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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 work or to get the kids to school.

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.

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Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. You know, this is a pre-serious podcast. I mean, philosophy is a serious thing. We talk about life. We talk about death. We talk about, you know, what our obligations are to the common good. We talk about resisting tyranny. We talk about ego. We talk about obstacles.

I don't want you to think that stoicism is this lifeless, loveless thing. That's just the opposite of what it is. It may well be that the things we talk about tend to be the more serious things. And I think that's because the serious things are the more complicated and the more stressful and urgent.

But I think the reason you don't hear the Stoic's talk so much about joy and laughter or the purity of hanging out with friends or whatever is because these things are kind of natural or kind of straightforward, the kind of obvious.

But that does become sort of an important omission and you can get me to distort a view of the philosophy. And so I wanted to talk to one of my good friends today, tanks and a true the Michael Jordan of memes.

He's the genius behind some of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram, tanks and not obviously being one of them influencers in the wild tanks, good news. He just has a brilliant sense for, you know, to stilling humor, but also commentary about the world down into like as few words as possible.

It's got this brilliant understanding of popular culture or the zeitgeist and he manages to communicate it in such an effective hilarious way influencers in the wild, I think is a brilliant ongoing art piece basically about ego and the superficiality of today's world.

And so I think the world's tanks, good news to me is just a breath of fresh air amidst all the negativity and dysfunction and division.

Mark really talks about how the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good.

Tanks, good news is basically an Instagram account that just shows you people who are actually doing that and we talk about this a little bit in the episode just like how oftentimes seeing what these people are able to do what a little kid does what a poor immigrant is able to do for someone else.

It inspires you and it almost shames you into wanting to step up and do a better job.

And George is a great thing or a great writer someone I love talking to we chat and text all the time.

He's also wrote a fun self-help book that's worth checking out happy is the new rich, which is a great expression certainly aligns with both Epicurianism and Stoicism I feel.

You know if you're not happy how successful are you right how how rich are you if you don't like the life that you live and so I think George and and his sort of success on Instagram is also just an interesting story in that sense like how does one.

Still the life around their passion or interest even if that passion or interest is as unusual as making funny pictures on the internet so George and I get way into it we do get a little serious but I think we're talking about philosophically important ideas check out his stuff it's great and especially tanks good news these days and and it should be said if you're like why would I want to listen to this George tank is a is a really smart guy he's been sober a long time is a really philosophical person.

He's been a student of Stoicism for quite some time so this isn't a reach for me as far as an interview goes I'm talking to a very like-minded person who knows who knows their stuff and as we say you can find philosophers anywhere and this one happens to make memes for a living but that is the world we live in the medium we communicate through these days and I think there's a bunch to learn from him so check it out.

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