The Daily Stoic

"It’s ironic that today we celebrate the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, because the entire conceit of Lincoln’s short, 271-word address was that people would little note nor remember what he was saying. What counted to Lincoln was what the soldiers had done. The full measure of their sacrifice, for freedom, to preserve the Union, was beyond anyone’s ability to add or subtract. The Stoics would have agreed with that sentiment. It’s a waste of time to talk about what a good man is like, Marcus Aurelius said, we just have to be one. So what, he asked, if people remember things you said while you were alive? "Ryan explains the hidden majesty of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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/signupFo

"Because of how Stoicism survives to us—mostly in the form of scraps and fragments and letters—we don’t exactly have a list of dos and don’ts. There are no Ten Commandments of Stoicism. No definitive book of what they believed or didn’t. But in those scraps and fragments, we do get plenty."Ryan explains what we know about how the Stoics felt about habits on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode, Ryan speaks with singer Mike Herrera, founder of the punk band MxPx. They talk about being a touring musician during COVID, the insights he has gained from being in MxPx, and more.Mike Herrera is lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter for the punk band MxPx. Herrera founded the band in 1992 in Bremerton, WA, and it has since gone on to reach Billboard charts multiple times and sell millions of albums worldwide. Herrera also performs solo and with LA punk band Goldfinger, and he produces The Mike Herrera Podcast as well.This 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.This episode is also brought to you by Amazon Mu

"A lot can happen to ruin your day. You could wake up to a freak storm, or roads gnarled with traffic. Your dog could throw up on the carpet. You could find out that the president called you out by name on Twitter. You could have the flu or food poisoning. You could just be tired. You could have a job you hate. You could get dumped… or dumped on. The potential nightmares are endless. It would be wonderful then if there was some way to counteract those looming difficulties, a pair of glasses you could put on that would change how you view anything and everything that could happen. Well, the good news is that there is and it comes to us—no surprise—from the Stoics."Ryan explains this secret on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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/s

"Few saw the pandemic coming. But certainly the woefully inadequate response, at all levels, was predicted by many. The same is true for most events, in politics, in sports, in business, in life. It’s next to impossible to know what adversity or what good luck will fall in someone’s lap. How they’ll be able to handle this—whether they’ll rise to the occasion, be corrupted or destroyed by it—on the other hand? That’s much easier to see coming.A simple Stoic maxim guides us: Character is fate."Ryan shows how character predicts so much about our fate, and also reads over the week's intention from the Daily Stoic Journal, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.This episode is brought to you by Neuro. Neuro makes mints and gums that help you retain focus and clarity wherever you go. Made with a proprietary blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and other focus-building compounds, Neuro’s products are great for anyone who needs help focusing in these trying times. Try out Neuro’s gums and mints at getneuro.com—

On today's episode, Ryan talks about the virtues that Marcus Aurelius brought to his position as Emperor of Rome. How did Marcus lead the Roman people through invasions and plagues, war and disaster, and still maintain his mettle? Find out on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode, Ryan speaks with Academy Award-winning actor and producer Matthew McConaughey about his approach to the craft of acting, the simple keys to living a happy life, his new book, the #1 best seller Greenlights, and more.Matthew McConaughey has been working in Hollywood for over 25 years, appearing in movies like A Time to Kill, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club. His work in the latter film won him the 2013 Academy Award for Best Actor. McConaughey also works as a producer and spokesperson, and recently released his first book, the bestselling memoir Greenlights.Today’s episode is brought to you by Amazon Music. Amazon Music has a great new promo where you can get your first three months of membership for free. With 70 million songs, millions of playlists, and thousands of radio stations, you’ll never run out of things to listen to—and it works great with your Alexa products. Get this offer now by visiting Amazon.com/ryan. Terms and conditions apply.Today’s episode is also brought

"It’s almost surreal to think about the things we were thinking about not long ago. How could we have been so naive? So entitled? How could we have missed the signs?Well, no matter, life has a way of letting you know that you’ve had your head up your own ass. And there is no other expression for what Western society, particularly but by no means limited to the progressive amongst us, has done to itself. Cultural appropriation. Micro-aggressions. The War on Christmas. Does square dancing have racist origins? Are unboxing videos bad for children? How dare that guy not stand for the national anthem?"Ryan explains what we should actually be focusing on, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https:/

"Don’t think of wisdom as something you get via epiphany or even a couple years of graduate school. No, it’s something you accumulate day by day—action by action, as Marcus Aurelius put it—over the course of a lifetime."Ryan points out the wisdom that can build up from small steps on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. And for another source of daily wisdom, get your 2021 Daily Stoic Page-a-Day Calendar! They're available now at the Daily Stoic web store: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/daily-stoic-calendar***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy

"We have good days. We have bad days. We will have, as Seneca experiences, moments of heartbreak and bad luck as well as strokes of good fortune and good timing. The question is how we’re going to respond to these swings of fate..."Ryan uses a poem by Rudyard Kipling to explain the poise with which we should all meet fate, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan talks with author Amy Shearn about her own journey with Stoicism, how she and Ryan both wrestle with the concepts of Stoicism in a modern context, the role of women in Stoicism, and more.Amy Shearn is an American author and essayist. During the coronavirus pandemic, Shearn became fascinated by Stoicism; she wrote about her experience learning about, grappling with, and ultimately accepting Stoicism in a popular Medium article. Shearn has written in venues like The New York Times, Slate, Jane Magazine and more; she published her most recent novel, Unseen City, in September.This episode is brought to you by Neuro. Neuro makes mints and gums that help you retain focus and clarity wherever you go. Made with a proprietary blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and other focus-building compounds, Neuro’s products are great for anyone who needs help focusing in these trying times. Try out Neuro’s gums and mints at getneuro.com—and use discount code STOIC at checkout to save 15% on your order.This episode is also brough

"'“A trifle consoles us,' Blaise Pascal wrote, 'because a trifle upsets us.' We get so worked up about things that don’t matter—of course we can be convinced to drop them. Of course we can be easily distracted.This is why Marcus talks about the importance of having no opinion."Ryan discusses the importance of Marcus Aurelius's advice on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Sometimes it can feel—especially lately—that we are, to use the novelist James Salter’s haunting phrase, just burning the days. We get up. We answer emails. We work. We eat. We sleep. One day bleeds into the next. What day is it again? The weekend? Already?"Learn how to break through that feeling in today's Daily Stoic Podcast. Also learn more about today's weekly meditation, which exhorts you to find the true, lasting sources of power that you have.This episode is brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Sign up for Daily Stoic's Alive Time Challenge—it's 14 days of challenges designed to make you ready for the un

On today's episode, Ryan goes in-depth into journaling, describing the benefits of journaling, how to get started, and more.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan talks with Instagram star Tank Sinatra about his unique approach to comedy, the best way to use or deal with anger, what philosophy tells us about how to handle our emotions, and more.Tank Sinatra, aka George Resch, is a Long Island dad who runs one of the biggest meme accounts on Instagram. Since launching the original account @tank.sinatra in 2015, Resch’s Instagram accounts (which also include @influencersinthewild and @tanksgoodnews) have over 8 million followers, with even more on Twitter and Facebook. He is currently the director of influence marketing at Brandfire and has written a book, Happy Is the New Rich.This 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

"Most people see life as a kind of a race. They want to win. They want to get somewhere. They want to do it better than other people. Certainly, one can see how this approach can produce impressive results. By creating a competition, by creating a way to keep score, it’s natural that one will do well by those metrics. The problem is that life isn’t a race, and even if it were, there’s no evidence that we’re all in the same race."Ryan explains a better way to perceive life, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at http

"This has probably not been the year you expected. Few of us went into 2020 expecting an impeachment, a pandemic, murder hornets, earthquakes, fires, record-setting unemployment and god knows what else has hit you individually. Blew out your knee? Lost a big client? A falling out?It’s easy to sit here and say this has been a bad year. But is it really so bad? Is it 1865 bad? Winter of 1777 bad?"Ryan puts this crazy year into perspective in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California

"When you look at a map of the world from a distance, everything seems smooth. The more you zoom in, the bumpier it gets. Suddenly, mountain ranges leap up at you. Enormous lakes emerge. Vast distances become apparent.In a sense, history is a lot like this, too."Ryan explains what becomes apparent if you take a step back from the day-to-day workings of history, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan talks with Megha Rajagopalan, a world correspondent for BuzzFeed News, about her reporting in China about human rights and how history informs our understanding of geopolitics.Megha Rajagopalan is a world correspondent for BuzzFeed News. She has covered major stories in Asia and the Middle East, and has been based in China, Thailand, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Megha has also written for numerous other outlets and has appeared on NPR, BBC World News, CNN, and other outlets.This episode is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees, the online nursery that delivers beautiful plants to your doorstep quickly and easily. Whether it’s magnificent shade trees, fruit trees with delicious apples and pears, privacy hedges, or beautiful flowers, Fast Growing Trees is the best place to buy your plants. And their 30-day Alive and Thrive guarantee means that you’ll be happy with whatever you buy. Visit FastGrowingTrees.com/stoic now and get ten percent off your entire order.This episode is also brought to you b

"Today is a day that Americans, as well as interested observers around the world, have been anticipating for some time. One of the most important elections in American history. November 3rd. For more than a year now, we’ve collectively been referring to this Election Day just by its month and day, not unlike September 11th in the US or 7/7 in the UK, for its consequential nature and the dread it creates in us. It’s a day we’ve been holding our breath for, wondering, worrying, speculating.Now it’s here. Now what?"Ryan explains what we know and don't know about Election Day 2020 on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. Remember to go vote if you haven't already—22 states and the District of Columbia offer same-day voter registration.***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://Dai