The Daily Stoic - It’s For The Young and Old

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:40 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

Starting point is 00:00:59 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

Starting point is 00:01:50 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, visitdailystoic.com. It's for the young and the old. Some of the Stoics found philosophy when they were young, Some were steeped in it from an early age, equipped with the best tutors that their parents' money could buy. And plenty of them found Stoicism when they were older. Zeno himself had a whole other life as a merchant before that fateful shipwreck led him to a bookstore in Athens.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Epictetus wasn't freed until slavery, able to dedicate himself fully to philosophy till his 30s. And Admiral James Stockdale, he didn't even hear about the Stoics till the Navy sent him to grad school. at age 35. President Bill Clinton, who famously once said he reads meditations once a year, said he didn't even know about it until his 50s. As we've said before of Seneca, a man who lost his 20s to illness, a decade to exile, and whose most productive years came during a painful retirement. We should remember what Seneca said, a man who lost his 20s to illness, a decade to exile, whose most productive years came during a painful retirement, said that it's never too late. That's actually why the epigraph in my new book, Wisdom Takes Work, which is the final book

Starting point is 00:03:34 in the Virtue Series, comes with a quote from Seneca's favorite philosopher, Epicurus. Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when they are young, Epicurus said, nor weary in the search thereof when they have grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that it is past and gone is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. It doesn't matter when you come to philosophy. No age is too early or too late. If you're asking if it's too early to introduce your kids to stoicism or the wisdom of the agents, it's not.

Starting point is 00:04:18 If you're worried it's too late for you to pick up this book or that book, it's not. if you're wondering whether the time has passed for philosophy to make a difference in your life, it hasn't. As long as you live, Seneca said, keep learning how to live. As long as we're alive, we must keep learning and wrestling with new ideas. We must ask questions when we are young, and we must also remain humble enough to ask them when we're old, powerful, or well-informed. No matter our age, no matter our law and life, we must keep doing the work that wisdom requires. That's why the new book is called Wisdom Takes Work, and it's the fourth and final book in the Virtue series.

Starting point is 00:04:57 My argument is that there's no easy way to wisdom, no app, no shortcut, no secret formula. It can't be hacked or downloaded or handed to you. It has to be earned, right? Through the same hard work that people have been doing for thousands of years, reading and thinking and living and reflecting. And that's what the book is about, and I look at great thinkers like Montaigne and Seneca and Lincoln and Joan Didion and many others.

Starting point is 00:05:18 I'm really excited about this book. It would mean a lot to me if you could, pre-order it. Pre-ordering is the most important thing you can do to help an author that you want to support. It's how publishers decide how many copies to print. Bookstores decide how many copies to order. It determines whether it hits the bestseller list or not. If you've gotten anything out of these emails out of this podcast over the years, it would mean a lot to me. If you could grab it, you can grab Wisdom Takes Work. We've got signed and numbered first editions at daily stoic.com slash pre-order. And you can actually get a signed and numbered set of all four

Starting point is 00:05:50 books in the series. That's Courage is Calling. Discipline is Destiny, Right Thing Right Now, and Wisdom Takes Work. We only did 1,500 of those. They're almost sold out. You can grab those, that collector set at dailystoic.com slash Stoic virtues. I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. And I'd really appreciate it. Enjoy and keep doing the work, folks. Thank you.

The Daily Stoic - It’s For The Young and Old

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.