We Are All Kings Now | Why We Can’t Stop Talking About The Odyssey

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. We are all kings now. For most of human history, Somebody else, a king, a lord, a tyrant, a chief, was in charge. In ancient Rome that was the emperor.

Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world. He could do anything he wanted. No one could tell him what to do or not to do. This was not all fun and games, of course, since this not only presented him with incredible amounts of temptation, but also an enormous amount of responsibility and stress. He had to make a lot of decisions for both himself and for other people.

As we've said many times, in light of the checks and balances, Marcus Aurelius had to turn to philosophy. He had to fight to be the person philosophy tried to make him, as he said in Meditations. That's a lot to ask of a person. That's a lot to put on a person. And this is ultimately what makes the decision that the founders made 250 years ago in America so radical.

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