The Daily Stoic - This Will Make You Stupid | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

It doesn’t matter how smart you are. In the moment, if you can’t control your emotions, you will be stupid.🪙 Carry The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion as a reminder to pause. A pause creates space. A pause creates clarity. A pause can change everything. | Grab The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion at dailystoic.com/pause👉 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 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. smart you are, it doesn't matter where you studied, it doesn't matter how much you have accomplished. In the moment, if you can't control your emotions, you will be stupid. Your excitement will blind

you to obvious problems. Your anxiety will distract and consume you. Your lust and envy will make you rash and reckless. Your anger? This is one of the passions that the Stilocks were most worried about because anger makes you dangerous. People think that the Stoics were emotionless, but as we've said before, this is quite wrong. The Stoics were human, so they had emotions. They just also tried to layer a certain self-awareness, wisdom on top of these emotions. As we emblazoned on our popular Daily Stoic medallion, the Stoics knew that they needed pausea et reflecta to pause and reflect. You have the emotion, and then you have to ask yourself, is this helpful? You have the impulse, and then you have to ask yourself, is this really the best idea?

And if you don't do this, you will get in trouble. You will make needless mistakes. You will make yourself stupid. And the idea of the pause and reflect medallion, I have one here in my pocket right now, is that it's designed to be meaningful and durable. When you feel that heat in your chest or those harsh words forming on your tongue, you touch you run your fingers over it, it can help you pause and reflect. Before you do something, you might regret. The weight in the palm of your hand is a physical reminder of the weight

of your reactions. The front side says delay is the remedy. A nod to Seneca's famous line that the greatest remedy for anger is delay. And then it's encircled with all 24 letters of the alphabet inspired from that line that the Stoic Athena Dora's told the emperor. He said, whenever you find yourself getting angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything until you've repeated the 24 letters of the alphabet to yourself. And then the front side is a mirror, right? Because again, as Seneca said, we want to catch ourselves in the mirror and see how silly and ridiculous or ugly we look when we're getting ourselves upset. So we don't do anything stupid. And if you want one, you can head over to daily stoic.com slash pause right now to grab it,

and I will link to it in today's show notes. Look, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of Hello Fresh, right? They're the number one meal kit in America. They make home cooking easier with chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. This fall, they're serving up even more to love. It's not the Hello Fresh you remember. It's even better. Hello Fresh is bigger.

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That's hellofresh.com, Stoic 10Fm, to get 10.m. to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. Well, it's almost here. Christmas is just a couple of days away, and maybe you're scrambling. You're like, what should I get my dad? I should get my mom. I've got to get something to my sister.

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For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting aura frames. dot com to get $35 off or his best-selling carver matte frames, named number one by wirecutter by using promo code stoic at checkout. That's a-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code stoic. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell-out fast, or order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, on Thursdays, we do Q&As. This is an interesting episode

because it almost didn't happen. So every once in a while, I'll get a media request like when I come on this radio show or this TV show. And back in mid-November, Boris Sanchez and CNN reached out to ask if I would come on and just sort of talk about some of the themes in the wisdom book. And I said, sure, I would love to. I didn't have to go to New York or go anywhere. I could just do it from the Daily Stoic studio. So as I went on, I think I was supposed to go on at 2.30, and I got in there, you know, they report it at 210 or whatever, and they do the sound check and all this, and they go, okay, slight problem. The president is giving a talk live, and we have no idea how long it's going to go. So there's a couple

segments before you, but basically it was like sitting in traffic, right? We're going to have to wait for him to finish, and then this and then this, you know, like when you're at the airport and there's like five other planes in front of you. So I had to sit there and watch the news for a while, And then we had a lovely little talk about some of the themes from the Wisdom book. And I thought I would bring that to you now. I hope you like it. Boris Sanchez has been a wonderful supporter of the book. He's great at what he does.

I texted him a while ago. I won't put him on the spot. But one of the guests had sort of really gone at him. And it was interesting. I was saying I was just admiring his self-control and poise on live television. so I tried to be patient and not get anxious or nervous as I did this thing. Being on live television is quite stressful. I'll let you decide how I did, and hopefully answering some of these questions might be of interest to you.

Thanks to folks at CNN, and talk to you tomorrow. Tucker Carlson and his friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have criticized Fuentes and Carlson saying that this kind of dialogue has no place in civil society. President Trump, though, last night, shared a different view. We've had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can't tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes,

I don't know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let them, you know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide. Let's discuss this and more with Ryan Holliday. He's the author of the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, his latest on Stoer philosophy. Ryan, thank you so much, as always, for joining us. Given that we've talked about the dangers of suppressing certain ideas before,

I wonder what your take is on this. If the president has a point that in a free society, you can't restrict who can be interviewed or the ideas that we find heinous, do you think, though, that platforming and normalizing hatred and bigotry crosses the line in this regard? Well, there's a line in the legal community that everyone's entitled to a lawyer, but that doesn't have to be you. So in the abstract, sure, free speech is great. We should hear divergent opinions. And then you as the person who has a podcast, who has a platform, who has influence, you know,

you should sit down and go, hey, do I want a platform? Do I want to sit across from a rabid anti-Semite and neo-Nazi? And I think that's the interesting thing about where we are. now. These aren't abstract or theoretical debates about free speech. These are, what are you doing with your platform and your audience? Who are you endorsing co-signing by putting them in front of millions of people? And I just think with power, with influence comes responsibility. And we're dealing with the consequences of a society where that seemingly basic premise is not shared by everyone. To that point, I wanted to ask you about the idea of working toward wisdom in an era where truth itself is elusive, not only because we're drowning in information and disinformation, bombarded by propaganda and brain rot, but also because of the notion, this post-structuralist, postmodern idea that truth is ultimately subjective and largely determined by authority, by those in power.

So if wisdom takes work and we're seeking it, how do you know what's true? Yeah, I think we have a recency bias in most of our information diet. Obviously, we're talking here on television. You guys break all sorts of important news. But I think to be able to make sense of what's happening of the present moment, you have to root your understanding, you have to root your perspective in history and truth. I think it was Truman who said the only thing new in the world is history that you don't yet know. And so I think too many people are consuming the latest speculation on social media, the latest breaking headlines, but they struggle to make sense of it to separate, you know, speculation from truth, information from misinformation or disinformation because they don't have the historical basis where they don't understand even, you know, sort of human nature, human psychology, or even just how the government works.

And so I think it is imperative that we all, you know, try to remain informed. I just would urge people to remember that getting it as it happens is not always the best way to do it. And it's hard to do it if you haven't based it on this sort of historical perspective. That's a really important point. It's also interesting because Stoic philosophy also encourages us to take control of our perceptions, to own that our mindset is a choice and that it shapes how we experience the world around us. You often quote Seneca, you know I'm a fan,

we die events with our own color. So then where do you draw the line between that sort of cognitive training, that reframing, and then delusion or denial or delving into ideas that may feel good but are harmful, not only to yourself, but to society? Yeah, at the core of Stoic philosophy is this idea that events are,

objective and our opinions about them or not. Our responses about them is the important thing. And so I think I would urge people, especially if you find yourself getting triggered, getting upset, despairing, getting ecstatic about what you're hearing on the news to ask yourself, hey, is this actually the right response? You know, how can I step? Do I have to have an opinion about this? So philosophy is the idea that you have the initial reaction, the initial emotion, and then you put that opinion, that reaction to the test. And you ask yourself, is this healthy? Is this constructive?

Is this based on anything real? The Stoics said that a great philosopher could tell the way a money changer by banging a coin on the table can hear if it's real or counterfeit. And I think we have to cultivate this ability, especially in not just in a world of a lot of information, but a world of AI and deepfakes. you know, the ability to suss out, hey, is this real? Is this true or not? And is my reaction? Is that what they were trying to provoke in me? These are all really important skills. Discipline, really, that we have to cultivate if we want to have wisdom and truth. The book is Wisdom Takes Work. It is worth your time. Ryan Holiday. We always appreciate yours. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. for listening to the Daily Stoic 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 of 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. 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

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