Podcasts of Note: AudioStoa and Marketplace Takeout

WAMU moved the Marketplace Morning report from 8:50 am to 7:50 am, so I’ve been missing it for about a week (I’m not in the car at 7:50 am). Since I was up early this morning to restart my training for the Shamrock Half Marathon in March (and hopefully get out of my funk), I heard the morning report when I got back. What I also heard was that Marketplace has a podcast called Marketplace Takeout. It’s a weekly collection of the best stories from all of the Marketplace shows. Sweet!

AudioStoa is an excellent resource produced weekly by Julien Villeneuve. So far, he’s been working his way through Epictetus’s Discourses. AudioStoa 12: Of Contentment is an excellent screed against whining.

My favorite part:

Remembering, then, this disposition of things we ought to go to be instructed, not that we may change the constitution of things — for we have not the power to do it, nor is it better that we should have the power — but in order that, as the things around us are what they are and by nature exist, we may maintain our minds in harmony with them things which happen. For can we escape from men? and how is it possible? And if we associate with them, can we chance them? Who gives us the power? What then remains, or what method is discovered of holding commerce with them? Is there such a method by which they shall do what seems fit to them, and we not the less shall be in a mood which is conformable to nature? But you are unwilling to endure and are discontented: and if you are alone, you call it solitude; and of you are with men, you call them knaves and robbers; and you find fault with your own parents and children, and brothers and neighbours. But you ought when you are alone to call this condition by the name of tranquillity and freedom, and to think yourself like to the gods; and when you are with many, you ought not to call it crowd, nor trouble, nor uneasiness, but festival and assembly, and so accept all contentedly.

What, then, is the punishment of those who do not accept? It is to be what they are. Is any person dissatisfied with being alone, let him be alone. Is a man dissatisfied with his parents? let him be a bad son, and lament. Is he dissatisfied with his children? let him be a bad father. “Cast him into prison.” What prison? Where he is already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is against his will, there he is in prison. So Socrates was not in prison, for he was there willingly.

Fantastic stuff.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

…pod boy…