Willpower will define whether your ideas become real or die in your mind.
How to Have Willpower is a book about what makes the difference between ideas that die in our heads and the few that become life. In this episode, Vashik Armenikus speaks to Michael Fontaine, classicist at Cornell University and translator of How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In.
Together we ask a practical question: what did the Greeks and Romans actually do to resist temptation, and can those moves still work today?
Fontaine pairs Plutarch’s direct advice on social pressure with Prudentius’s vivid poem Psychomachia where virtues fight vices. The result is a field manual for self-command that you can test in daily life.
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In this conversation you’ll hear:
🧠 Why many ancients treated vice as voluntary self-harm, and how that view clashes with today’s medicalized habits.
⚔️ The unforgettable set pieces of Psychomachia: Faith vs. Worship of the Old Gods, Patience vs. Anger, Temperance vs. Indulgence, Humility vs. Pride, Chastity vs. Lust.
✋ Plutarch’s practical scripts for saying no: set the glass down after the toast, agree when someone calls you a “chicken,” practice refusing small asks so you can refuse big ones later.
🧘 Stoic perspective shifts from Marcus Aurelius, Dante-like imagery for moral clarity, and a starter reading list Fontaine recommends.
Website: artidote.uk/episode/mike-fontaine
