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.

4.7

1,918 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

There is Only One Thing To ...

12.08.2022

It would be wonderful if the Stoics promised you some sort of breakthrough. One that solved for the messy divorce or the unfortunate bankruptcy. One that helped you rehab from the car accident or magically deal with a pandemic that ...

The Daily Stoic episodes:

12.08.2022 There is Only One Thing To Do \| Don’t Hide From Your Feelings It would be wonderful if the Stoics promised you some sort of breakthrough. One that solved for the messy divorce or the unfortunate bankruptcy. One that helped you rehab from the car accident or magically deal with a pandemic that ...
12.07.2022 Professor Josiah Osgood on Cato, Caesar and the Battle for Rome's Legacy Ryan speaks with historian of Rome Josiah Osgood about his new book Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic, the complicated legacy of Cato, how Caesar and Cato’s relationship can help inform our daily lives, ...
12.07.2022 Passing Judgment Is No Way To Live You don’t know that someone acted wrongly or that they totally screwed a situation up, because you don’t know the full story. You don’t know their reasons or their side of things. And what do the Stoics tell us to ...
12.06.2022 It’s Not A Bad Experience \| Living Like A Stoic For 30 Days A night spent at the airport. A prison sentence. A two week bout with COVID. The crazy rush of the busiest season of the year for your business. We know we’re in for it. We dread it. We curse our ...
12.05.2022 The Violence Of The Dog Days \| Be Stingy With Time As summer now passes into fall and all too quickly fall turns to winter, it is worth stopping and thinking for a second. Where did that time go? Not long ago you were watching fireworks and enjoying the light late ...
12.03.2022 Adam Hochschild on One’s Obligation to the Common Good pt. 2 In the second of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with one of the great non-fiction writers and historians of our time, Adam Hochschild, about his classic 1986 memoir Half The Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, the impetus ...
12.02.2022 It's Not What Happens. It's How You Bear It. \| Ask Daily Stoic It doesn't matter who you are, the facts are the same. Marcus Aurelius was Emperor. Epictetus was a slave. Two different fates, but the same reality. Most of life, most situations are out of our control. All we can do ...
12.01.2022 The Only Thing New In The World \| Pretend Today Is The End We live in unprecedented times, we like to think. Our technology. Our conflicts. The state of the world. It’s all very new, it’s all very different. But is it though? Check out the Read To Lead Challenge 2022 and the ...
11.30.2022 Adam Hochschild on Our Obligation to the Common Good pt. 1 In the first of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with one of the great non-fiction writers and historians of our time, Adam Hochschild, about how history can inform the push for change in the present, the civil rights trailblazers he ...
11.30.2022 The Best Stuff Is An Accidental Byproduct In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius marvels at “nature’s inadvertence.” A baker, he writes, makes the dough, kneads it and then puts it in the oven. Then physics, then Nature takes over. “The way loaves of bread split open,” Marcus writes, “the ...
11.29.2022 No One Can Take This Away \| Why Seeking Out Challenges Will Change Your Life “It is a vast kingdom to be able to cope without a kingdom,” Seneca wrote in his play, Thyestes. This was no mere word play. This was hard-won wisdom. No one can stop you from ruling over yourself. It’s the ...
11.28.2022 What We Owe Each Other \| Balance The Books Of Life Daily The Roman Empire at that time was enormous. Jobs were scarce. Unemployment was high. Rapid expansion and economic stagnation had led to a sort of economic recession–one not unlike the one that looms globally right now. In response, the upper ...
11.27.2022 Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers: How To Be Content - The Problem of Passion Pt. 1 For many people, happiness is associated with contentment: being around family, enjoying work, having enough. But what are the secrets to obtaining a contented life in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures? One of Rome's greatest and most ...
11.27.2022 How To Be Content - The Search For The Good Life pt. 2 Nobody wrote about the “good life” more beautifully than Horace (65-8 BCE). In numerous writings, the Roman poet shared his wisdom on how to use virtue as a key to unlocking contentment and, therefore, happiness in our daily lives. Today, ...
11.26.2022 Drs. Edith Eger and Marianne Engle on Forgiving Over And Over Again Ryan talks to mother-daughter duo Drs. Edith Enger and Marianne Engle about their work in clinical psychology, the power of spreading kindness in a world that often seems very cruel, letting go of the past through forgiveness, and more. A ...
11.25.2022 What To Do With What You’ve Been Given \| Ask Daily Stoic Yesterday we took a minute to think of all that we have to be grateful for, all the blessings life has bestowed on us–even if those things didn’t always appear to be blessings at the time. Well, today, on so ...
11.24.2022 Convince Yourself That Everything Is A Gift \| Train To Let Go Of What’s Not Yours Today in America is Thanksgiving. It’s the day when we’re supposed to actively practice gratitude, and be thankful for all that we have. Yet this can be hard to do…when the specter of a World War looms, the lingering of ...
11.23.2022 Jennifer Baker on Stoicism in Academia Ryan talks to Professor Jennifer Baker about her approach to teaching Stoicism, ethics, and political theory at the College of Charleston, what the Stoics might have said about driving a Mercedes instead of a Hyundai (or a Tesla), the challenges ...
11.23.2022 Pity Is More Appropriate Than Anger At the beginning of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius laments the kind of people he’s going to meet each day—the bitter, the stupid, the jealous, the petty. Throughout the book he mentions other undesirables—the shameless, the evil, the greedy, the ignorant, the ...
11.22.2022 This Is The Day \| How Stoicism Can Make You Happier This is what we tell ourselves: Someday I will write my book. Someday I will travel abroad. Someday I will learn how to play guitar. But someday soon, you will no longer be able to say, “someday…” --- “A good ...
11.21.2022 The Last Words Of Marcus Aurelius \| Practice Letting Go It’s one of the most haunting paintings you’ll ever see. More than 11 feet wide and 8 feet tall, painted in rich but dark oils, Eugene Delacroix (a student of the Stoics) captures Marcus Aurelius at the end of his ...
11.20.2022 This Stoic Virtue Will Change Your Life You’d think that the more powerful you are, the more freedom you’d have. The more money and success you have, the more you can do. You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would ...
11.19.2022 Ramit Sethi on What It Means to be Rich Ryan talks to personal finance advisor, entrepreneur, author, and host of the I Will Teach You To Be Rich podcast (one of Ryan’s favorites), Ramit Sethi about helping couples grow stronger through finances, the importance of a personal definition of ...
11.18.2022 The Most Human Thing You Can Do \| Ask Daily Stoic Years before he became president, Harry Truman owned a haberdashery that doubled as a local hang-out. A kid named Albert Ridge would often head there after his shift at the neighborhood grocery store. For the rest of his life, Ridge ...
11.17.2022 Small Things Are No Small Thing \| Judge Not, Lest… George Washington’s favorite saying was “many mickles make a muckle.” It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Our perennial Page-A-Day ...
11.16.2022 Dr. Sue Johnson on Emotionally Focused Therapy and Stoicism Ryan talks to clinical psychologist, couples therapist, and author Dr. Sue Johnson about how Stoicism and Emotionally Focused Therapy complement and enrich each other, what psychology can teach us about the nature of human relationships, her best-selling book (and a ...
11.16.2022 Time has a Way of Humbling Us In several of Seneca’s letters he speaks about the power of bloodletting as a medical practice. In one, he actually remarks—with some superiority—how earlier generations had not yet discovered bloodletting and suffered for it. Marcus Aurelius hints at some other ...
11.15.2022 Where Is Your Command Center? \| Casey Neistat's 10 Stoic Practices (For Productivity) We get all sorts of messages. From the world. From social media. From other people. From our bodies. The question–the great difficulty of life–is gathering, deciphering and deciding which of these messages to listen to and act on, and which ...
11.14.2022 This Is Nothing To Brag About \| Judge Yourself Not Others Oh, you’ve read the works of Heidegger? You finished all of Infinite Jest? You made it through all of Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, all of Faulkner’s lesser works, Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses? You must be pretty proud of yourself. ...
11.13.2022 The Virtue That Made Marcus Aurelius So Great Marcus Aurelius did not come out of the womb a leader. Nor was he an emperor ‘by blood.’ In fact, when first told he was to be king, he wept—thinking of all the bad and failed kings of history. So ...
11.12.2022 Yung Pueblo on Measuring Success and Seeking Wisdom Ryan talks to the poet Yung Pueblo about his new book Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future, why servicing the common good is the most valuable metric to measure great work by, ...
11.11.2022 How To Make Better Use Of Your Time \| Ask Daily Stoic Years before he became president, Harry Truman owned a haberdashery that doubled as a local hang-out. A kid named Albert Ridge would often head there after his shift at the neighborhood grocery store. For the rest of his life, Ridge ...
11.10.2022 There’s Nothing Like This \| Always The Same The rockstar Warren Zevon had been on the top of the Billboard charts. He’d been on the cover of Rolling Stone. He’d been admired by other great artists and musicians like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty. The heights ...
11.09.2022 Sophia Amoruso on Building Resilience and Defining Success Ryan talks to Sophia Amoruso about how she has navigated the highs and lows of being a successful business woman, how to become great without becoming a monster, the importance of staying grounded while reaching great heights, and more. Sophia ...
11.09.2022 This Is How You Strengthen Your Soul According to the great Jesuit Monk Anthony DeMello, there are three intellectual feats that we struggle with on a regular basis, that are harder than just about any physical activity on the planet. Just three. They are, he said, in ...
11.08.2022 This Is Your Job As A Citizen \| Why You Should Do Something Scary Every Day The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don’t. Epictetus said, “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say ...
11.07.2022 You Become What You Give Your Attention To \| The Real Power You Have The Stoics were all about routine and repetition. They talked about fueling the habit bonfire. They would have agreed with Aristotle: we are what we repeatedly do. We become what we repeatedly study and focus on.
11.06.2022 The Most Life Changing Marcus Aurelius Quotes Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor, born nearly two millennia ago (121 – 180). Marcus became the Emperor of the Roman Empire in 161 and ruled for nearly two decades until his death in 180. It is important to realize ...
11.05.2022 Kate Courtney, Karen Duffy, Meg Mason, and Susan Cain on Using Stoicism to Endure Life's Obstacles This episode is a compilation of some of the best Stoic wisdom from the Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan talks to Kate Courtney about the important distinction between optimization vs. maximization, Karen Duffy about how Stoicism can help guide you through ...
11.04.2022 We Are Not In Decline \| Ask Daily Stoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
11.03.2022 A Sense of Urgency \| Following The Doctor’s Orders In the kitchen at Per Se, one of the best restaurants in the world, there is a sign. All it says is: A Sense of Urgency. That’s what a great chef, a great service staff, a great organization has. A ...
11.02.2022 Thomas Ricks on the Military History of the Civil Rights Movement Ryan talks to Thomas Ricks about his new book Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, the philosophical methods that guided the leaders in the civil rights movement, the grit that it took to ...
11.02.2022 Pursue Excellence, Not Credit Perhaps you remember reading The Odyssey in high school or college (or possibly you picked up Emily Wilson’s fabulous new translation at the Painted Porch). Even if you haven’t, you’re probably familiar with the cyclops scene. Odysseus and his men ...
11.01.2022 Why We Admire Marcus Aurelius \| Ancient Strategies For Finding Happiness Marcus Aurelius was smart. He was rich and powerful. He won wars and conquered territories. But that doesn’t explain why we are still talking about his Meditations so many thousands of years later. As Brand Blandshard would observe of Marcus’s ...
10.31.2022 We Are Not Alone \| Accepting What Is Ghosts are, of course, a silly thing to believe in (Athenodorus’ ghost story notwithstanding). Yet the Stoics would not have scoffed at Eleanor Roosevelt’s feeling of not being alone in the Lincoln bedroom. As the New York Times would write ...
10.30.2022 The Professional — An Excerpt from Steven Pressfield’s “Turning Pro” In this excerpt Steven talks about the difference between an amatuer and a professional, the qualities that a professional expresses, and he explains what it takes to become a professional at whatever you do. Published by Recorded Books on Brilliance ...
10.29.2022 Atticus the Poet on Modern Media and Remaining Anonymous Ryan talks to the anonymous Instagram poet Atticus about how modern media has distorted old ideas, his experience meeting the Dalai Lama, the decision to remain anonymous in the public eye, and more. Atticus, who grew up in Vancouver, has ...
10.28.2022 More Often Than Not \| Ask Daily Stoic The Stoics were not perfect. Nothing illustrates this more than Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Why would Marcus have to write reminders about not losing your temper or not wasting your time if he was not guilty of those very things? Why ...
10.27.2022 Wondery Presents: Don't Call it a Comeback Every fan loves a comeback story. There are few moments more thrilling or inspiring. From an athlete’s resurgence after being left for dead to a cellar-dwelling franchise who suddenly defies all odds, these sports comeback moments stay with us and ...
10.27.2022 We Don’t See The Full Picture \| We Reap What We Sow History is a lie. It is written by the victors, as the saying goes. Which means the picture it produces is inherently biased by a particular point of view. It’s also biased towards the things we know about, by our ...

Older episodes

The Daily Stoic

What's The Daily Stoic about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Daily Stoic episodes:

There is Only One Thing To Do | Don’t Hide From Your Feelings

Professor Josiah Osgood on Cato, Caesar and the Battle for Rome's Legacy

Passing Judgment Is No Way To Live

It’s Not A Bad Experience | Living Like A Stoic For 30 Days

The Violence Of The Dog Days | Be Stingy With Time

Adam Hochschild on One’s Obligation to the Common Good pt. 2

It's Not What Happens. It's How You Bear It. | Ask Daily Stoic

The Only Thing New In The World | Pretend Today Is The End

Adam Hochschild on Our Obligation to the Common Good pt. 1

The Best Stuff Is An Accidental Byproduct

No One Can Take This Away | Why Seeking Out Challenges Will Change Your Life

What We Owe Each Other | Balance The Books Of Life Daily

Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers: How To Be Content - The Problem of Passion Pt. 1

How To Be Content - The Search For The Good Life pt. 2

Drs. Edith Eger and Marianne Engle on Forgiving Over And Over Again

What To Do With What You’ve Been Given | Ask Daily Stoic

Convince Yourself That Everything Is A Gift | Train To Let Go Of What’s Not Yours

Jennifer Baker on Stoicism in Academia

Pity Is More Appropriate Than Anger

This Is The Day | How Stoicism Can Make You Happier

The Last Words Of Marcus Aurelius | Practice Letting Go

This Stoic Virtue Will Change Your Life

Ramit Sethi on What It Means to be Rich

The Most Human Thing You Can Do | Ask Daily Stoic

Small Things Are No Small Thing | Judge Not, Lest…

Dr. Sue Johnson on Emotionally Focused Therapy and Stoicism

Time has a Way of Humbling Us

Where Is Your Command Center? | Casey Neistat's 10 Stoic Practices (For Productivity)

This Is Nothing To Brag About | Judge Yourself Not Others

The Virtue That Made Marcus Aurelius So Great

Yung Pueblo on Measuring Success and Seeking Wisdom

How To Make Better Use Of Your Time | Ask Daily Stoic

There’s Nothing Like This | Always The Same

Sophia Amoruso on Building Resilience and Defining Success

This Is How You Strengthen Your Soul

This Is Your Job As A Citizen | Why You Should Do Something Scary Every Day

You Become What You Give Your Attention To | The Real Power You Have

The Most Life Changing Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Kate Courtney, Karen Duffy, Meg Mason, and Susan Cain on Using Stoicism to Endure Life's Obstacles

We Are Not In Decline | Ask Daily Stoic

A Sense of Urgency | Following The Doctor’s Orders

Thomas Ricks on the Military History of the Civil Rights Movement

Pursue Excellence, Not Credit

Why We Admire Marcus Aurelius | Ancient Strategies For Finding Happiness

We Are Not Alone | Accepting What Is

The Professional — An Excerpt from Steven Pressfield’s “Turning Pro”

Atticus the Poet on Modern Media and Remaining Anonymous

More Often Than Not | Ask Daily Stoic

Wondery Presents: Don't Call it a Comeback

We Don’t See The Full Picture | We Reap What We Sow

Other shows like The Daily Stoic: