Do You Have That Dog In You? | Ask Daily Stoic

In a world of hypocrites, status worship, and fools masquerading as wise men, we need the clarity and courage the Stoics embodied. 🏛 The 2025 LIVE session of Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life starts November 10th. Don’t miss your chance to join us! Read on for more about the unique opportunities you get from joining the LIVE course.🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/Seattle, WA - December 3, 2025 San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 Phoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have that dog in you? The Stoics spoke about kindness. They tried not to get upset. They tried to avoid arguments. But you know what? Sometimes, somebody just needed to say something, and sometimes, the truth hurts. The Stoics were inspired and shaped by the example of Diogenes, the dog of Sinope. Diogenes was known for his brutal takedowns of hypocrites, of fools, and of the powerful. And it was his example that Xeno was following when he eviscerated a pompous student named Aristo after years of tolerating his interruptions and disagreements. It was Diogenes that Agrippinus channeled

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  when he responded to exile with a shrug and a dismissal, saying, "Okay, we'll take our lunch on the road." And it was Diogenes who Epictetus admired and looked up to, perhaps more than any of the other Stoics. While they never sought to hurt anyone's feelings, they didn't indulge people's pleasant fictions either. They spoke up. They defended themselves. They protected what was important. They had that dog in them, a game one at that. And what about you? Does political correctness have you cowed? Are you too deferential? Are you easily fooled by appearances and status? Do you say what truth needs to be said?

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  Because sometimes philosophy isn't polite, it's powerful. And the truth, well, it bites. Which is why we created Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. It's a 14-day course that delivers the core principles of Stoicism in a way you can actually apply it every day, the same way the Stoics practiced themselves. It's one of our most popular courses. We've been running it for years. There's going to be a private discussion board, all the previously recorded office hours from the other times we've run Stoicism 101, along with a bunch of other awesome stuff. And to join us, you have to sign up by Monday, November 10th. That's when it starts. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or you can just go to dailystoic.com/101 to join us.

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Doing a Q and A today. As you know, I get to travel all over the world giving talks. In the last year or two alone, I've been to Dubai, and Brazil, and Hawaii, and Australia, and Europe, and Canada. But most of the talks that I give are not available to the public, right? I'm usually talking to companies, or groups, or conferences. But back in September, I spoke here in Austin, Westlake, to about 1,000 people. And many of you came, and that was awesome, and it was great to see you. Afterwards, I answered a bunch of questions, and I'm going to bring you a chunk of that today. And if you want to come see me talk and ask me some questions, while I'm going to be in Seattle on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th,

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  and Phoenix on February 27th, all of those tickets are available at Daily Stoic Live. I'm excited to see you, and we'll talk very soon.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Creo que mi pregunta es, es muy interesante tu ser una persona claramente más a la izquierda en el espacio de la auto ayuda que... no es inherentemente político, pero siento que estos días cada vez más hay una especie de estigma alrededor de ello, como si fuera más a la derecha como la mentalidad de "grind set" creo, si sabes lo que quiero decir. Solo estoy curioso, ¿cómo afecta eso a tu trabajo? ¿y cómo afecta eso a la forma en que tratas de presentarte, supongo?

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sí, no pienso tanto en ello. Solo trato de decir lo que pienso y hacer lo que pienso que es correcto. He tratado de no ser radicalizado por lo que está pasando en el mundo y también no radicalizado por lo que leo y veo en Internet. Siento que no he cambiado mucho, excepto por tal vez la forma en que el estoicismo trabajas lentamente en ti. Creo que llegué al estoicismo por la razón de que muchos jóvenes llegan a él. Tal vez tú llegaste a él, sobre cómo puede hacerte más fuerte, más rápido, más inteligente, lo que sea, todo eso. Pero, como dije, hay un componente ético fuerte. El núcleo ético es esta idea de justicia, esta idea del bien común,

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  esta idea de que somos hechos para el otro, esta idea de que si es malo para el mundo, es malo para nosotros y viceversa. ¿Y cómo pensamos en esto? No tengo una buena respuesta para por qué eso es "de izquierda" estos días. Parece bastante básico, como una parte básica de ser una persona no sucia, pero...

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  No me veo particularmente como persona política. Creo que la mayoría de lo que hablo tiene que ver con cosas básicas de contrato social, como solo lo que son nuestras obligaciones para nuestros compañeros humanos, cuáles son nuestros derechos constitucionales básicos y libertades. Eso es lo que pienso sobre ello. No es como, "deberíamos votar por esta ley, por esa ley, por esta política..." Eso no es usualmente lo que hablo. A veces lo hago si hablo con mis amigos o lo que sea, pero por la mayor parte hablo sobre esto en lo que creo que es un alto nivel, nuestros obligaciones filosóficas. Así es como pienso sobre ello. Pero gracias.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Stoicism seems to explore the mind and body connection. So I'm curious, when you're speaking, do you make a distinction between when you're speaking from your head and your heart?

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  That's a good question. I don't know. I guess I wouldn't know exactly what the difference is. I don't think about it that much. So maybe, maybe that means I'm in my body, not in my head. I do think that when you are in a flow state, when you are locked in, you know, that's where good performance comes from. It's not a super conscious deliberate thing, but it is also the result of the deliberate practice and training that precedes it. And I think that's true both like on a basic performance level, we're talking about writing, or playing music, or, you know, shooting a basketball. But I think it's also true for these ideas of virtue too. Like, what do you do in the moment? You don't sit down and weigh all the options. Like, that's what I was curious when I was talking to Kyle.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  How much thinking went in to the decision to jump on a grenade? And the answer usually is not much at all. Because he's not just trained for it literally, but there's a spiritual tradition and an idea and a mindset that they learn about and hear about and come deeply to believe in. And the idea is that in the moment, you do the thing. Epictetus said like the whole point of philosophy is so that whatever happens in life, you can go, this is what I trained for. But I think it's actually not even that. That's like afterwards, you go, oh, I trained for that. But in the moment, you do what the training says you should do.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  In your opening, when you're talking about courage, one of the things that you raised was the need to be our authentic selves.

• 8:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Even if it comes to us at a cost. And you gave example of the, the person standing up to Nero. I forgot his name already. How does that apply? What is your perspective on establishing close, personal relationships?

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Is that a different standard? Or?

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  I don't know how close a personal relationship can be if it's not based on your authentic self, right? If you're pretending to be someone for someone else's sake, that's probably not a good foundation of a relationship. But, you know, it's funny, in the UK a few years ago, there was this guy who was just kind of a jerk. He didn't bathe, he didn't take care of himself. He was rude to his coworkers. He said inappropriate things at the office. And then finally, he was fired and he sued. And in his lawsuit, he said, you know, he was being discriminated against for his religion, which was Stoicism. And, and he was just indifferent to all these things. Although the Stoics do have a bit of the cynic tradition in them,

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  sort of not caring about certain conventions or, you know, superficial things. The Stoics were functioning members of society. And, you know, being in a functional relationship, I don't think you always say everything that pops into your head, especially because this is, I think, a big part of Stoicism. It's not that, that you don't think it. It's that you think it in this moment because you're upset, because you're worried, you're frustrated, you're reacting. And I think Stoicism is this idea of like, I can have the opinion, the impression, the initial thought, but I don't have to do it. And maybe I'm not going to do it if it's not actually important and it's going to needlessly hurt someone's feelings.

• 10:11Ryan Holiday?

  So I, I think the Stoics are functioning members of society, which means empathy and compassion and connection and wearing clothes and things like that.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Hi Ryan.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  Hi.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  What do you feel the difference is between wisdom and intelligence?

• 10:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think that's kind of the ultimate question. There are obviously lots of really smart people who are good at one thing or good at a handful of things. And then, I don't know if we would classify them as wise. There are obviously also ways in which wise and smart people can do very stupid things. And one of the ideas in the book is like, okay, here's all the ways that we acquire and move towards wisdom. And then, the middle part of the book is all about how we acquire or move towards stupidity. All the ways that we make ourselves foolish by the information that we consume, things like ego, things like not taking care of ourself.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't matter how smart and studied you are. If you're not sleeping, at some point, you're cognitively equivalent to a drunk person. If you are burning yourself out, you're obviously not going to be wise. If you, our mind is our friend. It's how we get wisdom. And then, our mind is also riddled with cognitive biases that we have to be aware of. And then, of course, there's this idea of self-awareness also. You can be aware of a lot of things, but if you don't have self-awareness, that's a big problem. That's what was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo. This idea of knowing thyself. So, how many people can you say you've ever met in your life who you would define as truly self-aware? It's kind of a rare, elusive thing.

• 11:55Ryan Holiday?

  So, to me, intelligence is important. It's very necessary. And then, wisdom has to be somewhere beyond that. Just like, you know, all the virtues, I think, exist on kind of a spectrum, as Aristotle would say. So, just as maybe there's a distinction between bravery and courage and heroism, right? It's a spectrum. I think wisdom, we want to say, is the end of the spectrum and it's the hardest and rarest of them.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  Just to let you know, I'm going to be doing three more live dates in the coming months. I'd love to see you in Seattle, Washington on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th, and Phoenix, Arizona on February 27th. The talk in Austin sold out. My tour last year sold out. So grab these tickets while you can. I did a wonderful talk back in Seattle with Robert Greene, which was one of my favorites. So I'm going to be there. You can ask me questions and I'll be talking Stoicism and the ideas in the new book. Just go to DailyStoicLive.com.

• 13:07Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.