The Daily Stoic

By Daily Stoic | Wondery

What's The Daily Stoic about?

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.

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Help Them Be Better | Role ...

06.05.2023

One evening Epictetus woke up to hear someone in his house. Walking towards the noise, he found a criminal had stolen the iron lamp he kept burning in a shrine in his front hallway. As always, Epictetus handled the situation ...

The Daily Stoic episodes:

06.05.2023 Help Them Be Better \| Role Models One evening Epictetus woke up to hear someone in his house. Walking towards the noise, he found a criminal had stolen the iron lamp he kept burning in a shrine in his front hallway. As always, Epictetus handled the situation ...
06.04.2023 Cicero On The Paradox Of The Rich Man In today's audiobook reading, Ryan presents the sixth and final reading of Cicero's Stoic Paradoxes. Cicero was considered Rome’s greatest politician, and he has survived as one of history’s most enduring chroniclers of Stoic philosophy and of the Stoics themselves. ...
06.03.2023 Wright Thompson On The Costs Of Greatness Throughout History Ryan speaks with Wright Thompson about his work studying the convergence of sports and culture, the evolution of society in conjunction with people’s emotional regression, why history is less distant than we think it is, and more. Wright Thompson is ...
06.01.2023 The Fever Has You \| Ask DS Look at any millionaire, Seneca tells Lucilius in one of his letters, they are some of the poorest people in Rome. Money has made them obsess over public opinion. Money has control of their schedules and their decisions. Money has ...
05.31.2023 Stephen A. Smith On Debating, Working, And Living With Authenticity Ryan speaks with Stephen A. Smith about his new memoir Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes, why it is so important to be okay with admitting when you are wrong, why his greatest attribute is his ...
05.31.2023 Try To Be Less Like Yourself A classic episode of Seinfeld begins with George Costanza having a revelation. "Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong," George says. "Every instinct I have in every aspect of life...is often wrong." Then just do ...
05.31.2023 Start The Clock. Just Start The Clock. \| Plato's View We don’t like how long they’re taking to get back to us. It’s slowing down the process, keeping us from doing what we want to do. We don’t like the estimate from the vendor who just told us it will ...
05.30.2023 This is The Most Expensive Thing \| The Best Stoic Insights On Raising Kids Since Stoicism was founded, most of the Stoics have been wealthy…and yet almost to a letter, most of them have warned of the dangers and perils of wealth. No one embodies this paradox more than Seneca. The Stoics have warned ...
05.29.2023 What Do You Pledge Your Sacred Honor To? \| The View From Above As the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that this wasn’t some painless petition. This wasn’t some minor political stand. No, they knew, as they wrote, they were mutually pledging their “life, fortune, and sacred honor.” It was ...
05.28.2023 Stoicism and Thought Leadership When an old friend from Ryan’s UC Riverside days reached out early on in the pandemic with an opportunity to speak at one of the premiere non-profit, non-partisan global policy think tanks in the country, the RAND Corporation, Ryan jumped ...
05.27.2023 Tim Urban On Procrastination, Changing Habits, And Slow Improvement Ryan speaks with Tim Urban about his new book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies, why everyone who wants to improve at something should aim to do it slowly, what it really means to “trust the process,” why ...
05.26.2023 How The Stoics Got Rich \| Stop Caring What People Think When you think of Stoicism, you don’t usually think of words like “rich” or “wealthy.” But you should. Before he founded Stoicism, Zeno was a wealthy and successful merchant from a family of wealthy and successful merchants. Seneca was so ...
05.25.2023 It’s Never Too Late To Get Back \| Ask DS Maybe you said some stuff you regret. Maybe the stress of the business has made you a nightmare of a boss lately. Maybe you’ve not been the parent you want to be. Maybe you’ve not been the spouse you’ve promised ...
05.24.2023 David von Drehle On The Pursuit Of A Good And Meaningful LIfe Ryan speaks with David von Drehle about his new book The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man, what he learned from one of the oldest people in the world, how being a Stoic ...
05.24.2023 This Can Drive You Nuts, Or You Can Learn To Love It You clean and then it gets dirty. You do the dishes and then five minutes later, the sink is full again. You made it through your inbox in the morning and by the time late afternoon strikes, you’re already digging ...
05.23.2023 This Is Demanded Of You \| 5 Stoic Secrets From The Ultimate Man Of Principle (Cato The Younger) Seneca tried to teach it to Nero but Nero couldn’t grasp it. To be fair, most leaders, most powerful people, most governments and civilizations struggle with it. In fact, up until Seneca sat down to write De Clementia there wasn’t ...
05.22.2023 Ask Yourself These Crucial Questions \| Practice True Joy There’s a story of Musonius Rufus paying a thousand sesterces to a charlatan posing as a philosopher. When an observer stepped in to say that the man was a liar unworthy of the payment, Musonius replied, “money is exactly what ...
05.21.2023 Just Start Journaling In today's audiobook excerpt, Ryan cracks open his best-selling book Stillness Is The Key to read the chapter titled “Just Start Journaling,” which covers why you should start your journaling practice.
05.20.2023 Renée Mauborgne On Blue Oceans, Disruption, And Succeeding By Being Yourself Ryan speaks with Renee Mauborgne about her new book Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs, the strategies that have helped both of be find success in their careers, why we are all blue oceans, ...
05.19.2023 Money Isn’t Rare \| Learn, Practice, Train It’s interesting how infrequently money comes up in Meditations. Here was a guy who had incredible wealth, whose predecessors obsessed over it and found it to be a source of both pleasure and conflict, and yet in his private meditations, ...
05.18.2023 Find A Way To Use What Life Hands You \| Ask DS Change is a constant in life, and embracing it is key to living a fulfilling and meaningful existence. The Stoics recognized this fact and encouraged us to be adaptable and flexible, no matter what life throws our way. It can ...
05.17.2023 General Ty Seidule On Our Responsibility To Study, Understand And Grapple With History Ryan speaks with Ty Seidule about his book Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, Henry Flipper and the less-told story of the aftermath of the Civil War and slavery in America, ...
05.17.2023 Do You Have This Kind of Clarity? Warren Buffett, whose net worth is north of $100 billion, lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,500. The NFL lineman turned mathematician John Urschel is worth millions but manages to live on $25,000 a year. Well ...
05.16.2023 Handle What You Control First \| Robert Greene's 6 Stoic Concepts For A Fulfilling Life Life is frustrating. You’re waiting for people to get back to you. You’re waiting for approval on stuff. You’re waiting for things to ship. You’re dealing with bureaucracy. You’re depending on teammates. You’re dealing with the fallout of decisions that ...
05.15.2023 When Are You Going To Get This Together? \| Count Your Blessings It doesn’t matter how old you are, it looms before you. Not death–although that’s always there–but the future itself. The future when you’re not going to be so young anymore, when you’re not going to want to be hustling entry ...
05.14.2023 The Life Of Chrysippus In today's audiobook reading, Ryan presents the biography of the great Greco-Phoenician Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. Written by the prolific biographer of the Greek philosophers Diogenes Laertius, this text covers Chrysippus’s early life, how he used his natural talents for dialectics ...
05.13.2023 MMA Legend Frank Shamrock On Conquering The Ego and Developing Honor Ryan speaks with Frank Shamrock about his memoir Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter, the convergence between the Stoic virtues and the tenets of the Warrior Code, managing his ego when he was considered the greatest fighter on ...
05.12.2023 What Gets The Best Part of Your Day? \| Kindness Is Always The Right Response In those first moments you’re awake, how do you decide to start this fresh day? By reaching for the phone, for social media? We fill the sunlight hours with meetings, spending them all indoors. We wait until after school, after ...
05.11.2023 Do You Make Time For this? \| Ask DS Even when he was president, Jimmy Carter tried to carve out space for reflection and study. Just a few days after being sworn in, he was already asking his aides to push his meetings back. “I need more time alone ...
05.10.2023 Gretchen Rubin On The Power Of Exploring Your Senses Ryan speaks with Gretchen Rubin about her new book Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, how our reality is composed entirely of our perceptions, her striving to better ...
05.10.2023 When Is The Last Time You Challenged Yourself? It’s very easy to get comfortable. To build up your life exactly how you want it to be. Minimize inconveniences and hand off the stuff you don’t like to do. To find what you enjoy, where you enjoy it, and ...
05.09.2023 The Personal Is Universal \| Short Stoic Lessons From All Of Ryan Holiday's Books Many artists—songwriters, poets, comedians, and so on—have said some version of the same idea: the personal is universal. Artists often find the more personal they get in their art, the more people tend to resonate with it. It actually helps ...
05.08.2023 This Is A Great Pleasure \| We Are A Product Of Our Habits Of the four Stoic virtues, Marcus Aurelius said justice was the most important. To him, it was “the source of all the other virtues.” After all, how impressive are courage or discipline if they are only used to serve self-interest? ...
05.07.2023 Ryan And Guy Raz On Controlling Only What You Can When a recent Q&A session between Ryan and Robert Greene fell apart just hours before the conference due to emergency health concerns, the moment presented Ryan with an opportunity to lean into the Stoic practice of controlling only what one ...
05.06.2023 Kevin Kelly On The Courage It Takes To Live Your Own Life Ryan speaks with Kevin Kelly about his new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, how his remarkable life and career is shaped by his quest to do things his own way, understanding that life is ...
05.05.2023 Tie Your Well-Being To This \| You Are The Project Today, we know F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. Tragically, in his own time, many regarded Fitzgerald as a failure. Sure, he was one of the highest paid writers of his time, but ...
05.04.2023 The Trouble Of Too Many Opinions \| Ask DS It goes without saying that the man has changed the world for the better. He’s reinvigorated the American space program. He popularized electric cars. His solar panels cover the roofs of countless homes, his batteries save electricity for emergencies, taking ...
05.03.2023 Jason Singer Of Michigander On The Reality Of Being A Rock Star Ryan speaks with Jason Singer of the band Michigander about he and his wife getting back on track after a series of injuries, the humbling experience of asking for help and paying it forward, the realities of being a professional ...
05.03.2023 Keep In Mind How Fast Things Pass By In 1859, before he was president, before he suffered through that harrowing train ride to Washington on his way to office where many thought he would be killed before he arrived, before the Union tore itself to pieces and around ...
05.02.2023 This Is The Secret \| 6 Stoic Examples Of Living A Great Life It seems obvious. If you want to be better at your job, work more. If you want to be more successful, focus on it entirely. Yet history doesn’t actually bear this out. Overwork. A lack of balance…it ends in ruin. ...
05.01.2023 This Predicts Everything \| Show, Don't Tell Who a person is determines what will happen and what they can do. It’s true in sports. It’s true in politics. It’s true in business. No matter how talented a person is, how great the incentives, how great the system ...
04.30.2023 Control Your Emotions In today's audiobook excerpt, Ryan presents his reading of the section of his own book The Obstacle is the Way entitled “Control Your Emotions,” in which he discusses why real strength lies in recognizing, understanding, and controlling one’s emotions. ✉️ ...
04.28.2023 Now That You Know, Do Better \| Wants Make You A Servant We look back on things we clearly messed up. We were too preoccupied. We were too harsh. We were wrong. We didn’t know. And because we messed up, we feel guilty. We regret what could have been. We’re mad at ...
04.27.2023 Make Them Do Their Own Stuff \| Ask DS There is a great story about a young Spartan woman, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans she was raised to be self-sufficient, with no frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgo’s surprise ...
04.26.2023 Rachel Hollis on Empathy and Emotional Acceptance In the first of a two-part discussion, Ryan speaks with Rachel Hollis about how her success has been defined by perseverance and acceptance, the importance of approaching work without arrogance, improving relationships by working to understand emotional boundaries, dealing with ...
04.26.2023 Don’t Let Them Make You Bitter Or Mean Whatever you decide to do with your life, whatever path you decide to walk, people are going to stand in your way. They’re going to doubt you. They’re going to give you bad advice. They will do you wrong. On ...
04.25.2023 Don’t Waste Your Gifts \| The Secret To Better Habits in 2023 There is, as we have talked about many times, a tinge of sadness in the story of Seneca. This immensely talented and wise man spent the best years of his life advising and collaborating with one of the worst emperors ...
04.24.2023 You Can Never Do This Twice \| The Freedom Of Contempt The first time was revelatory. The first time you watched Mad Men. Or The Godfather. Or cracked open Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Or heard Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ or listened to Fantine sing, I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis. Or ...
04.23.2023 The Life of Cleanthes In today's audiobook reading, Ryan presents the biography of the great Stoic philosopher, boxer, and successor to Zeno of Citium as the second head of the Stoic school of Athens, Cleanthes. Written by the prolific biographer of the Greek philosophers ...
04.22.2023 Sarah Bakewell on Humanism and The Power of Connection Ryan speaks with Sarah Bakewell about her new book Humanly Possible: seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope, how growing up surrounded by books shaped her philosophical mindset, the philosophical principles that she applies to her life, and ...

Older episodes

The Daily Stoic

What's The Daily Stoic about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Daily Stoic episodes:

Help Them Be Better | Role Models

Cicero On The Paradox Of The Rich Man

Wright Thompson On The Costs Of Greatness Throughout History

The Fever Has You | Ask DS

Stephen A. Smith On Debating, Working, And Living With Authenticity

Try To Be Less Like Yourself

Start The Clock. Just Start The Clock. | Plato's View

This is The Most Expensive Thing | The Best Stoic Insights On Raising Kids

What Do You Pledge Your Sacred Honor To? | The View From Above

Stoicism and Thought Leadership

Tim Urban On Procrastination, Changing Habits, And Slow Improvement

How The Stoics Got Rich | Stop Caring What People Think

It’s Never Too Late To Get Back | Ask DS

David von Drehle On The Pursuit Of A Good And Meaningful LIfe

This Can Drive You Nuts, Or You Can Learn To Love It

This Is Demanded Of You | 5 Stoic Secrets From The Ultimate Man Of Principle (Cato The Younger)

Ask Yourself These Crucial Questions | Practice True Joy

Just Start Journaling

Renée Mauborgne On Blue Oceans, Disruption, And Succeeding By Being Yourself

Money Isn’t Rare | Learn, Practice, Train

Find A Way To Use What Life Hands You | Ask DS

General Ty Seidule On Our Responsibility To Study, Understand And Grapple With History

Do You Have This Kind of Clarity?

Handle What You Control First | Robert Greene's 6 Stoic Concepts For A Fulfilling Life

When Are You Going To Get This Together? | Count Your Blessings

The Life Of Chrysippus

MMA Legend Frank Shamrock On Conquering The Ego and Developing Honor

What Gets The Best Part of Your Day? | Kindness Is Always The Right Response

Do You Make Time For this? | Ask DS

Gretchen Rubin On The Power Of Exploring Your Senses

When Is The Last Time You Challenged Yourself?

The Personal Is Universal | Short Stoic Lessons From All Of Ryan Holiday's Books

This Is A Great Pleasure | We Are A Product Of Our Habits

Ryan And Guy Raz On Controlling Only What You Can

Kevin Kelly On The Courage It Takes To Live Your Own Life

Tie Your Well-Being To This | You Are The Project

The Trouble Of Too Many Opinions | Ask DS

Jason Singer Of Michigander On The Reality Of Being A Rock Star

Keep In Mind How Fast Things Pass By

This Is The Secret | 6 Stoic Examples Of Living A Great Life

This Predicts Everything | Show, Don't Tell

Control Your Emotions

Now That You Know, Do Better | Wants Make You A Servant

Make Them Do Their Own Stuff | Ask DS

Rachel Hollis on Empathy and Emotional Acceptance

Don’t Let Them Make You Bitter Or Mean

Don’t Waste Your Gifts | The Secret To Better Habits in 2023

You Can Never Do This Twice | The Freedom Of Contempt

The Life of Cleanthes

Sarah Bakewell on Humanism and The Power of Connection

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