Don’t Be a Fool
There are lots of ways to spot a foolish person. They say dumb things. They make unforced errors. They make the same unforced error over and over again. You tend to recognize one when you see one. Sen...
11 Dec 20191min
Why You Should Do Your Own Writing
There is something strange you find when you study the early Stoics. Not Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus, but the Stoics who influenced them. The names you don’t hear much: Cleanthes. Posidon...
10 Dec 20193min
Remember: You’re Just Passing Through
Reputation is a powerful thing. The desire to keep it, maintain it, to not betray it, was a force that made someone like Cato unstoppable. On the other hand, the desire to make it—to have a name that ...
9 Dec 20192min
On a Long-Enough Timeline, We Are All Blips
Here’s an interesting exercise. Pull up a Spotify playlist for hits from the ‘90s. Or turn on a satellite radio station built around that time. As you listen to the songs, note how many you recognize ...
6 Dec 20193min
Don’t Blend In. Stand Up and Stand Out.
In a famous exchange—which we wrote about a while back—Agrippinus explained why he was spurning an invitation to attend some banquet being put on by Nero. Not only was he spurning it, he said, but he ...
5 Dec 20192min
You Are Part of a Team (Whether You Know It Or Not)
One question you hear the comedian Marc Maron ask a lot of standups and actors at the beginning of his interviews is: Who did you come up with? Who were your guys? By that he means, who were the comed...
4 Dec 20193min
There is Only One Place to Look for Approval
We all want to be liked. We want the acceptance of our peers. We want to be chosen. We want the stamp of approval—from the critics, from the crowd, from the market.This makes sense...except it doesn’t...
3 Dec 20192min
We All Need Monuments to Guide Us
Nobody cared more about statues than the Greeks and the Romans. In fact, the only reason we know what many of the Stoics looked like is because they were preserved in marble by sculptors many thousand...
2 Dec 20194min
