Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired

by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength

and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known

and obscure, fascinating, and powerful.

With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are

and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.

But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday, welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

There is obviously this perception that stoicism is boring, that it's dour, that it's devoid

of any and all emotions, any sort of zester joy for life.

We've talked many times about how this isn't true, but I think one of the areas that we

can really combat this is by showing that the Stoics had a sense of humor.

There's jokes, even in meditations, Marx really repeats this weird joke we don't quite

get about how this guy is so rich and his house is so full of stuff, he doesn't have

any place to go to the bathroom.

So even Marx is realists who people don't seem to think as I don't think many people

would read as funny, actually is funny.

And the Stoics love the theater, which is where they would have seen comedy, not just

tragedies, but also comedy.

And that's why I love talking to comedians, and in the case of today's episode, we have

an interesting quirk where we are talking to an Oxford-trained philosophy student and

...