Why Are We Still Talking About This? | You Can’t Touch Me

Ryan why we must be continually reminded of our duty to the common good, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out today! You can still get the preorder bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorderLadder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  Why are we still talking about this? Of course, we get it. We're good people. We pay attention. We would never do something like that. Our parents taught us better. Our religion, our beliefs have put us on the right side, right? Sure, hopefully. So why are we still talking about this? Why do we have to hear about racial injustice? About our obligations to the less fortunate? About the importance of courage and selflessness? About the power of kindness? About the scourge of radicalization? About keeping our passions in check? That character is fate and that leaders who don't have it must not be trusted? Because not everyone does get it. Daily Stoic reaches roughly 1 million people per day

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  across its channels. Imagine if 1% of the people are just really busy and haven't been paying attention. Imagine if 1% have been given bad information, 1% slipped into bad habits, 1 are really hard-headed, and 1% have never heard this before. That's 50,000 people right here who don't get it, who need to hear it. And those are conservative numbers. Just check the comments on YouTube or Instagram, and you'll see. But that's not the only reason either. One of the most striking features of Marcus Aurelius's meditations is the repetition. Over and over again, Marcus returns to the same core themes. Over and over, he turns ideas around in his mind.

• 2:01Ryan Holiday?

  Because even though he does get it, he still knows there's more left to understand, that there's still more left to sift through. These ideas are not something you just hear once. They are things we must wrestle with continually, constantly. We must apply them to current events. We must follow them to places that make us uncomfortable. We must explore them until we know them as well as we know ourselves. That's the work we're doing. You're either up for it, or you're not. And remember, as always, you can't learn that which you think you already know. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today's episode is from the Daily Stoic. "You Can't Touch Me." It's a wonderful quote from Zeno.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  "If you lay violent hands on me, you'll have my body, but my mind will remain with Stilpo." You know, Zeno's not claiming magical powers here, but that he's saying, while his body can be harmed and victimized, philosophy protects his mind. In this case, cultivated under his teacher, Stilpo. That his mind is connected with an inner fortress, whose gates can never be broken from the outside, only surrendered. Look at Reuben Hurricane Carter, the boxer wrongly convicted of homicide, who spent nearly 20 years in prison. He would say, "I don't acknowledge the existence of the prison. It doesn't exist for me." I mean, of course, the prison literally existed, and he was physically inside it. But he refused to let his mind be contained by it. He refused to be broken by it.

• 3:30Ryan Holiday?

  And this is a power that we all have. Hopefully, you'll never have to use this power in a situation of violence or grave injustice. But in the midst of any and every kind of adversity, it's there. No matter what's happening to your body, no matter what's happening on the outside world, no matter what it inflicts on you, your mind can remain philosophical. It's yours. It's untouchable. And in a way, then, so are you. And this is my favorite part about the Stoics. So the Stoics weren't, you know, just talking about these abstract ideas, talking about philosophically how someone can hurt them, but, but not touch their soul or their mind. The Stoics were saying this in real trying circumstances. They're saying it in defiance of Julius Caesar.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  They're saying it in defiance of Nero. They're saying it in defiance of real, physical violence and harm. And so when the Stoics talk about courage as being a virtue, this is what they're talking about. They, they cultivate this mental state that allows them to be physically brave. And that's what so inspired me to write this new book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Bold, is that, again, the Stoics weren't academic philosophers, but courageous soldiers and artists and politicians and business people. Even going back to Zeno, right? Zeno is saying like, you can, you can take my stuff, but you can't touch my soul. That is his life. I mean, he loses everything in the shipwreck, but what does he do?

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  He has the courage to like, pick himself back up and keep going. And when we say fortune favors the bold, what we mean is that fortune can't break you. If you keep going, if you decide not to be broken, you're essentially unstoppable. And, and that's the essence of Stoicism. That's the essence of the new book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Bold, which, as we're just saying, is now available. I'm so excited about it. I hope you can check it out. Awesome stories about everyone from Florence Nightingale, the Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., and as well as Seneca and Cato and Marcus Rios, the real Stoics, who really challenged themselves and were challenged by the circumstances that life threw at them.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what strikes me so much. So it strikes me as such a sad note about like where we are politically right now. I've talked to a number of different politicians and I go, why don't you say something about this? Why don't you do something about this? Because in private, they're more than happy to, to, you know, say this or that. And they go, well, I'd lose reelection, or oh, you know, I'd be attacked, or oh, you know, so and so would tweet about me. And you think about... The tradition that we come from, you think about how these institutions were created. It wasn't by people who were afraid to rock the boat, who were afraid to risk stuff. The founders talk about this, and I quoted it in one of the early chapters in Courage is Calling.

• 6:22Ryan Holiday?

  You know, they knew they could be signing their death warrant as they signed the Declaration of Independence, and they did it anyway. They pledged their sacred honor to do it. And that's the kind of courage that I think we need more of, not just politically, but artistically, parentally. You know, we've seen how in the last year, how much our society owes to the courageous doctors who showed up for work every day, even the frontline grocery store workers and warehouse workers and delivery people who showed up every day while the rest of us got to, you know, sit comfortably in our houses. Courage is the force that makes the world go round. It's what propels us forward. Where

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  would we be without courage? If you think things are bad now, things would be so much worse without the courage of ordinary men and women and extraordinary courage of, you know, brave soldiers and statesmen and women and ambassadors and inventors and creators. Courage is the most important force in the world. That's what the new book is about. Obviously, that's what the Stoics knew. A person with courage can't be touched, can't be broken. If they can make you do it, you've forgotten how to die. That's the ultimate form of this Stoic courage is you can break my body, you can take my stuff, but you can't get me to accept what isn't right. You can't get me to accept something that's not true.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  That's where we want to come from as Stoics. That's what the new book Courage is Calling is about. I hope you check it out. We're extending the preorder bonuses. You can check that out at dailystoic.com/preorder or pick the book up, audio, physical, whatever form you want. We even have signed copies. But I really do hope you support the new book and check it out. And I hope you are brave today and all times.