The Daily Stoic - Ryan Discusses Lives of the Stoics at 92nd Street Y

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Sunday podcast, Ryan gives a virtual talk at 92nd Street Y in New York City, discussing three of the most important Stoics, and takes audience questions.Get Lives of the Stoics: https://geni.us/LUN7This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Four Sigmatic has a new exclusive deal for Daily Stoic listeners: get up to 39% off their bestselling Lion’s Mane bundle by visiting foursigmatic.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow 92nd Street Y:Homepage: https://www.92y.org/Twitter: https://twitter.com/92YInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/92ndstreetySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think to go for a walk to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

I think it was with Ego, I got to go to New York and do a talk at the 92nd Street Y, which is sort of the prestigious book talk opportunity that authored. I remember wanting to do one for my previous books, but not having sold enough books or been cool enough, I guess, to warrant one. I finally got to do an in-person talk on ego, although I would say I was sort of in a tiny little room, not the big room that I've seen talks in before. So I was hoping with the lives of the still so I'd get to do it bigger and better and we were looking forward to a live event there in New York City as part of the launch week. But obviously all those plans went out the window,

but they were nice enough to agree to a virtual talk. So I gave this talk, a day that book came out, which is always a weird day. When you put out books, it's this weird sort of limbo zombie day where you're half trying to work and telling yourself you're not gonna refresh Amazon a million times because you know it's bad for the soul and bad for your confidence. On the other hand, it's really hard to actually focus on other stuff. And you really should be trying to move the needle

as much as possible. So it was a weird day. It was also the day of the first debate, if you remember. So it wasn't sure how turnout was gonna be, but it ended up being a great event. Funny enough, my sister called me like moments before. I went on just to talk to see how the book was going and I said, hey, can't talk about to do this thing.

So she dialed in and listened, which is always fun. And I could see her in the comments. Anyways, it was a great event. What I do is I sort of walk through the lives of three different stilloks who I think are worth knowing and learning about and what lessons they apply to us. And then we wrap up and I take some questions. So I think you're gonna really like this one.

I won't belabor the intro. We'll get right into it. And of course, remember you can check out Lives of the Stokes, anywhere books are sold. It's doing great. Just getting the first week sales numbers in now. And you know, it's good. I'm excited. I appreciate all the support.

I hope you guys like the book and just know I'm hard at work at the next one. And I hope you like this episode. Hi everyone. It's wonderful to chat with you guys. What we're gonna do is I'm gonna give a quick talk, maybe 30 or so minutes, and then we'll open it up to questions if you see the chat window below.

You can put your questions in there, and I'm looking forward to answering them. I thought where I'd start is, first off, thanks everyone for supporting the book, for coming out to do this. It's great to see everyone. There's this famous Chinese saying, the idea of may you live in interesting times. And the cleverness of the quip is that this is a bit of a curse, right? Interesting times are interesting, sure, but it also means that things are going wrong often or the interestingness can get exhausting quite quickly.

And I've come to think of the idea of stoicism in similar terms, the idea of, may you live in stoical times, or may you live in a stoic moment of history, might be a curse of sort of equal proportions. And if we can think about how stoicism has been resurgent in various periods of history, it tends to be associated with disaster, difficulty, crisis, adversity, unrest, warfare, and on down the line. And so when we think about the idea that never has Marcus Aurelius been more relevant, well, part of the reason for that is that Marcus Aurelius was writing during what we now refer to as the Antenine play. When we think about why Seneca feels more relevant today

than ever, that's because he lived in a decadent society filled with corruption and temptation, epicurean pleasures as well as sort of profound stoic difficulties. And never before has this stoic idea that we don't control what happens, but we have to focus on how we respond. Really never has that sort of been more rudely reminded to a population than it was to ours, you know, just a few months ago, the Stoic virtues of courage and justice and self-discipline and wisdom, these are ideas that are interesting to read about, and when

you suddenly find them sort of playing out on the world stage, you know you are at least living in an interesting moment in history. And, you know, this book, the new book, Lives of the Stoics, I know it just came out today, so I'm sure most of you have not read it yet, although you may have, some of you may have listened to the audio book already, which means you're tired of hearing me talk. But one of the things I say in the intro is just, what a fascinating spectrum of society that the Stoics cover

over roughly 500 years of Greek and Roman history. These, there's a philosophy that begins in Athens, makes its way to Rome, and in between those periods, in between Zeno and Marcus Aurelius, we get people from Spain, in Syria, and Iraq, and Turkey, as well as Italy, and Greece. So not only are the Stoics sort of geographically diverse, but then there are male Stoics and female Stoics,

and there are rich Stoics and poor Stoics, and powerful Stoics, and deeply disempowered, disenfranchised Stoics. And so across these stations and backgrounds and genders and experiences, you have them all sort of struggling with the same difficulties of life. In some cases, the very difficulties that you and I woke up and faced this morning.

In other cases, unimaginable additional adversity on top of that. This was a time when you could die from a cut on your finger. This is a time when infant mortality may have been as high as 30% or 40% in some cases. This was a time that if not as politically dysfunctional and chaotic as our moment today, the punishments were much stricter. You could be executed, you could be exiled. Civil wars could break out with a few moments notice.

And the Stoics endured this and survived it and teach us really interesting lessons within it. And so what I thought I would do today is pick just three of the Stoics that we could talk about whose stories I think each individually teach an interesting lesson, and then we can obviously discuss whoever you guys would like. Obviously I start the book with Xeno. Xeno is the founder of Stoicism. I think it's a credit to Xeno that Stoicism is called Stoicism, not Zenoism, as Epicurianism is named after its founder or Christianity is named after Christ. The idea that he was humble enough to name his philosophy after the porch that he started

it on. To me, is an interesting insight into how Xeno thought. But there's really no better person to have started Stoicism, nor a more perfect way that Stoicism could have been started than as it did for Xeno. He's a successful merchant who suffers a grievous shipwreck, the details of which were not totally certain about. But we know it was a catastrophic loss. He's completely wiped out and he arrives in Athens essentially penniless. And so, as I say in the book, this is a moment that could have made Xeno, that could have been the end of Xeno's life. It's a moment that could have been the end of Zeno's impact on the world,

but in fact, it's the stage on which he performs his greatest performance. He's in a bookstore. One of the hardest things for the pandemic for me has been the inability to go to bookstores, but he's in a bookstore and there he hears a man reading a passage from Socrates, just as if you were at this talk with me and I was there

talking about a book, Zeno's reintroduced to the works of Socrates and it sets him on the philosophical journey that then ends up ultimately changing the world and brings all of us together, 2,500 or so years later. It's a pretty incredible moment. And in fact, he believed this moment was faded, right? And the reason he believed that was because several years earlier, he'd gone and visited the Oracle at Delphi, and they'd given him a prophecy, a prediction about his life. And it's an interesting one. They said, you will become great when you have conversations

with the dead. They said that his destiny was to have conversations with the dead. They said that his destiny was to have conversations with the dead. What does that mean? Well, as he walks into this bookstore and hears a man reading the works of Socrates, he realizes this is a conversation with the dead. And this conversation we're having right now,

as I'm telling you the story of Xeno, as I'm going to be quoting the other Stokes to you is a kind of conversation with the dead are long, long gone. This is my copy of meditations here. And it's incredible to think that I am reading the words that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself 2,000 plus years ago, and there is real and as raw and as personal as they were the day he put them down. And so Zeno is made great by this idea of having conversations with the dead. And if we see philosophy, this love of wisdom as a sort of an ongoing tradition, a passing

of the torch from one generation to the other, I think it gives some purpose to what we're doing here even right now, but also as you read in bed before you go to sleep or as you listen to an audio book on your commute to work in the morning, stoicism is this conversation with the wise people from history. So, you know, suffers this shipwreck and what does he do?

He gets to work rebuilding his life. He starts this philosophy, he starts it in the stoa, the porch, but unlike the other philosophical schools, the stowa is located in the middle of the agora, right? We tend to see philosophy and religion as a place away from the busyness of the world. But stosism has always been rooted in the hustle and the bustle of things in the marketplace, in the marketplace of ideas, in the competition, in the noise,

and the din of people going about their daily business. And so, that stoicism begins to take root. He begins to acquire students, he begins to talk about things. He's the first stoic to articulate the four virtues of stoicism, as we talked about earlier, courage, justice, wisdom, and self-control. These are, as you know, also the four cardinal virtues

of Christianity, but we get the stokes introducing this idea that these four virtues are the key to the good life. They are the key to what the stokes say as far as living with accordance to nature. And so Zino begins the prophet, I say in the book, he's the evangelist of Stoicism, he begins to lecture, he begins to teach in this philosophy, starts a journey through the world that, that, you know, remains ongoing to this day. But what I think so interesting about Zeno is, you know, as I said, he arrives penniless and he rebuilds his life.

you know, is, you know, as I said, he arrives penniless and he rebuilds his life. And he, but, but not just fit, not just in the sense of, of, of, you know, going from owning nothing to, you know, the reasonable, you know, sort of accomplishments of a life, but he rebuilds himself spiritually, mentally, you know, in every sense he rebuilds. And, and that, for the Stoics, this is the journey that we're on. This is the journey to the good life. And it's a slow, steady and methodical one. One of my favorite quotes from Zeno, he says, well being is realized by small steps,

but it is no small thing. And so if we think about this philosophical journey that we're on, the books that we're reading, maybe the therapy that we go to, the late night conversations we have with a friend, a 12-step group that we attend, a lecture like this that we listen to, the journaling that we do in the morning. Each one of these things is a small step in the direction towards what we want to, where we want to go. I don't think the Stoke's thought that wisdom was a place that you arrived, but I do think they thought it was a destination worth setting one's bearings towards. And then we go and we move towards it as much as we were able to. And so Zeno is the first of the Stokes to put this in motion by no means the only by no means the most interesting, but I figured we'd

start with the beginning. And when I was thinking about who I wanted to talk to you guys about next, one of the questions I've gotten the most about the book is sort of like, who did I not know about? Who was I interested? Who did I become? The question I was getting most often was, who surprised me the most? Who taught me the most? Who was I most unexpectedly intrigued by. And so I wanted to talk a little bit

about a stoic named Gryponus. Now, he was someone I was vaguely familiar with because he's mentioned briefly in the works of Epictetus. And I was vaguely familiar with the sort of stoic tension in Nero's regime, but I sort of thought that the sentica was the embod sort of stoic tension in Nero's regime. But I sort of thought that the sentica was the embodiment of stoicism at that time. So I was fascinated to learn about agrippinus. We hear from Tacitus that agrippinus inherits from his father a hereditary hatred of tyrants,

which I thought is a magnificent phase. Now, why did he inherit this hatred of tyrants? Well, I imagine what happened to Agrippinus's father had something to do with that. So Agrippinus's father runs a foul of the emperor and is set to be executed. But the emperor being very busy and apparently very sensitive and is always sentencing people to death for offending him forgets about this sentence. And it's only at a dinner party that a dwarf, a palace dwarf, begins to mock the emperor

for failing to execute a grippiness. And so a grippiness is father. And so this sets in motion the death of a grippiness which you can imagine would be a rather heavy blow for any son to deal with. But we find that this doesn't make a grippiness bitter. It doesn't drive him to be a drunk. He becomes an able administrator in the Roman Empire

holds all sorts of positions of power, mostly judicial power. And yet, always seems to be one of those figures that marches to the beat of their own drummer. That was something I found over and over and over again in the Stoic's that a Stoic dare is to be different, a Stoic dare is to be themselves. And in fact, one of the great anecdotes

that we have from Agrippinus has to do with someone coming up to him and asking, why is he so contrarian? Why is he so strange? And a grippinous tells the story of a sweater. He says, if there's a sweater and with a stripe in it, you want to be the thread that is of the stripe, not of the boring color of the rest of the sweater. He says, me, I should like to be red.

He wants to be the color that stands out because it's the color that stands out that makes the entire garment beautiful. He says, and he says, if I don't stand out, if I look and act and behave like everyone else, then I would no longer be the red and I would no longer be beautiful. And what we see time and time again in in stoicism is that the stoics are not afraid to stand out. The stoics are not afraid to be themselves. And the stoics are not afraid of looking silly

or ridiculous by the standards of that moment. So perhaps it was inevitable that Agrippinus would find himself in a sort of moral battle with Nero, one of the most arrangedanged emperors in Rome's history. And Agrippinus has, again, this hereditary aversion to illegitimate power, which Nero certainly was. And so there's a wonderful story about a fellow philosopher coming, There's a wonderful story about a fellow philosopher coming, both a Gryponus and this philosopher have been invited to a banquet being hosted by Nero

for what purpose we don't know. And the philosopher says to a Gryponus, are you gonna attend? And he says, do you think I should attend? And a Gryponus says no. And the guy says, sorry, a Gryppinus says yes, you should go. And the man is surprised because he knows Agrippinus is not going.

And so he says, why should I go if you're not going? And Agrippinus says, because you were even thinking about it, right? Agrippinus knew what right and wrong was, he knew where the line was, and the idea of attending some Suare thrown by an illegitimate murderer, the idea that he was going to go kiss somebody's ass that he would lick someone's boot was incomprehensible to him. And so again, it shouldn't surprise us that

eventually he earns Nero's iron and somehow offends him. And so he's driven to trial on some trumped up charges. We don't know. We do know around the same time, Nero has a poet executed merely for being more talented than Nero. So we can only imagine what someone like a Grippinus must have done. But a Grippinus is exercising. He's working out when he gets the news that that he's been brought up on charges and then a jury is out deciding his punishment.

And the word comes that he's been spared, that he won't be executed, and then word comes that he's been exiled. And a grip and us simply looks at his friends, who the news has been delivered in front of, and he says, well, we shall take our lunch on the road. And they leave. And his idea was, and he said famously, I am not a hindrance to myself. What does that mean? What he means is that he wouldn't make his problems

worse ever by bemoaning them. So he would be himself, even if that would mean that he is exiled or unfairly punished. But once that unfair punishment came down, he would not complain about it. He would not cry over spilt milk. He would, he had no hope that you could convert or convince someone as broken as Nero and he hit the road.

And so, a grip and we'll talk a little bit about this more later, but a grip and this is one of the few Romans who refused to bend under Nero's will, who refused to cower in front of the mob and insist always on being themselves, which to me is a very key stoic teaching. We don't add to our we don't add to our troubles. We face our fate bravely and first and most importantly, we refuse to compromise

on what is essential to us. We will not bend, we will not be anything other than the red that we know that we were meant to be. So the book begins with Zeno and obviously it's filled with all sorts of interesting characters like Agrippinus in the middle. It was fitting, although there have been modern Stoics, you know, James Stockdale being one and General Mattis being another more recent one and and there were some Stoics, you know, near the decline in fall of Rome. But I wanted to end with Marcus Aurelius. I felt like there was a nice And there were some Stoics, you know, near the decline in fall of Rome. But I wanted to end with Marcus Aurelius. I felt like there was a nice cemetery of beginning with Z and ending with A.

And so Marcus Aurelius, to me, is sort of the apotheosis, the pinnacle of Stoicism. It's this philosophy that begins, you know, 500 years earlier in a moment of powerlessness and loss, and it culminates in perhaps the only historical example of a philosopher king. The philosophy goes from this lowly porch to the imperial palace. And so in Marcus, we have a fascinating example of what philosophy can help us be of the sort of true greatness that philosophy allows us to realize. And what I just love about Marcus' story is it's complete lack of precedent in all of history before or since. Now, here you have Marcus who is not born to a royal family and does not marry into a royal family,

but somehow he catches as a young boy, the eye of the emperor Hadrian who does not have a son. And Hadrian somehow senses something in Marcus, something that must have been profoundly inspiring and noticeable. I mean, the idea that the most powerful man in the world would see an aboie, whom he is not related to in any way, the future of the empire is a pretty incredible thing. And what Hadrian puts in motion is a succession plan where he adopts a man in Anteninais Pius, who's in his 50s, in exchange for Anteninais Pius, in adopting Marcus Aurelius, the idea being

that together they will groom Marcus Aurelius to wear the purple cloak of the emperor. Now, this is ironically a very similar trajectory to Nero, right? Nero is not quite the emperor's son. He's the emperor's stepson, his mother believes that he's destined for greatness. She's so lexem for a life of greatness early on. She secures for him the best tutors, so on and so forth, that one of those tutors being Seneca. But somehow the process of being a young prince in line for the throne creates one of the worst people in history in Nero.

And yet in Marcus Aurelius, it creates one of the greatest people in history. We have this idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And yet in Marcus's case, it's the opposite. Somehow it makes him better as a person. Matthew Arnold says, you know, in Marcus Aurelius, we have a man who has given all the gifts of fate and power that one could possibly imagine. And yet somehow he proves himself worthy of it. It's really an incredible story, one that I remain fascinated with every time I think about it. And I think, again, just one of those great historical moments that is not explored enough.

If we think about why this happened, how it could have happened, I mean, obviously, stoicism to me is that missing key, but there's sort of two key moments in Marcus Aurelius' life. So one, he is adopted by Antoninus, who seems to be, although not an overtly philosophical figure, one of those people who just seems to naturally embody goodness and greatness and philosophy, even if they're not conscious of it.

And Marcus is adopted as a boy, and I think the idea was that Antoninus Pius might rule for a few years. Marcus would have a chance to familiarize himself to be educated, the people would get used to him. And then Marcus Aurelius would be a young king, who with the energy of a young king would rule for many years. Well, what's incredible, it's a fluke of biology and fate. Marcus Aurelius ultimately does not assume the throne

until he's in his 40s. So he has this long apprenticeship under a truly great man in Antoninus. And if you haven't read meditations in the first book of meditations, he has a very long list of gratitude of all the things that he learned from Antoninus, which I think is worth reading for any father or leader

or writer, it's just a profound paragraph, sort of a meditation on mentorship, really. But the other pivotal moment in Marcus' life, at about 25 years old, he's studying under a man named Junius Roustakis, a well-known stoeic, and it's Junius who recommends that Marcus read the lectures of Epictetus.

And we don't know if Junius has just a copy of Epictetus' lectures, or if he, in fact, attended Epicetus' lectures himself, but what we know is that a book recommendation is given, and everyone in this event has been recommended a book. You know, most of the time you go, oh, sure, I'll get around to that and you don't. What I think so incredible is Marcus does read this book,

and here you have the future emperor of the world reading the lectures of a slave, a man who had been cruelly and been cruelly enslaved by Marcus's predecessors, who worked in the court of Nero. And so you have the most powerful man in the world being influenced by a man who not long ago is one of the least powerful men in the world. The only other precedent really I find for this is the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. But anyways, the introduction to philosophy, to stoicism particularly, I think is the secret. It's the driving force of Marcus Aurelius's greatness. And it sets in motion, again, another totally unparalleled event

in all of World History. As Marcus assumes the throne in his 40s, there is a pesky logistical detail, which is that Antoninus Pius had another son that he gets from Hadrian Hadrian, had adopted a man who had a son. So long story short, it gets complicated, but basically Marcus Arelius has a step brother. And if you're familiar with royal history in any way, what does the ascendant prince have to do before they take power? You have to clean house, right?

You can't have any other errors to the throne. And in fact, as I tell in the book, when Octavian becomes Rome's first emperor, he is advised by his stoic philosophy teacher to kill Julius Caesar's existing son. He says one cannot have too many Caesar's. So Marcus Relius is given absolute power and here he has a potential rival. And what does he do with this potential rival? I don't think history would have judged Marcus

unkindly for dispatching his stepbrother. The man would have been a footnote in history. Instead, Marcus does the only instance that a king, as I know, has ever done this. Marcus names his step brother, his co-emperor. And so the first thing that Marcus really does with absolute power is he gives half of it away. And it's an incredible moment. His brother, Lucius Varis, tends to handle, ends up handling military matters. Marcus hands handles civil matters. And so again, it's just a magnificent moment, not only this absolute power, not go to Marcus's head, with absolute power, he performs one of the most majestic, magnanimous gestures in all of royal history. Now, we might hope that an emperor who's so thoughtful, who's so kind, who's so philosophically inclined, would rule in a time of peace and plenty,

and we could have seen from him all sorts of brilliant gestures. If you've seen the movie Gladiator, they have the character playing Marcus Aurelius, try to make Rome a republic again. And free the slaves, Marcus could have done all sorts of amazing things. He could have been a sort of a, but he could have been a liberator, a refender of Rome. But instead his reign is a little bit like Lyndon Johnson's.

Lyndon Johnson has all these aggressive social endeavors and plans and is sort of blindsided by the Vietnam War, which ultimately consumes the political equity of his presidency. Marcus Aurelius is besieged not just by wars at the foreign border, not just a decaying and crumbling empire in other cases, but early in his reign, what begins what we now known as the Antonine plague. And this plague lasts for something like 15 years. It's a devastating pandemic. It originates in the east, it quickly overwhelms Rome's

institutions, obviously overwhelms any sort of rudimentary medical understanding of the time. And so what does Marcus really do in these crises, whether they're wars or pandemics or civil unrest, or there's even a serious attempted coup on his life? In every instance, what we see is Marcus living up to his philosophy, When things break down, a leader steps up. And that's what Marcus does. And it's incredible. He appoints Galen,

the great medical mind of his time to lead the response to the plague. He personally leads the troops into battle to drive out the invaders. But whereas other previous kings had ruthlessly slaughtered, the so-called barbarians, Marcus embarks on an audacious peace plan when the coup by one of his most trusted generals. And I tell the story at the end of the obstacles the way. When one of Marcus's trusted friends in general's, you know, declares himself emperor and thus in dangers, not just Marcus,

but Marcus's family and Marcus's legacy. How does Marcus respond? He responds with with self control and with mercy. And he says, let us use this as an opportunity to teach future generations how to deal with civil strife when the enemy is killed by an assassin. Marcus supposedly weeps because it deprived him the chance of pardoning the man who tried to kill him. So this idea for Marcus of, you know, he says,

just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. These are not idle words. He's tested on these things at almost every moment of his reign, right up to the end. As far as we understand, he catches the plague. He knows that he's marked for death. And his last moments are consumed with how to pass on succession. He can soles his grieving friends. He sends them away so he doesn't affect them. And he thinks of the legacy that is handing on down. So I just, Mark has talked about how we never step in the same river twice. That every time we read something or look at something or think about something.

Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynnins lack of public support. It angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed

to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. The thing is different and we are different because we're constantly being remade by by atoms and our perceptions. Every time I study Marcus' story every time I tell it every time I think about it, I'm touched by it in some new way. And, you know, I've been thinking about and writing about Marcus going on a decade and a half now.

And it wasn't until really the beginning of this year that it fully struck me just how profound it is that this work of self-control and gratitude and goodness and patience was written during a horrendous pandemic that he was worried about his life at every moment, that he was worried about the lives of the people that he loved at every moment, that it would have been an overwhelming all-consuming crisis, and yet he still found the time to do this writing. And when he says, you know, flexibility looks at events

and says, you are just what I'm looking for. When he says, no, it's not unfortunate that this happened. It's fortunate that it happened to me. And that I've remained unharmed by it. And that I can manage to turn it into something good. When he talks about how a fire uses everything that's thrown in front of it as fuel. You know, he wasn't just talking about, you know, the ordinary stresses of the workplace. He wasn't just talking about, you know, an argument with his wife. He wasn't talking about,

you know, the the the pittly concerns of, of, you know, and, and, and every day person. He was talking about some of the worst, most stressful situations you can imagine. So it's really an incredible idea. And I think my favorite line from Marcus, which I rediscovered right in this chapter, is he says, what we must do is remove our passions and replace them with love.

And the idea that again, a man with absolute power is remove our passions and replace them with love. And the idea that again, a man with absolute power who saw the horrors of war and the devastation of a plague and the backstabbing betrayals of politics, that he would be reminding himself to love everyone and everything in every moment was just a magnificent moment of human greatness to me. So those are the three stillings I thought I would talk about.

If I could conclude on one note, I assume most of the people on this event are Americans. I appreciate you carving out some time this evening, the night of the first debate between Biden and Trump tonight. When I talk about the sort of stoic moments, may you live in a time where stoicism is required, I mean, I think this is one of those moments, right? This is what stoicism was training us for. We are in the midst here in America, not just of a devastating pandemic,

but a new civil rights movement. We are watching democratic norms be eroded if not deliberately flouted on both sides of the political spectrum. We're watching institutions crumble under the weight of mismanagement and neglect. We're watching people even struggle to agree on what basic principles we want to stand for. But I would also say all of that true and we could say that sort of blame on both sides thing.

We are also staring at a sort of a rising, stumbling, bumbling, you know, descent into fascism, where at least the very real possibility of that thing. And when I think about the Stoics, when I think about what they did, whether it's Cato or Thrasia, Helvides or Marcus Aurelius, whether it's Portia Cato, one of the few women we were able to profile in the book or on down to General Mattis today, when the Stoics saw something that was wrong, the Stoic stepped up

and did something about. There's even a term for the Stoics of that sort of middle Roman period. They were known as the Stoic opposition, meaning that the Stoics, with the exception of Senaqa who took more of an insider's role in Nero's administration were pretty unified in their opposition to the excesses and the cruelties and the violations of the law by Nero's administration. And in fact, the stand that they take not only costs the lives of several of the Stoics leads many other many of the rest of them into exile, but there stand inspires Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius in the beginning of Meditations, credits,

those early Stoics with teaching him the essentialness of the rule of law, of equality under the law, of a ruler who respects the rights of his citizens, of all citizens, of the importance of freedom of speech and liberty, right? The founding fathers of America when they are resisting the tyranny of the British are inspired by Cato. In fact, George Washington puts on a play about Cato at Valley Force, the lowest moment in American history.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of the translators of Epictetus, leads a black regiment of troops for the Union cause in the Civil War. So this idea that I wanted to conclude with the idea, with a clear argument against this idea of the sort of the apathetic stoic, the resigned stoic, the stoic who doesn't get involved. In fact, what you'll see in almost every one of these stories

is that the stoic does get involved. When the stoic sees something, they say something. The stoic does not care much for political parties. They don't care much about the quibbles over this policy or that policy, but they do care about sort of basic bedrock ideas of liberty, of justice, right? The idea that the Stoics would look at the civil rights movement that we're having here in America and be anything but incredibly supportive of it to me is just a perversion of the philosophy. Justice is a core virtue of Stoicism. Being politically active is an imperative of Stoicism, in fact. politically active is an imperative of stoicism. In fact, Sennaka talks about the difference between Epicurianism and stoicism.

He says the Epicurian only gets involved in politics if they have to. The stoic only isn't involved in politics. He says if there is some dangerous emergency reason why they cannot be involved. So as we go into this debate, as we go into this election, I don't mean to make things political, but I would say that the Stoics would be looking at this moment as an opportunity, they would see it as an imperative that one votes, that one participates, that one says, look,

there may always be evil and bad people and incompetent politicians in the world, but they would say, I'm not going to accept or tolerate it if there is an opportunity for me to make a difference. If there's a, I won't allow a wrong to be done in my name. I think this is what the Stoics would say. You know, as I say about Cato, a stoke does not go quietly into that good night.

A stoke does not accept injustice. If they have even a one and a 1000 chance of making a difference, The Stokes get involved. And I would say the final thing that the Stokes believed about themselves, about the politicians they supported, about the people they hired, the idea of character being fate, right? So again, you can disagree or agree on certain political issues,

but what the Stokes would have insisted on, not just of themselves, but of the leaders they selected into office of the causes they donated to they would demand character from them in return and they wouldn't tolerate cheating or lying or indifference or incompetence in any way, because this is a violation of everything that the Stoics holds dear. And in fact, that idea of holding these things dear, we have an extra chapter. Three extra chapters, actually, if you pre-order the book, if you buy it this week, you go to dailystoic.com slash lies. We have three bonus chapters that I wasn't able to fit in the book. And one of those is about General Mattis, a lifelong fan of Marcus Realis. Mattis talks about holding the line and I think that's what Estelle does in a moment like this. We can't magically transform things. We can't magically fix them but we can hold the line. We can say,

I'm not going to let I'm not going to contribute to things getting worse. I'm going to try to make them better as best as I can because that's my obligation as a citizen. That's what those four virtues of courage and moderation and justice and wisdom demand of me. So that's all I had today. It was awesome to talk to you guys. You can put all your questions in the chat and we'll kick these around. And again, it was a complete honor. Thank you for supporting the book. I'm really proud of this one. Like I said, I wish it wasn't as timely as it turned out to be, but here we are.

And let's do the best we can. So someone was asking how to spell the middle philosopher I talked about that's Agrippinus, A-G-R-I-P-P-I-N-S. And he's in the middle of the book. There's a table of contents, but agrippinus is a fascinating guy. Someone Steve Cardosa asked about straying from St.O.S.S.ism about falling short. I think this is an inevitable reality of any philosophy of any religion. And St.O.S.S.ism, you know, it isn't this idea that if you sin, if you mess up, you go to hell and you need to beg for forgiveness. That's not what the stoic logic is. The stoic logic is, look, if you're not living rightly, if you're not living in accordance with nature, if you're

violating those four virtues, I think the stoic argument is that your life will come to feel like hell. And so that's the bad news. The good news is you have the power to change that at any time. And so for the stoic, the idea, there's a beautiful passage from Marcus to realize about picking yourself up when you fail, when you lose the rhythm, the flow of life, what you have to do is take a deep breath and return to it, come back to it. So when I find myself drifting, I just try to go back to the original sources. I just, I try to do a little reading. I try to root myself back in the ideas, and I find that that tends to re-center

and reconnect me. Hugh Connelly is asking, why didn't the people of Rome think Marcus's behavior of mercy and forgiveness was a weakness? I mean, I think it was quite obvious that it wasn't a weakness. He was universally lauded. He was believed even in his own time to be one of the great men of all of history. Some polarization, there are some people who didn't like him, and clearly there was a coup. But when you really see a leader who is thoughtful,

who is empathetic, who understands human beings, who treats human beings as flawed, but fundamentally good people. Again, these are all, I think, similarities between Marcus and Lincoln. Even when you disagree with them, even when you think maybe you do it differently yourself, it's hard not to admire them.

And look, there was a hardness and a determination in Marcus as well. I mean, he leads troops in battle successfully. You know, he hands down hard judgments and sentences. He is by no means like a complete softy. Often it is true that philosophically sort of intellectual leaders can be weak, but that just wasn't the case with Marcus.

And I think that was the source of some of his greatness. Someone's talking about Desmond's Howard's idea of control, the controllables, how else do you apply stoicism to athletes and coaches? We have that distinction between what's up to me, what's not up to me is an essential stoic premise. I have a great video on YouTube. You can check out what we talk about.

You control how you play. You don't control the refs. You can control how you play. You don't control the weather. You can control how you play. You don't control your teammates. You can control how you play. Ultimately what an I'm talking to professional athletes

about this, It seems simple, but the human mind is not content to just focus on what you control. It wants to control everything. So I guess what I would say is I wouldn't underestimate that or undersell that as a major breakthrough. It's a big one. But you know, the idea of determination, the idea of practice, the idea of preparing for adversity. These are all really essential parts of the Stoke philosophy. And I think why it's well suited to us, why sports and services are well suited to each other. There's a chapter in the book about an early Stoke in Crescippus. And Crescippus is actually an elite athlete. He runs distance running.

It's a really strange event. You do like a few hundred almost wind sprint style laps that are about 200 yards long each. And actually, he coins a stoic principle that academics now refer to as the sort of the no shoving rule. And so he talks about how winning is great and wanting to win is great and doing everything you can do to win is great

up until the line of your actions having a negative impact on another person, right? And I think this is, again, even 2,000 years ago the Stoics were wrestling with, you know, the idea of what's allowed and what you can get away with. And also what's sort of ethically right in the gray area between those things. Are there any politicians today that you would say

fit the description of a stillic? Look, I get this weird thing, because I talk about our political situation and people get upset that I'm being political and I think there's a big difference between being engaged and active politically and I think it's imperative that writers and thinkers and artists use their platform to be engaged in that sense I think it's the wrong decision to get, to take a sort of a philosophical platform and to use it to advance very specific policies. So like to me, when I look at the police brutality issue, I don't see that as a political

issue to me, that's a human rights issue. When I look at the destruction of democratic norms that have occurred under the Trump administration, that's my problem is not that a Republican is doing that. My problem is that that's a betrayal of what this country is supposed to stand for. I'm not upset that Donald Trump cheats on his taxes because, again, because he's a Republican, I have a problem with people cheating on their taxes,

and I have a problem with people who are, you know, hold power and then use that power to bully, to lie, to mislead, to enrich oneself. So I don't think, I don't think the idea of like, hey, who's a politician, who I identify as Stoke and then we should go support them for that reason. What I think we want to see are politicians adhering to these Stoke principles to go support them for that reason, what I think we wanna see our politicians

adhering to these stoic principles within the ideological spectrum that they occupy. So I think John McCain's final decision to vote against the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. To me, it was a moment of greatness and a moment of stoicism, not because whatever my private opinions are about about Obamacare, but because he was a man living up to his principles, even though it was not just a politically

unpopular move, but he did it with quite literally one of his dying breaths. And so I think McCain was one of the last politicians and a generation to really embody those ideas. And I say that as someone who had the opportunity to vote for him in one election and didn't. But to me, what stoicism brings to the political arena, and I've had the privilege of talking to a number of politicians of both parties,

what it should bring is not specific prescriptions, I don't know, related to gun control or taxation, or how the Department of Education is run, but it should instruct the character and the kinds of decisions that one makes within their own party and within their ideological beliefs. Someone is saying that they have a 17 year old son who believes that the ultimate form of stoicism is to become a robot of reason. Well, actually, so I would encourage them to read this passage from Marcus, to really say, this is what Marcus learns from sex this. And sex this is a fascinating philosopher. It's actually Plutarch's grandson, who's a major source in the book, and the incredible thing, there's a story of Marcus Aurelius going to attend a lecture of sex this well into his

reign of emperor. Someone asked, what are you doing? And he says, I am going to see sexists to learn that, which I do not yet know, which to me is wonderful. But this is what he says, in example of fatherly authority in the home, what it means to live as nature requires, gravity without errors, to show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance to amateurs and sloppy thinkers,

his ability to get along with everyone, sharing his company was the highest of compliments and the opportunity was in honor for those around him to investigate and analyze with understanding and logic, the principles by which we ought to live by, not to display anger or other emotions to be free of passion yet full of love, to praise without bombast to display expertise without pretension. So I don't know, I mean sure there's room to disagree, but that to me that description from from Marcus Reelis does not strike me as a robot of reason it strikes me as actually quite a wonderful person, a person capable of joy and happiness and laughter,

but also a person who's protected themselves from the depths of despair and rage and bitterness and resentment and hatred. Someone mentions, what can we learn about Marcus and Rizzo Realias is addiction to opium. It's very worth pointing out that whole, there is some academics who think that a Marcus may have had an opium addiction. And this is from the fact that Galen was known to prescribe opium and whatever its rudimentary form of the time was. And a reading by an academic many years ago

of meditations where Marcus describes things like running along the course of the stars and floating above the sky looking down. The writer theorizes or psychologizes from this that Marcus must have often been high and this is where this sort of images are coming from. I think first off the exercises that Marcus really is doing are long philosophical traditions, taking the view from above, you know, looking out of an air, if I picked up your diary and

I saw you write a little thing about how you were looking out of an air, if I picked up your diary and I saw you write a little thing about how you were looking out of the window of an airplane and you reminded you of how small things were, how connected everything was, I wouldn't say, oh, from that reading, Michael Davis is clearly an opium addict. That's just not the read I would get. So I disagree with the premise.

Someone is asking about my next book. I can't tell you, but I can say that I am hard at work on it. Someone is asking where there be more signed books for me in the Daily Stoke store. Actually, yes, they just went up today. If you go to store.dailystoke.com, you can get signed copies of any of my books. We have them there.

And we are currently out of stock of the leather bound edition of the daily stock, but that we are waiting on the shipment and that should be here sometime in mid-November. If I wanted to be the mentee of a successful person and how would I approach it, look, you don't approach a person and make them your mentor. A mentor selects you, right? That's what happened for Marcus Rios. Hadron sees something in him and chooses him. The idea that you would go up to a pretty stranger in a bar

and say, would you be my girlfriend or do you want to get married? These are ways to creep people out. A mentorship is something that evolves that happens over time. I started doing transcription work for Robert Green and that blossomed into a fuller mentorship that continues to this day. So there's a great line from Cheryl Sandberg.

She says, it's not if you have a mentor, you will do well. It's if you do well, a mentor will find you. And I really like that. Anna says that she ordered a copy in January and have not received the bonus items. Then I'm guessing you have not emailed the follow the pre-order instructions, which you can do at dailystoke.com slash lives. Someone asked, how do we contribute to the political discourse? When everything is so divisive, and there are societal pressures not to take strong chances? Well, I would say a couple of things. One, I'm not sure the discourse needs more contributions.

I would say people need to get off their ass and make hard decisions. You have to decide who you're going to vote for. You're going to have to decide what cause you're going to support. You have to decide how are you going to contribute to those causes in a way? I think that's almost the problem. Is everyone thinks like, well, I'm tweeting about this,

therefore I'm making a difference. I don't think that's sufficient. I don't think the Stokes would agree that that's sufficient, either. So I think the societal pressure against taking strong, strong chances, I would urge you to read the agribinist chapter in the book. You know, I don't give a fuck what people think. And I'll get angry emails from people. It says, oh, I'm, you know, unsubscribing from your emails

or I'm never gonna buy one of your books because you supported this cause or you said this or you, you know, dared to criticize the person I've decided that I unquestioningly support. My response to that is, I don't choose my opinions. I don't choose what I believe is right based on whether I think it's going to be popular or not, and whether I think it's going to help my career or not. I do it because I think that it's right.

So the societal pressure against taking a stand, I mean, to me, the stoic rejects that out of hand. and taking a stand, I mean, to me, the stoic rejects that out of hand. What I would say is that we are, our obligation is to speak up when we see things that are happening. It's to be clear and emphatic while still being empathetic and kind and to try to move things forward rather than simply point the finger and blame. Someone's asking about my interview with Jocco and the end of Extreme Ownership. I love Jocco, I think his stuff's great.

And we did talk a little bit about Stoicism. I think Jocco is a great example of somebody who, like an Antoninus Pius, who is intuitively and actually still, rather than maybe someone who's sort of deeply versed in the philosophy, but in a way I almost find that more inspiring and more interesting and I love his stuff. And if you wanna check out the interview, you can. Somebody asked about the stuff in the data

stock store, do we ship? Yeah, as far as I know, we ship all over. Certainly we sold stuff in India before, so check that out. Somebody's asking about where there's still eggs who struggled with mental health issues. I mean, obviously in the ancient world, these things were much less understood. And so there's not, you know, here's Marcus Relius's battle with depression, or here's, you know, Sena, cause struggle with, you know, bipolar disorder or something.

That's not to say it didn't exist, it's just not how we understood it. But I will say what's really interesting to me is that if you're familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy, which I've done a bit myself, it's actually the teachings of Albert Ellis are rooted in the core teachings of stochism. So I think I don't think the stochists would at all be against therapy, against seeking medical help. And in

fact, one of the things I do tend to point people to is there's a great quote from Marcus Aurelius, which I think is worth saying these days. No, he says, there's no shame in asking for help, asking the fellow soldier for a leg or a hand up, right? So I certainly don't think the Stoets would stigmatize mental health issues. And if they knew what we knew now, I think we'd obviously hear a lot from them. So I got time for one more.

Are there any female leaders who I think we'd obviously hear a lot from them. So I got time for one more. Are there any female leaders who I think embodies stoic principles? That was a really important thing to me writing this book. I did not want it to be just a bunch of old guys. So there's a chapter. One of my favorite ones to write is about Portia Cato, whose Cato's daughter. She's an integral part of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. She's a total badass. She embodies stoicism at its absolute best. Flash forward a few hundred years.

Mustonius Rufus famously says that virtue has nothing to do with gender and advocates teaching both boys and girls philosophy young. So the Stokes were early to the idea of equality between the sexes at that level. So we talk a little bit about that. But if you check out the bonus stuff, what you can do at dailystokes.com slash lives,

I also have a profile of Ariana Huffington who grew up in Greece was introduced to stoicism really early. And in fact, carries a note card with a quote from Marcus Aurelius around in her purse everywhere she goes. So the connection between, and I happen to see, because obviously I have the back-end stats, you know, the audience for Daily Stoken for my books

is actually quite evenly distributed across men and women. I think, unfortunately, the ancient world The audience for Daily Stoken for my books is actually quite evenly distributed across men and women. I think, unfortunately, the ancient world was a man's world. So most of the people we know, or we're famous, we're men. But to me, the sort of quiet dignity, the endurance, the absolute fearlessness and determination of generations of women who worked and lived alongside these stoic men,

to me is just as much living the philosophy as the people who wrote the philosophical books that we happen to be drawing from. So great. And the last question someone asked, this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the pandemic. Well, I do more. Yes, of course, I love digital stuff. And if you like digital stuff from me, I do one of these every single quarter for the members of Daily Stoic Life, which you can check out at dailystoiclife.com. So guys, thank you so much. I hope everyone's

being safe. I hope you're keeping your head amid, thank you so much. I hope everyone's being safe. I hope you're keeping your head amidst all the craziness. I hope you're sticking to what's, you know it'll be true and right. And I hope you're wearing a mask, being smart, being safe, taking care of your neighbors, your family, and yourself. Thank you guys very much.

Appreciate it. If you like the podcast that we do here and you wanna get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.