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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, this is Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I don't give a lot of talks but I don't go to many talks.

But about two years ago now I made sure I went to go see today's guest speak when she was speaking to parents and administrators at a small private school here in Austin.

And Jessica Leahy was spectacular. I love her book, The Gift of Failure, how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed.

And she talked about something that I think is sort of part and partial of stoicism which is that stuff happens and we have to figure out how to respond to that.

And life is, you know, can you respond well to the adversity and difficulty of life. And the problem is a lot of parents, a lot of people never learned how to respond well because they actually don't have that much experience with failure or difficulty because they had snowplow parents or helicopter parents.

They had people who got in the way of that learning opportunity. So I've had Jessica on to speak about The Gift of Failure but her new book, the Addiction Anoculation, raising healthy kids in a culture of dependence just came out.

And I actually think is perhaps more relevant to stoicism and relevant to you whether you're a parent or not. We started to figure out that addiction, there's some in in heritability in addiction. We can inherit a predilection for addiction.

Maybe it's a gene, maybe it's a genetic, I don't know how it works, but the idea is that if your parents were addicts or there's some history of addiction in your family, you are much more likely to become one yourself.

And yet this isn't, it's not like a death sentence, right? It's not a guarantee. So what separates the people who don't go down that road versus the one who does.

And a lot of it has to do with things you pick up early on, but also just general sort of coping strategies. And this idea, I love this idea of anoculating one self against addiction or the culture of dependence that we live in.

So I wanted to have Jessica in to talk about this and we really get into it. And again, although I'm a parent of young kids, I mostly I was talking about things that I'm struggling with and how I apply this stuff in my own life because this, this stoic idea of temperance, you know, moderation.

But also abstaining from things that really shouldn't be consumed in any quantity or for those of us because of our certain predilections, just don't have the luxury of consuming those things.

To me, it's very relevant. I really enjoyed this interview every time I talk to Jessica, I learn so much. She's awesome. And I think you will really like this interview. Check out the gift of failure and the addiction inoculation.

I carry the gift of failure in my bookstore here, the painted porch in vascular Texas, because it's great. And I believe we will soon be carrying the addiction inoculation as well.

So you can check out Jessica's books. You can also go to JessicaLahy.com. She co-hosts the Am writing podcast with two bestselling authors. She lives in Vermont. There are two sons and a lot of dogs. Check out my interview with Jessica Leahy.

How is putting out your second book? What's different for you, sort of emotionally, spiritually going into a second book? I think this one's much more personal than your first one. So I'd be curious how you're feeling about it.

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