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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four

Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school.

We have the time to sing, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hello, I'm Hannah and I'm Syrte and we are the hosts of a Redhanded, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Redhanded we get stuck into the most talked about cases.

From the Idaho student killings, the Delphi murders and our recent rundown of the Murdoch saga.

Last year, we also started a second weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like.

We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction.

Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist?

Listen to Redhanded wherever you get your podcast. So, and access our bonus Shorthand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music, or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic. Hope everyone's doing well. I hope everyone's wearing a mask.

If you hear me say that and you find that to be a political or a frustrating statement. If you don't mind, just hang up the podcast. We don't need to talk or be friends anymore.

We are talking about taking care of each other. We're talking about taking care of ourselves. We're talking about being smart. So I just wanted to stay that.

And then I was going to read an article I've been working on something I've been thinking about for a long time here. The good news is this is was partly inspired by the fact that I got the unexpected news early this week that my publisher had discounted my book conspiracy, which is the true story of the billionaire Peter Teos.

Ten year secret quest conspiracy, if you will, to destroy a media empire that had outed him as gay. To me, it is this sort of strange, Shakespearean epic story. It's actually being turned into a movie. They're casting it right now. I actually think it's my best book. It's the one I'm most proud of.

But anyways, it's discounted on Amazon Kindle in the US right now for $1.99, which is cheap as basically it's ever been. So you can check that out in the show notes. But I wanted to write sort of about why I would take on a challenge like writing that book. And so my idea is, like, look, if you're not seeking out challenges, how are you going to get better?

My point is, if what you're doing is easy, you're not growing. It's like lifting weights. If you can do it without trying, you're not going to get any stronger. The whole point of life of working out and of work is to push yourself and to grow as a result of pushing against and through the resistance.

A couple of years ago, I was at a book signing. This is actually the book signing for ego is the enemy and a friend came to the signing and afterwards we were talking and he said, you know, hey, I think you should write a book about Peter Teo and Gokker. And I said, get out of here. I have no interest in doing that. That sounds extremely hard. That seems like a great way to get my life destroyed and get sued. And by the way, I don't write those kinds of books.

So, you know, there were way more reasons to say no than yes. It was outside my wheelhouse. It would be a ton of work. It would be the kind of project that would upset a lot of people. And frankly, it was personally quite risky to be writing about a powerful gossip merchant and a right wing billionaire who would just shut down a media outlet that he didn't like.

I was just about to have my first kid and it seemed like it would be terribly difficult to manage a newborn and a new kind of book, particularly one that in the case of conspiracy required that I read something like 20,000 pages of legal documents just to get started.

So, you can imagine what I said. I said, yes, I don't know why I said yes, but I said yes. I knew it would be hard and I also knew that it might not work.

But I also knew that it might be the most interesting thing I ever did. And if it did work, it would be a book unlike any of the others that I had written or might write in the future.

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