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 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 work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast a very long time ago before we had this podcast, when we just started Daily Stoic, we would do interviews over email and we just sent like I'd read a book that I liked or there'd be someone in my network or a friend that I thought it an interesting perspective.

I wasn't quite ready to do a podcast, so I just emailed them over some questions and they'd answer and we'd post that on the site. Sometimes I'd do, you know, the Daily Stoic emails around some of the answers.

So actually one of the one of the early people I interviewed was Tamler Somers. He's a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, but he wrote a fantastic book that I'd read in life called Why Honor Matters.

As you know, honor is a sort of a key stoic concept. You know, Kato would rather die than experience the dishonor of receiving Caesars mercy and living in a corrupted room under someone who destroyed the Republic.

So I'm fascinated with this concept of honor and I think it pertains as you'll see in our conversation to where we are today. I mean, look, honor cultures where people are fighting duels and and all of that.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, the honor of self respect, honor of integrity, the honor of knowing right from wrong and again, rather, rather face or endure anything, then that wrong.

And I think the deficiency of that is is obviously explains a lot of the problems we're having as a society and as a world these days.

So Tamler and I have a great discussion. I think you're really going to like this one. If you haven't read his book or heard of it, Why Honor Matters, please check it out. It's a great book.

He also has a very popular podcast called Very Bad Wizards, which talks about science and philosophy and and all of that. It's great. I think you'll like, I think you'll like the podcast as well. If you're looking for another listen.

And yeah, I can't wait for you to check out this interview. It's a good one. We went even a little longer than I was expecting, but I very much enjoyed it. I think you will as well.

So check this out. Tamler, Somers and myself talking about philosophy, the applicableness of philosophy as I say in lives of the Stokes, the only reason to study philosophy is to become a better person.

I think Tamler's work helps you do that. And I hope the Stokes, I hope you do that as well.

Are you in Texas?

Yeah. I'm in Houston. Beautiful day. Yeah.

It's not bad. It's, it's been cold. There's been freezing in Austin the last couple weeks and consistently, which is not typical for us.

Yeah. We've had some really cold days and nights, but it's, you know, we always have a little bit of the from the coast, the humidity and the

humidity and so I don't know, it's kind of, it's been kind of perfect recently. I kind of like the cold, I'm from Boston originally. So while I'm totally spoiled now and probably couldn't go back and live somewhere where it's, you know, I still like that kind of bracing feeling that we don't get too often.

You probably get a little bit more because it's drier there. Yeah. And I'm also the sort of cliche Texan that came here from California. So I'm, I'm, I'm spoiled the other way.

...