# Day 136: Memento Mori for Normal People | Dying Every Day Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387/day-136-memento-mori-for-normal-people-dying-every-day Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387/day-136-memento-mori-for-normal-people-dying-every-day.md Podcast: [Dying Every Day (Stoicism in a Year)](https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387) Published: 2026-01-22T21:48:11+00:00 Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e0f06dc3 Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/e0f06dc3/de76f215.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387/episodes/day-136-memento-mori-for-normal-people-dying-every-day Duration seconds: 447 ## Resource 📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Day 136. You don’t need a skull on your desk or a Latin motto in your bio to practice memento mori . Montaigne, a sixteenth-century philosopher influenced by the Stoics, treats mortality as a human issue rather than a rare or dramatic event. He removes death from the category of “special occasions” and places it where it truly belongs: within everyday life. Montaigne famously relies on the old saying that “to philosophize is to learn to die.” But his goal isn’t to make you morbid—it’s to make you less influenced by fear. He argues (again and again) that much of what we call “living” is really just avoidance: constant busyness, constant delay, constant mental bargaining. We postpone the hard conversation. We postpone the creative work. We postpone courage. We postpone rest. We even postpone joy. Remembering death is a way of interrupting the postponement. [...] --- 🖇️ Stay Connected: Newsletter: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perennialmeditations/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PerennialMeditations --- 🦉 Additional Resources: Perennial Meditations archive: https://perennial.substack.com/archive Listen to more podcasts: https://www.perennialleader.com/podcasts ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387/episodes/day-136-memento-mori-for-normal-people-dying-every-day/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-every-day-stoicism-in-a-year-7153387/day-136-memento-mori-for-normal-people-dying-every-day.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.