Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

In April 1960, the writer Richard Whalen was trying to meet with Diane Nash and the sit-in students for a Time magazine cover story.

These young students had suddenly become the focus of an immense amount of attention,

not just from the press, but from the police and politicians and the rest of civil rights leaders.

How were these kids going to upend years of stymied racial progress?

How could they possibly challenge a system in which the police

and the courts and elected leaders in public opinion were all against them? Could they win?

It seemed very unlikely. Richard Whalen was stunned to find that he had trouble asking these

students' questions because they were not particularly interested in meeting with him. They were

too busy.

They did not have the time,

even though he represented what was at the time one of the most important publications in the world.

Finally, Diane and her team agreed they would see him at 6 a.m.

Before the morning strategy that started their day,

Whalen could only marvel 6 a.m.,

the only time they can meet with me

is 6 a.m. They're going to win, aren't they? He said. Winners attack the day like that. It doesn't

matter what their cause is. They win that discussion that Marcus Aurelius has with himself in meditation,

the one we all must win when the alarm goes off. Yes, it is warmer

under the covers, but we are not meant for that. We have a duty. Our nature, justice demands

something from us. It demands that we get up, that we get after it, that we wear ourselves doing it.

...