The Daily Stoic - It’s Mostly Froth And Bubble | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Silly worries and petty rivalries. People arguing for no reason. People trying to accumulate more than they could ever need. This is what we do, isn’t it?🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/Seattle, WA  - December 3, 2025 San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 Phoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/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.

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, visitdailystoic.com. advertisements, celebrity scandals and local gossip, silly worries and petty rivalries, people arguing for no reason, people trying to accumulate more than they could ever need.

This is what we do, isn't it? What we've always done? And one of the more cynical passages of meditations, Marx Reelis describes life in Rome as a pointless bustling of processions. Operas, herds of sheep and cattle, military exercises, a bone flung to pet poo poodles, a little food in the fish tank, the miserable servitude of ants, the scampering of frightened mice, puppets jerked on strings. We fight over things. We entertain ourselves with trivialities. We miss the point. We waste this thing called existence, led by our perceptions, our insecurities, our fears. Stoicism is supposed to be a dash of clarity. It's a hard dose of perspective. It's what Marcus was doing in that passage, contemptuously dismissing so much of what

people take for granted, trying, as he said later in meditations, to strip things of the legend that encrust them. Too much of life is froth and bubble. Too much of it is servitude and stupidity being jerked around like a puppet. You are better than that. Time is too short for that. Wake up. Stop it. Show up. Be the person philosophy tried to make you. See what it tried to show you. Hey, it's Ryan. I am recording this on my wife's phone, not at the office, at home, because it was a long, crazy day of the office. We called each other. She was driving home. I was driving from picking up the kids and we said, what are we going to do for dinner? And that's when I remember. we had Hello Fresh in the fridge. Hello Fresh is the number one meal kit in America, making home cooking easier with chef-crafted recipes

and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. In this fall, they're serving up even more to love. This isn't the Hello Fresh you remember, but it's bigger. It's double its menu. It's healthier. They've got a healthier menu, including 15 high-protein recipes each week,

and it's tastier. You can get steak and seafood recipes delivered every week for no extra cost. Discover new seasonal produce each week, from leeks to broccoli to Italian eggplant and more. As I said, we love HelloFresh because they curate meals that are not only easy to make, but they are delicious. The best way to cook just got better, go to hellofresh.com slash stoic 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life, one per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on first box. new subscribers only varies by plan.

That's hellofresh.com slash stoic 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. It's time for Black Friday. Dell Technology's biggest sale of the year. That's right. You'll find huge savings on select Dell PCs like the Dell 16 plus with the Intel Core Ultra processor. And with built-in advanced AI features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster. From smarter multitasking to extended battery life, these PCs will get the

busy work done so you can focus on what matters to you. Plus, you can earn Dell rewards and many other benefits like free shipping. Expert support, price match guarantee and flexible financing options. And they have the biggest deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC. Improving the way you work, play, and connect. Whether you just started your holiday shopping or you're finishing up, these PCs and accessories will make the perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at Dell.com slash deals and don't miss out. That's dell.com. Deals. Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Weirdly, I'd never been to Vermont before until September. I landed, I think, in Boston and I drove up to Burlington. It was lovely. Had a great run there. I went and I saw the world's tallest filing cabinet, which I will say, something was disappointing. I'm just saying, if you had to guess how tall the world's tallest filing cabinet was,

just a bunch of filing cabinets stacked together, I'd hope it'd be more than like 10. I think it was like eight, but I would have guessed it'd be like 30. And now my kids are bursting in. What are you doing, boy? Are you guys playing hide and seek? Okay, he's not in here. I will tell you if he hides in here.

Shut the door. I'm recording something, okay? Oh, you? Buddy, you didn't shut the door. Shut the door. So that's what I'm dealing with. I just picked the kids up from school, and they are running around before we go to Jiu-Jitsu. In any case, had a lovely time in Vermont, much colder there than in September than it is now in Texas.

I think it was like 85 today. What is this out to do with today's episode? I was doing a talk in Vermont to this group called Exit 5, which is a membership community place for B2B marketers to get together. It's a lovely chat. I didn't talk about stoicism so much as I talked about how I was able to take a, obscure school of ancient philosophy and build it into something, which was always lovely to talk about. I was talking about more or less the ideas in Perennial Cellar. In any case, afterwards, I got to answer some questions, a lot of which were about stoicism. So I'm going to bring you

that for today's Q&A. In related news, I'm going to be in Seattle on December 3rd, giving a talk much more about stoicism, but you can ask me questions about anything you want there in the Q&A or at the VIP. I think there's a few tickets left to that. And then I will be a talk. be in San Diego and Phoenix in February. You can grab tickets to all of those before they sell out at Daily Stoiclive.com. Thanks to Dave, the founder and CEO of Exit 5. He was a big David Stoke fan. He said he gifted it to many people, including friends and family, which is very cool to hear. And I appreciate him inviting me. Got another child interruption. What's up, buddy? Are you locking the door? That's smart. I will tell him I haven't seen you. So I'm going to get to

this game of hide and seek. In the meantime, I hope to see you in Seattle, Phoenix and San Diego. Diego, DailystokeLive.com. Enjoy this episode of the Daily Stoak podcast. I used to be a high school teacher, and I had a really big responsibility to school in the south side of Chicago to get kids believing themselves. I'm going to get emotional talking about this. I decided to crowdsource on donors choose a class from Senate obstacles away for them. Yeah. I cold email you.

You funded like 200 bucks today and then tweeted it and was funded in like three minutes. That's all that. I was. I'm just swinging down on. Okay. Well, here's something I've been thinking about. I want to keep it related to marketing, because otherwise I want to ask about conspiracy,

one of my favorite books. Okay. But Trust Me Online was the first book. I read yours. I still think it holds true quite a bit. Unfortunately, yeah. What do you see, the intersection between conspiracy that I have the conspiracy you posed, like,

what if we use this for good? Yeah. What about Trust me on? Is there parts of that that you still see we can use for good today in marketing? Yeah, so I wrote a book, my first book as I was saying, which came out in 2011, it's basically about sort of how the media system and marketing can be manipulated and how sort of the things that we find out about, like what's going on behind the current. Why do we hear about some things and not other things?

Basically my argument is sort of a knife fight for attention, attention being this scarce resource in this world, and that there are a lot of forces and a lot of sort of bad actors involved in that system. And that my argument was, like, you've got to figure out how this system works because the fact that you have a cool cause or even a great product is not sufficient to break through when you're up against these, you know, sort of better funded or better organized, you know, sort of groups and interests. So I think, you know, how do you actually break through?

What are you willing to do to break through? To me, that's kind of the lesson of that book. And I think we're watching, you know, too many people just presume that because their hearts in the right place or presume because, you know, most reasonable people would agree with what they're saying that that message is going to get out. And that's not how it works. It's much more complicated than that. And I do think you've got to figure out how the system works,

particularly if you have something that actually worth seeing and hearing about. And I think, you know, in a world of AI, it's only going to be more difficult just because there's, you know, endless amounts of slot that you're competing with. Hey, Ryan. Hi. Thanks for coming out. Yeah. After your thumb, ready, the first draft, I imagine you go through an editing process.

Sure. How do you know when the editing is done? How do you know what to stop? Yes. He's a writer, by the way. Okay. Yeah, in Perennial Cellar, I sort of split it. I feel like there's four phases.

There's sort of writing, and there's editing and refining and crafting, and then there's the marketing, and then there's kind of this other stuff we're talking about as far as platform, all the stuff that sort of comes about towards the end. I think the editing phase is probably the most important. in many ways. You know, the book that I have coming out in October, you know, I had to cut 20,000 words out of it.

And that was the hardest and most visible of the edits, but I just finished the audiobook, and I was, you know, much of the chagrin of my publisher even editing as I was doing, because now I'm having to read it out loud in a studio by myself, and there's just stuff that on the page seemed fun, But, you know, I just, oh, I said this word three times on the same page.

And when I was editing it in Microsoft Word, you know, nine months ago, those words weren't on the same page just because the layout's compressed and moved stuff around. So I think editing is this ongoing thing. And as I said, I just had this weird experience doing the 10-year anniversary. I'm going to do a 15-year anniversary of Trustman Online. There's still stuff I'm adding and changing. and changing as it goes. So it's not that it never stops, but I do think

in a world where I could edit the e-book tomorrow. If there's something I want to change, I'm going to keep changing it. But to me, you do your draft, as they say, like the first draft is just for you. And then once you finish, now you have to start to take a bunch of other considerations into consideration. Everything from what am I legally allowed to say here, to who am I really trying to get this?

the land to, with, and all of that is the, yeah, a painful but necessary part of the process. Right here. Look at your list of books right now, like, the one question comes to mind for me, is what is your ideation process? Like, how do you write such great stories that keep your audience engaged without being the one broken record? Yeah, look, I started as a research assistant. I was a research assistant for this writer named Robert Green, and his books are primarily

story-based. And I do think stories, parables, anecdotes, this is how we learn. This is what stays with us. So what I tend to always be looking for stories, and I have a whole method that I sort read, synthesize, record, process stories, and then as I'm writing a book, I'm sort of moving and plugging around. I share you my note card. I do all that. But I usually have like the idea for what I want to say, like the argument, and then what I'm looking for are stories that that illustrate that idea. So, you know, the writing rule is you always show, don't tell. And so I'm not saying, you know, here's a logical proof for why this is true. I'm saying, let me show you what this looks like in practice. Let me show you someone violating the idea or observing the

idea or, you know, proving it in some way. That's kind of how I think about it. But stories, not just, I think stories make for compelling reading, but then what I like about, the insert story basis, then it's very translatable to all these other mediums. So I might write a 5,000-word story in a book, and then that story can be condensed down into a 30-second TikTok, it can be a 30-minute YouTube video, it could be a five-minute section in an hour talk. And so the things are modular and I kind of move them around. I'm curious about your distribution when you talk about how much content you distribute and how that works in the team, but also the dad, curious about the motivation behind Daily Dad.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in the sort of page a day format, which I didn't really know that much about before I wrote the Day of Stoach. But I've gotten so much out of sort of having the surface, like one idea or one thing to think about each day. So, David Stoke came out in 2016, Daily Dad came out, I think, two years ago. It's just stories that sort of illustrate the lessons that I think we all want to embody as parents. And so, but I think about it as like, am I going to get better for doing the project?

That's one of my sort of thing. So the DailyDap book is also a day-to-day email that goes out every day, it's daily.com, and the process of like, hey, what's something to meditate on, and something to think about that, that's kind of how that is. And yeah, there's a team. I write all the stuff, but then people are just like, I don't do the Spanish translation of my books.

someone helps me translate that into, you know, okay, here's, as I said, here's the TikTok version of this, and here's the YouTube version of this, and the Instagram version of this, the tweet version of this. So how do we take this sort of core idea is what I'm saying, and then find ways to reach people in all the different mediums

that they're consuming content. And like me, when I want to learn about something, I read a book, that's my medium. But that's not the dominant cultural medium these days. And so I think I spend a lot of time trying to take what I do and make it work for wherever there's people. And then the idea is that sort of funnels back ultimately to the books, which is where I spend most of my effort. You kind of touch on it a

little bit on the distribution side, but to zoom in a little bit more on your process for sourcing ideas, like all of the place for books and conversations you're doing, whatever. And then your daily practice for maintaining that ability to do it for 50 plus years, daily cadence, being unbelievably prolific. What does that look? like when I should sit down to write or do the thing. Yeah, so I'm reading widely, and I tend to find the best stuff when I'm not looking for it. So I find stuff in novels.

I find stuff in weird history books. I'm just reading where my interests take me, but it's like I'm kind of using the confirmation bias to my advantage. Like, oh, that connects here. Oh, that's related to this. Oh, I was just thinking about something in this story that I'm reading, this three-sentence

anecdote and a history book happens to maybe illustrate that idea. Now I need to go dive deeper into that and find out, is it actually an illustration of what I'm talking about? It's a coincidence. And so, yeah, I kind of read widely. And then I'm just always doing it. I obviously have the advantage that's my job to read and find stories.

But I really love doing it. It's what I was doing when I had my marketing career, is that I love to read. I love history. I love learning out about stuff. and I try to find just stuff that I haven't heard of. So that sort of curiosity is driving you. And yeah, you never know what you're going to end up finding.

But you need to have a process. Like I think the reason I tend to read physical books instead of e-books and audiobooks, although I don't begrudge anyone that consumes in any medium they like, is that I don't want it to just go into some black hole somewhere. For me, it's the process of taking the notes and recording it and transferring it that allows me to develop the recall but I need to actually be able to use it at some time.

I don't think Evernote exists anymore. People would be like, I have that in an Evernote somewhere. And it's like, okay, but you don't actually have it. You know, so for me, it's that process of finding recording and then applying is really where it's about. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoak 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. 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 descriptions to make those ads go away.