You 2.0: The Wisdom of Stoicism

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. To be human, to be alive, is to be vulnerable to sadness and suffering. For centuries, artists, writers, and thinkers have tried to capture what this feels like. The author William Styron once said, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. Sometimes, our suffering is connected to what we see in the world. During the Civil War, president Abraham Lincoln, who was already prone to depression, was often consumed by the horrors of the war. His secretary, John Hay, would note that he would sit for hours staring vacantly out the window, his face displaying the deepest sorrow imaginable. But as long as humans have been suffering, humans have also been trying to find paths out of suffering. Philosophers, scientists, and spiritual leaders have offered many ideas on how to live a life of contentment. Today on the show, we explore the ideas of an unusual philosopher king who lived some 19 centuries ago. There's a reason his meditations about a life worth living have survived nearly 2,000. Ancient ideas to help us find a way out of modern despondencies. This week on Hidden Brain. Most of us have been there. Low points in our life when we look around and realize that something needs to change. What we do in these moments can spell the difference between a life of well-being or a life of despair. At the City College of New York, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci has personal experience with such moments in his own life. Massimo Pigliucci, welcome to Hidden Brain. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Massimo, your world fell apart when you turned 40. Where were you living at the time? I was in, Knoxville, Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible Belt as they as they call it. And what was going on in your life? I had started my academic career at the University of Tennessee. You know, I had a I was a biologist at the time, not a philosopher, and I was being treated very well by the university there. But at the same time, there were a couple of things that were problematic. Number one, the local culture was difficult for me to live in. I was a professor of evolutionary biology. My students, some of them actually told me that I was probably gonna go to hell. So I was like, you know, that's challenging. But the more important bit was that I had a daughter from a previous relationship, and she was living on the …