The Daily Stoic

His new book, Nero, Matricide, Music and Murder in Imperial Rome came out in November.

Well, this is more a look at Nero and what made Nero tick--was he misunderstood by history or perhaps properly understood by history?

I have read your Augustus book. I have read your Cicero book and I very much enjoyed your Nero book so this is a complete honor for me.

I think that's very wise and very good. The thing about Nero is he was a rotter before he became emperor so you can't read them all on Nukedans for his behavior.

I ordered his book Augustus, the life of Rome's first emperor on January 14th, 2011.

I think biographies such a great way to understand not just an individual but a whole swath of history. And these are just super entertaining biographies.

And I guess I would have got it at Barnes and Noble reporters. I may have even read it when I was in college.

the impediment to action advances action; what stands in the way becomes the way

whatever you happen to experience in life it's an opportunity to be excellent in whatever capacity one is able to be excellent

you don't have to be happy about it it's okay to be to you know get pissed off about it it's okay to not like it but you can learn to just ride with it in the passenger seat or you know in the motorcycle sidecar and you're still moving forward you're still going places and it's just kind of alongside with you and that's enough sometimes

being a person who stutters prepared me for cancer

the impediment is interwoven to your existence

In her beautiful book about the Los Angeles Public Library Fire, Susan Orlean captures the magic of what libraries can offer.

She describes walking through the empty library in downtown LA, not a soul in sight and feeling connected to all the voices represented on the millions of pages that surround her.

A library is a good place to soften solitude, she writes.

A place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you are all alone.

The library is a whispering post, she said, you don't need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you.

he says you know um when you are not practicing somewhere someone else is practicing and when you meet that person they will win

Number one that virtue is the only good, two that it is sufficient for happiness, three that all virtues and vices are equal, four that all fools are mad, five that only the sage is truly free and six that the wise person alone is rich.

How can virtue be the only good if we also need health and money to live? Is a lie really as bad as killing someone? Plenty of philosophers were visibly poor. How were they rich?

He said, I want to understand justice in such a way that it's fully compatible with compassion.

Bordea Laza Power, definitely.

The crack up is an incredible book that I would also recommend a very sad, haunting memoir about discipline and let's say destiny also.

She's written a book on Marilyn Monroe.

She's written a book about the American Dream

She's written a book about Gone with the Wind which I'm looking forward to reading and we'll probably have her back on the podcast.

one of my favorite novels which is Bud Schuylberg's book that Disenchanted about F. Scott Fitzgerald but what I took from your book and what I've always taken from Fitzgerald was so interesting is that he's this guy that writes with this amazing kind of self awareness like he's so aware of what his issues are, his flaws are human nature etc and then seem to be utterly powerless to do anything about them or with this self awareness.