The Daily Stoic - What The Wise Know—And Fools Ignore | 15 Stoic Lessons from the Birthplace of Stoicism

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

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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. It could be said that he was the most prolific writer of his time. He wrote hundreds of letters, dozens of essays and plays, volumes of natural history, and more. He shared his thoughts on the Roman

entitled elite, the doctrines of stoicism, the conquests of Alexander the Great. But you know what Seneca didn't write much about? What he thought about himself and his job at Nero's right hand. It's like that line from Taylor Swift, who I believe has a new album out today. Seneca would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look into the mirror. We should contrast that with Marcus Aurelius, who we see force himself to examine himself across meditations. What am I doing with my soul? He asks in book five. And then he says that he and that you need to interrogate yourself to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul do you have. A child's soul, an adolescence, a tyrant soul, the soul of a predator? Or it's

pray. What he was doing in this journal is self-awareness. Journaling is how we understand who we are and who we've been. It's how we discover who we hope to become, why we make the choices we make. It's how we stop being strangers to ourselves and get to what's underneath, to make sense of the complications and multitudes we contain. Yet so much of this wisdom is lost to us because we ourselves are lost, not to the world, but to ourselves. One must know oneself, the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, reminds us, even if it does not help in finding truth. At least it helps in running one's life. Nothing is more proper. Becoming self-aware takes work, but from Marcus Reelis to Montaigne and Joan Didion, it's all work that the wise do. They do it in their journals. They do it on their

long walks, they do it in their discussions. Because what the wise know and fools ignore is that the unexamined life is not much of a life, practically or otherwise. And I spent a lot of time talking about journaling in the new book because it is so essential. It is a practice that nearly all the Stoics thought essential. And it is what the second chapter in part two of wisdom. Here, let me read it to you real fast. Page 139. Write to think right. For a Trappist monk, Thomas Merton sure talked a lot, on the page, at least. And I talk about Thomas Merton, and then I transition to Joan Didion and Dwight Eisenhower. This is one of my favorite chapters in the whole book. Every book I write, Merton reflected, this is the last two sentences of the chapter, is a mirror of my own character

and conscience. We are writing to think right, to understand what we feel and know, and who we are. If you want to check out the new book, it would mean a lot to me. You can pre-order it right now. A bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses, including signed limited edition and numbered first editions. And you can have dinner with me at the painted porch. I'm really excited about it. A bunch of awesome stuff. Grab all that at daily stoke.com slash wisdom or pre-ordered wisdom takes work anywhere you listen or read your books. Thanks so much. We were just at a dinner with some friends, and they were talking about their sort of pre-game partying routine now that they're a little older.

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A lot of people travel to flee themselves. As Seneca points out, they travel to escape. They travel to get away from it all, although of course they find that they bring themselves with them. Me, I travel for the history. I want to see where things come from. I want to see the places that I've read about. I want to teach my children about those things. And I'm here in Ithaca right now. There's really no place better than Greece to see where it all comes together, where it all comes from, where it all intersects. And Greece is the birthplace of Stoic philosophy nearly 25 centuries ago.

And I want to talk about that in today's episode. what Greece can teach us about stoicism, what ancient Greece can teach us about life and the human condition, and what's taught me on this month that I've been here. How does something like this turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you? I don't know who crashed this boat in the Mediterranean. But 2,500 years ago, there was another sailor who loses his ship. His name is Zeno, and he actually found the philosophy known as Stoicism.

He washes up penniless in Athens. and he's introduced to philosophy, which changes his life and changes the world, and he would joke later that he made a great fortune when he suffered a shipwreck. His point was that it's not the things that happen to us that count. It's how we respond to those things. And we can turn these terrible things that happen to us into great things. If we choose to rebuild, if we choose to respond well, if we choose to grow and learn as a result of what's happened.

So that's how the worst thing that ever happened to someone, a shipwreck, turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened, not just to Zeno himself, but to all of humanity. Do you know the three inscriptions carved into the rock at the Temple of Apollo where the Oracle of Delphi sat for hundreds and hundreds of years? Number one, know thyself. Number two, nothing in excess. And number three, offer a guarantee and disaster threatens.

That's self-awareness, that's self-control, and then that's humility. These are three pieces of advice that have endured throughout the centuries. They were true in ancient Greece, they are true Titha. A man has sent hundreds of miles. It's a long journey all the way to Delphi to the Temple of Apollo where the Oracle sits. He asked this question, is there any man wiser than Socrates? The Oracle comes back and says, no, there is no one wiser than Socrates. But this is news to Socrates himself.

This is a surprise. He says, but I have no wisdom, big or small. What does this mean? And so he goes on a mission. He walks around Athens. He asks questions. He explores. He thinks, and then it comes to him. He realizes that this is, in fact, his wisdom. He says that I neither know nor think that I know. He realizes that he is the wisest man in Athens because he does not think he is the wisest man in Athens. Sort of like the third inscription here on the Oracle. If you offer a guarantee disaster threatens, it's basically a warning about humility. Also, there is the inscription about knowing myself. self-awareness, right? Ego is the enemy of knowledge. Humility is the way that we get smarter and better humility is, in fact, the key to wisdom. Socrates, in his asking of questions,

is learning and growing and getting better. He does not think that he has the answers. And that's how he gets closer and closer to possessing that wisdom that the Oracle thinks that he has. So one of the most famous images in all of ancient philosophy is play. Plato's allegory, the cave. Plato says we're trapped in a cave, like the one I just came out of, this is on Ithaca, this is Homer's school, says we're trapped in a cave. So we can only see what's going on right outside the cave, but that the sun is casting shadows into the cave. And so we have this warped sense of what the outside world is like. All we are seeing is shadows. We believe the shadows are real. Now what Plato says is what happens if we get

free from the cave, we get outside. And we see that we have been looking at shadows. Now we have truth, right? This is what the allegory of the cave is about. Plato says, we are then obligated to go back into the cave and explain to the people what's actually happening. If you possess truth, if you possess enlightenment, you must go back into the cave. This is actually similar to Buddha. Buddha achieves enlightenment and then he wants to just experience the happiness of this enlightenment, but he wrestles with whether he is obligated to teach, whether he's obligated to instruct, whether he's obligated to help other people achieve enlightenment. I think this is the stupidity of Ayn Rand's philosophy, that like all the rich, successful people get tired of

the parasites and the bloodsuckers and the stupid people dragging them down and they create some utopia somewhere else. Galtz, Gulch, I believe it's called. No, the allegory of the cave obligates us to come back, right, to bring truth back to people who don't know it. That is the fundamental truth and obligation of philosophy and enlightenment. It's why Lado's Cave is one of the most powerful stories in all of ancient philosophy. A philosopher once went and visited with the Spartans and had their famous Spartan ghoul. And as he's picking at this horrendous food, he says, you know what, I think I get it. I think I get why you guys are so brave and selfless on the battlefield.

It's because of this, meaning the food was so horrible that they'd rather die than have to come back to Sparta and eat it. I think the truth of that insight is that discipline, self-discipline, sacrifice makes us capable of of other forms of sacrifice and self-discipline in the future. When you regularly subject yourself to difficult things, whether we're talking cold showers or long workouts or sleep it on the ground as Mark Srealis did, it makes you capable of other future forms of self-discipline and sacrifice.

It starts to make a little bit more sense. There is a consistency to it. You cultivate a kind of self-discipline and indifference to the creature comforts so that when you're asked to give them up, It's not much of a calculation for you. You cultivate a kind of fortitude, an ability to shrug off what other people can't even comprehend.

I think this is why Xerxes is so surprised. I'm here at Thermophilie when the Spartans repeatedly turned down his enormous bribes. They would actually rather die than betray their values. I think they also developed from their sort of hard scrabble, self-disciplined existence, again, in indifference. the independence that the Stoics were trying to cultivate. What's always been interesting to me about the Greeks,

for all the misogyny in the sexism, for all the rape and the terrible things they do to women, they have a remarkable amount of female heroes, not just in their gods, but in their stories. Of course, Odysseus is the hero of the Odyssey, but I think one of the most cunning and determined and resilient characters is Penelope. Penelope's trick where she is weaving her shroud every day, unweaving it at night. That is a trick we might hear of from Odysseus himself.

And while she is not traveling from island to island battling monster after monster, she is fighting to preserve her home, fighting to preserve her family, fighting to protect her dignity and her freedom to choose. And then, of course, the other hero of the Odyssey is Athena, the goddess. And while Odysseus has no trouble tricking polyphemus, he has much more trouble with Calypso and Circe and the sea nymphs and the sirens. So I guess my point is that, sure, it's mostly a male story. Sure, it's mostly male heroes. But in some ways, the most heroic characters are the women of the story.

And I think we see this in Stoicism. Of course, we celebrate Seneca and Marksurelius, Musonius Rufus, but we don't hear so much about the people behind the scenes. We don't hear about the people who went into exile with them, who bravely faced death with them, who had to endure for long absences, who had to rule while their husbands were away, who had to hold down the fort, who had to bury countless children, who had to put up with indignity and disrespect and anonymity on top of everything else. So sometimes when I think about who the real Stoics were, I gravitate towards the ones who don't get so much credit, who don't get so much attention because there is a real and inspiring and quiet stoicism to that.

How many centuries ago was it we don't know? Did it really happen? We don't know. But what matters is what the story means and what it has meant for least 2,500 years. So a young Hercules is in the hills of Greece and it comes to the crossroads, right? A road diverges in the wood. Which path will he take? We take the easy way or the hard way. Will he take the path of virtue or a vice? Will he delay gratification or will he indulge in his lower impulses? This is the choice of Hercules, a famous story we get from Socrates. It's also the story that Zeno washing up in Athens in this city in the 4th century BC, penniless in the Athenian agora, hears he hears a man reading this story from Socrates, the choice of Hercules. And now Zeno is at his own crossroads. Will he rebuild his

Who will he become? What path will he follow? And this is the same choice that we all face in our own life, not just in big moments, but in little moments. What choice will we take? Who will we be? Will we go the easy way or the hard way? Will we take the new path or the old path? Virtue or vice? That's the question. That's why John Adams wanted the choice of Hercules, this story of Hercules, to be on the seal of the United States, not whether something was legal, but whether it was right. This is the same choice. It's always the same choice. That's what the story is about. That's why it doesn't matter if it's true or not. What will you choose? You've come to a fork in the road. Which direction will you go? Funny story about Socrates that not a lot of people know.

Okay, so you know, Socrates is brought up on false charges of corrupting the youth. He's thrown in a prison like this. They claim it's this one in Athens, but it's not actually here. He's brought up on these charges, but he's given one small token mercy. He is allowed to make an argument about what punishment he thinks that he's deserved. Now, only a very small majority of the 500 jurors vote to convict Socrates. But after Socrates goes up and gives his speech, where instead of saying he should be let off lightly or throws himself upon the mercy of the court or even argues for a small fine, what Socrates does

is he says, actually, I should be rewarded. I should be given a pension. And in ancient Athens, the pension was reserved for like the greatest of Olympians and athletes. And so this speech is so jarring and unpleasant that actually a higher percentage of the jurors vote to sentence him to death than voted on his guilt. Basically, after Socrates goes up and makes his case, he's so unlikable that people who think he's innocent still think he should be sentenced to death. So Socrates is, of course, incredibly wise, but he's also really bad at reading the room, like as bad as you could possibly read a room. Imagine a room that partly thinks you're

innocent thinks you should be killed anyway. There's a line from a British historian who says, you know, the more I read about Socrates, the more I understand why they killed him. Basically, for all of Socrates's insights and wisdom, he just, he doesn't get how he comes off. Like, he calls himself the gadfly of Athens. But people fucking hate flies, right? I think this is actually what makes someone like Benjamin Franklin so interesting. Franklin is a genius. Also brings wisdom down from the heavens. Yet he's very likable. like him. He doesn't have that many enemies. Socrates doesn't manage to get away with it. He rubs people the wrong way. He doesn't understand how he comes off. The Socratic method gets to

truth. But Socrates seems to miss how aggravating it is, how unpleasant it is for people to be on the other side of said method. And so part of wisdom has to be this. Social intelligence, the ability to understand how we're coming off, empathy to understand what's happening in the person on the other side of the exchange with us. And Socrates is huge miss here. It's not just bad for him. It's bad for the world, right? Because people are less likely to hear what he, what he has to say. And in this case, it puts an end to what he has to say. So wisdom, I talk about this in the wisdom book. Wisdom is also the ability to read a room, to get your message across, to not make unnecessary enemies. And Socrates lacks that. And it is a fatal flaw in an otherwise

magnificent man. We get the past totally wrong. We think of ancient Greece and ancient Rome as this one thing, as this period of time. But in fact, it was countless periods of time. When Marcus Aurelius comes to Stoicism, it's already an ancient philosophy. It was an ancient philosophy to the ancient. It's 500 years old by the time Marks Reelis gets to it. As remote and old to him as Shakespeare is to you or I. Marksuelis comes to Greece to see the ruins, to see the place where it happened a long, long time ago. He is turning to the past. This is civilization after civilization after civilization, generation after generation, generation. But now we can press it all into this one period,

as if those people, each one of them, wasn't living in the newest time that had ever existed. The past is happening now, always. We are living in the past. Yesterday is the past. We are living through history always and we always have the ability to make these choices we forget that but the idea that stoicism has been an ancient tradition even to the ancients is my favorite thing to think about Seneca said that the whole world was a temple of the gods this is mount olympus so it's literally true here but the most beautiful writing from the stoics comes when they're rhapsodizing about nature and it's not always beautiful stuff like waterfalls. Marksruis talks about the flex of foam on a boar's mouth. He talks about the brow of the lion. He talks about the way that olives fall right from the trees.

He talks about grain bending low under his own weight. He talks even about human beings and the things they do. He talks about processions and weddings. He talks about people arguing over money. He talks about looking at the world from above, from the Acropolis, from a mountain, from a second story window, the idea is that the world is surreal and incredible and beautiful, and if you have the right view on it, if you look at it right, it all becomes a kind of temple, kind of church, and you find something wholly and special and wonderful to look at, but you need to cultivate this. This is the eye of the poet. It's why we read literature. It's why we read philosophy. It's why we read natural. It gives us a better lens at looking at the world

and understanding a world that so often can feel dark and ugly, we find the beauty and the loveliness in it by remembering that this whole place is a temple. This whole thing is a poem. This whole thing is a painting. And if we look and see it that way, it'll feel that way too. Odysseus is not a hero. He is a man to be pitied. He is tragic and flawed. His 20-year journey home, we find it inspiring, but we miss what he does almost the second he gets home. Finally makes it back to Ithaca. He makes it here. And what does he do? He almost immediately thereafter leaves to go on a series of raids to replenish his coffers. Odysseus is not a tragic figure because he is cursed by the gods.

Odysseus is a tragic figure because he has cursed himself. He is endlessly restless. He can never, ever, ever be seen. still. Actually, when you read the Tennyson poem, Ulysses, you get a sense of this. He says, I cannot rest from travel. The whole poem is about him sort of handing the reins over to his son, Telemachus, because he's going to travel again. How dull it is to pause, he says, to make an end, to rest unburnished, not to shine in use. He is a machine. He is human doing, not human being right in the poem he says you know to my son who I leave this kingdom to you're better than me you're wiser than me he he envies his son because his son can be still his son can be king

not a wanderer he says you know he works his works I work mine and he's looking down at the port the port like this one and he's aching again to leave one version of the story has him subsequently killing his other son in a distant island, far from Ithaca. And so when you read that famous line from Tennyson, the one the poem ends with, he says, made weak by time and fate, it's strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield, you realize, again, it's not heroic. It is tragic. He is cursed. And the Stoics pitied these kinds of people, Seneca, most of all. He talked about how many people travel, not unlike the man who is flipping his pillow over and over again,

trying to find the cool side as he tosses and turns and is unable to sleep. The Stoics understood that many people, when they travel, are traveling to flee themselves. You know, too many of us in our travels are running from something. Too many of us in our ambition are hoping that on the other side of a hill, on the other side of some accomplishment,

will finally feel good, will finally feel sated. But we won't. We are subjecting ourselves to the same torture that Odysseus subjected himself to. It's worse than what the gods can inflict on us. He says to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die. What a terrible fate.

It makes the whole journey, in a sense, a little pointless. What was it all for? Why did he want to get home so badly if just to leave again? When Marcus really says that life is warfare and a journey far from home, he is describing, again, the tragic nature of his fate as the Emperor, and that is the cautionary tale of the Odyssey, something we might miss in the first readings, but as we go over it over and over again,

we start to see that, yeah, we wouldn't want to trade places with Odysseus. In fact, we don't want to be anything like him. What was in it for them? This is where the 300 Spartans died. 300 Spartans went up against a million Persian troops. They must have known it was a one-way mission. They must have known they would never see their family or Sparta again. And yet they stood here and fought anyway, despite not just repeated calls to surrender, but a carrot as well as a stick.

Xerxes offers Leonidas the opportunity to rule all of Greece. Other Greek city states had taken enormous bribes to switch sides with the Persians. Leonidas says, if you knew anything about the noble things in life, you wouldn't be coveting the possessions of others. He says, I would rather die than rule all of Greece as a betrayer of my people. And it is this idea, standing for ideals, not having a price. This is often shocking to transactional people. There's a story about Donald Trump standing out in Arlington Cemetery and asking that very question I started with, what was in it for them?

I don't get it, he says. And I take him at his word, he doesn't fucking get it. The idea of giving yourself for something is anathema to a Xerxes, to a Zerxes, to a transactional person to a soulless person. But for people who believe in something, who have standards, who have ideals, who are committed to something larger than themselves, I don't think that makes it any easier, but it does make it make sense. And we want to celebrate, we want to understand, we want to try to put ourselves in the minds of those people, those people that won the Medal of Honor posthumously, those 300 Spartans that lie here obedient to their laws, as the monument

says, who gave the full measure of devotion, as Lincoln said. Those are the finest of us. Those are the people that show us that it's possible to put aside self-preservation or petty self-interest and actually do something great and meaningful to transcend the self, to reach however briefly this higher plane. And even if you're not around to enjoy it, all of us are around to enjoy the bounty of that sacrifice. All of Western civilization hinges on that selflessness from Leonidas and those Spartans, from the sacrifice, from the devotion of those great men, and of course, their families who supported them too. The violence at the end of the Odyssey never sat super well with me.

Odysseus gets home, he finds the suitors have overrun his house. He proves that he's Odysseus, and then what does he do? He hides all the weapons, and then he and his son, Telemachus, kill them. He kills not just the hundreds of suitors, but all the servants who cavorted, with them, which, if you think about it, was almost certainly against their consent. But it is shockingly violent and bloody and vicious. And I think fundamentally un-stoic. And we know this because a similar thing happens to Marcus Ruiz.

He is rumored to be dead. Marcus has this chronic health condition. So rumors spread that the emperor has died. And his most trusted general, Avidius cast his names of self-emperor, which puts Marcus' children and his wife in danger. It puts the future of the empire in danger. But like Odysseus, he is not actually dead, and he has to put down this threat. I tell the story in The Obstacles, so, wait, we know how a Stoic would respond to this.

And it's not with violence. Marcus does have to deal with it, but he tells his men that he wants to use this as an opportunity to teach future generations that there's a right way to deal even with civil wars. And Cassius is assassinated. We're actually told this happens over Marcus's objections, that he weeps when he's brought the head of his enemy because he has been deprived of the chance of granting him clemency. And then we're told that Marcus writes a letter to the Roman Senate and says that he wants everyone involved in this pardon. He says, do not stain my reign in their blood. He says, may it never happen.

There's this quote in meditations about how the best revenge is to not be like that. And we find that Odysseus, over the course of his travels and then his arrival home, he has hardened. He has lost a part of himself. He has become vicious. He has become brutal. He has become cruel. He's become desensitized. And that's how, like that, he's able to order the killing of dozens and dozens of people. He stains his palace in blood. He stains his rain in blood, but almost certainly destroying a generation of leading men, however dishonest and entitled they may have been, Ithaca can't afford to lose this whole generation of people either. And so I've always thought of that scene. How could Odysseus have handled it

differently? Obviously, you can't let people walk all over you. People have to be held accountable for their excesses and their abuses. And in his case, for the enormous expenses they levied on the kingdom. But there was probably some punishment between letting them all go, between letting them walk all over you with impunity and murdering them in what is effectively cold blood. And this middle ground brings to mind all sorts of moral and ethical questions that, again, I think the purpose of the Odyssey is for us to think about. How would we handle it if we were in such a situation? How do we handle our own much more minor versions of these situations?

That's what the Odyssey wants us to think about. And that's what Marcus Aurelis himself is having to think about in real life, not in fiction, but in real life. I just did something insane. I ran from marathon to Athens. That is the original course of the marathon. Why do people do stuff like that? Why did I do it? What do I get out of it?

I mean, besides blisters and I guess I burn some calories. I mean, what you get when you do hard things, not the sense, but the real knowledge that you are a person who can do hard things. You have proved it to yourself. This is what Seneca was talking about when he said that he appears. people haven't been through adversity or difficulty because they don't know what they're capable of. They don't know how they would handle something beyond their limits, beyond their capacities. I know that. I know that for other reasons, but I proved it to myself today. And that's

why it's good to push yourself to try a hike that you've never done before, to try a race that you've never done before, to try to lift an amount of weight, slowly, intelligently, of course, that you've never lifted before, to take on a project or a responsibility that you've never done. done before kids are one of those things like how do you know you can do something until you have done really hard things or how do you know that you can do hard things until and unless you have done hard things so what you get from any difficult physical activity is that a sense no proof that you're a person who does hard things that you are a person who can do hard things and that's something special i'm here on the

hill across from the Acropolis. That's it, right there. That's the Parthenon. But this is kind of crazy. I'm looking here on this rock, if you can see. But someone carved, someone carved their name in here in 1933, so roughly 100 years ago. And you go, that's a fucking instant compared to that.

Compared to that, compared to how long people have been coming here. And as the Stokes would say, being born, and dying and arguing over things and trying to build things, trying to sleep with someone, Marcus Reelis says in meditations, lusting over power, hoping that they'll be remembered.

I mean, who remembers that guy who even knows what that's for? Who knows the names of thousands and thousands of people who not just built that, but then worked on its repairs over the years or conquered this city? The Stoics just try to take these moments in time, these little reminders of the passage of time

and the effect it has on obscuring and removing and rendering insignificant each and every one of us. And so what's left? If Mark Sr. says, Alexander the Great and his mule driver, they both die. They're both buried in the same ground. What's left? What's left is the present moment. What's left is what kind of person you are. The significance of the accomplishments,

the size of the tomb, that's not what really is. really matters. What matters is how you treated your children. What matters is, did you soak in a beautiful morning? What matters is, were you kind, were you decent? Did you live the years that you had? Did you make the most of it while you could? In the end, that's, that's what matters. That's what counts. That's the only thing that's really significant. Every day, I send out one Stoic-inspired email to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. If you want more Stoic wisdom in your inbox, you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. It's totally free and unsubscribe at any time. We'd love to have you. Dailystoic.com slash email. 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

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