Can you say a waterfall is sublime? Or are you just describing your feelings?

C.S. Lewis thought this question mattered more than it looks. In the first chapter of The Abolition of Man, he argues that modern education smuggles in a dangerous idea: that value judgments are just reports of emotion. Nothing to debate. Nothing to get right or wrong.

Caleb and Michael work through Lewis’s argument in this first episode of a series on the book. They cover his case for objective value, what he calls the Tao, and his warning about producing “men without chests” — people with sharp intellects, strong appetites, and nothing in between.

(00:00) Introduction: C.S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man

(06:30) The Green Book and the Waterfall

(10:10) Emotivism, Expressivism, and Subjectivism

(13:40) The Fact vs Opinion Distinction

(19:00) Education as Cultivating the Right Feelings

(25:40) The Way, the Tao

(28:50) The Head, the Belly, and the Chest

(34:50) Dulce et Decorum Est

(43:20) Are Aesthetic Judgments Objective?

(47:50) Men Without Chests

(52:00) Takeaways

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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

In this episode, Caleb talks with Massimo Pigliucci about his new book, How to Be a Happy Skeptic, and the thinker at its center: Cicero. They trace skepticism from Pyrrho’s radical doubt to the Academics, who found a better path. You don’t need certainty. You need to know how sure to be, then act (or not).

The Stoics and skeptics argued for decades over whether truth leaves a mark you can trust. What happens when you admit you might be wrong?

Read How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic.

(03:00) Pyrrhonism: suspend judgment, find peace

(06:50) The Academics go back to Socrates

(08:40) Fallibilism: senses and reason both fail

(10:20) Carneades and the degrees of probability

(18:00) Skeptics versus Stoics: the cataleptic impression

(22:20) Certainty, polarization, and the case for doubt

(25:30) Cicero, friend and critic of the Stoics

(27:00) On Divination: the first book against pseudoscience

(31:40) On Ends and the gift of aporia

(37:00) Virtue, friendship, and the good life

(41:50) Seneca and skeptical Stoicism

(44:50) Cicero’s life and death

(55:40) Being useful to others

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Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

People love to pair Stoicism and Buddhism. Both blame suffering on desire. Both teach a kind of meditation. Both are about 2,500 years old. So how similar are they, really?

Michael and Caleb run a Buddhism 101 for Stoics. They start with the Buddha: a prince who had everything, saw old age, sickness, and death for the first time, and walked away from the palace to figure out why we suffer. From there it’s the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the Middle Way.

(00:00) Introduction

(06:28) The Buddha’s Founding Parable

(14:24) The Four Noble Truths

(19:59) The Middle Way and the Eightfold Path

(31:30) The Evolutionary Case for Buddhism

(40:09) Where Stoicism and Buddhism Overlap

(48:02) Where They Split Apart

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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

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What makes some people excellent at their craft and others just average? Michael walks through a classic 1989 sociology paper on Olympic swimmers and pulls out three lessons that apply directly to Stoic practice.

The answer is not what most people expect. It is not extreme effort. It is not raw talent. Excellence turns out to be mundane. It is how you do the boring things, every day, for a long time. And when the pressure is on, excellence is just doing those boring things well one more time.

(00:00) Introduction: What makes someone excellent?

(02:50) Lesson One: Excellence requires qualitative differentiation

(06:40) Separate worlds: how levels differ in kind, not amount

(07:40) Lesson Two: Talent does not lead to excellence

(09:40) Talent is indistinguishable from its effects

(11:00) Talent as a floor, not a ceiling

(14:20) Lesson Three: Excellence is mundane

(14:30) Mary Meagher: show up on time, nail the turns

(17:40) Long-term motivation is boring

(18:30) Excellence is doing the boring stuff under pressure

(20:40) How refusing the mundane caps your ceiling

(23:10) Summary of the three lessons

(25:50) Takeaways for Stoic practice: making good use of impressions

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

What’s the core of Stoicism worth keeping? And where does it fall short?

Caleb shares his life philosophy in this companion to Michael’s earlier episode. He builds the case for Stoicism from the ground up, then turns it on itself. If happiness has to be up to us, what does that say about the rest of life? And what do you do with the parts of human experience that don’t fit neatly into propositions?

The thread running through it all is humility. Stoicism gives you a strong frame. It also asks you to admit what you don’t know.

(00:00) Introduction

(03:30) The Core Argument: Happiness Must Be Up to Us

(13:30) Character and How We Think

(15:30) Human Nature: Rationality and Sociability

(25:30) Objection One: Life Is Tragic

(31:30) Objection Two: Reason Doesn’t Capture Everything

(41:00) Objection Three: Non-Cognitive Knowledge

(48:50) Summing Up

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Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

Caleb shares reflections from a recent pilgrimage to Athens. He walks through the ruins of the Stoa Poikile, the painted porch where Stoicism was born, and finds the irony of a philosophy of impermanence enduring in stone fragments thousands of years later. He visits the Acropolis, the Lyceum where Aristotle taught, and thinks about what makes Athens worth visiting today.

(00:00) Visiting the Stoa Poikile and the Athenian Agora

(05:00) The Acropolis, the Lyceum, and Plato’s Academy

(06:30) Edward Lear and Athens as an imaginary city

(08:40) Athens as a platonic form

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

Your mind should be quietly vibrating. Not tense, not slack, not leaning in any direction. That’s Musashi’s opening instruction in the Water Book and it sounds a lot like what the Stoics were after.

Caleb and Michael continue their series on Musashi’s Book of Five Rings with the second book: Water. Where Book One laid out general strategy, this one gets into the craft itself: swordsmanship as a lens for how to carry yourself, think clearly, and stay locked onto what actually matters.

(00:00) Introduction to the Water Book

(03:40) Mindset: Quietly Vibrating, Not Leaning

(07:50) Don’t Let Your Body Control Your Mind

(10:50) Spirit vs. Body Size

(13:00) Posture as Evidence of a Strong Mind

(18:00) Make Your Everyday Stance Your Strategic Stance

(21:50) Purpose Over Technique: Cut the Opponent Down

(25:10) Bruce Lee, the UFC, and Rejecting Styles

(28:00) Telos: The Ancient Word for “Keep Your Eye on the Ball”

(31:30) Positions That Exist and Don’t Exist

(35:00) Precepts as Boats: When to Let Go of Rules

(38:30) Rhythm in Fighting, Conversation, and Life

(42:00) Offensive and Defensive Lessons on Disruption

(44:50) Forge Yourself with a Thousand Days of Training

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

Some guy goes on a podcast and argues against introspection.

Caleb pushes back.

This solo episode uses the viral debate as a launching pad for what the Stoics actually think about self-examination.

Caleb draws a sharp line between the kind of introspection the critics hate — guilt, rumination, dwelling on the past — and the kind Marcus Aurelius practiced: forward-looking, demanding, and grounded in a clear standard of how to live.

(00:00) The VC’s argument against introspection

(03:00) Marcus Aurelius as counterexample

(05:00) What Stoic introspection is

(08:30) Self-criticism: proleptic, not punishing

(13:30) Knowing yourself: the Delphic tradition

(18:00) Why Stoic introspection isn’t rumination

(20:30) The risks: diminishing returns and the hall of mirrors

(23:30) How much introspection is enough

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

Michael picks up the New Testament for the first time and does something unusual: he treats Jesus not as a religious figure, but as a philosopher. A contemporary of the Stoics and Epicureans, teaching in the same era, competing for the same minds. The results are surprising.

Some of Jesus’ core teachings land hard from a Stoic lens. Vice lives in desire, not action. The cowardly adulterer is worse than the bold one — he has two vices instead of one. Virtue demands the right reason, not just the right deed. Film your charity for Instagram and you’ve already collected your reward. Turn the other cheek isn’t passive — it’s radical character consistency. And loving your enemies? If you only love your friends, you’re not doing anything impressive. Everyone does that.

But then things get complicated. What’s the ethical function of miracles? Why does faith matter if the Stoics demand knowledge? And if heaven promises a hundredfold return on your sacrifice, doesn’t Christianity collapse into delayed hedonism?

Michael and Caleb wrestle with all of it — the overlaps, the tensions, and the parts that don’t resolve neatly.

(03:00) Reading Jesus as a Philosopher

(07:30) Vice Lives in Desire, Not Action

(12:30) Virtue Requires the Right Reason

(17:00) Turn the Other Cheek

(22:00) Love Your Enemies

(28:00) Cast the First Stone

(37:30) The Danger of Appearances

(41:30) Where a Stoic Pushes Back

(51:20) Ted Chang and the Literature of Faith

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

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Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/

What does a historian of Stoicism actually believe? Michael puts his money where his mouth is and lays out his personal philosophy of life from scratch.

The result is something between Stoicism and Aristotle — keeping the Stoic emphasis on character and agency while smuggling in a little more common sense about the human condition.

(00:00) Why articulate a personal philosophy?

(04:00) The geometric method

(05:00) The eudaimonistic framework

(10:30) What kind of thing are we?

(16:30) Degrees of happiness

(22:00) Rejecting the Stoic binary

(24:00) Unequal agency, genuine hardship, and obligations to others

(32:00) The capabilities approach

(37:30) The Stoic counterargument

(44:30) Summary

Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): https://stoameditation.com/pod

If you try the Stoa app and find it useful, but truly cannot afford it, email us and we’ll set you up with a free account.

Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/

Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations:

https://ancientlyre.com/