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Practical Stoicism: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Tanner Campbell
Stoicism is the pursuit of Virtue (Aretê), which was defined by the Ancient Greeks as "the knowledge of how to live excellently," Stoicism is a holistic life philosophy meant to guide us towards the attainment of this knowledge through the development of our character. While many other Stoicism podcasts focus on explaining Ancient Stoicism in an academic or historical context, Practical Stoicism strives to port the ancient wisdom of this 2300-plus-year-old Greek Philosophy into contemporary times to provide practical advice for living today, not two millennia ago. Join American philosopher of Stoicism Tanner Campbell for new episodes.
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- 5 days ago22 min
Managing Anger as a Parent
In this episode, I talk about parenting, exhaustion, frustration, and the very real challenge of remaining Stoic when your emotional battery is running on empty.Stoic Mentoring: https://tannerocampbell.com/mentoringSunday 7th Webinar: https://stoictalks.uk/june-cosmologyUsing a story from my own 43rd birthday, I walk through a morning that did not go according to plan. What I wanted was a peaceful day. What I got was a very normal morning with a two-year-old child who wanted things his way, struggled to communicate those wants clearly, and repeatedly tested my patience.The story revolves around a simple trip to a café that gradually became a lesson in expectations, frustration, entitlement, and emotional regulation.The deeper lesson is not really about toddlers. It's about the stories we tell ourselves.I had convinced myself that my birthday entitled me to a peaceful day. Rationally, I knew that wasn't true. But emotionally, I had quietly bought into the idea anyway. That expectation became the source of much of my frustration.From there, I explore several Stoic lessons:Managing expectations before frustration takes hold.Recognizing when we're running our emotional batteries too low.Understanding that self-care is not selfishness.Appreciating how much children learn from our behavior, especially when we're angry.Recognizing the difference between discipline and rage.I spend particular time discussing the impression we leave on our children. Children are constantly watching us. Every outburst, every moment of patience, every act of self-control becomes part of the example we set for them.A parent losing their temper doesn't just solve a problem poorly in the moment—it can shape how a child understands relationships, authority, safety, and emotional expression for years to come.I also argue that many parents wait far too long to recharge. We run ourselves into the ground, then expect one special day, one holiday, or one break to somehow restore everything. That's not sustainable.The Stoic approach is much simpler: maintain the battery before it reaches zero.Even a single hour each week dedicated to rest, reflection, reading, walking, or simply being alone can dramatically improve our ability to show up well for the people who depend on us.The central message of the episode is this: parenting is hard, and perfection is impossible. But we can dramatically reduce the likelihood of losing our tempers by managing our expectations, protecting our own wellbeing, and remembering that our children are always learning from how we choose to respond.Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.
- 1 weeks ago16 min
Keeping Your Cool
In this episode, I talk about heat, irritability, anger, and why being physically uncomfortable can quietly erode our Stoic practice if we’re not paying attention.First, an announcement: after years of being asked, I’m officially opening applications for 1:1 Stoic mentoring and life coaching. This is a six-month mentorship for people who are serious about applying Stoicism deeply and consistently in their lives. It includes weekly calls, structured curriculum, support between sessions, and a small accountability group. I explain who it’s for, what’s included, and how to apply.Apply for 1:1 mentoring here: https://tannerocampbell.com/applyThe core topic of the episode, though, is anger — specifically how heat and physical discomfort make anger far more likely.I draw heavily from Seneca’s On Anger, where he describes anger as a kind of temporary madness: a passion that overrides reason, destroys judgment, and pushes people toward destructive choices they later regret. I connect this to modern psychological research showing that heat increases irritability, hostility, and aggression.The basic point is straightforward: when we’re physically uncomfortable, our threshold for frustration lowers dramatically. Small provocations escalate faster. We become less patient, less reflective, and more likely to lash out.But rather than treating this as an excuse, I frame it as a call for preparation.A Stoic does not pretend the body doesn’t matter. The Stoic prepares rationally for predictable challenges. If you know extreme heat affects your mood and judgment, then planning ahead becomes part of your moral responsibility.I walk through some practical examples from my own life living in the UK during a heatwave:Buying bags of ice in advance.Staying hydrated constantly.Having contingency plans for cooler environments.Saving for a long-term cooling solution.Refusing to indulge self-pity or dramatics about discomfort.The point is not “be tough.” The point is “be prepared.”I argue that failing to prepare for predictable discomfort is itself a failure of Stoic practice because it unnecessarily increases the risk that we’ll act irrationally toward ourselves or others.The Sage would not ignore heat to prove toughness. The Sage would plan, prepare, adapt, and endure intelligently.That’s the real lesson of the episode: Stoicism isn’t about pretending external conditions don’t affect us. It’s about anticipating their effects and choosing wisely despite them.---Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.---I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at https://stoicismpod.com/members---Subscribe to A Little Wiser, a newsletter which explores philosophy more broadly than Stoicism and publishes multiple times a week.
- 3 weeks ago23 min
Decide Like a Stoic
Support my work for as little as £0.87/wk: https://stoicismpod.com/members -- In this episode, I lay out a practical, step-by-step Stoic framework for making decisions well. A lot of people interested in Stoicism know the quotes, know the terminology, and understand the broad concepts — but when an actual difficult choice appears in front of them, they still don’t know what to do. This episode is about solving that problem. I begin by making a distinction the Stoics took very seriously: the difference between wanting something and determining whether something is right. Most difficult decisions are not difficult because we don’t know what we desire, but because we’re uncertain what action accords with virtue and reason. From there, I walk through an orthodox Stoic decision-making method rooted in Panaetius and preserved through Cicero’s De Officiis. The process begins with examining what the Stoics understood to be the four roles every human being occupies simultaneously: Our universal human nature as rational beings bound by the virtues. Our individual nature — our temperament, strengths, and weaknesses. Our circumstantial roles — parent, child, citizen, employee, neighbour. Our chosen roles — career, projects, commitments, ambitions. I use a detailed example throughout the episode: a person deciding whether to take a major overseas promotion while also caring for an aging mother whose health is declining. The key Stoic insight is this: the right action is usually found at the intersection of all four roles. Most modern ethical thinking frames difficult choices as trade-offs, but Stoicism instead asks us to search for the action that satisfies all our legitimate roles without violating virtue. I then explain the “tragic conflict clause” — what to do when no intersection seems possible. In those cases, the Stoics held that lower-order roles must be abandoned before virtue itself is compromised. After identifying a candidate action, I introduce three tests the Stoics would apply: The rational defence test: can you clearly explain why the action is right? The sage test: would a genuinely wise person choose this? The role-fidelity test: does the action honour your responsibilities regardless of what others do? Finally, I discuss the importance of post-action review — what the Stoics called prokopē, or progress. Stoic character is built not through perfect choices, but through repeated examination, correction, and refinement over time. The core point of the episode is simple: Stoicism is not passive inspiration or emotional comfort. It is a disciplined framework for reasoning through life well and choosing in alignment with nature, virtue, and our roles. Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- May 4, 20267 min
You Cannot Be Just a Stoic
In this episode, I take aim at what I call “stoa shaming”—the habit of pointing out someone’s failure to be perfectly Stoic as a way of dismissing both them and the philosophy. You’ve seen it. Someone loses their temper, struggles with their weight, or makes a mistake, and the response is: “That’s not very Stoic of you.” On the surface, it sounds like a call to higher standards. In reality, it reveals a misunderstanding of Stoicism itself. Stoicism does not expect perfection from its practitioners. It defines perfection—sagehood—as something effectively unattainable. The Sage is a theoretical ideal: someone who never errs in judgment, never assents incorrectly, and never acts viciously. That’s not us. That’s not anyone. What we are, instead, are prokoptôns—progressors. People in motion. People practicing. This matters because if you misunderstand Stoicism as requiring perfection, then every mistake becomes evidence of failure, and every practitioner becomes a hypocrite. That’s the logic behind stoa shaming. It reduces a philosophy of progress into a brittle standard no one can meet. But Stoicism isn’t a label you “achieve.” It’s a framework you use. Saying “I’m a Stoic” doesn’t mean you embody perfect virtue. It means you’re attempting to move toward it using Stoic principles. That means mistakes aren’t contradictions of the philosophy—they are the condition under which the philosophy is practiced. When someone says, “That’s not very Stoic of you,” what they’re often doing is collapsing the distinction between Sage and student. They’re holding a progressor to the standard of perfection and then using the inevitable gap to dismiss both the person and the system. It’s also, in many cases, a defensive move. If they can frame you as inconsistent, they can ignore what you’re saying. If you’re not perfect, then your arguments don’t count. It’s an easy way to avoid engaging with the substance. The Stoic response is simple: reject the premise. You are not trying to be flawless. You are trying to improve. And improvement requires error, correction, and continued effort over time. So when you fall short—and you will—you haven’t failed at Stoicism. You’ve participated in it. And when someone tries to use your imperfection against you, consider what they’re actually asking for: not progress, but perfection. Not practice, but performance. That’s not Stoicism. Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts. I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at https://stoicismpod.com/members Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": https://stoicbrekkie.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Apr 24, 202614 min
We Must Say No To Thirsty Justice
Register for the May 9th workshop today: https://tannerocampbell.com/may -- In this episode I work through how Stoic Justice differs from what we moderns typically mean by the word — because when we say "justice" today, we almost always mean retribution: rewards for the deserving, punishments for the rest. Stoic Justice isn't concerned with desert in that sense at all. It's concerned with giving each person what is owed to them as a fellow member of the Cosmopolis, and failing to do that is, on Stoic terms, about as serious a moral error as you can commit. Along the way I push back on the fairly common claim that Justice is the "highest" of the cardinal virtues — the one that orients all the others and without which courage collapses into bravado, temperance into private self-management, and wisdom into mere cleverness. I grant the intuition has some force, but antakolouthia — the mutual entailment of the virtues — rules out any hierarchy, and I note that Marcus, contrary to what some popular communicators like to imply, isn't in the camp that elevates Justice above the rest. From there I trace how our thirst for a culprit is eating away at social cohesion in the West. The older western instinct — that it is worse to wrongly convict the innocent than to let the guilty slip through — is being quietly replaced by something uglier: not "did this person do the thing?" but "is this person close enough to the thing that punishing them will feel like justice?" We're no longer just eager to punish the accused; we're hungry to produce more accused, and the bar for what counts as worthy of condemnation keeps dropping. Evidence stops being something to weigh and becomes something to enlist. I argue this is injustice in the precise Stoic sense — not the cartoon sense of wanting to hurt someone, but a failure of attention. You cannot give each person their due if you will not first do the patient work of finding out what is due. And I close with what I want listeners to actually do: the next time they feel themselves reaching for a verdict, pause long enough to ask honestly whether they're trying to find out what's owed, or whether they're just trying to locate a target for something they were already feeling before this particular person walked into view. Getting the right outcome by accident isn't justice — justice is the discipline itself, and what's true of the individual eventually becomes true of the society they're part of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Apr 17, 202619 min
Silence Is Not Always Complicity
Stoic Journaling 50% OFF - Use code EASTER50 - https://stoicjournaling.com -- Live in Leicester? Join me live on May the 23rd: https://tannerocampbell.com/events/stoicism-a-complete-framework-for-living-a-good-life -- In this episode, I explore the idea that “silence is complicity” and whether that claim holds up under Stoic scrutiny. This phrase gets used as a kind of moral pressure—an attempt to force speech or action by implying that not speaking is equivalent to endorsing wrongdoing. But Stoicism doesn’t deal in slogans like this. It deals in judgment. It asks: what is appropriate for me, given my role, my knowledge, and the situation in front of me? Sometimes speaking is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is not. The Stoic position is not that silence is always justified, nor that speech is always required, but that both must be evaluated through reason. One of the problems with slogans like “silence is complicity” is that they bypass this process entirely. They encourage immediate assent to an impression—“something is wrong, therefore I must speak”—without first testing whether that impression is accurate, whether one understands the situation, or whether speaking will actually improve anything. From a Stoic perspective, speaking without understanding can be just as irresponsible as remaining silent when action is required. Both are failures of judgment. So the real question isn’t whether silence is complicity. The real question is: what is the just and appropriate response here? That requires slowing down, examining the impression, and being honest about what you do and do not know. It also requires considering your role. Not every situation calls for your voice. Not every issue falls within your responsibility. And not every demand for speech is made in good faith. That doesn’t mean you default to silence. It means you earn your speech. You speak when you have reasoned your way to the conclusion that speaking is the appropriate action—and you remain silent when that same process leads you elsewhere. The takeaway is straightforward. Don’t outsource your moral judgment to slogans. Whether you speak or remain silent, make sure it is the result of clear reasoning, not social pressure. Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts. I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at https://stoicismpod.com/members Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": https://stoicbrekkie.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Apr 4, 202620 min
Stoic Endurance & Resilience
Join the Prokoptôn Journaling program: https://stoicjournaling.com use the code "BREKKIE" at checkout to save 25% -- In this episode, recorded from the Isle of Raasay in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, I reflect on endurance and resilience—what they are, how they differ, and why both matter. The setting matters. The Highlands and islands confront you with something modern life often hides: limits. Weather changes quickly. Conditions are often harsh. Nature does not adjust to you. You adjust to it. This creates a constant reminder of mortality—not just in the literal sense, but in the sense that good conditions don’t last, and neither do bad ones. From there, I turn to endurance. We often think of endurance as physical strength, but from a Stoic perspective, it is not physical at all. Endurance is the ability to continue through difficulty because you choose to. It is grounded in rational judgment and strength of will, not muscle. Anyone can endure if they have trained their capacity to choose well under pressure. Resilience is different. Where endurance is about carrying the load, resilience is about recovering after carrying it. It is the ability to return to stability, to maintain hope, and to continue living well after hardship. This is much harder to cultivate. I push back on the modern idea that resilience is built through constant stress exposure. That approach often misses the essential component: rest. Without deliberate recovery, systems break down. True resilience requires cycles—effort followed by rest, strain followed by recovery. I use the analogy of steam-bending wood. You cannot force wood into shape all at once. You apply pressure gradually, allow it to rest, and repeat the process. Over time, the structure changes. The same is true for human resilience. The takeaway is simple. Endurance is about choosing to carry difficulty. Resilience is about knowing how to recover from it. Both are necessary. Neither is built through brute force alone. Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts. I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at https://stoicismpod.com/members Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": https://stoicbrekkie.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Mar 24, 202613 min
Will AI Destroy Our Purpose?
My Stoic Journaling Program is now 25% OFF with code "BREKKIE". Sign up at https://stoicjournaling.com. -- In this episode, I explore a growing concern: will AI eliminate human work, and if it does, what happens to our sense of purpose? I start by acknowledging the reality in front of us. AI is rapidly improving across creative and technical domains. Tasks that once required human skill are now being automated or reduced to minimal input. This is not speculation. It is already happening. Many forms of labour and many learnable skills are being replaced or compressed by technology. From there, I push the question further. If this trend continues, we may face a future where traditional employment becomes rare or unnecessary. That raises a deeper issue. If our culture has been built around work as the primary source of meaning, what happens when that work disappears? To answer this, I turn to Seneca and his writing on leisure. For the Stoics, leisure is not idleness. It is not the absence of work. It is the presence of directed attention toward what matters: self-examination, philosophical development, and contributing to others through wisdom and character. The problem is not that we may lose jobs. The problem is that we are not prepared to live well without them. I argue that we have confused employment with purpose. Stoicism makes a clear distinction. A person can lose their job and still live a purposeful life. What matters is whether they are being useful to others, improving themselves, and acting in accordance with reason. That work does not require a paycheck. I also acknowledge the uncertainty ahead. Economic systems may change. New structures like universal basic income may emerge. Or something else entirely. But rather than speculate too far into the future, the Stoic focus remains on preparation. We can begin now by asking what our purpose would be without our current job, and whether we can start moving toward that purpose today. The core idea is simple. Job work may disappear, but meaningful effort will not. Stoicism gives us a framework for living well regardless of economic conditions. The question is whether we are ready to use it. Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts. I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at https://stoicismpod.com/members Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": https://stoicbrekkie.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Practical Stoicism
Stoicism is the pursuit of Virtue (Aretê), which was defined by the Ancient Greeks as "the knowledge of how to live excellently," Stoicism is a holistic life philosophy meant to guide us towards the attainment of this knowledge through the development of our character. While many other Stoicism podcasts focus on explaining Ancient Stoicism in an academic or historical context, Practical Stoicism strives to port the ancient wisdom of this 2300-plus-year-old Greek Philosophy into contemporary times to provide practical advice for living today, not two millennia ago. Join American philosopher of Stoicism Tanner Campbell for new episodes.
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