Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

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This is How to be smart, or at least not dumb. Look, some people are just not right. They didn't receive much of an education or they weren't much interested when they were getting one. Some

people receive genetic gifts and others don't. Some people get

kicked in the head or a warner meets part of their brain. Maybe we ourselves are not exactly geniuses.

But you know what? That doesn't really matter. Success and happiness in life doesn't require being a

genius. It begins with require being a genius.

It begins with not being a fool.

This is one of the ideas at the center of the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, which is the fourth book in the Stoeper series about wisdom.

In fact, the whole middle of the book is about avoiding the traps that make really smart

people really stupid,

which, again, is key. For instance, Marcus Reelis doesn't credit Rusticus his philosophy teacher

with making him brilliant. He thanks him for two things, for teaching him not to be satisfied

with just getting the gist of things, and for showing him how not to fall for every

smooth talker. That is, to say, he helped him to avoid two timeless pitfalls in life, superficiality,

and grifters. If we can avoid ego, if we can cultivate a smidge of self-awareness,

if we can try not to let our emotions

blind us, we have already struck enormous blows against stupidity in life. We can avoid being swept up

...