Kate Bowler Challenges Stoicism’s Most Famous Idea

One of Stoicism’s most famous ideas does not sit right with bestselling author Kate Bowler https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler*. In this episode, Ryan and Kate discuss the pressure this idea can place on people facing illness, grief, and impossible circumstances, the limits of personal agency, and how to find meaningful action without pretending we are in control of everything. Kate Bowler is a four-time New York Times bestselling author https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler*, award-winning podcast host, and professor of religious history at Duke University. She is the host of the podcast Everything Happens https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everything-happens-with-kate-bowler/id1341076079, where she has honest conversations about grief, joy, faith, love, and the realities of being human. Grab signed copies of Kate’s books Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved-signed-by-author?_pos=4&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r, No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Needed To Hear) https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/no-cure-for-being-human-and-other-truths-i-need-to-hear-signed-by-author?_pos=1&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r, and her latest book Joyful, Anyway https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/joyful-anyway-signed-by-author?_pos=2&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler* | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler* Follow Kate Bowler: Instagram https://instagram.com/katecbowler/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf8m7lNdR7YVieU0muCg5cg 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's always interesting when you find out you disagree with someone. Like, you're aligned on most things, and then they just have a very different opinion than you. You know, like, put aside bad faith disagreements or criticisms. Those are difficult to handle, and none of us are particularly great at dealing with that. But what about like, when there's someone who you're lined up with on most things, you are fans of many of the same things, and then you find out that they've got a very different opinion than you? Kate Bowler, whose work I love, she's a professor of religious history at Duke University. At 35, she basically finds out she has stage IV cancer, basically a terminal diagnosis.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  And all of a sudden, she has to rethink, like, not just her life, how little of it might be left, but, you know, all her views about suffering and success and control and faith and hope, all of that, right? In the way that a diagnosis like that would turn everything upside down. And she wrote this beautiful essay in the New York Times that my sister and I connected over when my sister was going through cancer. In that essay, she quotes and talks about the Stoic. She's been on the podcast a couple of times. I'm a huge fan of her work. We've always gotten along. I don't know if we're friends, we hadn't ever met, but we were certainly friendly. So it was interesting, I read this interview that she did. And she basically is saying in the interview, like, I think it's total crap, this idea when people say, you might not be able to control what happens,

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  but you can always control how you respond to what happens. And I was like, ooh, I feel attacked. I mean, not literally, it was just like, oh, that's like colloquially the definition I often give for Stoicism. And then I'm like, still reading the interview, and she says, and when I say modern, she meant like the 2010s, which is wild. She says, "It is in part a result of an incomplete theology of masculinity that has been available and has become a way to explain specifically to men that there's almost a natural impassivity that is there should they claim it. And then in the face of chaos, global and personal, that there's this higher path." She says, "Stoicism is being stripped of its original cosmology and refitted with self-help techniques."

• 2:27Ryan Holiday?

  She says, "But what she really objects to at the core is this idea about control." And so I was like, whoa, okay, are we having beef here? And I've seen that before, right? I've seen people who have loved to come on the podcast. They've asked me to blurt their books. And then, you know, I see them say something really nasty about me in an interview or something. And I knew that wasn't what Kate was doing, because she's great and nice. And if she had a problem with me, she would say it to my face. But I was like, oh, suddenly do we have like a very different opinion on this? And this is how I think you want to approach this. And I thought, well, what about her experiences would give her a different perspective on these things? And what can she teach me? So she was coming out, she has a lovely new book called Joyful Anyway, which I love, reminds me of Viktor Frankl's little essay collection,

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yes to Life in Spite of Everything. She has two other books that I've really liked. Everything Happens for Reason and No Care for Being Human. What about her experience as a professor of religious studies? What about her experience going through this cancer thing? What about all the people she's met that have gone through profound suffering and pain and loss? Like, is there something about Stoicism that's inadequate, that's falling short, that's not working? You know, and maybe we could talk about it. So she came out, we had a lovely conversation. And I think we, we don't hash it out, because there's no beef. But this is my point, what you tend to find is actually, you agree way more than you think, but sometimes there's a disagreement on terms. Sometimes there's a distinction without a difference. Or then sometimes there really is something that you need to go back and think about.

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  And I think all of the above here is true. This is a great interview, talking about some of the fantasies of self-help, some of the patronizing and glib things that people say, which are woefully inadequate to the profundity of the human experience. And anyways, I think you're really gonna like this. Certainly the Stoics weren't being glib about any of this stuff, because they knew suffering is profound and real as anything anyone has ever gone through. And you got a lot to learn from Kate Bowler, a fantastic author, four times New York Times bestselling author. She's got a lovely podcast called Everything Happens. If you go to Duke University, you can take her classes on religious history. And you can follow her on Instagram, @katecbowler.

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  You can grab signed copies of her books here at the Painted Porch. And mostly you can just enjoy this conversation, as I did. I heard you say, some version of basically that you think my definition of Stoicism is a bit not true, or you disagree. I heard you say, and I'm not mad about it.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  You?

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  I want to talk about this, yeah. You said, "I've sometimes summarized Stoicism as we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens."

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Oh, I've been mad about that definition, for sure. I didn't know that's what you said.

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not taking it personally. Tell me why you don't like that.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I think that you can only control how you respond.

• 5:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I hear that a lot, particularly from people who are facing sometimes like life-limiting illnesses, or you get like a very narrow window of possibility. I think it creates enormous pressure on like a very small place of possibility and agency. And I think typically the people who are saying it are people who have almost unlimited possibility. And they're like, okay, look, I really hope you control how you respond.

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think anytime you're doing it in a glib way, like, as you said in your book, like, everything happens for a reason, that even if it's true, it's a wildly inappropriate thing to tell someone who's going through.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  That's true. There are some horrible truths you can only tell yourself.

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I remember my son hit my other son, and then when he retaliated, he said, you know, "You only control how you respond." And it's like, okay, that doesn't work either. You can't bait someone into doing something and then make their response their responsibility, even if it is true that we shouldn't retaliate. Like, you're not guiltless by, you know, repeatedly poking and inciting the violence that you then come and yell about. But, so is it that you don't like that it applies pressure? Or you don't think it's true that we control how we respond to things?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  I think it's barely true. I think that much of what happens in our lives is beyond our control. And even, and if you take the scope of our lives, a third, we're barely coherent information. At the end, we're barely coherent in information.

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  I mean, we're just talking about the rational self as just like a window in the like life cycle of being a person. And I think sometimes like a hyper fixation on rationality can over-prioritize like who we are as people.

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  It's also interesting, because the Stoics talk about, which I think you were also highlighting in the response I was seeing you talk about, that the Stoics totally concede there are involuntary responses. Like Seneca's like, "If I jump out from around a corner, you're gonna be scared." Or he says, "If I throw cold water on you, you're gonna shiver." I think when the Stoics say you control how you respond, they don't mean, although to a certain degree, you know, you see, you know, first responders or elite performers, you can train some of those reactions out. But I think the Stoics would totally concede, like, if someone you love dies, you're gonna be sad. They're not saying that you can train yourself into not having those emotions. But there is some degree of agency, I would say, like, in the weeks and months afterwards.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're both pointing to limited agency.

• 7:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  And that there's a small, that between nothing is possible and everything is possible, there is a window, and we should cultivate virtue inside of that window.

• 8:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  And I do wonder if we both might also then disagree with our culture's over-prioritization of a, you can't control what happens to you because of, I think one of the primary stories in our culture is a traumatic past, is that we are so then pre-programmed, because our bodies have kept the score, that then that window of agency is even smaller and smaller.

• 8:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  And I would say there's still meaningful action. But I think our therapeutic culture might disagree.

• 8:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and then also, you know, the system is rigged. Everything is systemic, you know? Even this idea, like historically, like, do you believe in sort of great men and women of history who have the power to change things? Or do you believe that everything is sort of happening as a result of these larger forces? And then there's even a third one, which is like, well, the arc of history bends in the right direction.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Which is not at all what that meant.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, as if it does this on its own, as if it wasn't a statement about agents.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Oh, just watch it bend.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Let's clap. Yeah, I totally agree. I do think that in the conversations I'm in, "You can only control how you respond," is usually said to people with really acute suffering, who then have to perform Public cheerfulness and gratitude for the lessons they're learning. And so whenever I hear like a really sick or sad or struggling person have to land that point, I think that it's our culture's cruelty.

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  That is cruel. And sometimes I struggle with this too. Like, you know, someone will ask if I'll sign one of my books for someone that's like, just got a cancer diagnosis, or somebody they know just died. And like, I just feel, I'm like, that's like a lot to ask of me and this book. Like, even if I think it could stand up, I also experience this on Ego is the Enemy. It's like, you're asking me to deliver a message for you.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  That's so true. Yeah.

• 9:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's weird.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  You're puppet handsing morality to somebody else's tragedy.

• 10:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they're like, hey, listen to this person tell them. But I would totally agree with you that like, we have like impossible expectations of people going through impossible situations. And that that is pretty screwed up.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  I do think there's like a Masters of the Universe story, though, that we have, particularly in the self-help genre about. And I find myself reading like, Six Magical Routine Steps to Billionaire Habits. He washes the dishes, you know, that we've like hyper fixate on small things when really, we are largely living inside of forces that we can't control.

• 10:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And I mean, if anyone understood this, it would be the Stoics who weren't talking about, you know, little things, but talking about what happens when you live under a tyrant, or you live through a plague, or you live in a world where infant mortality is horrendously high. Like, one of Seneca's essays is him writing to his mother to console her after he's been exiled. And so you go, okay, they were dealing with some, some real shit. And so, so although he can talk to his mother this way, you probably shouldn't have told him and his mother, like, well, this could be the best thing that ever happens to you. That would be so insulting and demeaning.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  I'm excited for the lessons you'll learn.

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I do think there is one piece too, though, about over, like, I think in every philosophical or religious tradition, you can ask primarily, is this, is this a head religion? Is this a heart religion? Is this a spirit religion? And Stoicism is obviously a prioritization of the head and mind. But I think every now and then, when you're worried that your thoughts are not ordered, whether it's mental illness, whether it's memory loss toward the ends of life, I think, I think some traditions, when they can step in, can be very comforting in saying, we are not primarily our thought world. I mean, in the Christian tradition,

• 12:06Speaker 01

  we would say, you're carried by a God who holds your understanding. So your self-understanding is, doesn't have to tell your story from beginning to end.

• 12:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And I think, just depending on where you are and what season you are, a prioritization on thought is either going to be an enormous comfort, as a possibility of, of action, or it could be a terrifying thought that we have to be our own author or narrator.

• 12:33Ryan Holiday?

  So when someone is going through something, you know, gut wrenching and overwhelming, you know, obviously showing up and doing their treatments, or, you know, listening to the experts or whatever, that is part of it. But by and large, whether they survive or how it goes, is not really up to them.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking of like, all the cancer metaphors.

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I'm sure we both hate, like, you have to be a fighter, you have to, you know, as if every day, you're just quietly willing the death of individual cancer cells.

• 13:04Ryan Holiday?

  And it's complicated, because obviously, giving up doesn't help anything, right? And not listening, and sort of having no spirit. But there are plenty of very spirited people who, it got worse as the harder they fought, right? Because it was, that was what the cells preordained from the, you know, the moment that they, that this happened. But what, what do you think a person should be thinking about in terms of a response?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Well, I do remember the first advice I ever got was from a nurse. This is my first chemotherapy treatment. I didn't really know what it would feel like. I thought maybe I'd be in a target, just passed out. Like, I was just, you know, I was, I was like, really overwhelmed by what I should do and what this would require me. And the nurse leaned forward, and she's like, I just know that some people take a nap, and they never get up.

• 13:52Ryan Holiday?

  Jesus.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Do they die?

• 13:54Ryan Holiday?

  Here's a new thing to worry about all the time.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  I was so confused. And I think that what that ingrained in me too early on was a sense that I always had to be doing the most, or else I wasn't. And that's a kind of like-

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  You had to be actively engaged against this?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, heroic survivordom that didn't, that didn't suit me well. I think it would have been much more sane and much more, I just like, the wiser choice is, is to have a stronger sense on my own limitations.

• 14:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So, I don't know. In a way, it's, it's a more sustainable sort of battle, and metaphors are bad here. But, but you're, you're fighting, but you're, it's not this sort of active thing. It's, it's the day to day-ness of it.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:40Ryan Holiday?

  That is the response.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the gift of prudence, such of like, and I know we both love it, but like, the wisdom to know what is for when.

• 14:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And I think if I had the gift of prudence at that time, I would have known, actually, there's some wonderful structure. That's a really good idea. If you've had, if you're going through a really difficult time.

• 14:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I made rules for myself. Like, no sad music, period.

• 15:04Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  No watching movies called The Women of Troy. It doesn't go well for them. And they can, they can mourn on their own for now.

• 15:11Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Try really hard to surround yourself with people who understand, who can read you, and can keep pace with you emotionally. Take pleasure in small gifts, like gummy bears and dumb things that can easily delight you.

• 15:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  But mostly be aware that every day, you're, you're, you're a wind-up toy that is about to run out. And if you treat yourself like you're unlimited, you'll ask something of yourself that no one else is asking of you.

• 15:37Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the interesting thing about that is like, in some level, you are saying, like, focus on what you control. It's just little things, you know? It's like little actions that you take day to day.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, as opposed to go cure cancer.

• 15:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Go suddenly transform the personality of the surgeon who is mean to you.

• 15:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Yeah. You have to make this, this big, enormous thing, as opposed to primarily focusing on, say, conservation of energy.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:05Ryan Holiday?

  And also, you know, showing up for however, the moments that you are lucky enough to have, as sometimes horrible as I'm sure they are.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  You do have to participate with the thing that is unfolding. I really do believe that. So I, I am always looking for that place of limited agency inside of a big and terrible thing. But you, you just, and sometimes there'll be moments where you really have to let yourself feel like you are being carried down the river, farther than you wanted to go. But I think if you look, though, at the sticky notes on the monitors of all the nurses' stations, and most of the messaging you're going to get in the, in the healthcare system, and it is going to be like, smile, chin up, better day, only optimists survive.

• 16:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And like, you get this gritty fear that a spectrum of emotion is not going to be acceptable from you.