Is This What You Spend Your Life For?
“Early on in Address Unknown, a haunting novel about the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s, two German entrepreneurs write to each other with much affection about their business success. One lin...
5 Feb 20212min
You Don’t Have To Do This Anymore | On Being Invincible
“In one of the most vulnerable scenes in the Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix, Swift talks about how she feels while looking at a paparazzi photo of herself. Her lifelong habit she says, is to see ...
4 Feb 20216min
The Highway Don’t Care
“It doesn’t matter that you’re a safe driver. Or that you’ve always paid your taxes. It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for this. Or that you volunteer with poor blind kids after school.”Ryan di...
3 Feb 20212min
Bryan Doerries On the Power of Greek Tragedy and Seneca’s Plays
On today’s episode, Ryan speaks to writer Bryan Doerries about his work in familiarizing service members and veterans with ancient Greek plays, the military history of Greek playwrights, how the perfo...
3 Feb 20211h 2min
Things Are Not That Different
“We live in the glorious future. Yet somehow it is exactly the same as the past. The scourge of the ancient world: Pirates. Pompey fought them in Cato’s time. Bandits and highwaymen. Countless Romans ...
2 Feb 20212min
This Is How a Wise Man Responds to Triggers | Focus On the Present Moment
“There’s a story in the Talmud about a man betting his friend four hundred zuzim that he couldn’t provoke the famous rabbi Hillel into anger. The friend accepted the wager and settled on an ingenious ...
1 Feb 20219min
Seneca On the Shortness of Life
Today’s episode features a section from James Romm’s How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life. How To Die is a modern translation and collection of Seneca’s musings on the shortness of life. Ja...
31 Jan 202129min
James Frey on Turning Chaos Into Success
Ryan Speaks to writer and businessman James Frey about the challenges of being isolated during the pandemic, the philosophy behind his sobriety, the painful discovery of human flaws in your heroes, an...
30 Jan 20211h 18min
