For centuries, all sorts of people—generals and politicians, athletes and coaches, writers and leaders—have looked to the teachings of Stoicism to help guide their lives. Each day, author and speaker Ryan Holiday brings you a new lesson about life, inspired by the thoughts and writings of great Stoic thinkers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca the Younger. Daily Stoic Podcast also features Q+As with listeners and interviews with notable figures from sports, academia, politics, and more. Learn more at DailyStoic.com.New episodes come out every day for free. Listen 1-week early on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday and to all episodes ad-free, with Wondery+ or Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.
2272 episodes transcribedThis was a big argument amongst the early Stoics: What was necessary for the good life? What was actually important to the wise man? They cam...
Here’s a question to ask yourself about your work and your life: Do you create value for society or do you extract it? Are you a giver or a t...
It must be said that the Stoics were cowardly when it came to slavery. Marcus Aurelius, who believed that we were all part of a common whole,...
It was not lost even on the Stoics that some parts of this philosophy come more naturally to some people than others. Some folks just seem ch...
In her beautiful book about the Los Angeles Public Library fire, Susan Orlean captures the magic of what libraries can offer. She describes w...
It’s pretty incredible to think that Hadrian was able to see the potential in Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian somehow, even though Marcus was just a...
Marcus Aurelius, on nearly a dozen occasions in Meditations, speaks of reaching or achieving “stillness.” Most beautifully, he writes of tryi...
Marcus Aurelius was an incredibly lucky man. He was born a Roman and he was born a man in a time where to be anything other than a man or a R...
It’s late summer now and you might be thinking it’s time to squeeze in a last minute vacation. Or maybe you’ve been looking forward to a long...
These are times of increasing political extremism. They are also times of corruption and rising inequality. Enormous, alarming trends are swe...
In his new book, Comedy Sex God (as well as on his wonderful podcast and on his HBO show) the comedian Pete Holmes talks about the aftermath...
The great C.S Lewis observed that we all find forgiveness to be a lovely idea...right up until we have someone to forgive. It’s true. Forgive...
The busier we get, the more we work, even the more that we learn and read, the further we tend to drift from our center. We get in a rhythm....
“If it is not right, do not do it,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “if it is not true, do not say it.” But it’s worth pointing out that as a philosop...
One way to look at an iconic or important landmark like the White House is with reverence. This is the seat of a global power. This is where...
In several of Seneca’s letters he speaks about the power of bloodletting as a medical practice. In one, he actually remarks—with some superio...
There are different kinds of ambition. There was, on one end of the spectrum, the ambition of someone like Abraham Lincoln. This was the ambi...
There is a balance to Stoicism between awareness and anxiety. The Stoics want you to be prepared for an uncertain—and oftentimes dangerous—fu...
What is wealth? It’s having plenty, right? The variables in the equation are pretty simple. What you have, what you’ve got coming in, and wha...
There is a morbid theme running through the music of Johnny Cash. His deep, haunting voice is rarely far from a lyric about death or murder o...
