Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

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.

You have to wrestle with this. It would be wonderful if history was a pleasant picture to look at. Sadly, it is not. Not today, it wasn't to the people of history either.

Take Marcus Aurelius, when he was made emperor, he could not have helped but look back at his predecessors, most of whom had not stood up well to the duties of the office.

It would have been nice to simply enjoy the pomp and glamour and traditions of the office, but to do that would have been to ignore its darker sides too.

For instance, at an early age, Marcus Aurelius was introduced to the inspiring examples of Cato, Thrasia, Helvides, the Stoics whose lives instructed him in the importance of equality under the law, freedom of speech and respecting individual rights.

Yet it could not have escaped him that it was the emperors of the past who had brutally persecuted and taken the lives of those brave heroes, the people who had the same job that he now had.

It would have been easier not to think about this, but he had to, lest he want to repeat the mistakes of the past, lest he want to commit injustices himself.

So Marcus wrestled with this, he looked uncomfortable truth in the face and tried to be made better for it. Was he perfect at this? No, of course not. Sadly the persecution of Justin, Margarit and other Christians under Marcus Aurelius was all too similar to the persecution of the Stoics under Nero, but he tried, he moved the ball forward if only a little.

Today we must do the same, whatever country we live in, whatever party we belong to, whatever generation we belong to. Are you as an American able to really sit back and think about what it has been like for black people in this country, not just during slavery, but much more recently?

Are you familiar with the history of redlining, lynching, poll taxes, Confederate statues, and police brutality? Have you, as a German, really studied the Holocaust, or as a British or French person, do you understand the viciousness of colonialism?

As a Turk, have you honestly looked at the Armenian genocide? As a Chinese or Russian citizen, can you wrap your head around the extent of the enormous human suffering and loss during your revolutions in the 20th century? Horrible things have been done by good people, horrible things, horrible things that are still happening and the legacy of these things is still very much alive.

It's not just race or nationality, either, doctors need to wrestle with the opioid crisis, the church with homophobia and abuse scandals, former bullies need to wrestle with their schoolyard behavior, football with concussions and player safety, academics with their support of left-wing dictators, Hollywood with the blacklists, parents with the mistakes they made with their own children and on and on and on.

We do this not to whip ourselves. Of course, the Stokes know you cannot change the past, but you can learn from it. You can end what has gone on too long. You can make amends. You can help us get a little bit closer to a more just society.

We can't ever be perfect, Epictetus said, but we can strive to be better, which is why we must wrestle with the past every single day.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat someone who can't really do anything for them or how they behave in private.

When my books were first starting to take off in professional sports, I got this text in a call, sort of out of the blue, from Dr. Michael Jervé, who is one of the most elite sports performance psychologists in the world.

He's worked with the Seattle Seahawks and Microsoft. He's been featured everywhere you can imagine. He reached out to me and he just offered some advice. He gave me a bunch of great advice and he really encouraged me.

...