The Daily Stoic - You Need to Calm Down | How To Read Epictetus (Enchiridion, Discourses)

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

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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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. You need to calm down. We live in a time of social upheaval. What work looks like has changed.

What marriages look like has changed. How kids dress has changed. How we understand or view our like has changed, what marriages look like has changed, how kids dress has changed, how we understand or view our history has changed, our discussion about race is different, even gender is fluid and up for debate in the modern world. And guess what? It was like that in the ancient world too. That isn't just to say that one can find precedents for some of today's debates about gender and sex and age and real, but more generally that the only constant in history was change. People have always felt like they were reeling that life was moving too fast, right down

to the first appearance of stoicism in Rome, which Cato the Elder thought would be such a dangerous import from Greece that he tried to ban it. Taylor Swift's advice to all of you who are freaking out about this is fitting. You need to calm down. You're not going to succeed at banning things. It never works. It only heaps shame and embarrassment on the people who ignorantly stood a thwart history and tried to shout stop.

And it certainly doesn't make a great case for the old values, which do have values when you present them as being so fragile that they need protection by any means necessary, including tyranny and cruelty. Focus on yourself. Try to practice some empathy. Try to, you know, understand. Try to mind your own business. Let people figure things out for themselves. Let them break new ground. Let them find themselves. And while they're doing that, focus on what you control by being decent and kind and open-minded. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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. Obviously, I talk a lot about Marx really, some of the podcasts. I talk a lot about Seneca, I talk a lot about Marx really is on the podcast. I talk a lot about Seneca on the podcast. Those are two favorite stokes. Epic Titus rounds out that big three and I think he's kind of the hardest of the big three to get into. I think that's because in some ways he was the least talented or writer of the three. And I don't mean that as a knock.

In fact, that's sort of why I wanted to do this episode, which is how do you read Epic Titus, given the fact that he wasn't a writer, what survives to us of Epic Titus is not his writings, but the writings of someone who was listening to Epic Titus. But it's nevertheless an incredible story in an incredible philosopher that you do have to study Epictetus going from a slave literally his name means acquired going from a slave to an advisor and influencer

Of the emperor. I mean, it's just an incredible story and the only equivalent really I think is the unique symbiotic relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln So it's an incredible story. And in this episode, I'm going to break down who Epic Titus was, the themes of his teachings, his influencer art history, the best way to access Epic Titus' wisdoms and teaching. And of course, you can get all the books mentioned in this episode at my bookstore, The Painting Ports. Just go to thepaintedportch.com, click the links in the description, or just stop by and grab

them, enjoy this deep dive into Epic Titus, how to read them, and what you should know from them. Most people have heard of Marcus Aurelius, and they know that he was the emperor of Rome, which is this incredibly powerful, privileged, majestic position. But what they don't know is how he became so wise who introduced him to the stove of philosophy to change his life. And it's an incredible story.

It's actually Epic Titus. A slave is the philosophical mentor of the Emperor of Rome. Marcus Aurelius is given a copy of the writings of Epic Titus by his philosophy teacher, Rousticus. This may have actually been Rousticus' hand-written notes from attending Epic Titus' lectures himself, or it may be a copy of the writings of Aryan, who gives us the addition of Epic Titus that we still have to this day. We're not sure, but it's an incredible story, the most powerful man in the world introduced

to and changed by the writings and the thinkings of a slave. And so in today's episode, I want to talk about that guy, Epictetus, one of the wisest, most brilliant philosophers to ever live, but of the Stoics, perhaps the hardest to start with. Now, maybe you've heard of Epictetus from some of the quotes we post on Daily Stoic. Maybe you've heard me mention him in other videos. Maybe you just read Tom Wolf's A Man in Full and you want to know where to start with Epic Titus. Well, here we go. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing modern Turkey. We don't know the name of his mother or really anything about his family, but we know he's born into a brutal form of slavery and Roman slavery typically would last for

the first 30 years of one's life. As a young man, he's purchased by a secretary to the then emperor of Rome, Nero, and he serves in Nero's court. And Epic Titus is right there. So on the one hand, he's experiencing this extreme powerlessness, this brutality, but he's also amidst incredible luxury. And he may well have met Seneca, who I have another video about,

but Seneca and Epic Titus are operating in the same relatively small world, but again, from very different positions. Now slavery itself is unjust, but epictetus experiences particularly cruel slavery. We know that his master was violent and depraved. At one point, and I think this is an insight into who epictetus is as a person, epictetus's master is torturing him.

And he's twisting and bending his leg. Is it a punishment? Is he just a sadist? We don't know. And he's twisting his leg and Epic Titus looks him in the eye and he says, if you keep doing that, it's going to break my leg. And then he says, if you keep doing that, it's going to break my leg. My leg is going to break. My leg is going to break. And then snap his leg breaks. And Epic Titus doesn't cry. He makes no sound and he looks at him and he says, didn't I warn you? So if we want a sense of who Epictetus is as this stoic who's mastered himself. I mean I don't think he gets much better than

that. But in fact, Epictetus returns to this injury over and over and over again in his philosophy because it changes his life. He walks with a limp for the rest of his life. But he says many, many times, something to the effect of lameness where a disability is an impediment to the leg, but not to the mind. We find that he finds a way to push forward to not consider himself deprived or disabled by this,

but actually to see a philosophical lesson in it, which is that the body and the mind are separate and that the mind is higher than the body and that although the body can be crippled or disabled or wounded, the mind has the ability to tell itself what this means and to move forward from there. We don't know how Epictetus himself is introduced to philosophy, but he begins to study under a teacher named Musonius Rufus, who is pretty socially ahead of his time. Musonius Rufus, who was pretty socially ahead of his time. Musonius Rufus is

considered the Roman Socrates, he's brilliant, he's wise, he's a strict teacher, but he also allows for the teaching of women in his classes, and probably for that reason also allows for the teachings of slaves in his classroom. And at some point Epic Titus is single about as a star pupil, he and Musonius Rufus become close. When Epic Titus is given his freedom and Musonius Epic Titus is singled out as a star pupil. He and Musoneus Rufus become close. When Epic Titus is given his freedom, and Musoneus Rufus is later exiled as all the philosophers in Rome or exiled, they go off together. And Epic Titus begins teaching by himself and becomes one of the great philosophy teachers

of his time. So great, in fact, that he teaches the Emperor Hadrian who stops by his school in the Coppolis and goes on to be one of the most influential philosophy teachers of his time. People would send their their children to study with Epictetus and I think it's just incredible right? Epictetus is born anonymous into great adversity and difficulty but it's his tenacity, his perspective, his sheer self-sufficiency that makes him not just in his own life, not just to the emperors who he influenced, but for history and all time, a symbol of the human ability to find freedom and self-mastery in the most difficult circumstances.

He dies in roughly the year 135 AD, circumstances unknown, but his teaching survived, and that's where we're going to start with today's books. Epic 2's has a great line that I think captures both howers was to think about stoic philosophy, but also what he's writing served best and actually have it on the back of the Daily Stoke Journal. He says, every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand, write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. So we want to think of Stoke philosophy and particularly the writings of Epititus, something you return to, you riff on, you're incorporating into your life into your own thinking. And if you've read meditations and I have another video about that

Marcus and Julius is doing this in fact several quotes and exercises that survived to us from epictetus come to us through Marcus Arrealis who was so Insimately familiar with epictetus that he's citing and quoting him from memory epictetus says that the first task in life The first job of the philosopher is to separate matters into two buckets. What's in our control and what's not in our control. And this exercise, what we call the dichotomy of control, is really at the core of EpicTidus' teachings. Is it up to me? Is it not up to me? If it's up to me, it gets my attention, my energy, my focus. If it's

not up to me, I try not to think about it. I try not to put energy or emotion towards it. The truth is, so much of what we spend time on is not in our control. He says, some things are in our control and others are not. He says, things in our control are our opinions, our pursuits, our desires, our aversions, or in a word, our own actions. Now, what's not in our control, he says, is our body, our desires, our aversions, or in a word, our own actions. Now what's not in our control, he says,

is our body, our property, our reputation, commands in one word, things that are not our own action. Now try to think about where this is coming from. This isn't just like some guy sitting in a mansion just riffing on big ideas, the way that some of the other ancient philosophers were. When he's saying, your body is not in your control, he's saying this from the perspective of a person

who was owned by other people and had his legs broken by those people. But he came to understand that even in the confines of slavery, what's up to him are his decisions, his actions, his thoughts, right? And everything else was not up to him. And so when we separate things, it widows what there is to focus on.

Epic Titus believed that as powerless as we were over external conditions, we always have the ability to choose how we respond to those conditions. He says, you can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus can take away my power of choice. And then he says later, which I love, and this is an important tag to that. He says, if we want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices. So for Epictetus, it's all about choice. And I love this so much because he was a guy who for much of his existence

had very little choice about where he lived, what he did, what people did to him, but he always focused inside that on where his choices were. The other thing Epictita says is that we have to test every impression. So it's not just that a lot of things are outside our control, it's not just that our judgments about things have set us. When something comes in, we have to stop. He says don't let the force of an impression knock you off your feet. Say to it, hold on. Let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test. It's like if you were to try to pay you with something with a hundred dollar bill, hold it up to the light or they'd scribble

on it. He even talks about how back in Rome, a money-changer could hear by the way a coin hit a table or a rock, whether it was counterfeit or not. And he says that really the job of the philosopher, the job of the stilett, is to separate these sort of counterfeit impressions from the real impressions. To try to strip away our judgment, to strip away our biases, strip away our fears, strip where our desires, all of that, to see things as they really are. Let's riff on some of my favorite quotes from Epic Titus' writings. He says, it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. A few years ago, I gave a talk to the Pittsburgh Pirates and as I walked into their

practicality and brained in Florida, they actually had this on the wall. They said, it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things. They didn't know that this came from Epic Titus, but it does, and I think that's so cool. The idea being that we control our thoughts and opinions, right? Everything else is objective and outside of us. He talks about this specifically in regards to being offended. He says, when someone provokes you, understand that you are complicit in getting upset. He says, we shouldn't respond immediately.

We should take a moment to react. We should regain control. But the idea is that nobody is responsible for your emotions, for your feelings, but yourself. Another person can't make you angry. Another person can't offend you. Another person can't hurt your feelings. Another person can't frustrate you. This is something that you have the power over. Now, other people can do bad things, they can do cruel things, they can do stupid things, they can do things you don't like. But we control how we respond to those things.

Most importantly, we control our emotions in response to those things. Running through Epic Titus' philosophy is the idea of intellectual humility, and you can get the sense he was bumping up against you know sort of best and the brightest of young Roman life. So a lot of egotistical kids, a lot of kids who've been coddled, a lot of kids who thought they were geniuses.

But he says look it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. He says it doesn't matter that you read, it matters what you read, it matters how you read. He says, don't just tell me that you've read books. He says, show me what you have learned by thinking better. And he says, look, to get better, you have to be willing to look not good. He says, if you wish to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. Not only can you not learn what you think you already know. If you're not willing to admit that you don't know something, right, if you're not willing to ask questions, if you're not willing to be bad at something, you will never get good at that thing.

You will never get better. And I think this pertains to another important thing where Epictetus is saying, look, when you're grounded in life, when you know what's important, when you only focus on what you control, you don't care what other people think. You don't look outside yourself for approval. you don't care what other people think. You don't look outside yourself for approval.

You don't care what your teacher thinks. You don't care what your classmates think. You don't care what anyone thinks. You're focused on yourself. But ultimately for Epictetus, philosophy was not a parlor trick. It was not intellectual exercises. Unlike Santa Cah, unlike Marcus Reyes, he wasn't writing these things in pseudo-retirement. He didn't get to go to the best schools. He wasn't anything even like his rich and successful

students. I hope Titus had a really, really hard life. So for him, philosophy was a coping mechanism. It was something that got you through the worst things that we can experience as human beings. And so basically he says, the equivalent to the don't talk about it, be about it. Just don't talk about your philosophy, embody it. And I think it says something that Epictetus didn't write anything down. And yet he comes to us all these thousands of years later because he embodied his teachings most of all. Yes, his students jotted down what those teachings were. But the power of them was who he was as a person. Epic Titus is obviously around the richest and most successful Romans.

He sees in Nero's court one guy go to Nero one day and go, Nero, I'm down to my last million dollars and Nero says, oh my god, how have you survived? And Epic Titus sees that even these successful rich people are actually quite poor because they want more always because they're insatiable. And because they don't know what's actually important. He says, it is better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind

than to live anxiously amidst abundance. And I think that's what he's seeing in Nero's palace every day, that Nero isn't someone to admire or to be jealous of, that epictetus is actually freer than the most powerful man in the world because epictetus is in command of himself. And I think opting out of this competition is a big part of it.

Epictetus is, again, saying by focusing on what you control, you decide what success is. He says, you can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. And he says, the only way to achieve this is by despising things that are is up to you. And it's the only way to achieve this is by despising things that are not up to us. What I think he means is, look, for me as a writer, for me making this video, if I care how many views it does,

if I care about how many copies I sell or what awards I win, then I've handed over the approval to something that I don't control. Success is now whether something breaks my way that's not up to me. Now if I focus instead on whether I did my best possible job, if I focus on the part of it that's in my control, then I can always win that competition. If I show up, if I do my work. And when we think about Epic Titus' life, this hard, brutal existence of slavery, how does he endure it? Part of it is by having his eyes wide open, he's not naive.

He says, set before your eyes every day, death and exile and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. And you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything. And actually, Mark's really gets, I think one of the most haunting exercises in all of Stoke philosophy from Epictetus,

just saying that even as you tuck your children in tonight, say to yourself, they may not survive till morning. Now, does this mean that you're not attached to them? You don't love them? No, I think it's that you're not taking them for granted. He says, you do not possess the precious people in your life. And I think that's a really important way to think about it. There is a funny story about Epictetus one night, he's in his house and he hears someone breaking in, he rushes downstairs and they've stolen his most valuable possession this this silver lamp And he says ah

Epic teedis, this is your fault you possess this expensive thing tomorrow You will go down and buy a cheaper lamp. You can only lose what you have I just love the idea that you know He's a philosophy says not to be attached But then he has this thing that he's attached to it it gets stolen, but instead of crying about it, instead of whining about it, it just says, let's get a cheaper one and let's not worry about it so much. Epic Titus, you know, just knows that doing the right thing is sometimes going to be judged, but if it's worth doing, if you've committed to doing it, you shouldn't care what other

people think he says. Whenever you do something, you have decided ought to be done, never try to avoid being seen doing it, even if people in general may disapprove of it. If of course your action is wrong, don't do it at all, but if it's right, why be afraid of people whose criticism is off the mark. And as we said, you don't care about other people's criticism because it's not in your control. It doesn't change you, it doesn't affect you, it's outside you.

What matters is, did you think this was something that needed to be done? If so, you should do it to your absolute best of your ability. And if we think about the injustices that epictetus endures, it makes this quote of one of my favorites even more admirable. It says, until you know their reasons, how do you know whether they've acted wrongly? The point is, people are often doing what they think is right or what they haven't thought about at all and to take it personally to assume the worst to add judgment on top of it, right? That's what upsets us, right?

It's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. So when we add to it, they did it because they hate me, they did it because they don't like me, they did it because they're trying to be cruel, they did it because they're an awful person, these judgments make hard things harder. So, as Epictetus gets smarter and wiser and better, how does he know or how does he measure the progress

of his students? He says, the sign of a person making progress in philosophy is this, criticizing nobody, praising nobody, blaming nobody, accusing nobody, saying nothing about oneself to indicate being someone or knowing something. And he says, whenever such a person is frustrated or impeded, he accuses himself. If he is complimented, he laughs

to himself. And if he's criticized, he doesn't defend himself. Again, talking about progress, he says, let's see some evidence of your progress. It's as if I were to say to an athlete, show me your shoulders and he responded, have a look at my weight. Get out of here with your giant weights, I'd say. What I don't want to see is the weights, but how you've profited from using them. So again, don't talk about it, be about it. And again, I think that's what makes Epic T2 so great. It's not what you've said. It's that he endured something that almost none of the other so it's would have possibly

been able to endure. But how do we balance like carrying what's in our control and not in our control but then still goes through the world? He says it isn't easy to combine and reconcile the two the carefulness of a person devoted to externals and the dignity of one who's detached but it's not impossible otherwise happiness would be impossible. He said it's like going on an ocean voyage. What can I do? I can pick the captain the boat the date and the best time to sail but then a storm hits. Well and it's like going on an ocean voyage. What can I do? I can pick the captain, the boat, the date, and the best time to sail, but then a storm hits. Well, then it's no longer my business.

I've done everything I could. Somebody else's problem now, namely the captain's. He says, but what if the boat starts to sink? What are my options? The only thing I'm in a position to do, drown, but fearlessly, without bawling or crying out to God, because I know that what is born must also die.

I don't know, I guess I would say you could also swim, right? But I think he's implying that that's outside of your control at this point. You know, he's basically saying, we work with the material we're given, we try to make the best of every situation, but sometimes all we can do is practice the art of acquiescence, right? The acceptance of things outside our control, which is actually something Marcus takes from Epictetus as well. In book three of discourses, one of my favorite chapters, he says, every circumstances represents an opportunity. Being healthy is good, being sick is bad.

No, enjoying health in the right way is good, making bad use of your health is bad. So even illness can benefit us. Why not? If even death and disability can't. So it's possible to benefit from bad circumstances. Yes, from every circumstances, even abuse and slander. A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner. And he says, when you are struggling in life, when you're going through something difficult, think about it as if life has paired you with a strong sparring partner, and that's how you become a better boxer and fighter. And then we get to just some fragments of epictetus, which I'll riff on with you real quick. Whoever chaste at the conditions dealt by fate is unskilled in the art of life.

Whoever bears them nobly and makes wise use of the results is a man who deserves to be considered good. Epictetus would say that there are two vices more blacker and serious than the rest, lack of persistence and lack of self-control. It's not events that disturb people, it's their judgments concerning them. To blame oneself is a proof of progress that the wise man never has to blame another or himself. Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen. This is the path to peace. Remember it is not

enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed. You must believe that you are being harmed. Then this is my favorite exercise from Epictetus and I think it's a good one to end with. He says, every circumstances has two handles with one of which you can hold while another is insupportable. If your brother mistreats you, don't try to come to grips with it by dwelling on the wrong he's done because that approach makes it unbearable. Remind yourself that he's your brother that you grew up together and that you'll find you can bear it. The idea that every situation has two handles, we decide how we're going to see things, we decide what response we're going to make of them,

that is the essence of Stereo-Philosophy. Probably Epic T, this is best and the biggest influence, and that is through the great James Stockdale. James Stockdale was a captain in the Navy. He sent to Stanford, and he's wandering through the halls one day, and he bumps into a philosophy teacher, sits in a philosophy class and is introduced to the writings of Epictetus. Now Flashford, a few years later, he's shot down over Vietnam and as he's parachuting into what he knows will likely be death or the very least terrible imprisonment, he says to himself, I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epic Titus. This is don't talk about it be

about it opportunity. This is where he has to apply his philosophy. And for seven years, he's a POW in what we now call the Hanoi Hilton, one of the worst prisoner of war camps of all time. And every day he's thinking of epicetus and using epicetus's sort of philosophy under real fire. He eventually does survive, he comports himself heroically, bravely, doigly, hinders this horrible torture and he gets back, he's talking to the writer Jim Collins and Jim Collins says, you know, how did you do it? And he says, well, and he's riffing on epictetus here. He says, I had to accept it unflinchingly, the difficulty, the pain, the struggle of my situation. But I told myself that

if I were to survive, and I thought that I would, that I would turn it into something that in retrospect, I would not trade. And that is the essence of epictetus. right? Epictetus wouldn't have chosen to be a slave just as James Stockfield did everything he could to not be shot down and to not be a prisoner of war, but once they were in these horrible circumstances, they tried to see it as an opportunity. That life was pairing them with a difficult sparring partner. They tried to apply their philosophy

to these difficult circumstances. They tried to be great inside of it. Couple other interesting little factoids about Epictetus Albert Ellis, one of the founders of rational, emotive behavioral therapy, R-E-B-T. Actually, things of Epictetus as one of his founding influences, as Donald Robertson says, Albert Ellis oriented most of his clients

and the fundamental concepts of cognitive behavioral therapy by teaching them this famous quote from Epipetus. It's not things that upset us. It's a judgment about things. So I love that. You might not have known and you can actually go see this edition at the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace in New York City.

But Theodore Roosevelt carried a copy of Epipetus with him on his famous River of Doubt expedition where he nearly died. You can see his inscribed copy of epictetus. Tussant Levantur, the Haitian revolutionary, red epictetus. So it did Montenegro. He actually had a quote from epictetus inscribed on the roof of his office. And then stocked out after he got out of the Hanoi Hilton,

he wrote this little book, Courage Under Fire, about his experiences testing ep Epic Tetis' doctrine in a laboratory of human behavior. It's an incredible document that everyone should read. It's assigned reading to all the people in the Naval Academy, which I've been lucky enough to talk at. He basically applies, as I said, stosism under incredible adversity, and I think it is an endorsement both of his character, of course, epictetus. Now, I know I've been referring to epictetus's writings, but epictetus didn't actually write anything down. Everything we have from epictetus survives to us

in the form of lecture notes from a student named Arian in the discourses in the Incrudian, and then a handful of fragments or quotes from other people. That's the entirety of what survives to us. We sort of have a snapshot of a snapshot of Epictetus, but I do think it is enough. If you've never heard of Aryan, Aryan was an influential Roman politician and writer. He also writes a great biography of Alexander the Great, but it's his beautiful note taking

in the lectures of Epictetus, likely in Cropolis that allows these to survive. I myself am a fan of the Penguin Classics translation. It's hard to go wrong. This is what I carry in my bookstore, The Pain in Purch. This has both the discourses and a selection of his writings, but as I said, the Sharon Label translation of Epictetus is really readable. It's nicely organized. You can see she sort of breaks it out in different passages. I really like that.

There's also How to Be Free, which is a selection published by Princeton University Press, translated by A.A. Long. I like this one a great deal as well. What I think is interesting about this word in Caribbean, and I know that's a great deal as well. What I think is interesting about this this word in Coridion and I know that's a difficult word. We'll flash it on the screen But in Coridion as a long says in this translation the earliest usage of this word refers to a knife or a dagger and I think what he implies is that Aryan by titling at this was that Epictetus's writings were meant to be defensive

or a protective weapon, or that it's just literally at hand. Ingredient basically means handbook, like book in your hand, that you have on your person whenever you need it. Once you've read Epic Tetris, this will make a lot more sense, because it's just there for you. You almost get the sense that he's answering questions

from his students. There's something from EpicTitus on so many different situations or circumstances that you might find yourself in. And so he really works as a great resource in that capacity. That's why his writing is so important, whether you start with a really accessible translation

like the Art of Living, or one of these collections like How to Be Free, or you go straight for the Penguin translation, which I always suggest. The important part is that you figure out how to, as Epic Tita says, every day and night, keep these thoughts at hand, write them, read them, allow, talk to yourself,

and others about them. Most of all, apply them to your life. That's what Epictetus shows us. That's why he's worth reading. Two other quick recommendations. Tom Wolf's fantastic novel, A Man in Full, is actually based on the writings of Epictetus. It's a beautiful, inspiring novel. It should be read by everyone who's interested in sending a philosophy. I also have a chapter about Epictetus in Lies of the Stokes, which I think you might like. Anyways, I will cut this video off here. You go read epictetus, then most importantly, apply it.

Epictetus said that philosophy wasn't this dry abstract thing. It was a thing he said you should be talking about writing down, reading about exploring with other people all the time. Is it constantly have it at hand? That's how I think about philosophy. It's weird. For the last five years, every single day I've been writing this free email about stoic philosophy. It's been not just cool to meet all these fellow practitioners of stoic philosophy, but in writing about it, talking about it, reading

it for our podcast, I have got to internalize these ideas in a way that I never would have been able to under any other circumstances. That's the idea. Flasfi is something you're supposed to engage in, not keeping these dusty old books or read once and be done with. It's a constant process. And I think that's why the email has worked so well for the people reading about it and sharing it and talking about it, all of that as well. So I'd love to have you join us on this email. You can sign up at dailystoke.com

slash daily email. It's totally free, no spam, you can unsubscribe whatever you want. I've basically given away a book for free every single year for five years. And I'm gonna keep on doing it until I drop dead. Check it out dailystoke.com slash daily email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoke early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other

people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric

rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today. a gap today.