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Bounce! Conversations with Larry Weeks

Interviews w/ authors, entrepreneurs, athletes and others on resilience, getting on or getting over life’s set ups and setbacks.

On the podcast Larry has in-depth conversations with notable people from a variety of fields and occupations; professors, entrepreneurs, athletes, physicians, etc, to get their stories or research on how to deal with or prepare for life’s challenges, stumbles, and stings. If research exists on how people bounce back, he talks about it. If there are physical practices, proven psychologies or philosophies that can help people build personal foundations before the storms come, he digs into it.

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  2. Medicine for the Mind: Donald Robertson on Ancient Therapies for Modern Stressors

Medicine for the Mind: Donald Robertson on Ancient Therapies for Modern Stressors

May 20, 2025

There’s something strangely reassuring about knowing people were wrestling with the similar issues we struggle with over 2,000 years ago — even if they wore togas and wrote with a chisel.
 
Donald Robertson is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, acclaimed author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, and one of the world’s leading voices on Stoicism. He’s also the founder of the Plato’s Academy Centre in Athens, and a founding member of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit.
 
On this pod, we talk about the wisdom literature and how it can help with emotional distress; specifically, the idea of Stoics as ancient psychotherapists. Donald explains how Stoicism wasn’t just a philosophy of life, but also a clear system of psychotherapy in ancient Greek and Roman thought.
 
Some episode highlights:
  • How shifting definitions shape our understanding of mental illness
  • On the paradox of growth through adversity
  • Struggle and transformation
  • Experiential wisdom
  • Fortune and the bitch goddess of success
  • Stoicism as an ancient psychotherapy
  • The philosophical roots of cognitive therapy
  • On anger, and the art of self-mastery (Seneca, Galen)
  • On Worry and rumination
  • Marcus Aurelius 
  • Stoicism’s broader vision
  • On the “view from above” and the liberation of perspective
  • How time expansion mitigates worry
  • The complex relationship of thoughts and emotions
  • The core proposition of both Stoicism and CBT
  • How complaining signals resistance to reality
  • Acceptance and the dichotomy of control
  • How to reconnect with what’s essential in a noisy world
 
This isn’t motivational fluff; it’s a toolkit for anyone who’s ever gotten tangled in their own head.