The Daily Stoic

There are all the things that wealthy people buy with their money. They buy nice cars and enormous homes. They pay for access. They hire help. But there is one thing that they cannot buy.

The world feels broken, and it’s easy to believe nothing is ever going to change. In this audiobook excerpt from Soul Boom, Rainn Wilson makes the case for a spiritual revolution and pushes us to wonder what would happen if we rejected cynicism and stopped building so much of our world around competition, greed, and ego.Rainn Wilson is an actor, comedian, author, podcaster, writer, and director. He is most known for his role as Dwight Schrute on The Office, for which he earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. You can follow Rainn on Instagram @rainnwilson and Twitter @rainnwilson, and on soulboom.com. Listen to Rainn's Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Watch on YouTubeIf you like this chapter

For the Fourth of July, we’re revisiting Ryan’s conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Thomas Ricks about America’s founding, the ancient ideas that shaped it, and the first principles the founders were trying to build into the country.In this episode, Ryan and Thomas talk about First Principles: What America's Founders Learned From the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, and why figures like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison looked to the ancient world for models of courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom.

Life is going to ask you to wait sometimes. There will be people ahead of you. There will be things you need to learn. To be able to do this will take all of the Stoic virtues.

 If we don't believe we're capable of change, then we are definitely not capable of change. 

We are what we do. What we do determines who we can be.

Jo Ellis spent years serving her country as an Army National Guard aviator and Black Hawk helicopter pilot. She wanted to fly, serve, and be part of something bigger than herself. Then, after a deadly aircraft collision over the Potomac, a false rumor spread online claiming Jo was responsible. She was not involved. She was not even there. But because she was a trans service member, the internet turned her into a target.In this episode, Ryan talks with Jo about service, identity, courage, and what it feels like to have your life turned upside down by a lie. They talk about her path from helicopter mechanic to pilot, the SERE training experience that forced her to confront the truth about herself, the cost of being publicly scapegoated, and why one of the most Stoic things we can do is resist the urge to have an opinion about everything.Follow Jo Ellis on Instagram | @JoEllisReallyWatch Jo Ellis on Kill Tony | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WYC-flN8Nc

People fall prey to the same traps—the ones that have existed since the days of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, indeed for all time.

Everyone is new to this. We’re all figuring it out as we go.

The Stoics studied powerful people not to worship them, but to learn from them. In this episode, Ryan looks at Elon Musk through the lens of courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, and what his life reveals about the difference between success and virtue.

Ezra Klein is one of the sharpest voices in American politics, but this conversation is not about left versus right. It’s about virtue, responsibility, and character. Ryan and Ezra talk about why virtue matters in a democracy, what liberalism has lost by failing to speak clearly about responsibility, and why institutions alone can’t save a society if the people inside them abandon restraint, honesty, and self-critique. They also get into what Ezra thinks Stoicism gets right, where it falls short, and why Stoicism, or any philosophy, has to be tested in real life.Ezra Klein is a New York Times columnist and the host of The Ezra Klein Show. He is also the co-founder of Vox, where he served as editor-in-chief and later editor-at-large, and previously worked at The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Bloomberg, and MSNBC.

In this bonus episode, Ryan is takes you inside his office and walks through the books, objects, notes, and reminders that shape how he works and lives.

Whenever someone does something to us—minor or major—we always have this choice.

Will we help or hinder? Will we support or stab in the back? Will we open doors or close them?

With the World Cup underway, it feels like the right time to revisit a conversation with someone who knows exactly what it takes to perform on that stage. In today's episode, Ryan talks with two-time World Cup champion Carli Lloyd about the work behind a championship career: learning to handle pressure, raising your own standards, staying disciplined when talent is no longer enough, and knowing when it’s time to move on.Carli  is a former American professional soccer player who retired in 2021 and was inducted in the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2025. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, two-time FIFA Player of the Year and four-time Olympian, competing in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.Carli scored the gold medal-winning goal in the final of the 2008 Olympics and both U.S. goals in the gold medal match at the 2012 Olympics. She also helped the United States win the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cups, earn bronze at the 2020 Olympics and finish as runners-up

From one end comes another beginning, nothing lasts forever—nor would we want it otherwise.

Step outside so that when you come back, you are not carrying the same heat you left with.

There will be times we have to bend. There will be times we have to collaborate. There will be times we have to adjust, times we have to meet someone where they are.

Bruce Springsteen once said we can be an ancestor for our children, or a ghost. Father’s Day is a good time to ask which one we’re becoming. In today’s episode, Ryan talks with Lieutenant General Mark Hertling about the lessons we hope our children inherit from us. Mark’s book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, began as a way to pass down guidance to his sons during a deployment he knew he might not come home from. Ryan and Mark discuss the idea of an ethical will, the responsibility parents have to talk openly about failure, and the importance of teaching children what our own scar tissue has taught us. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling served 38 years in the U.S. Army, rising from tank platoon leader to commander of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army. His career included combat tours in Desert Storm and Iraq, where he commanded the 1st Armored Division, prepared U.S. and allied forces for deployment, and helped support military transformation across Eastern Europe.

Some fathers show us who to become. Others show us who not to become.In this Father’s Day weekend episode, Ryan looks at two very different examples of fatherhood. First, he reflects on Marcus Aurelius and the extraordinary influence of Antoninus Pius, the adopted father who taught him compassion, humility, discipline, responsibility, and how to hold power without being changed by it.Then Ryan talks with Tom Junod about the harder side of inheritance: what it means to love a father who caused pain, kept secrets, inspired fear, and still shaped the man his son became. Tom’s new book, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, is about masculinity, moral injury, family secrets, and the lifelong work of deciding which parts of your father you carry forward and which parts you refuse to repeat.Tom Junod is senior writer for ESPN, where his work has won an Emmy and the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, a