Episode · The Daily Stoic · 2026-11-09
Ryan Holiday & Robert Greene: books mentioned on The Daily Stoic (Nov 2026)
Robert Greene: 99% of People Are Sleepwalking Through Life. Here's How to Wake Up.
There's magic all around you, but it's easy to miss when you're glued to a screen and going through life on autopilot. Ryan sits down with bestselling author Robert Greene to talk about his new book, The Law of the Sublime, and how to rediscover the sense of wonder we tend to lose as we get older.
Ryan Holiday recommended Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino, discussed Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko, Meditations by Aurelius Marcus, and The Law of the Sublime by Robert Greene, and read History of the Peloponnesian War for a book club. Robert Greene discussed Dersu Uzala by Vladimir Arsenyev and Aztec Philosophy by James Maffie, and criticized The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Discussed“So the food was just amazing, but I was reading Willa Cather's death comes for the Archbishop. And it was this sort of flood of all these things because the book opens in Rome and we just gotten back from Rome.”
Where to get it
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Dersu Uzala
Discussed“And I had just been reading that story of Dar suu sala, you know, that story. I talk about it in in the sublime of, of this trapper, this indigenous trapper in Siberia, and he meets this Russian explorer.”
Where to get it
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Aztec Philosophy
Discussed“I read a book researching for this one about the Aztecs and it was called Aztec Philosophy and it was about 800 pages thick. And a little bit like the Willa Cather book, there were so many details.”
Where to get it
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Under the Jaguar Sun
Recommended“And you read Under the Jaguar Sun by Talo Covino? No. He wrote these series of essays, like one on each sense, one on sight, one on smell.”
Where to get it
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The Emerald Mile
Discussed“And and I was like, I I'm actually having trouble with it. So many of the sentences are good. I have to stop. Like I can't just read this mindlessly. It's called the Emerald Mile.”
Where to get it
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Meditations
Discussed“Well, that's one of my favorite passages in meditations of Marcus Aurelius when he talks about wine and where it comes from and the feet that we're like, I don't know if I'm quoting it correctly.”
Where to get it
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The Law of the Sublime
Discussed“how much work went into the science, understanding and communicating and capturing this small scientific fact we have where I think about like I know how long did you work on law of the sublime? Seven years.”
Where to get it
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History of the Peloponnesian War
Book club“And I'm just now I'm rereading Thucydides, we're reading for a book club, we're reading history, the Peloponnesian War. And one of the arguments I think it's Paracles makes at the beginning is like, well, we have all these golds at Delphi that that Sparta doesn't.”
Where to get it
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The Philosophical Baby
Critiqued“And one of the things that this book, I wrote, which is actually a book I didn't like, but it had some interesting things called The Philosophical Baby. And children are babies. They don't have what's called disinhibition.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“But like, all I could think about was the description that you wrote in, is it? It's the 48 laws you tell the story, right? Or is it? I might be strangers of war.”
“It's the 48 laws you tell the story, right? Or is it? I might be strangers of war. But you so beautifully wrote about it. And I remember reading it at, you know, 19 or 20 years old, and not knowing that history could be written that way.”