Modern Meditations - Stoicism For The Real World

Send us Fan Mail Bruce has found another hero to obsess about, no surprise it's the world's fastest marathoner: Eluid Kipchoge (a stoic adjacent runner.) In today's episode we break down some of the many lessons that can be learned from him through the lens of Marcus's beautiful quote in chapter 11: "The pythagoreans bid us in the mornings to look to the heavens that we may be reminded of those bodies that continually do the same things and in the same manner perform their work, and als...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever had a friend insist that a quote is relevant, additive, and deep, but you just don't get it? Listen to Bruce try to justify bringing in this quote from "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" and see if it resonates with you? Have you ever wondered what the nature of life is? Marcus says, "A healthy pair of eyes should see everything that can be seen and not say, 'No! Too bright!'.. So too a healthy mind should be prepared for anything." This frames our discussi...

Send us Fan Mail This episode took us a year to make... Well, at least it is the byproduct of a year focused on focus and rest for Bruce. If you read between the lines of Meditations Book 9 you'll find an emperor who also shares an obsession with finding ways to increase his focus and find rest. For instance Marcus says things like: "You can remove out of the way many useless things among those which disturb thee, for they lie entirely in thy opinion" Or "Let there be freedo...

Send us Fan Mail On the 50th episode of Modern Meditations we break our format to give you two audio essays that changed our views on what it means to be a citizen of the world. In Meditations we read, “My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a human being, it is the world." The first, by Bruce, from his trip on Thailand and the lessons he learned from the East that would solve many problems in the West. And another from Justin that shows where philanthropy...

Send us Fan Mail Discussing Book 8 of Marcus Aurelius' meditations is not for those unready to face the existential dread of facing themselves and what they were born to do... Are you? We start with a fun teaser of "What is required of someone to be a Stoic?" Then we dive into the heavy-hitting themes of this book of Meditations with figuring out what you were born for. Join to answer the most important question of all! Who will project their biases more onto the world, Justin o...

Send us Fan Mail Happy Halloween! What a perfect time to discuss death! On this spooky holiday we open with Data asking Picard to grant him a gift... mortality. We discuss how we deal with mortality and why it is such a gift to be alive and that we all die. We go into how we can prepare for our own inevitable death. Part of that is destigmatizing death to not let it be a looming fear, but instead of provider of beauty and meaning. Can it be destigmatized too much? Possibly, but we thi...

Send us Fan Mail Book 7 of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius focuses on Stoic themes like living in harmony with nature, accepting the impermanence of life, and the importance of rationality. Marcus considers valuable things such as how little is necessary to living a happy life, what the perfection of moral character looks like, and how the more you dig for good within yourself the more it will bubble up. The chapter is a reminder to align actions with reason and find peace within...