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On the new season of the divided dial from On the Media, we're exploring shortwave radio, where prayer and propaganda coexist with news and conspiracy theories, and where an existential battle for the public airwaves is playing out right now.

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Good morning, Prokaptan. I hope you are doing well. Today we're working through Meditation 43 from Book 2. But before we start, a quick plea for help. I'm looking to make these episodes longer. And I'm sure you'd like to hear them be longer, but that is genuinely difficult to do when I

already write about 20,000 words a week in scripts and articles. You can help me accomplish this

easily, though, by submitting questions to the podcast via stoicismpod.com forward slash ask. My hope is

that this adds another layer of benefit to the podcast, and of course will

lengthen each episode by appending a Q&A section to each meditation. So, please, if you're

inclined to do so, don't be shy, ask away. As to today's meditation, which again is number 43 from

book two, it reads as follows. Time is like a river made up of the events which

happen, and a violent stream, for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another

comes in its place, and this will be carried away as well. There's something romantic about how

Marcus has worded this one. I think it's beautiful

to imagine our lives as a series of moments rushing past. Here it comes. Here it is. There it goes.

But hey now, here's yet another. It makes me feel like I'm part of something really ephemeral.

I'm an experiencing agent within

the flow of time. Imagine how many things are not. So it feels lucky and beautiful. I've made a

similar analogy in the past in an episode called Amor Paddle, comparing fate to a river and our

agency to a canoe and a paddle. And of course you already know the

one about the dog and the cart. In a different previous episode last Monday, I think, we talked about

how perhaps the most central lesson of stoicism is that nothing but virtue truly matters.

I gave the example of how dying doesn't hurt us because the only true hurt is hurt of one's virtue

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