The Best New Ideas Come From Old Books

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.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow 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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  The best new ideas come from old books. We live in modern, cutting-edge times. Each day, there are breakthroughs in neuroscience, microcomputing, medicine, in how we make and save and spend money. Our ability to beam information around the world instantaneously also means that we get breaking news from all corners of the planet. Big data gives us the power to scrape enormous amounts of input and draw new insights from them. All of 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,

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  "My best ideas come from very old books." We've talked before about how they hide money in books. They also hide ideas. How incredible is it that an 1,800-year-old diary, like Meditations, can teach a leader today about how to control their temper, how to work with difficult people, how not to be corrupted by power? How remarkable is it that one could have learned how to maintain their sanity and character in the COVID-19 pandemic by reading Marcus's Thoughts on the Plague from his own time? Or that a fighter pilot like James Stockdale could rely on Epictetus in the middle of the jungles of South Asia all those years ago? Or that a professional sports franchise can pick up

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  a quote from him to tattoo on the walls of their facilities? Or that remote knowledge workers can adopt the habits and routine of the prolific writer and thinker Seneca? Human beings have been doing the same things for eons, and the wisest minds who have ever lived wrote down the best of what they figured out. If you want to stay informed, if you want to learn how to prepare for an uncertain future, forget about breaking news articles, forget about refreshing your feeds, forget about the arguing talking heads on CNN. Instead, drink deeply from the great texts of history. Learn from the distant past, from the wisest minds who ever lived. Search

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  very old books to find your best new ideas.

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  As you know, reading books is a huge part of my life. They've helped me accomplish my goals and become a better person. And if you're listening or reading this, you probably feel the same way. But like me, you probably feel you're not getting all you can out of the books that you read. And maybe you feel like you're kind of reading the same books over and over again, that you're stuck in a rut, or that your reading habits could be elevated, taken to a new level. Well, we've come out with a new 13-day challenge to help you do just that. It's called Read to Lead. And we've got 13 days of Stoic-inspired challenges to help you take your reading to the next level. Comes with exercises, a new reading list each day, and some really awesome bonus material. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/reading.