Renew Your Focus On, And Appreciation Of, The Present

This episode uses Seneca’s image of the road to ask whether we are moving with purpose or merely following the crowd. A clear destination helps us resist distraction, while Epictetus shows where our a...

19 Aug 8min

This episode uses animals as a reminder to return to the present moment. Hadot and Marcus Aurelius show that life is lived only in the now, where we can think clearly, act justly, and avoid adding nee...

12 Aug 8min

This episode explores conversation and kindness as forms of care for the soul. Socrates saw dialogue as essential to self-knowledge, a way of bringing hidden thoughts into the open and examining them ...

5 Aug 7min

This episode reflects on the shortness of life without turning it into panic. Oliver Burkeman’s “four thousand weeks” gives us a blunt measure of our limits, while Seneca’s story of Julius Canus shows...

29 Juli 8min

This episode explains Epictetus’s three disciplines as a practical way of returning to the present moment.The Discipline of Assent helps us judge clearly, the Discipline of Desire teaches us to want o...

22 Juli 8min

This episode uses the thought of a “last day” to test the distance between our values and our actions.Montaigne, Seneca, and Lucretius show how reflecting on death can sharpen our sense of what matter...

15 Juli 6min

This episode looks at how the chase for novelty and the habit of overextension both unsettle the mind. Cicero reminds us that possessions and technologies are not good in themselves—their value depend...

8 Juli 7min

This episode treats life’s difficulties as assignments rather than interruptions. Epictetus reminds us that we don’t get to choose every task Fortune sets, but we do choose how well we meet it. Each c...

1 Juli 7min