Economist Emily Oster On Rationality and Risk
On today’s episode, Ryan has a wide-ranging conversation with professor and economist Emily Oster. They talk about how to balance your life with children, how to communicate positive messaging, how th...
13 Jan 202153min
You Are Not Too Busy To Read
“We get it. You’re busy. You have kids. You have a job—maybe two. You have these things you are trying to accomplish. You have to get to the gym. You have a long commute. You have all these projects a...
13 Jan 20213min
There Is No Reason Not To Follow Your Heart
“Steve Jobs was more interested in Buddhism than he was Stoicism. He may not have been, at least according to biographies, a particularly good person. But he was still a person, one whose perspective ...
12 Jan 20213min
What If This Made You Stronger? | The Sphere of Choice
“It wouldn’t be wonderful if it weren’t true. But it is: “Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,” the philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer...
11 Jan 20219min
The Incredible Stoicism of James Stockdale: Prisoner At War
“On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in Vietnam. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese and spent the next seven years being tortured and subjected to ...
10 Jan 202112min
Historian Thomas Ricks on Stoicism and the Founders
Ryan speaks with author and journalist Thomas Ricks about his new book, First Principles, the importance of looking back at the virtues and principles embodied by the founding fathers of America, how ...
9 Jan 202158min
Here’s What You Can Do With Those Long Odds
“To face long odds, to face what others call an “impossibility”—some people can handle this and some people can’t. Think of the chances that Epictetus faced, when the life expectancy for a wealthy per...
8 Jan 20212min
You Can Find Peace
“There’s a chapter in Epictetus’ Discourses entirely about forlornness (or solitude, depending on the translation), the state where one feels miserably and helplessly lonely. His aim is to make a care...
7 Jan 20213min
