The Daily Stoic – Details, episodes & analysis

There was gruffness to the Stoics. A wariness of getting too close or too attached, lest your heart be broken by fortune. But does that mean the Stoics were unfeeling?

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Most people are enslaved and controlled and directed by their ignorance. Their impulses. Their temper. Their desires and delusions.

📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. The Daily Stoic is releasing a limited collector’s edition set of all four books signed and numbered, with a title page identifying these books as part of the only printing of this series. PLUS we're including one of the notecards Ryan used while writing the series. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues

📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work

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Looking for practical strategies to deal with difficult people? In today’s episode, communication expert Jefferson Fisher shares a 3-step process for navigating conflict, especially when kindness and empathy no longer work.

Jefferson Fisher is one of the most respected voices on communication and arguments in the world. He is a Texas board certified personal injury attorney and law firm owner of Fisher Firm. Millions of people and some of the world's leading brands come to Jefferson for advice and practical strategies to communicate more effectively. 

Follow Jefferson on Instagram and X @Jefferson_Fisher, on YouTube @JeffersonFisher and on TikTok @JustAskJefferson

📚 Grab a signed copy of Jefferson’s book, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More, at The Painted Porch! 

🎥 Watch Jefferson Fisher and Ryan's full conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs6rPU1lH3Q

🎙️ Listen to Jefferson and Ryan's full conversation on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from THE NEXT CONVERSATION by Jefferson Fisher, read by Jefferson Fisher. © 2025 Jefferson Fisher, ℗ 2025 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Marcus Aurelius' life teaches us how to live well. And because he lived well, his story also teaches us how to die well: with grace, with strength, with empathy, and with the comfort of knowing that he lived a good life as a good man. 

🎉 Celebrate Marcus Aurelius' Birthday this month by reading Meditations with us and the Daily Stoic community. On April 26th, 1905 years after the day of his birth, Ryan Holiday will host an invite-only LIVE Q&A to talk about all things Marcus Aurelius and Meditations.

Get 20% off with a Meditations BOOK & GUIDE bundle. Join the LIVE Meditations Q&A with Ryan Holiday by purchasing before April 26th!

Get all our Meditations offering and learn more at our official Meditations Collection at dailystoic.com/meditations today. 

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The reason we don’t get what we want is because we want it too much. We reach for it with too much force. We lack the patience, we lack the poise. In Buddhism, they speak of willful will. More often than not, that is our problem.

In her beautiful book Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindberg writes on the hunt for sea shells: “The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach–waiting for a gift from the sea.”

It’s our expectations, the Stoics tell us, that get us in trouble.

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And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan examines the Stoic idea that expensive things cost more to us than their dollar value by reflecting on a recent situation in his life.

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Ryan presents the second of four excerpts from Josiah Osgood’s Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic. Here, in Chapter Two, we witness the parallel paths that the rivals took as they grew and gained power in Rome, as well as how their journeys shaped their personalities.

You can listen to Ryan’s recent conversation with Josiah here.

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In the second of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with Rick Rubin about his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, respecting everyone’s unique approach to the creative process during collaboration, his new podcast Tetragrammaton, the importance of studying art created long ago, and more.

Rick Rubin is a renowned American record producer and the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. He has produced albums for a wide range of acclaimed artists, including the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine, and Johnny Cash. He has won nine Grammys and has been nominated for 12 more. He has been called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and was named on Time's list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World".

You can hear part one of Ryan’s interview with Rick here. 

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We are so busy. We think we’re supposed to be. We think that’s how we get better. We think that moving is the only way to move forward.

You might think that Marcus Aurelius could relate.

Yet when he speaks most beautifully it’s of moments of quiet and calm. "If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind," he said, "free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, 'a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness.’" Have you ever had a moment like that?

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And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses his perspective on focusing on the internal more than the external by examining the quote from Epictetus's Discourses, “These things don’t go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things out of your control—take great care with the inside and not what’s outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!”

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It’s hard not to look at the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Cato and Zeno and not see what seems like one trauma after another. The loss of young children. Civil wars. Betrayals. Sickness. Criticism. Droughts, deforestation and powerful storms. Then again, it’s hard not to look at our lives and see the same thing. Financial crises. Political unrest. Political violence. A pandemic. Terrorist attacks. Mass shootings. Climate change.

But of course, this is not how a Stoic tries to look at things. Because it’s not a great lens.

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And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part one of his Q&A session with a group of doctors in which he covers the Stoic way of motivating a team to achieve a common goal, how we can use routine to come back to ourselves, and more.

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We live in modern, cutting edge times. Each day, there are breakthroughs in neuroscience, microcomputing, medicine, and in how we make, save, and spend money. Our ability to beam information around the world, instantaneously, also means that we can get breaking news from all corners of the planet. Big data gives us the power to scrap enormous amounts of inputs and draw new insights from them. All this is wonderful and illuminating. We know things that we never thought we’d be able to know…and the person who doesn’t avail themselves of this is needlessly ignorant.

And yet…and yet.

As the great General Mattis said recently on Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter’s podcast:

My best new ideas come from very old books.

📚 If you’re ready to put down your phone and pick up a book to find those best new ideas, check out our Read to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge.

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