Why EVERY Generation Rediscovers Stoicism | Mark Manson & Ryan Holiday

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Daily Stoic – Why EVERY Generation Rediscovers Stoicism | Mark Manson & Ryan Holiday
Date: December 7, 2025
Guests: Ryan Holiday, Mark Manson, Stephen Hanselman (co-host), with discussions from Dan and other guests

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Main Theme

This episode explores why Stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, keeps resurfacing through history as a source of wisdom, resilience, and self-mastery. Ryan Holiday and Mark Manson dive into Stoicism’s recurring appeal to generations of leaders, thinkers, and ordinary individuals—especially in turbulent times—linking its principles to modern psychology, historical events, and enduring self-help traditions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Stoicism's Enduring Appeal Across Generations

[05:21–08:24]

• Stoicism has long been a “secret weapon” among elites—from ancient philosophers to Enlightenment thinkers and political leaders like the Founding Fathers.
• Its role as a “governor” for ambitious, talented individuals was highlighted, suggesting it offers grounding for those groomed for power or success.
• Stoicism resurfaces during turbulent times because when the world feels uncontrollable, people turn inward for self-mastery.
  • Quote: “When the world feels like it's out of control, people are like, ‘Oh, I got to get better at controlling myself. What's the smartest stuff ever written on that topic? It's from Greece and Rome.’”
    – Stephen Hanselman, [07:34]

2. Stoicism and Christianity: Deep Interconnections

[08:24–10:04]

• Early Christian thinkers, including Paul and Thomas Aquinas, were influenced by Stoic ideas.
• There are accounts of direct interaction, e.g., Paul studying Stoicism in Tarsus and engaging with philosophers in Athens.
• Stoic wisdom was absorbed into Christian doctrine and reemerged in the Renaissance with the proliferation of texts.
  • Quote: “Even in the early days they were like engaging and interacting with each other less contentiously than we might imagine.”
    – Stephen Hanselman, [08:55]

3. Stoicism Pop Culture & Historical Influence

[10:04–12:14]

• Stoic ideas permeated Western culture, often through literature, e.g., Shakespeare and the popular play "Cato," a favorite of George Washington.
• The Serenity Prayer, often mistaken as ancient, reflects Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist wisdom intermingled—a testament to Stoicism’s universal truths.

4. Stoicism as Resilience: James Stockdale’s Story

[12:14–13:32]

• Navy pilot James Stockdale survived imprisonment during the Vietnam War by drawing on Stoic philosophy, specifically Epictetus.
  • Quote: “Supposedly as he's parachuting down into what he knows is going to be imprisonment, possibly death. He says, ‘I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’”
    – Stephen Hanselman, [12:32]

5. Stoicism and Modern Psychology

[13:32–17:40]

• Stoic frameworks closely align with cognitive behavioral therapies developed by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis.
  • The three-part Epictetus model—Desire, Action, Assent—parallels CBT’s focus on thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.
  • Journaling and “narrative therapy” echo Seneca’s approaches to reevaluating one’s experiences and thoughts.
  • Quote: “There's a shocking amount of overlap... Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, who did REBT, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, they do credit the Stoics with a lot of that.”
    – Guest Expert, [15:06]
• Philosophy in the ancient world functioned similarly to modern therapy or support groups: ongoing, practical, communal.

6. Limits of Ancient Stoicism and Updating for Today

[19:24–24:15]

• Stoicism isn’t perfect for all psychological issues, especially severe emotional or mental health cases—though it excels in "cognitive reappraisal."
  • Quote: “Where I feel it lacking at times is on the more of the emotional side... When you are consumed frequently by anger or when you are so sad you can't get out of bed, how do you work with that?... Probably until modern times.”
    – Dan, [20:54]
• Ancient Stoics often responded to contexts of war, mortality, and social obligation; our modern focus on happiness and meaning adds nuances they didn’t address.

7. Stoicism’s Rediscovery in Modern Times

[26:35–28:49]

• Modern repopularization is partly enabled by tools like social media, podcasts, and accessible books for a wider audience.
  • Holiday credits Robert Greene’s method of illustrating timeless truths with relatable stories as shaping his own approach.
  • Practical framing of Stoic wisdom (i.e., “The Obstacle is the Way,” “Ego is the Enemy”) meets people’s latent needs.

8. Internet Stoicism, Bro-culture, and Backlash

[30:26–34:41]

• The mainstreaming of Stoicism introduces distortions: some “faceless channels” on social media reduce Stoicism to “brocism” or macho productivity hacks.
  • Quote: “If your interpretation of stoicism is that it'll help you be a better sociopath, you're getting it totally wrong.”
    – Stephen Hanselman, [32:13]
• Despite some misreadings, the hosts prefer broader exposure and engagement, even if only partial, to ignorance.
  • Stoicism’s popularity still lags far behind philosophies like Buddhism, suggesting there’s much potential left.

9. Core Stoic Ideas Summarized (The 80/20 Rule)

[37:09–39:15]

• The essence: You cannot control what happens, only your response—which is always an opportunity to practice virtue (courage, justice, self-control, wisdom).
  • Quote: “You don't control what happens. You control how you respond to what happens... It fucking sucks that you have cancer... And now, what are you going to make of this?”
    – Stephen Hanselman, [37:09 & 38:08]
• The virtues become most relevant in adversity.
• Stoic texts (Meditations, Seneca, Epictetus) should be revisited throughout life; their meaning deepens as we change.

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• [07:08] “It's almost like history's self help.” – Dan
• [12:32] “I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.” – Account of James Stockdale
• [16:57] “Philosophy was this ongoing thing, more similar to what a therapist's role is in someone's life.” – Stephen Hanselman
• [23:13] “Not until Gandhi, that we're like, oh, you don't have to, like, kill and murder someone that you disagree with. There's, like, other ways of producing political change.” – Stephen Hanselman
• [32:13] “If your interpretation of stoicism is that it'll help you be a better sociopath, you're getting it totally wrong.” – Stephen Hanselman
• [38:08] “It fucking sucks that you have cancer. It fucking sucks that someone just stole all your money... And now, what are you going to make of this?” – Stephen Hanselman

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Important Timestamps

• [05:21–08:24] – Stoicism’s secret role among elites and its resurgence in turbulent times
• [08:24–10:04] – Stoicism’s influence on Christianity and the Renaissance
• [10:04–12:14] – Stoic ideas in Western literature and popular culture
• [12:14–13:32] – The James Stockdale story: Stoicism in crisis
• [13:32–17:40] – Direct impact on modern therapy and psychology
• [19:24–24:15] – Where Stoicism falls short emotionally and how perspectives have shifted
• [26:35–28:49] – Role of modern media in Stoicism's popularity
• [30:26–34:41] – Internet “brocism,” misreadings and why inclusion still matters
• [37:09–39:15] – The 80/20 of Stoicism: Virtue in adversity, daily application

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Conclusion

Stoicism endures not because it is trendy, but because its simple, fundamental advice—control what you can, respond with virtue, revisit wisdom often—offers repeatable value for every generation. The episode draws clear connections between ancient philosophy, Christianity, psychology, and modern self-help, illustrating why Stoicism is “your favorite person’s favorite philosophy.” Ryan Holiday and guests argue Stoicism’s worth lies not in perfect doctrine, but in ongoing, practical application—especially during life’s greatest challenges.

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Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Stephen Hanselman]

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[Stephen Hanselman]

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

[Ryan Holiday]

On Sundays, we take a deeper dive.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like, hear or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

[Ryan Holiday]

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It's weird to think I remember the.

[Ryan Holiday]

First podcast that I ever listened to. I remember I would download them in college when I would work out at the gym. This was back in 2005 and then.

[Stephen Hanselman]

The medium kind of went away for.

[Ryan Holiday]

A while and and then for my first handful of books, whenever you do press it'd be like two minute radio interview or a three minute television spot or an interview with a reporter for a newspaper. But podcasting has kind of changed everything. It's been interesting to watch podcasts get.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Bigger and bigger and bigger and longer.

[Ryan Holiday]

And longer and longer. That evolution occurred to me when I.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Was down in LA over Labor Day.

[Ryan Holiday]

Weekend to do a podcast with Mark Manson. He has this new podcast called Solved where they sort of do these deep dives into these topics. We recorded for three, three hours.

[Stephen Hanselman]

We really dove into Stoicism, the Four.

[Ryan Holiday]

Virtues, talked a little bit about the new book Wisdom Takes Work.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But really just like if someone wanted.

[Ryan Holiday]

An introduction into stoicism, this could be a good place to start. I just remember going like three hours. This is crazy just to think about how the medium has evolved. I don't know, it was just striking to me. Towards the end of the episode we talked about stoicism and modern psychology and how it's persisted through history. I asked Mark if I could grab a chunk of that to run here. You can listen to the whole thing. I thought it was great. You can listen to Mark's many episodes on the Daily Stoic podcast.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Of course, if you haven't read his.

[Ryan Holiday]

Books, the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and Everything is Fucked, A book about hoped you absolutely should we Carry him at the Painted Porch. They are classics for a reason. Do listen to his New podcast Solved, which is great. You can follow his work. He has an email list that is a monster for a reason. You can find [e-mail] and I really appreciate getting kick stuff around with Mark. I think you will like this little segment and since it's Sunday, I won't waste your time. Let's just get into it and I'll.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Link to the full episode below.

[Dan]

So coming out of the ancient world, Stoicism persists throughout history. It's a philosophy and a school of thought that seems to sit with the elites throughout Western culture.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It's like a secret weapon.

[Dan]

Yes. And it's. First of all, if you look at the Enlightenment philosophers, a few of them talk about it explicitly. I know Nietzsche wrote very fondly of the Stoics, but it's you. You actually find out if you read their biographies that they were very much into Stoicism and it was very inspiring for them. And it's similar with a lot of world leaders, a lot of very famous figures throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. So talk to me just about the legacy and influence through Western culture of all the philosophies and all the schools of thought. Why did Stoicism persist, especially among kind of the upper echelon of.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I wonder if a lot of it is exactly why Rusticus gives it to Marcus Aurelius in his early 20s. It's like if you have a promising, talented person you're grooming for success, greatness, power.

You know, they have a lot of the things they need, but they need this as like a governor. And so I wonder how much of it is like, it's like this kind of like open secret. Like, okay, but have you read this and that? Like, the Stoics are not the thing that anyone is specializing in. It's not the sexy or the exciting or the groundbreaking field. And a lot of it is kind of intuitively obvious, but there's something inspiring and beautiful and affirmative about it. And it's just always been there as this person to person, passing this along kind of a thing.

[Dan]

It's almost like history's self help.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yes, yes.

[Dan]

It's the sort of thing. The same way people don't. Or at least when we were growing up. Right. Nobody broadcasts that they were reading Tony Robbins, but if you got one on one in a quiet room, they'd be like, hey man, you gotta check out this Tony Robbins guy. It was completely life. It seems like Stoicism was that for centuries.

[Stephen Hanselman]

And Seneca was more familiar than the other Stoics for a Long time because his epigrams were often how you learned Latin. So you learned Cicero and Seneca as you were learning languages and obviously that sort of fell away. But you tend to see Stoicism resurgent in turbulent times. So the Enlightenment thinkers, the, you know, the founding fathers, there's a segment of it in the American Civil War. You know, it's, it's, I think it says it's fitting that it's popular now too. It's like when the world feels like it's out of control, people are like, oh, I got to get better at controlling myself. What's the smartest stuff ever written on that topic? It's from Greece and Rome.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Guest Expert]

It also survived because it got co opted into so many other philosophers. Right. Christianity being the prominent one. I was kind of teasing earlier when I brought up Epictetus and his kind of upending the moral order. Christianity did that in a big way. And I didn't really realize the influence that Stoicism had on those like Thomas Aquinas for example. So how did it, I guess those early Christian years where Christianity was starting to take off, the Roman Empire is falling. What happens there?

[Stephen Hanselman]

So Paul studies Stoicism in Tarsus as Saul of Tarsus. And then famously when he goes to Athens, he stops at the Stoa Pokele, meets with the philosophers there and they walk him up through the Agora to the hill next to the Acropolis where he gives one of his most famous lectures. And so this was all kind of swirling about. I mean, Seneca's brother is in the Bible. He's a judge who lets Paul go. There's series of fake letters between Seneca and St. Peter. So even in the early days they were like engaging and interacting with each other less contentiously than we might imagine. And then I think obviously a lot of the ideas from the ancient world make their way through the Bible. Then obviously we have the Dark Ages where we turn away from classical wisdom. But the Renaissance is kind of the rediscovery of these ideas. And I think with the printing press, suddenly you didn't still elite ish, but like regular people are getting some of these books in their native languages for the first time. And that's also the reemergence of this idea.

[Guest Expert]

You see it all throughout though. I mean, you've mentioned Shakespeare several times already too. In Hamlet.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Right.

[Guest Expert]

The most famous line, nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. You've mentioned some of the founding fathers of the United States. The play Cato was played before Valley Forge. Right. The Battle of Valley Forge. George Washington was a Stoic.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. This play, Cato, is like, I've said this joke so many times, but I think it's true. It was the Hamilton of his day. It's the play that everyone knows. And it's like in the way that a 15 year old might not have actually paid attention in, you know, U.S. history, but they got the gist of what happened in the Revolution from the play. They might not have read the Stoics, but they knew Stoic wisdom from this play. The famous line in the play, Cato, says that we have to look at everything in the calm light of mild philosophy. And this is one of Washington's favorite lines that he says, like, over and over again in letters.

[Guest Expert]

Yeah. And the play was written in the 1700s too. It wasn't like a throwback or anything like that.

[Stephen Hanselman]

No, no.

[Guest Expert]

It's during this Renaissance period.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Guest Expert]

That it was. That was brought on. Yeah. But I mean, you go all the way through, like, I just found all these, like, little examples of where stoicism just pops up, but it rarely gets acknowledged. And I don't know if it was like what you were talking about. People were just like, well, that's just what it was. It seems to just be like just this foundation of Western thought that has persisted and just. It gets absorbed into everything. Like Christianity, like a lot of like the Founding Fathers, the Serenity Prayer. Get to that. That's very, very stoic.

[Stephen Hanselman]

What I like about the Serenity Prayer is like, if you just gave it to someone, you're like, what year was this written? You know, they'd be like, I don't know, the 1300s. Or like, is that. Did Jesus say that? And you're like, no, no. Some guy wrote it on a train in the 50s. But it's obviously the synthesis of the accumulation of all this wisdom distilled down into its Stoicism, Christianity and Buddhism all mixed into one.

[Guest Expert]

What was then? Even go into that book by James Stockdale, the Vietnam.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So Stockdale, the Navy sends him to Stanford to get a graduate degree and he is introduced to Stoic philosophy.

A professor gives him a copy of Epictetus. So he reads it and he kind of goes down this Stoic rabbit hole. And then he's shot down, like, I don't know, two years later. But his copy of Epictetus is on is like, with his stuff. Like, it gets mailed back to his family because it was on the aircraft carrier that he took off from. And supposedly as he's parachuting down into what he knows is going to be imprisonment, possibly death. He says, I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus. It's like, oh, these ideas that were theoretical. Now shit's about to get real. And Epictetus is tortured by his slave, his master. He breaks his leg and he never fully regains the use of it. The same thing happens to Stockdale in this prison. So it's one of the. When we talk about the resilience layer of stoicism, that's Epictetus. And then it's Stockdale who's like, oh, no, no, this wasn't just true 2000 years ago, it's now. Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Expert]

I mean, it even comes. You want to get into the psychology part of it too?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Sure.

[Dan]

I mean, you really should see it show up, you know. It was highly influential on Aaron Beck. It's interesting. Like, Epictetus has this. This three part little framework. I believe it's Desire, Action and Ascent.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And they all work in cohorts, and you could almost copy and paste that in the CBT as the thoughts, behaviors and emotions and how each one is an entry point to the other two. So if you want to.

You can't single out any single one and only master that. You have to continually adapt to all three and work with all three simultaneously. And so there's also a lot of stuff. I mean, they used to call it narrative therapy, which you actually. I forget the name of the journaling process that they studied. But it's like you literally. I mean, it could come straight out of Seneca. It's basically you write down your worst thoughts and experiences and then you go back and reread it and do a reappraisal of the meaning of it. And it's like there's all sorts of positive therapeutic outcomes that come from that. So it is. I mean, whether intentional or not, like whether the psychologists kind of came across the same truths independently or if they were reading tons of Epictetus and Seneca in college, it's probably both. There's a shocking amount of overlap.

[Guest Expert]

They do credit them like Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, who did our ebt, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. They do credit the Stoics with a lot of that. It was kind of after the fact that one of the interesting things, I think Beck and Ellis both came up with their frameworks, which are very similar, around the same time, the 50s and 60s, and it was during. So you had behaviorism, which was proving to be a little bit difficult in a lot of areas. Could everything just be boiled down to incentives? And then you had psychoanalysis, kind of the other side. Everything's unconscious. What Beck and Ellis realized was that these people were not. They were psychoanalysts. They were psychoanalysts. So the unconscious played a big role. What they realized was these people weren't unconscious of their motives and desires. They were very conscious of it. They just didn't know what to do with the interpretations that they were giving it to it, which was very, very stoic, which is what they realized. So it was. I don't know how much of it was after the fact. They write later about. Yes, this was very much. These aren't new ideas, they're very stoic. But it was just interesting how that kept popping back up again when you had to have when there was a kind of rubber hits the road moment. This shit has to work. And then the stoicism comes back in to save the day.

[Stephen Hanselman]

There's something about psychology and therapy that's akin to the role that philosophy played in the ancient world.

[Guest Expert]

Yes.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Today we think it's like people go like, oh, I studied philosophy, or I was a philosophy major. As if it's this one time thing. And then you just go about your normal life. You're like, good, you got it. In the same way that I learned my multiplication tables and that's not what it was supposed to be. And when you hear about the Scipionic circle or these dinners that Cato would have, it was like philosophy was this thing you were engaged in constantly. People would go and see Socrates and talk to him about their problems and.

Shoot the shit and get ideas and whatever philosophy was this ongoing thing, more similar to what a therapist's role is in someone's life, in that you're like, I call this person or I go to this person's office once a week or once every other.

[Dan]

Or a support group, Right?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yes. I think 12 step groups are very similar to the stoic process of like, hey, are you sure that that assumption is true? Because what about this, this and this? And like, here are some aphorisms or ideas that you can maybe try to replace that thought pattern with. And then here's a network of like minded people who are all engaged in the same. Like they're porch guys. Yeah, you know, totally.

[Dan]

And we're. And we're going to meet twice a week to remind ourselves to do this stuff.

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Stephen Hanselman]

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[Ryan Holiday]

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[Dan]

As I sit here thinking about it, I feel like you could probably, if you took the Stoics, Aristotle and say Buddhism. That probably covers 80 or 90% of psychology of like. Yeah, of like shit that actually works.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Guest Expert]

You even look at like post traumatic growth theory. It's very much Tadeshi and Calhoun. They very much credit the stoics with it. But then nobody acknowledges it after that.

[Stephen Hanselman]

The only thing that's missing is like the mental illness side of things. Yeah. Like it's hopeful but a bit naive in the Stoics of just like you control your mind, get to rationality and it's like, okay, but what if you were horribly abused or what? You know, like how do you, what if you, you know something happened, you got a head injury, like there's something missing there. Like I think the part, the 10, the 10 to 15% you're missing is for like the edge cases that are just like where. Yeah. But it works up until a point.

[Dan]

I personally feel that stoicism is best when it is kind of in psychology. It's called cognitive reappraisal, where it's basically like you take the narratives and the shit that your mind is saying to you, and then you take a step back and you reevaluate. You say, what if that wasn't true? What if it was this way? What if we invert that? What if we pretend I'm the other person? I feel like stoicism is.

Like the goat at that. Yes.

Where I feel it lacking at times is on the more of the emotional side.

I don't subscribe to the common criticism that it's. Stoicism is just telling you to be feeling less emotionless, robotic. And to be fair, I don't think anything in the ancient world really addresses this super well. When you are consumed frequently by anger or when you are so sad you can't get out of bed, how do you work with that? Right. Like, how do you. What is the process or procedure? And I really don't think we got anything consistently.

Replicable that could address that. Probably until modern times.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. And I would also say there.

If your primary concern is like, not being exiled, not being murdered, how do you deal with. Your infant mortality is 30%.

[Dan]

There's a war every other year.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Stephen Hanselman]

You're primarily going to be thinking about freeing yourself from anxiety and worry and anger and dread and what you're not. Okay, well, where do I find meaning? Where do I find purpose? Where do I find happiness?

And sure, I think they do have a definition of happiness, and it's not, I make a lot of money and I look great or whatever, but that's why I think it's so striking. You read Marc Srilius and you read Seneca, and you're like, which one would you rather be? Marcus Reelis is more impressive as a figure, but it doesn't seem like he's having a great time.

[Dan]

No, he seems miserable. I mean, to be fair, Seneca, you know, it's not exactly a rosy picture either, but yeah, it's.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I think we've made, like, we've made a lot of advancements in just our assumptions. Like, there's just different. I just think about, like, how interesting it is. That's like, not until Gandhi, that we're like, oh, you don't have to, like, kill and murder someone that you disagree with. There's, like, other ways of producing political change. You know, like, nonviolence is literally an passive. Nonviolent resistance is an invention that happens in the 19th century.

[Dan]

Well, to be fair, Jesus invented it, but we immediately killed him.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And we had to relearn it. Yeah, you know, sure, sure, 1900 years later.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But it's also. Jesus isn't proposing it as a political strategy, he's proposing it as a mode of personal behavior. Right. And so it's just like the idea of what a good life is was circumscribed. It never occurs to Marcus Aurelius that he doesn't have to be the emperor.

He hates it. And it's not conceivable to him that he would do anything other than this thing he was chosen for. Right. And I think we've made some developments as a society about what your obligations are.

[Dan]

To come back to the parallel between him and Washington. Washington fucking hated being President.

He spent the entire time wanting to go back to Mount Burton. And so to his credit, he stepped down. And it says something about his character.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It's ironic that a philosophy that was popular with elites kind of becomes to everyman for modern day elites to properly mythologize and institutionalize. So, yeah, you have these college kids reading Plato when really they should be reading Marcus Aurelius and then the grad students should be reading Plato. Which one is actually going to help you in your life? I think it's so interesting to go back to the founders. We spend a lot of time thinking about who inspired them from like a legal basis, which is like, interesting. But again, if you're 17, what do you do with this information? There's much more. These classical ideas and these myths and these stories. I didn't know who Cincinnatus was until I was probably in my mid-20s. I mean, I'd obviously heard of Cincinnati, but I never heard like. But that's a story that for hundreds of years, thousands of years, everyone heard when they were growing up, like, here's this guy, he's named dictator, and then he defeats Rome's enemies and then he retires to his farm. That's such a beautiful, inspiring story. And it's what, it's foundational to America, but like, we don't learn about that. And maybe you learn about Washington resigning as a commission. You do learn about resigning after two terms. You don't learn the classical basis for it. So we've just been skipping that. This was kind of the. It's like the Stoics. You know that expression like your favorite rapper's favorite rapper. Yeah, the Stoics were your favorite person's favorite philosophy. But you kind of don't get back that far. And so people have been missing that. This is the piece. And I think that's if there's any reason my works and my writing has succeeded, I think it's because it kind of broke the floodgates of that a little bit. And it kind of took this thing that people of all different types have already known about or been using, and then they're like, oh, yeah, this is an entry point into this thing. That's actually because it is hard. You go, well, what is the best entry point into the Stoics? Is it Marcus Aurelius? Is it Epictetus? Is it Seneca? The answer is, it's kind of all the above. So much credit to my book agent, who suggested an idea of the Daily Stoic. He was like, there's not actually one book that is the Greatest hits of the Stoics. And I was like, is that true? And he's like, yeah, it's true. And so that's where the Daily Stoic came from.

[Guest Expert]

I was just saying, could it be all of that and.

That the Stoics uncovered something so fundamental to human nature that we kind of ended up taking it for granted and just kept rediscovering it? Like if you take, for example, REBT with Albert Ellis, and he's got this ABC model, you have this. The A is sometimes called adversity. It's an action event, then the behavior, then the consequence. And he says, you know, like, the human free will exists between the action and the behavior.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Right.

[Guest Expert]

Very stoic idea.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure.

[Guest Expert]

Also incredibly obvious when you think about it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Stephen Hanselman]

There's something about it that's like, oh, yeah, I think my grandma told me that. Yeah. Right. And so what I like about it is you're like, no, no, no, no. This actually isn't some cliche that you saw written on the wall of a gym like this. Somebody made this up for the first time, and we know who it was. I was giving a talk to the Pittsburgh Pirates at spring training a couple years ago, and they had on the wall, it's not events that upset us. It's our opinion about events. And I'm like, you don't even realize that that's from the Stoics. Like, you think I'm here to talk about stoicism, but you already know it. Yeah. You know, and that. That's like, that's stoicism all day.

[Dan]

So let's. Let's back up. Let's talk about earlier in your career. You used to write about marketing.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And. And at the time, it's one of these funny things that you look back on at the time. You decided to take a huge Risk, exhibit some courage and write about this. I guess what you thought at the time was an obscure philosophy by writing Obstacles the way in 2013. And then it did kind of blow up. So I'm curious, why do you think it's taken off the way it has in the social media age? Like, what is it about this era that suddenly has everybody calling themselves a stoic? Following Stoics, reading about stoics?

[Stephen Hanselman]

I don't know, I mean, it probably says something about how dysfunctional and weird things are. I think it says something about the tools that allow.

The repopularization of something in a way that can appeal to.

My books have sold really well, but I've reached many, many, many millions more people on social media and the email and the podcast and whatever.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right?

[Stephen Hanselman]

Because way more people consume those things than books. So I think it did allow this idea to break outside of just sort of people who read books about philosophy or even just people who read self help books. So that was a big part of it. But I think I was mentored and taught by Robert Greene. And what Robert Greene is so great at is taking ancient ideas and then illustrating them with sometimes ancient stories, sometimes modern stories, sometimes literature, sometimes source. But he's like, let me, instead of, let me just tell you this idea, let me show you this idea what it looks like and maybe a story that you are familiar with or a person you're familiar with, but you didn't actually fully understand what this would look like. And I think what I have been able to do is take the ideas from the Stoics and illustrate them in a way that people go, oh, I get it now. And then I can give this to my 16 year old son, or I can give this to this person who's struggling at work, or person who just found out they have cancer. And then I think also what I've tried to do is I'm not writing about stoicism generally. I'm always writing about a very specific thing that stoicism can help you with. The obstacle is the way is about dealing with problems. Ego is the enemy is about obviously dealing with ego. And then stillness is like, how do you find peace in a noisy world? I'm taking all the things the Stoics said, plus a lot of other people, and aiming it at a thing that there is a latent and perennial interest in getting better at.

[Dan]

And how do you feel? It's been interesting.

Watching this philosophy blow up over the last 10 years. And I feel like we're now in an age where it's become so popularized and there's so many. There's now we were talking over lunch. There's so many social media accounts now that are these faceless channels that are knockoffs and in many cases, like posting absolutely terrible advice and calling it stoic advice. It's funny. There's like, almost. There's a, There's a term I've seen thrown around a little bit of Brooks, you know, like brocism. Like, it's, it's stoicism. It's, it's, it's almost been co opted by some Internet sub communities that are.

[Stephen Hanselman]

It's been co opted and that's a problem. I mean, look, I also get it, like, why at 19, reading meditations? What lit me up? Was it the fact that he talks about doing good for the common good like 80 times, you know, was it like his meditations on mortality and wrestling with our fear of death? Like, no, that's not. Like, I'm like, wake up early, work harder, push yourself, don't be a bitch. You know, like, you know, like, so, so, like, I understand that that's the entry. That's if you're a young dude or if you're any person in a sort of competitive environment of any kind, there's a lot of that the stoics teach you. And I'm like, if that's what brings you in the door, welcome. You know, I think there's also been kind of an elitism backlash to it that I don't like either. Like, I'd rather you be in the ballpark of stoicism than going the opposite direction at the same time.

I think if your interpretation of stoicism is that it'll help you be a better sociopath, you're getting it totally wrong.

That's certainly not what the four virtues are about, and that's certainly not what virtue is about. So you take the good with the bad. In the early days of something, you're just desperate for anyone to hear about it and take it seriously. And then you're fortunate enough to get in a position where it's bigger than you thought, or there's a backlash to what you.

I said this at this conference about stoicism almost 10 years ago now, and people still throw it in my face. But I think it's more or less correct. If you took every person in the world who knew about stoicism and then you stack them against the people that are familiar with the ideas in Buddhism or even just, let's just say Eastern thought generally, or Talking about meditation and such, it's like, not even close. Like, stoicism is a fraction of how big it could be. And I don't mean that from, like, a business standpoint. I just mean that, like, it can be really easy to be. Like, everyone's talking about this. It's popular, and it's like the vast majority of people think the word stoic means, has no emotions and be a robot, and they've taken it no further than that. And if they know the name Marcus Aurelius, it is from the movie Gladiator and nothing else. And so I'm much more of the minds of, we should bring as many people in as possible. Because even if you get only a few of the teachings, that's better than nothing.

[Dan]

And even if there's a temporary backlash or some bad actors or whatever, like, this stuff is clearly timeless.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Dan]

It's been around for over 2000 years. It will likely outlast all of us.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, look, the Stoics were arguing about what Stoicism was, right? Like, you had Seneca and Thracia, and there are different definitions of it, so I think that's fine, too. But, yeah, like, if you ask AI what stoicism is, it's like this shredded Greek statue, you know, like decapitating his enemy with a sword or something.

[Dan]

Like, feeling nothing about it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah, exactly. And that's, to me, what I think about being that person who is attracted to this sort of muscular, masculine productivity. Stoicism at 19. And then because I stayed with.

[Ryan Holiday]

Works.

[Stephen Hanselman]

On you as you're working with it. And I think it's hard to actually read the stoics at any length and not be like, these were thoughtful or fundamentally decent people. And it's not about whatever these other people are saying about. It's the opposite of Andrew Tate or whatever.

[Guest Expert]

How would you update anything in Stoicism for today's.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I mean, I would love to hear.

[Ryan Holiday]

Them talk, first off.

[Stephen Hanselman]

I would love to know what they would have said about the breakthroughs that we've had medically.

[Guest Expert]

Neuroscience.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. What would they say about this? And it's only a dead philosophy because they're dead. It's not like it's this and nothing else. It's not the word of God you can add to it. And Seneca quotes a lot from Epicurus because he read widely. So I don't think it's a problem to update it. I would love to know.

This line between acceptance and agency, and where is it? Because it's true. There's some things that are up to us and some things that are not. And then there's a lot in the middle. Yeah. You know, like, you know this as a writer. Like, you put out, like, obviously you control the book and you don't control whether people like it or not, but you kind of control the marketing. Yeah. You know, like, so there's a lot of gray area between and like, I think most people need the black and white thing first. Then once you've grasped the black and white thing, like, what do you do in the end? Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Which stoic philosopher would have the most Instagram followers?

[Guest Expert]

Ooh.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Well, you know, let's get.

[Dan]

Let's get into the hard hitting question.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Is the most famous and powerful. So, you know, maybe he's the emperor. He's got the official Roman Empire account.

[Dan]

I wonder what the.

[Guest Expert]

I bet he actually does.

[Dan]

I wonder what color check mark that would be.

[Stephen Hanselman]

But Seneca is the best. Better writer.

[Dan]

He is the better writer.

[Stephen Hanselman]

So would, you know, have been very popular with his other works.

[Dan]

Yeah.

All right, I'm glad we got to the bottom of it.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan]

Any parting thoughts for people listening who this is? This podcast is their first exposure to stoicism. What would you recommend?

[Guest Expert]

Yeah, we usually do an 80 20, so maybe give us like the 80 20, if that's even a thing.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, we should do an 8020 of stoicism. Like, what's the 20% of stoicism that.

[Guest Expert]

Will give you new to it?

[Stephen Hanselman]

You don't control what happens. You control how you respond to what happens. So the stoics believe that everything that happens, including obstacles, including adversity, is this opportunity. It's this opportunity for you to practice virtue. Right. There isn't a situation that you can think of that doesn't allow you to respond with courage, self command, justice, or wisdom. And in fact, it's like the worse the situation, the more. The more opportunity, the more opportunity, the virtue. So when I wrote the obstacles away, I think a lot of people, and I think that's where I was when I was 24, 25, is like, hey, how does this help you professionally? And it's true, there's a chance to do that. Right. That's what great entrepreneurs and creatives do. But what they're really saying is that, like, this is a chance for you as a person to get better or worse. What is it going to be? Because it's unfair to be like, well, you know, amor fati, you have cancer. You know, that's not what. But they're saying it fucking sucks that you have cancer. It fucking sucks that someone just stole all your money. It fucking sucks that you lost an election, whatever it is. And now, what are you going to make of this? With whatever is feasible or possible next, which could be 24 or more hours on this planet, or it could be 50 years of exile, what are you going to do with it? That's what stoicism is. The more trying the situation, the more impressive the virtue can be. But if you're asking me where I would go next, I mean, I would pick up Meditations, I would pick up Seneca. I'd probably start with those two. I'd do Epictetus last. And I would make them your companions again. It's not a thing. Oh, I flipped through it. I got it. It's like. No, no. It's a thing you come to and you come back to. And my relationship with stoicism has changed. The words are the same. But what I take out of it and who I am bringing to it, that's what's changing. And that's.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's the.

[Stephen Hanselman]

That's what great texts do, is they bring you something new every time.

[Dan]

Nice. Ryan Holiday. Thank you so much, dude.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Thanks for having me.

[Dan]

We made it. We made it to the end.

[Guest Expert]

Dan, this is awesome.

[Stephen Hanselman]

Cut.

[Dan]

Cut.

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