Talks on a park bench: Stoicism, friendship, and philosophy for young people looking something more

What if philosophy weren't something you study, but something you discover simply by living? Marc, Nora, Diego, and Vera have a park bench, four complicated lives, and the habit of sitting there almost every afternoon. They don't talk about Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius to show off how cultured they are. They talk about them because, without realizing it, an exam, a breakup, a loss, or a phone they can't put down keep leading them straight back to the questions humanity has been asking for centuries. What you'll find in this book: - A multi-voice narrative - four friends, four different ways of facing life - that hooks you like a story, not a manual.- Real Stoicism, not the gym-motivational-quote kind: with its history, its contradictions, and its limits.- More than twenty philosophers, from Epictetus and Hypatia to Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt, joining the conversation exactly when they're needed.- The concept of diligence versus toxic productivity, as a thread of its own running through the whole book.- Practical exercises at the end of every chapter, designed to help sort through your own thoughts. This isn't a book that tells you who you should become. It's a book that teaches you to think more clearly when life - your own, real life - gets complicated. María Ferrer Tarazona teaches philosophy at a high school, where she tries to get her students to stop seeing the subject as a list of names and dates to memorize. Before that, she was simply a young woman with more questions than answers, who learned her first lessons in philosophy talking with friends on a park bench, and from adults who eased her fear of not knowing everything. Talks on a Park Bench is her first book.