's case, as they said about him, he never forgot what he learned. The gains that he made, the improvements that he made were completely internalized as a result. Isn't it interesting how certain sort of metaphors or

analogies persist. Like both the Stoics and the Buddhists talk about that idea of like a bowl or a cup of water that's got some silt in it and you've got to let it settle to see through it. And then, yeah, to have Xeno compare Clanthes to a waxen tablet that you carve it in and then it hardens. That was how his mind works. And then, you know, yeah, 2,500 years later to have Lincoln compare his mind to, you know, you carve something in it and it's hard to do, but once it's carved there, it never goes away. You wonder if that was just, if that's just kind of a naturally occurring insight, or is it actually, you know, something that Zeno threw out there 25 centuries ago that is just remaining in constant use? Like, like at some point, every cliche was

said by someone as an original insight. And I, yeah, I loved that, that both of them were kind of described the same way. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like, are you doing something for the performance value of it, or are you doing it to really get it? Yes. You know, I think it's kind of what it comes down to. You know, Marcus in the sixth book, he talks about that there's only one prize, only one prize that the exertions of teaching and education are about. And that's that we should have self-respect for our own mind and prize it so that we'll be in better harmony with ourselves and the universe. And I think, you know, in the case of Lincoln and the case of Cleanthes, they got it. They knew what the prize was. They weren't doing all the

things they were doing for external validation, to be the smartest guy in the room, to, you know, be acclaimed for knowing more than anyone else. It was about getting it right for themselves. I think the Lincoln chapter is some of the best writing that I've ever done. I'm proudest of that chapter. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. And I talk about this in the afterward that, you know, I remember as I was laying out the project, I was thinking, okay, I'm going to have Lincoln there at the end. And I was like, that's the one guy that I'm not going to have to research, because I've already read, you know, a lot on Lincoln. I mean, he's one of the main characters in obstacle. I've just written about him a lot. And then, you know, I sat down to write

and I maybe made it like two paragraphs into that section. And I said, you know, no, I'm going to have to do a bunch more read. I think I read, you know, three or four thousand additional pages on Lincoln, which I wasn't expecting to do. But in the whole season, you know, I'm going to have to do. But in the whole series, I would say that section on Lincoln, the Queen Elizabeth section in discipline, and then maybe the part two in justice where I sort of lay out this sort of procession of process of social justice, I guess warriors, you might call them, but starting with Thomas Clarkson and the abolitionist movement and leading up into the present moment, just each sort of one of these initiatives that expand the definition of sort of who's in.

equal citizen under the law, I think those are probably the three that I'm proudest of. Yeah, I agree. And I, you know, I think having Lincoln at the end of the book in the final section, it really sings. Because he's the complete man, you know? And that's, I think, what Tolstoy is getting at that, like, you know, obviously Washington was great and Napoleon was great and Charlemagne was great. All these sort of great heroes in Congress, Wellington, was great. But as human beings, they left a lot to be desired. or the cause itself left a lot to be desired. They're famous primarily for their, you know, military genius,

their geopolitical sort of statesmanship genius, but it's lacking that, you know, very few people would have said, you know, but they're just like the best human being that I've ever met. I think that's right. And you're always very good in balancing the sense. sections with central figures. And, of course, in this book, it's sort of Montaigne Musk and Lincoln. You know, because, well, as Plutarch taught us long ago, it's through these figures that we can really kind of focus and crystallize the lessons we need.

Do you think people are going to get mad about the Musk section? Well, you know, Musk has made quite a few people mad all on his own. The last year has been something seeing Tesla's on fire and crazy, insane stuff like that. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I went through that with stillness where I was writing about Mr. Rogers and then all of a sudden there's a Tom Hanks movie and there's this kind of whole resurgence. And I'm like, no, I thought I was kind of picking someone, not from obscurity, but I was picking a unique angle on someone. And then the Musk thing, I mean, I decided to work on that. chapter, and I believe I began it even before the Twitter purchase. So that one has been weird in

that, you know, it's been exhausting in that, like, new things keep having to be added to it. And then I fear it will be read as more political than it was meant to be. Even if I agreed with them on everything, I would have written the exact same chapter. You took such care with it, and there's such a vast amount of biographical and background information there. I think a lot of people won't even know. So people are going to learn a lot about Musk when they read it. Yeah, that was a tough one to write too. Walter Isaacson is interviewing me at the Texas Tribune Festival in a couple weeks. So we'll have to see if he asked for a copy of the book. So we'll have to see what he thinks of the chapter. That should be a good discussion. I interviewed Doris

Curran's Goodwin and I ran some of my my Lincoln theories by her as the complete man. And I I feel like I'm on pretty firm ground there. A very solid source. All right. So let me ask you something because I was thinking about this. I took a pretty straight down the middle definition of each of the virtues. You know, maybe I did a little work making temperance a bit more about self-discipline than maybe the ancients would have rendered it.

I did take a lot of the ancients put the idea of endurance under courage. and that strikes me as incorrect and that it more obviously belongs under the virtue of sophracine, temperance, discipline, what have you. What do you think of that? Well, I, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from Epictetus when he's basically saying he can summarize the whole philosophy in two words, persist and resist, as I like to translate it. It's often translated. It's often translated. endure and renounce. But he's clearly, we know this from Alos Gellius, the learned banqueters,

that's where the saying is preserved. But he's clearly talking about two virtues there. He's talking about courage, and he's talking about discipline. And so he's got them too right next to each other. And basically, Epictetus is saying, And this sums up the whole philosophy. Although, of course, it doesn't, right?

Because, well, what should you persist and what should you resist? And, yeah, what cause should one's persistence and resistance be directed? This is, I think, why it's more clearly all four of them in an interrelated, inseparable way. For me, when I read that, what I'm getting from it is that the endure and the persist part, that really is about courage. It's about knowing when not to give up and to keep pressing on. When you have every reason, I'm tired, I'm going to get hurt, I won't survive, courage is what keeps you moving forward. And the sort of resist and renounce, that's the discipline of knowing,

hey, this isn't good for me. I do not have to go here. I'm going to say no. I'm going to stick to my You know. Yeah. I was thinking about this because I interviewed Kyle Carpenter here the other day, who was a Medal of Honor recipient. He threw himself on a grenade in Afghanistan and saved the life of a comrade. And it struck me that courage was that sort of split-second decision where the thing came up on the roof and he dove on top of it. That's courage. But then the three years in the hospital where he has to wake up every day as they're literally putting his his arm and his face and his jaw back together another skin graft another rehab session you know just the waiting and the patience and the pain that to me is the endurance that to me is persist and resist that's where

the courage crosses the territory into endurance and that yeah they're They're different forms of courage, but I, you know, I was thinking of Seneca's line about how sometimes even to live is an act of courage, right? But the day-to-dayness of it, to me, is where courage moves over into, you know, this idea of temperance or discipline. Because it's about, it's about the sustaining and it's about the maintaining of that thing, you know, even when you don't want to. Like Marcus Reilly says, just that you do the right thing, you know, cold or tired, hungry or well-rested. Well, it's the listing of all the variables where courage isn't enough. You need this discipline to this will to bring it into the world and make it real. Right.

Yeah, it's going back to areas didomis when he's going through all the different virtues and listing, you know, the sub-v virtues. they go under it. So when he's talking about courage, he's talking about, one of the things he's talking about is filiponia. Yeah, a love of toil. Yeah, of toil. Yeah, of toil, of pain. But I think what they're getting at is, it's not pain for its own sake. It's like knowing when the fact that something is painful is not enough reason to stop. Yes. it's knowing that no you're going to go over that the pain is going to pass and the fact that you didn't

give up is what matters i do think it's worth pointing out there are virtues and then there are sub virtues and it's when you get into the business of the sub virtues that i really think you see where there are so intertwined like i talked about this in the afterward of the justice book it's hard to know which virtue love goes into because obviously it goes into all of you know, the courage to tell someone you love them, you know. But then I felt like it probably belongs under justice, if, if anywhere. Yeah, that's where I would put it. The sort of fellowship and, you know, the communal feeling, I think that's where they tended to think of it. But obviously, you know, from the standpoint of wisdom, you know, Marcus is always talking about, you know,

that wisdom is when we're not just doing it for the sake of our own character, but we're doing it for the sake of the common good. Yes. And it's bringing those two things together for Marcus. He said the fruits of this life are acts that improve our character and are for the benefit of the common good. Well, and what is at the core of it the motivator of most, you know, acts of courage? Or the most transcendent and beautiful forms of courage, it's always somebody else. or something else that you love more than life itself, right? That's the famous line from the Bible about, you know, there's no greater love than this than to lay down one's life for their friends.

The selflessness to go, I'm choosing you over me, is probably the highest and most laudatory form of courage. Yeah, that's what that whole megalosukea, the sort of greatness of soul was all about. I think I'm glad I waited till the end on wisdom, just because I'm also six years older. I've read more. I've experienced. I knew justice wasn't going to be first, and I knew wisdom couldn't be first. So that really only left discipline and courage to start off with. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, in terms,

terms of back to your original question of the sort of how it all played out yeah you know the when the justice book came i mean it was sort of this like complete ruin of public conversation sure about the topic and i remember we went around and around around we should even use the word yeah or the subtitle and and we were all afraid of how it was going to come over you know how was going to go down and um it's the one book that was an instant number one bestseller Yeah, I was just going to say, I could not have, looking at the proposal again, I could not have guessed that of the four books, that's the one that would debut at number one. I guess it remains to be seen on wisdom. We'll see how it does. But I would have guessed that far and away, it would have been the worst. Yeah, we were all prepared for that. And, you know, there you go, right out the gate faster than any of the books.

Yeah, we'll see how this one does. I'm definitely very proud of it. It was an exhausting ordeal. and yeah, there's some relief at the end, too. Although also, like, a weirdness of, like, every day for six years I've woken up and I sort of have known what I'm supposed to be working on. Like, I mean, I know what my next project is, but this was a very clear and contained world to live in and also a very wonderful world to live in

because I liked all these people for the most part. I mean, there's some cautionary tales in there for sure, but I mostly wrote about heroes, not villains. Right, which, you know, always makes for a good read. It's hard to, uh, the lessons we learn from the villains are, they, they don't travel as well. The decision to make Musk, uh, main character in, in part two of wisdom was interesting to me because, you know, at first I was, I was just sort of focused on the, the sort of decline and the, the sort of what happened. But then I realize actually it's not until you make the positive case first until you steal man him and you show

you know sort of what a genius he is and how smart he is and how sort of effective this sort of algorithm he developed for thinking about the world and thinking about tough decisions and thinking about innovation you know and i think plutarch does this well you know i don't think he likes Julius Caesar, but you get both the good and the bad. And yeah, that was fascinating to me. When you really, when you really first make the case, just the incredible achievement and accomplishment, because I think, you know, the current discourse about Musk, especially sort of in liberal circles, is that he must have been fooling us all along. And I don't think that's right. And so when you look at how you go from here to there, that's really the full arc of it that I think is so compelling and then also cautionary.

And yeah, so no one's ever fully a villain. You've got to show the virtues and the vices. And then you see how the vices eat away at and destroy the one's virtuous thing. No, he has many strengths, which obviously produced credible results. for it. Well, that's the danger, right? Is that when someone who has a plausible claim of being one of the smartest people in the world starts to see themselves as one of the smartest people in the world, that's the timeless danger of hubris and the sort of killer of wisdom ultimately is when you think you have it, you are in the midst of losing it. When Marcus said he didn't

want to be Caesarified. Yes, stained purple. You know, and it's easy when you're you're looking at all these, the sort of heroes and the villains, you know, when Epictetus was talking about, you know, education, he would always circle back to this idea that, you know, opinions of what is rational and irrational, what's good, what's evil, it differs, you know, from person to person. Everybody's got their own, yeah, about this stuff, you know, which is precisely why we need education, you know. The process of gaining wisdom is about engaging. with our own preconceptions, our own notions of what's rational, of what's good, and working a math in a way that not only conforms with what we're created for, but in keeping

with a character that we're trying to develop. So it's this idea that the heroes and the villains, what we're trying to learn here, it's all about self-application. and not about sticking our own ruler, you know, on somebody else. Yes. No, you're supposed to study these lives ultimately to see yourself reflected in them. That's the whole point. And this goes back even to how the Spartans taught, which is like it's this constant debate.

You know, you're Alexander at this battle. What would you do? You know, you are faced with this ethical dilemma. What would you do? You are here. What would you do? why would you do it? Why do you think so and so did X, Y, or Z? You know, which is so different than I think philosophy today, which is these kind of abstract theoretical questions, mostly

removed from any kind of historical context, right? And yeah, I think I'm trying to show the stories not to make, to raise anyone up or to pull anyone down, but to look at the person for better or for worse and see what we can take from them. That's why I've always found the criticism strange that people are like, well, how could you write a book about stoicism? And then in the part one of the obstacle is the way you're celebrating John D. Rockefeller, he was a robber baron. And it's like, oh, I'm not celebrating John D. Rockefeller. I'm showing you a way in which he was stoic. But we're not talking about social justice in this book. We're talking about overcoming obstacles and being rational, and you could argue that that's his problem. He's hyper rational. All he's thinking about

is the objective value of this or that, how to make more or less. He's not thinking about, you know, the externalities of his decisions or the ethics of his decisions or the fairness of the economic system. And so, yeah, what you're trying to do is in each one of these situations is hold this person up for review and take the good and the bad, which is, by the way, what the Stoics do, You know, they're talking about Alexander the Great, and they're talking about Odysseus, and they're talking about, you know, all the emperors that came before and what we can learn from what they did well and then what we should learn not to do from them. Yeah, and as we did in lives of the Stoics, you know, there are plenty of situations in which, you know,

our Stoic heroes fell down badly. Of course. Yeah, and we have to learn from that, too. Epictetus has this sort of metaphor about our education that we're basically, we're taking these moral preconceptions that we have. And our education is really about constantly polishing them, almost as if they were weapons that we were about to take out into battle. Yes. That whole focus of the idea of you're doing this for a reason. You're polishing these because you're going to need them. You're going to need them in your own roles, your own duties, the things that

lie ahead for you. He basically says the whole of education is about knowing what is up to us and what's not up to us. And, you know, the question should be, have we learned something? Have we polished, you know, these weapons? And are we engaging the choices and the decisions and the actions, which are ours along to make, if that's what wisdom is, that's a very tough assignment. I think the idea is, and I say this in the intro of the book, is that at some point in your life, you're going to need to draw on some wisdom. You're going to be making a real tough decision, right? And not just, we don't just come to this crossroad once. We come to this crossroads constantly. But wisdom is this thing that in moments in your life you desperately need. And you'll have either

done that work or not, you'll have either made those deposits and built up that balance or you haven't. And so that's why I think we have to say wisdom is work. Wisdom is the reaping of seeds that you sowed a long time ago. Exactly. Things you read, mentors you had, experiences you underwent, questions you asked. It's this work that you're doing now that you draw on, you know, many years from now. And it's work that we get to do. I mean, you don't have to. Epictetus, you know, would always say, you know,

oh, you know, people will tell you, it's only the free who can be educated. Yes. So the sort of wealthy upper class, the kind of people that he worked for is a slave. Right. You know, they'll tell you education's only for free people. And Epictetus is like wrong.

Yes. No. Only the educated, those who really work at it, they're the only ones who are free. And by that, he meant free to know what is up to them. Sure. What is not up to them. And free to say, you know what? All that external stuff going on that doesn't have anything to do with me, I don't have to care about any of it. Well, I think he's saying also, you know, to know the value of things, right? He has that. that famous analogy about banging a coin on the table and knowing whether it's counterfeit or not or what metals in there or not. If we define wisdom as discernment and judgment, we get a little bit closer to what the Stoics meant by it. They don't mean, oh, that's that old guy who's always able to give you good advice or whatever, right? Wisdom was the insight, the ability to sort of know the value and the truth of things more clearly than the people than your peers.

and, you know, the moment in time that you happen to live in. Yeah, and I think it's what, you know, Epictetus was a teacher, one of the, you know, most famous teachers in antiquity, but his teacher, Musonius Rufus, was even more famous in his own time. And, you know, he believed that there's this deeper work that's always going on. Whatever our roles and responsibilities in life, There's a deeper work that's going on that takes place at the same time. You know, while we practice the art of living, we're both artisans and artifacts.

While we are artisans making things in the world, we're also working on ourselves and our lives are an artifact that we're leaving behind. Yes. And this idea that through our inner work on virtue and character and all the, it's always going on. underneath everything else that we do, this is our true education and wisdom. And seeing ourselves as both artisans, people were making things out there in the world, but also artifacts, and asking ourselves, how have my qualities change? What am I becoming? Well, that ultimately, wisdom, like all the other virtues, is something you do, not something you have. It's, like they say, there's no such thing as love. There's only loving actions. There really is no such

thing as a courageous person or a just person or a disciplined person or a wise person. There's a person who is doing wisdom. There's a person who is in the middle of a courageous act. Turning words into works. Yeah. And I think it's worth emphasizing that as we wrap up here, like that wisdom maybe doesn't feel like that. Like wisdom does feel like the result of the study that you've had or the intellectual gifts that you have or the teachers you have. But no, it's as much an ongoing thing as any of the other virtues. It's not an end point. And if you think you have it, you are exhibiting a sure sign that you do not have it. You can acknowledge that you have gotten wiser than you were in the past. But if you think that you are wise, you are missing a critical element of wisdom because it's

not a place that you arrive at because there's an unlimited amount of it. It's an unlimited, ongoing, you know, endless pursuit that you start ideally when you're young, but you could start it right now. And the point is that you don't ever finish it. Yeah, it's a constant work. Progress, not perfection. Because I use this thing at the beginning, you know, it's like the horizon, you know, you feel like you're making, you're walking towards it, but it's not getting any closer. But one of the things, if you, tonight, you started heading towards the sunset, after a certain point, you'd look back and you'd notice that you actually have traveled quite a far distance. You've not made it any closer to the destination, but you have traveled a far,

right, because the destination is pulling ahead of you each time. But that doesn't negate the significant progress you've made or distance that you've traveled. And so that's kind of the paradoxical nature of wisdom. Absolutely. And, you know, this whole sense of well-being or flourishing that comes with the virtues. You know, it's not like we're without a clue when we're in the groove or not in the groove. You know, yes. We know when life is flowing better. And we know when it's not. And as Zeno said, well-being's realized step-by-step. But it's no small thing, right? He says it's realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. That's one of my absolute favorites. Well, Steve, thank you for helping me make this a reality. I love that

I could call you after that hike in 2019. And then here we are six years later. And I've got all got all four of them. I love it. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. There it is. I'm very excited. I got 17 hours of transcripts of an oral history for the book that I'm working on now. We just discovered it. No one thought it existed. But we just found 17 hours of interviews with the main subject. So I'm rearing to get back to my office to dig into that. Tremendously exciting.

Yeah. Amazing, Steve. Thanks for everything. All right, Ryan. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. we love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these

episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you.