Do You Know Where to Find It? | Why Does Ancient Wisdom Still Surprise Us?

That’s Stoicism. A philosophy to help us in our search. But where do we start with it? Thenew 10th Anniversary Edition of https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10will be released October 6, 2026—but signed and numbered first-edition copies are available NOW https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10👉 Pre-order your signed and numbered 10th Anniversary Edition here https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/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 toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: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 athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. -- Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoic This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features. Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  I was at someone's home gym the other day and they had a tonal. And I was like, man, that thing is nice. I gotta get me one of those. It's hard to go to the gym. It's discouraging. Even if you get yourself there, the results can be discouraging. But with tonal, you can actually see your progress with every workout and you can do it without leaving your house. Tonal is the ultimate strength training system for a reason. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer at home in one sleek system. And you don't have to second guess your form. Are you doing it right? Are you accidentally taking shortcuts? Tonal gives you real time coaching cues to dial in your form and help you lift safely and effectively.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  After a quick assessment, Tonal sets the optimal weight for every move and increases it in one pound increments to get you stronger. As I said, it's ratcheting up the physical load, but reducing the mental load. You can choose from expert led workouts in strength training or high intensity interval training or yoga or mobility. You'll love it. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners 200 bucks off your Tonal purchase with promo code TDS. That's tonal.com and use promo code TDS for $200 off your purchase. Tonal.com TDS 200 bucks off. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know where to find it? We might not know it's what we're doing, but we are. We are like the main character in Walker Percy's famous novel, The Moviegoer, engaged in the search. The search for what? For truth, for meaning, for practical wisdom that tells us how to handle this confusing thing called life. Bing Spohling, Percy's character, like the author himself, finds some of that in the little bits of Stoic wisdom that his aunt passes him in the form of notes. And as it happens, this is a timeless tradition she is participating in, one much older than the American South, anyway. In his letters, Seneca tells his friend Lucilius that the key to a good life was to acquire one little bit of wisdom every day.

• 2:11Ryan Holiday?

  Something to protect against poverty, against death, to fortify oneself against life's misfortunes, he says. And after you have run over many thoughts, Seneca wrote, select one to be thoroughly digested that day. That's Stoicism, a philosophy to help us in our search, a place to find answers. But where do we start? 10 years ago, it's Ryan, by the way, I started writing a book around answering that question. It was called The Daily Stoic and it was supposed to be one bit of Stoic wisdom every day. One day a quote from Marcus, one day from Epictetus or Seneca, plus a little meditation on what they meant and how to apply it.

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  And 10 years later, and over 3 million copies later, my publisher was nice enough to let me have another go at it. They let me add new quotes from more of the Stoics. They let me improve the stories, fix mistakes. And you know, in those 10 years, my own study of Stoicism has gotten better. My search has yielded some lessons and I wanted to add all of that. When it came out, The Daily Stoic was the first collection of all the Stoics in centuries. Probably the only one to ever put them in a page a day format and was accessible and digestible. Help you get incrementally better each day. And now I think it itself is better because everything is about this iterative process. So I'm really excited to announce the 10 year anniversary edition of The Daily Stoic.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  We have signed numbered first editions, which I'll link to in today's show notes. And we've got a new edition of the leather one that will be coming here shortly as well. I'll link to all of that. Thanks, everyone who's supported Daily Stoic over the years. Thanks to everyone who's bought the book, read the book, pressed the book in other people's hands. So it's been an honor. Let's keep it going. I'll see you in another 10 years, hopefully. Check out the new book. Really proud of it. Talk soon.

• 4:12Ryan Holiday?

  So last week, sort of a last minute thing, I ended up having a talk to do in New York City. So I dropped my kids off at school, had our Daily Stoic staff meeting, flew to New York, got in pretty late, woke up early and met my friend Casey Neistat for a run. Well, actually, we were supposed to meet at Chelsea Piers. It was like a mile from my hotel, but I ran a mile in the wrong direction first. That was, that was lovely. And I was so convinced I was going in the right direction. It was really embarrassing. Anyways, we finally linked up. I ran with him back down to his house. And by the time I turned around and ran back, I did 11 and a half miles, which was a little more than I wanted to do on the morning before I had to do a talk. But um, I went well. It was a lovely morning.

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  Some people asked me some interesting questions from the audience, which I wanted to share. And then I went down on the way to the airport to the real reason I was in New York City, which is there's this vintage shop, like maybe a half a block down from The Strand, one of the great bookstores in the United States. It's called Metropolis Vintage. And you know, you're always seeing me in vintage clothes. There's actually a great new vintage shop here that just opened on Main Street in Bastrop too, called Good Old Habit. So pretty much if you see me in a band shirt or a vintage shirt or whatever, it's either a shirt I got myself at a concert 20 years ago, or Reva picked it out for me at Good Old Habit, or on a trip to New York, I grabbed it from Metropolis Vintage on Broadway.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  Those aren't ads. I just wanted to give you a little glimpse into my life before I bring you this Q and A. As far as an ad is concerned though, I'm going to be doing a bunch of talks in October in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland, the 13th through the 21st. I screwed up the order on that, but you can grab those tickets at dailystoiclive.com where you can see me in Boston, Nashville, Philadelphia, or DC in November and December, dailystoiclive.com. So let me just bring you this, some of these questions from New York City, because I thought it was interesting. And then hopefully you can ask me a question, whether you are down under or in the United States here in October, November, or December. I was at someone's home gym the other day and they had a tonal.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  And I was like, man, that thing is nice. I gotta get me one of those. It's hard to go to the gym. It's discouraging. Even if you get yourself there, the results can be discouraging. But with tonal, you can actually see your progress with every workout and you can do it without leaving your house. Tonal is the ultimate strength training system for a reason. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer at home in one sleek system. And you don't have to second guess your form. Are you doing it right? Are you accidentally taking shortcuts? Tonal gives you real time coaching cues to dial in your form and help you lift safely and effectively. After a quick assessment, Tonal sets the optimal weight for every move and increases it in one pound increments to get you stronger.

• 7:06Ryan Holiday?

  As I said, it's ratcheting up the physical load, but reducing the mental load. You can choose from expert led workouts in strength training or high intensity interval training or yoga or mobility. You'll love it. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners 200 bucks off your Tonal purchase with promo code TDS. That's tonal.com and use promo code TDS for $200 off your purchase. Tonal.com TDS 200 bucks off. It would be nice if the purchase price of buying a home was the major expense or the only major expense. But if you've ever bought a house, you know, the expenses just don't stop coming. There's plumbing failures, there's HVAC breakdowns, there's electrical issues, stuff you thought was taken care of.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  But it's suddenly your problem. And that's where HomeServe comes in. It is a subscription for your home for as little as $4.99 a month. They've got your back. Repairs hit fast and hard. You know, you're searching for a contractor, whatever. You could already be on the phone with HomeServe's 24/7 hotline scheduling a repair. It's super simple. You choose a plan for your needs and your budget. And when something on your plan goes wrong, you call the hotline and they start the repair process. They've helped homeowners like you for 20 years with the trusted national network of 2,600 local contractors. I have spent way too much of my life and time trying to figure out how to fix things myself,

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  trying to meet someone who was supposed to show up and then didn't show up, looking through bills, looking, comparing bids. It's just, it's just a lot. And when you're in over your head, it's hard to get out from under it. Well, join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe for 50% less for your first year. Go to homeserve.com/stoic. That's homeserve.com/stoic for 50% less savings compared to renewal price and void in Florida.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Quick follow up. Can I write that reading memo using AI? And do I need to edit it afterwards? Here, here's why. I'm a little bit serious on that. No, no, here's why you can't. It's for the same reason that your kids can't have AI write their school essay. The point is not the essay. The point is to be the person on the other side of having written the essay or the memo. Joe Didion famously said that if writing is a hostile act, meaning I'm trying to not just figure out what I think, I'm trying to make you think what I think. And the idea of outsourcing this is to totally miss the point of I have to sit down and figure this thing out.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  And then I have to figure out how to persuade you how to do it. And it's not just the memo, of course, but it's being the person who knows what's in the memo and why it's in the memo. And did the thinking and the research and the understanding to get there. And from what I understand and how Amazon does this, is it's not just like you sit down and write this memo, but like you write a draft, then your team floats it around. It's a collaborative thing. So, so yes, everyone's sitting down and reading it at the meeting, but it's not like, surprise, everyone's got to read this, this three page paper. This is a collective process that is winnowing down.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  The other story I tell as George Marshall, Chief Staff of the US Army, get attacked on Pearl Harbor. He has this sort of, he's trying to find good talent who's going to help, you know, America sort of very rapidly go into this war. And so he's calling this series of generals into his office. And one of them is a young Dwight Eisenhower. And he says, you know, hey, we just got attacked. What's the plan? All the generals before Eisenhower had just sort of spouted off an answer. Eisenhower is the only one that says, can I have a couple hours and a desk? Marshall says, sure. And Eisenhower goes, he sits down and he writes out like a strategy paper where he flushes out his ideas.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  And then he gives a summary of those ideas to Marshall. There's probably nothing in this memo that Marshall had himself not already considered. What strikes him about Eisenhower is that he took the time to think about it and he took the time to articulate what he thought about it and he could do it in a coherent and a persuasive way that he realizes that he actually has what it takes to execute that strategy. And I think Marshall says something like, okay, go do it. But that was the genius of Eisenhower. You know, he wasn't like this brave swashbuckling soldier. He was a great administrator. He was a great communicator.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  He was a great strategic mind, which ultimately to be the supreme allied commander of this largest army in the history of the world, that was the skill set actually needed. Can I maybe talk a little bit more about journaling? Yeah. Journaling, writing is something like one of the other ways to... Yeah, you know, it's funny. I talk a lot about media diet on my first books, about media manipulation. But it's funny, I usually tell people like, if you're not running a hedge fund, you should probably watch a lot less real time news. Now, it's a little bit different for people who are actually in the business where, you know, news moves markets. Most of your average people are just consuming way too much real time information, too much breaking news and not enough sort of real wisdom or history.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  But I think even in a world where of policy or politics or, you know, markets where you do have to have a sense of what's happening day to day, even then, you know, most of the things that are happening now are going to be better understood the more of a historical or philosophical perspective you have. And so I think, you know, people are just not, not reading enough. They're not going, they're not reading enough literature, they're not reading enough history, they're not reading enough biography, they're not reading enough philosophy, they're not reading enough psychology, just like understanding the underlying human factors that are influencing this stuff.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  So I, I would, I really urge people to think, to look at their media diet and just like you might be looking at stock or a property or an investment and going, you know, how long is this going to be a good business? How long is this going to last? Ask yourself when you're dealing with information, like what's the half life of this information? You spend a lot of time consuming things that don't hold up. A friend of mine was saying, you know, think back 10 years, can you remember any articles that you read? And probably not, but you can think of some books or you can think of conversations that you had. And so just, I think the information diet is a big one. Journaling, yeah, is great. I know I'm obviously repeating myself as far as writing, but, but just quiet time where

• 14:03Speaker 01

  you're sitting and reflecting is really important. And then I think there's a reason that almost all artists and all philosophers had some sort of a walking habit. Like there's something, I think we are designed to think on the move. In fact, it's like the oldest evidence we have of humans on this continent are some footprints in White Sands National Park of like a mother walking with her child. Like it's so long ago that her footsteps are crossed by like giant sloths and all these species that don't exist anymore. And so like I try to take my phone calls walking. I try to, you know, if it's a short distance, I try to walk even in the summer in Texas.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Got my kids this dog, they promised me they would walk it. Of course they don't, but like, am I taking it for the walk or is it taking me for the walk? Like I'm, I'm getting the benefit out of it. There's some physical benefits to walking, but to me it's mostly in the, in the cognitive and emotional benefits, the, the regulation. And then very rarely have I come back from a walk and not like been calmer and a little more clear eyed about whatever it was that I was dealing with before I started the walk. So your first part of your time really start to be the, you know, this 2000 year old, you know, wisdom that seems new every time we hear about it. Mm-hmm. Right? So the question that I have is, what about human nature makes that so surprising every time we hear this?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  You know, what, what, what are we reverting to that we need to relearn this every 10 years? That's a great question. I, I mean, what, what's so striking too is like, there's this huge overlap between Stoicism and Buddhism and it's thousands of years older than Stoicism. And as far as we know, they sort of developed totally independently, although the Romans made contact with the Han dynasty in China during Mark's religious reign. We don't know, you know, what they brought back exactly. We don't know, but, but there is something crazy about all these schools kind of independently coming to the same basic conclusions, which you're right, we promptly forget, get distracted about, and it's only when we sort of bump into the, the hard truths or the unpleasant

• 16:17Speaker 01

  realities of, you know, sort of how powerless we are or how short life is, that, that we go, hmm, you know, what, has anyone dealt with this before? And it's like, yes, literally every person who ever existed dealt with this before. And, and I think that's of course also the, the case for reading, right? We, we talk a lot about learning by experience, but obviously it's better to learn from the experiences of others. And there have been people in moments like this before, like we think of the ancient world as this sort of, you know, peaceful idyllic place, like, you know, Socrates, the world is falling apart in Socrates' life.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Talking about the Thucydides trap, he lived through the Peloponnesian war, he fights in it. He lives through a time in Athens known as the time of the Thirteenth Tyrrhax. That sounds pretty bad. So we, we, we forget that like there have always been times like these and people were always worried about what was happening next. They were rattled by what had just happened. They were dealing with alternatively prosperity or, you know, disaster. And they wrote about it and they talked about it and they sort of distilled it down to some basic operating principles that, you know, for all the changes and all the improvements,

• 17:42Speaker 01

  like life expectancy is better, you know, I'd rather live in our politics than Mark's Aurelius's politics, like everything is so much better in so many ways, but the fundamental truths about what it is to be a person is there. I mean, there's a passage in Mark's, in Mark's moving meditation, book five, that he opens where he's like, doesn't want to get out of bed that morning because it's cold. And, and he's like, is this what you were put here to do? To like huddle under these blankets and stay warm? And I just think there's something where in, when you see something like that, all the time and distance and culture falls away and somehow you find yourself relating to

• 18:24Speaker 01

  a seemingly unrelatable person's experience. But, you know, his favorite philosopher is Epictetus, who was an enslaved person. And so, yeah, we have way more in common and way more things are the same than they, than, than they are different and have changed.

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