The Stoic Handbook by Jon Brooks

You look up and twenty minutes have gone. The problem is not only the phone. It is the tiny judgements your mind keeps accepting while you scroll.

In this episode, I explain prosochē, the Stoic practice of attention, and share Name the Hook: a one-word exercise for catching what has taken hold of you before shame takes over.

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge:

Some mornings, nothing has gone wrong and the day already feels like too much. This guided Stoic morning practice starts from Marcus Aurelius's own argument with the bed in Meditations 5.1. Rather than manufacturing enthusiasm, you will choose one real reason to move and one obstacle to begin. The practice also draws on Meditations 5.20, where Marcus treats an obstruction as ...

We usually explain regret as knowing better but lacking discipline. This episode argues something more useful: in a hot state, the values on your internal scoreboard change.

I connect Epictetus with hot-cold empathy gaps, self-control replication research and implementation intentions. Then I give you a four-minute handover note: one specific if-then plan, written ...

Stoicism says nobody does wrong on purpose: every bad act begins in a mistaken judgement about what is good. But does that survive contact with clear-eyed cruelty, compulsive habit and modern moral psychology?

I test the claim against Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Medea, research on psychopathy and the Stoics' own internal disagreement. Then I keep the practical part...

The most feared striker in MMA history spent this conversation talking about calm.

Before his first fight in Japan, Bas Rutten wrote one letter on each fist with a marker: R, for rustig, Dutch for relaxed. He'd found out that morning his opponent was 33 pounds heavier, the round was thirty minutes long, and there were no rules he recognised. Mid-fight he was calm e...