The American historian Will Durrant once wrote that nations are born stoic and die epicurean: a catchy but misleading aphorism that has led people to conflate stoicism and apathy. A far more accurate explanation for the philosophy of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius was written last month by Melanie McDonagh . Stoicism, she wrote, is “the opposite of snowflakery, and the cult of being perpetually offended by other people’s speech and the general embrace of victimhood.
” And so it is, as it has always been, that great minds emerge in reaction to the spirit of the day. Enter Ryan Holiday, host of the podcast The Daily Stoic, author of eight books on the matter and a man once asked to be Donald Trump’s director of comms (he turned the job down). Holiday, 36, is a sprightly and decidedly modern ambassador for an ancient philosophy with roots in Classical Greece.
A university dropout at age 19, he began his career consulting for the authors Tucker Max and Robert Greene, before swapping writers for brands and serving as Director of Marketing for fashion behemoth American Apparel. His interest in Stoicism dates back to reading Epictetus during his brief stint at the University of California (and, before that, becoming familiar with Marcus Aurelius via the Ridley Scott film, Gladiator). After gaining notoriety for his writing on media manipulation, he returned to the subject that’s now made him a definitive star.
“My publisher was like, what is that?” when he first pitched .
