New Book Preview: Courage Is Calling | You Must Burn The White Flag

On today’s special episode of the podcast, Ryan reads a chapter from his newest book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave which is available for pre-order now. If you pre-order the book before September 28, 2021 you can get exciting pre-order bonuses (you could even have dinner with Ryan at his bookstore in Bastrop, TX). BUY 1 COPY: TWO full bonus chapters that Ryan wanted to get into the book but couldn't fit, an extended bibliography of the books that went into the making of this book, and a Spotify playlist of the songs Ryan listened to while writing the book (and would be good to listen to while reading it)BUY 5 COPIES: All the 1 copy bonuses, plus: A signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of Courage is Calling, Live Q&A with Ryan (moderated by someone cool)BUY 120 COPIES (Limited to 20 Buyers): All the 5 copy bonuses, plus:A philosophical dinner at The Painted PorchGo to dailystoic.com/preorder to get your copy today. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. You know, I think the first podcast I ever did, or first or second, was Jordan Harbinger Show. He reached out to me. He's been doing this forever. He's put in his 10,000 hours plus. That's why he's one of the best interviewers of our time. I love listening to Jordan Harbinger Show, and I'm so glad he's today's sponsor. He's interviewed like a bazillion heavy-hitting guests, from Russell Brand to Seth Godin, Matthew McConaughey, Lynda Carroll, Jack Schaefer, Scott Galloway, Peter Diamandis, Adam Grant, Leah Remini, Rob Dierdick, George Ravling.

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  He's a great host of a great show. I have a ton of fun every time we chat. You can listen to my episodes with him or check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations, or you can search The Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Great dude, great show. Check it out.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It is pretty nuts. I am holding it in my hand, an actual finished, full, ready-for-consumption copy of my new book, Courage is Calling, the first in my four Stoic Virtue series. I'm doing Courage first, then Temperance, then Justice, then Wisdom. But it's crazy to me. I conceived of this book like on a walk in the park with my kids, like, two and a half, three years ago, and now it's real. It's a book, and you can preorder it, dailystoic.com/preorder. But in today's episode, I wanted to bring you an excerpt of one of my favorite chapters. Actually, the title of the chapter is from this great

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  band I love called Joseph. It's these three women, and they have a great song called "White Flag." And they have, one of the lyrics is, "Burn the white flag." It says, "I could surrender, but I'd just be pretending. No, I'd rather be dead than live a lie. Burn the white flag. Burn the white flag." And sometimes when I'm writing chapters, I try to think of, of like little homages, little things I don't tell people about, but maybe it's tapping into something. Maybe they do remember the song, they have heard the lyric. Sometimes it's just a little inside joke to myself. But anyway, the title of this chapter in Part Three of Courage is Calling, page 253 of the book. Anyways, I'm giving you an excerpt from the audiobook, which

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  I recorded here in my sweltering office in Bastrop, Texas, a few months ago. And if you listen to audiobooks, well, this is a sample of what to come. If you read books or just listening to this podcast, also a sample of what's in the book itself. Here is the first excerpt that I've given publicly of the new book. And again, it's a, I just wanted to give you this little hint of how I write, which is I usually will listen to a song on repeat. And so I don't remember when I first heard this song. Maybe it was on the radio, maybe I heard it in a video or something, maybe Spotify recommended it. But anyways, I've listened to this song hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. That's just how my weird brain works, and it helped inspire this chapter, which is about not only not giving up,

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  But refusing to be beaten and refusing to quit on something you believe in, which I think is an integral part of courage and what I wanted to talk about in today's episode. So here's an excerpt from the new book Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, which you can preorder now at dailystoic.com/preorder. And as it happens, one of the preorder bonuses is a Spotify playlist of all the songs I listened to while writing the book. So here we go.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  You must burn the white flag.

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  Endurance is one thing, refusing to surrender is another. There is a story about Epictetus under torture by his master who expected him to beg him to stop, but instead Epictetus calmly warned him over and over and over again that his leg was about to break. Finally, it snapped. "What did I tell you?" he said. It was this commitment, this perseverance, that transcends simple endurance. Epictetus could not, would not allow his spirit to be broken. He would not give in to bitterness or hopelessness. And that's how he eventually survived 30 years of slavery and exile to boot. Cato not only refused to surrender

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  to Caesar as he fought to preserve the Roman Republic, he demanded that no one ask for mercy or clemency on his behalf, because that would mean he had been beaten, that he had been conquered by the forces of tyranny. And that was not the case. This is what a hero does. They burn not only the boats behind them, but the white flag too.

• 5:44Ryan Holiday?

  Emeline Pankhurst, in her famous Freedom or Death speech, inspired by Cato and his own resistance, outlined this kind of commitment. "As long as women consent to be unjustly governed, they can be. But directly, women say, 'We withhold our consent. We will not be governed any longer, so long as that government is unjust.'" Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very weakest woman. You can kill that woman, but she escapes you then. You cannot govern her. No power on earth can govern a human being, however feeble, who withholds his or her consent.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  We understand that while there may be some situations that call for tactical retreat, we never, ever surrender. They can count you out. They can throw you in chains. They can confiscate your property. They can humiliate you in the press. They can attack you in court. They can throw the full weight of their corporate resources at you. They can banish you to a rock in the middle of the ocean. They can take a lot away from you, but as long as you're alive, they can't make you quit. Rioters burned the bus that the Freedom Riders came in on, and you know what the riders did? They boarded the next bus. They got stitched up in the hospital

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  and kept going because they had something they were fighting for. "If you see the president," Grant told a reporter as he bore down on Lee, "tell him for me that whatever happens, there will be no turning back." He wasn't sure he could win, but he was saying, like the Spartans, that he was going to come back with his shield on it. No one can truthfully promise victory, so what Grant was pledging was to give everything that was possible for him to give, including his life. "Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio," James Stockdale wrote. "They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating

• 7:47Ryan Holiday?

  when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow man or God. It is from the soul that the hero draws their real power. It's not about who has a bigger army, the better weapons, or who has the stronger case or the bigger budget. The one who won't ever quit will still be the winner, if not now, then later, if not in this life, then in the next. There is an old Latin saying, 'If his legs fail, still he fights on his knees.' Still, they will rise, even if that's not literally possible." Churchill wasn't sure

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  that Britain could hold out. Nobody could have been. He was sure about how he would respond if the Nazis came. "What should we do?" his daughter-in-law asked. "Nothing is stopping you from getting a carving knife from the kitchen," he told her. "Nothing can stop you from taking a few of the bastards out with you." No one is saying they can't eventually beat you, only that surrender is a choice. Quitting on your cause, that's on you. Resistance unto whatever you've got left to give. Hemingway reminds us that while it is certainly possible to be destroyed by life, by the enemy, by a bad break, no one can defeat us.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  That's our call. That's in our power. And it only happens when we give up. The only way to lose is to abandon your courage. Your feet is a choice. The brave never choose it. My newest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, is now available for preorder. We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis has called it "a superb handbook for crafting a purposeful life." Matthew McConaughey called it "an urgent call to arms to each and all of us." I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the Four Virtues series, Courage, Temperance, Justice, Wisdom. Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to preorder it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailystoic.com/preorder.