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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more you can visit us at DailyStoke.com.

You can't buy fearlessness.

There's no question that the super rich can afford better medical care than you. They have access to the best doctors, the most cutting-edge treatments.

So naturally, they are living longer. They are buying what scientists are calling radical life extension. In fact, some thinkers believe that this will be the source of conflict in the future. Today we have income quality. Tomorrow it will be longevity inequality.

We should ask ourselves, though what are these folks actually buying and why are they buying it?

Because the Stokes would point out that no amount of wealth will ever fully exempt you from the basic fact of mortality that no amount of medical care, no amount of delaying can ever rid the fear that so many people have about death.

There's no question that Nero had better doctors than Epictetus. One was the Emperor, the other was a slave. Then as now the rich spend their money on insane medical treatments and soothe sayers and magical treatments.

They were trying to buy the same thing billionaires are trying to buy today, but it's not actually health. It's a respite. A get out of jail free card. Peace of mind from the one fact that so deeply disturbs us.

It's ironic, though, that the thing they actually needed was very cheap. Sure living longer is great, but the secret to most of our anxiety about death is quite accessible.

Fearlessness is available to everyone and anyone. It's there in the Stoic text. It's there in the examples of the people we admire.

Is it as awful as that one of Nero's guards taunted him to die? It was to Nero because he was a coward because he had lived a bad life.

But for Epictetus who lived well, fear was never part of the equation. He did not tremble before his mortality. Instead, he went through life day by day without worry, without despair.

Death and pain are not frightening, he said. It's the fear of pain and death that we need to fear, which is why we praise the poet who wrote.

Death is not fearful, but dying like a coward is. And so it happens. It's living like one.

Thanks for listening to another episode of The Daily Stoic. It's mind-blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads at this show.

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Thanks again for listening to The Daily Stoic Podcast.

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