Paths / Philosophy

Stoicism, the foundations.

A week with Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus — read aloud, at the pace it was written.

7
days
12
min/day
90
min total
7
audio tracks
Start this path Read Day 1 free

Available on the App Store.

The shape of the path

Seven moves the Stoics knew, that we forgot.

The Stoics weren't austere. They drank wine, ran empires, and wrote letters to their friends. What set them apart was a small, specific way of meeting the world — one that we lost, between Christianity and the Enlightenment, and that the last fifteen years of psychology have been steadily rediscovering.

This path is a week of those moves. Day 1 sets the foundation — the dichotomy of control, the one idea that everything else hangs on. By Day 7 you'll have a small daily practice you can keep after the path closes itself.

The seven days

Each day, one idea. Slowly.

01
The dichotomy of control.
Epictetus, the one idea everything else hangs on — what's up to you, and what isn't.
Free preview 12 min
02
The view from above.
Marcus Aurelius, on the trick of imagining yourself as a small thing in a vast time — and what it does to a bad email.
11 min
03
Voluntary discomfort, as inoculation.
Seneca and the cold shower — why deliberately exposing yourself to small hardships immunises you against larger ones.
13 min
04
The art of negative visualisation.
Picturing the loss of what you have, on purpose. The exercise that makes ordinary life feel like the gift it is.
10 min
05
Memento mori, kept close.
Death as a daily reminder, not as morbid theatre. Why the Stoics carried a coin with a skull, and what to carry instead.
12 min
06
Anger, in slow motion.
Seneca's De Ira — the most concrete chapter of the Stoic library. Watch yourself get angry; do nothing about it; the anger leaves.
14 min
07
A small daily practice.
Closing the path. The five-minute evening review, the one question to ask yourself, and what to do with everything you've learned.
8 min
Written by
DK
Dr. Donald Robertson
Author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. Cognitive-behavioural therapist, classicist.

Every lesson is reviewed twice before publishing, and narrated by a human voice. No LLM on the publishing path.

Day 1, on the way home.

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