Some people when stressed ask: What would Jesus do? or What would Luke Skywalker do?\u00a0Massimo Pigliucci \u201994 Ph.D.\u00a0asks: What would Epictetus do?<\/p>\n
Pigliucci believes the teachings of ancient Stoic philosophers like Epictetus can help us temper our response to the everyday tensions of life. In \u201cA Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control,\u201d he provides 52 weekly lessons applying the teachings to modern life.<\/p>\n
Although he credits stoicism with alleviating the daily stressors of his personal, public, and social life, Pigliucci hasn\u2019t always been a Stoic \u2014 or even a philosopher. After getting his doctorate under Carl Schlichting, head of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Department at UConn, he became an assistant professor in EEB at the University of Tennessee, where he made significant contributions to the field and even won the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize for outstanding young evolutionary biologist.<\/p>\n
Then \u201cI had a midlife crisis of sorts,\u201d he says. \u201cThe year I turned 40, I got divorced and my father died. So I started feeling that, professionally, I needed to do something else.\u201d Hence, graduate school for philosophy \u2014 which he considers one of the best decisions of his life.<\/p>\n