The Daily Stoic - Steven Pressfield on Battling Resistance and Winning With Love

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

Ryan speaks to his friend and fellow author Steven Pressfield about battling resistance and becoming who you were meant to be, the triumph of good over evil and ultimately love, his new novel A Man At Arms, and more. Steven Pressfield is the author of several critically acclaimed books including Gates of Fire, an epic novel about the battle of Thermopylae, and The War of Art, a guide to unlocking the creative potential inside yourself. This episode is brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. Get your FREE Sample Pack now. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. This episode is also brought to you by Ladder, a painless way to get the life insurance coverage you need for those you care about most. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.This episode is also brought to you by Scribd, the e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. We’re offering listeners of The Daily Stoic a free 60 day trial. Go to try.scribd.com/stoic for your free trial. That’s try.scribd.com/stoic to get 60 days of Scribd for free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Steven Pressfield:Homepage: https://stevenpressfield.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/spressfield Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steven_pressfield/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StevePressfield YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/StevePressfield See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare

for what the future will bring. I wanted to talk. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

I've had this person on the show before, and I'm having them again, because not only are they one of my favorite people of all time, but I think they are one of the best living writers of our time. And certainly have influenced me more than just about any other writer that I've ever read. I'm talking about Stephen Pressfield. I have his book, The War of Art, right here.

This is my very well-worn, well-thumbed through copy. I don't think any of my books would be possible without this book. I reread Stephen's book, Gates of Fire, at the beginning of the pandemic. I loved it as much the second time, as I did the first time when I read it almost 15 years ago. I remember it being delivered to my college dorm room.

I feel so humbled and flattered and inspired by the fact that I get to know Stephen, that I get to send him early drafts of my books. He's just been a wonderful mentor and inspiration to me. And so I was very excited to get his new book, A Man at Arms. I think his best book since Gates of Fire, it's just an incredible story about a man, not

at arms, although it is a man at arms, but a man who lives by a code. And it's a really inspiring, fascinating historical novel as all Stephen's books are. We have a great conversation today about stoicism, about battling the resistance, about becoming who you're meant to become. And about the triumph of good over evil, which I think is the real core theme of Stephen's books. I would actually say it's not that the triumph of good over evil, it's the triumph of love over all things. And I might seem like a strange description of a guy who writes books about Napoleon and Alexander the Great and King Leonidas of the 300 Spartans but at the core of it I think

Stephen's books are really about love and the power that love has to help us do incredible things. I'm so excited for you to listen to this interview with Stephen Pressfield. His new book, A Man at Arms is out now. Please read it. Read Gates of Fire, Read War of Art, and of course, check out his writing Wednesday pieces, following on social media, just a great dude. You're Steven Pressfield, A Man It Arms, and some Stoicism.

So we'll talk about the book, which I absolutely loved, but I was curious how many books is this for you now? I think it's 20. It's 20. Wow. So what what keeps you going? I mean, obviously at some point one could stop or rest, but you seem to be always in the middle of a project. What what keeps you going? It's probably the same as you. You know, I mean, I feel if I stop, I'm going to be in the grave, you know, plus I keep having ideas. You know, I keep

having things I want to do. So what keeps you going? Well, that sort of was going to be my next question. Could you stop if you wanted to? No, I couldn't. I really couldn't. You know what, you may have heard this before, but a friend of mine has a analogy. Apparently rats, rats.

Their teeth like grove back up into their brain if they don't keep knowing on something that to wear down the teeth at the front of teeth grow back in their brain and kill them. So they got to just keep knowing. So I'm like a rat that just has to keep knowing. But is it because it's funny you have this concept of the resistance, which goes through your work and is a very real force and I think about on a regular basis. But I almost feel like for some writers, for some of us, there's also whatever the opposite of the resistance is,

which is some sort of compulsion, almost addiction that you couldn't stop if you wanted to. There's a lot of truth to that. In fact, right now, as you know, I'm really in the throes of promoting the man at arms, right? So I'm doing podcasts, I'm doing all kinds of stuff like that. And I'm dying to get back to writing, you know? Yeah. The opposite of resistance.

I just sort of want to get back to my home turf and do something. No, I know that feeling very well. I, uh, I'm not talking about it, but you, you were nice enough to read the new manuscript for me. And so I fit, it's done, right? You know, you sort of get to that place where the book is done, then it's sort of, it goes through the, the editorial process. So you might see it a few more times, but the vast majority of the creative lifting is done. And I don't wanna say it's a grieving, but there's an emptiness that happens. Like I read this book in October,

your book in October, and here we are in March and it's coming out. You've been sort of done with it, and then probably thinking about your next thing. But there's like a hole in you that's not being filled when you're not writing. I mean, I'm definitely, I know you know this right, I'm from the school of that there should never be a gap between books, you know, that you should already be eight chapters into your next book when you finish the other one. And that's for that reason, because I think it is a grieving and it's like not going to the gym, right?

If you knock off for, you know, a few days or a month, it's really hard when you go back, you know? so Yeah, every time I've stopped and kind of fallen into that dip like Seth Godin says, that's not good You know, it's weird about that period too. So it's like when you're writing a book, obviously it takes so much time and so much energy. And I noticed this because I'm sort of in the research thinking about phase of the next book. So I haven't really started yet. But I noticed that I'm still spending the same amount

of time at the office, even though I'm not writing. You know what I mean? So it's like, there's that idea of Parkinson's law, which is that the task expands to fit however much time you take. But so there's this weird thing where when you're working on a book or a really big project or maybe you're training for a fighter, you know, whatever the thing the person is doing is where it forces you to focus and concentrate in such a way that you get so much more done, then you lift that, you would think that suddenly you have all this free time.

And in fact, actually, it's the opposite. You have the exact same amount of time. You're just not creatively fulfilled and you feel like suddenly a collapse of meaning. It's this weird experience. Yes, very. Which is why I always want to try and have something there that's the equivalent of meaning. It's this weird experience, which is why I always want to try and have something there that's the equivalent of that. Because it feeds you, you know? And to not do it,

sort of whatever the opposite of being is, it's kind of a dream, you know? If you're a creative type of person, is there some, the stokes would say we should always question anything that's sort of not driving us, but anything that we're not sort of in charge of. And so sometimes I may be a little suspicious of that. Obviously, it's a much more healthier of an addiction than heroin or sex or something. But there is a part of me that goes, it can't be good that I can't stop.

Well, you know, I suppose there's, maybe there's a dark side and a light side of this, you know, there probably isn't unhealthy thing when you're addicted to something like that, but the other thing is like to me, I just was thinking of this in these terms, just the other day, as a writer, you feel like you've got, I can underground river flowing, right? You're on the surface and maybe you can't see it, but you can hear that gurgling underwater.

And that's that kind of underground. And that's that creative flow. And if you don't somehow tap into that or allow it to come to the surface, bad things start to happen. So I think it's probably a dark side and a deep side to this, you know? Yeah, it's like the Langston Hughes thing. What happens to a raisin in the sun? What would happen if you don't, if you don't let it out? It goes somewhere bad. Yeah, yeah, it does, I don't know. I know I've told you this thing about,

right up the hill from me, right above me, Tom Loughlin used to live there. Did I tell you this story about him? No, Tom Loughlin, a Billy Jack. Do you remember him? Oh, there was a movie called Billy Jack, like probably before you were born, but it was a huge hit.

It was one of those kung-fu, so for literally anyway, Tom Lofflin became a kind of a Jungian therapist. And what he used to do was if people had cancer or some kind of, you know, tumor or something like that, he would sit with them and he would say, is there something, some creative thing that you had that you stopped doing? And a lot of times people would say, well, when I was young, I wanted to be a concert pianist. And his therapy was, okay, go back to the piano.

And sure enough, people's cancers went into remission. So his theory obviously was that that energy's got to go somewhere. And if it's not going into a positive way, it's going into something negative in your own body. So that's a very L.A. story. You can cure a cancer by following your dreams. But I do love the general concept of by following your dreams. But I do love the general concept of, Robert Green talks about, you know, what's your life's task? And usually we sort of hit upon that when we're young,

we have some sense of it, but then we deny it or we come up with reasons why we can't pursue it. You call the resistance. And there's undoubtedly gonna be consequences for that in all sorts of ways in your life. Yeah, I mean, I think to get, I didn't want to get political, but I'm going to get political. I think a lot of the stuff that you have with the proud boys and these other guys that are acting out with guns, if we could speak to them individually and get to know them individually, I would bet a million bucks that each one of them is frustrated in some way by that underground river not being tapped. And so that energy flows out into aiding other people and acting out

in some kind of negative way. I think that's absolutely right. I've got to imagine, you know, if the, although some of them certainly do, so it's not a complete solution, but, you know, if you have a wife or a husband and you have kids and you've got a job at the local power plant, you know, you don't have time for any of this nonsense. You don't have time to go play revolutionary at the Capitol. You've got stuff going on. And so I do think there's, right, there's an element where they call it um, cognitive surplus. What do you do with the cognitive resources that you're not spending? And I've never heard that before. I read a great book a few years ago where I think it was by Clay Shurkey And Clay Shurkey was saying that, you know, Wikipedia is a positive use

of the cognitive surplus. We have a little bit of extra time and we collectively come together and we make Wikipedia, which, as you know, as a researcher, solves so many writing problems for you. You're like, you're like, what was that? And you can figure it out.

But yeah, QAnon would be the example of the negative results of a cognitive surplus. People have created a preposterous fantasy world based on lies and hatred and delusion. Where do you spend that energy? I got to imagine a good chunk of the population is because of the resistance abandoned some purposeful or meaningful thing they could be dedicating their life to and it feels good to be politically active, they're just being politically active in a destructive way. Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that before, but I think that like, you and I, and all

of the theory that created this conspiracy theory is all stuff, that's really a shadow creative expression. You know, that's like a novel. It says involve as a novel, and it's as creative as a novel. It's wildly creative. It's just going into, you know, a darker channel. Yeah, I read an interview with a guy who was like one of those massive role-playing game creators,

like he creates those like World of Warcraft games. And he was like, that's what this is. This is an end, because you know what I mean? That there's always an answer, there's always an explanation, there's always an explanation. Right, right. And just keeps you going.

And yeah, these people have been sort of trapped in a shadow world. And I think a lot of their anger and despair is being weaponized against them by people who are trying to... Exactly, that's the real dark side of it. That there's in a way this sort of fantasy and dark side thing is harmless. And it's just allowed to be just something existing in your mind. but when it becomes weaponized and turned into some kind of political, then it gets really dangerous. And I don't think you want to, you don't want to overstate it, but in a sense, this is what Hitler does as well. Exactly. I was going to say the exact same thing. You know, protocols of the elders of Zion,

all this stuff was the exact same thing. Yeah, and that in the despair and the brokenness of post-war Germany, he creates a completely preposterous storyline and myth with no basis in reality that everyone sort of play acts their way through. Yeah. Yeah. And then you could argue, and he's a character in my next book, you could argue, this is also what great leaders to, right? So the goal does the same thing.

Yeah, truly. The fantasy world that the Gaul creates about sort of France as a world power. Yeah. France as an idea and as a, you know, symbol of resistance is, you know is not as no basis whatsoever in the facts at the time, but he wills it into existence. There's that expression, a leader is a dealer in hope. And I think that's what DeGal does. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

And you did it so well. You know, it really worked. Yeah. I mean, paracles in ancient Athens was the same thing where his whole thing was, you must fall in love with Athens. He made the city this some kind of ideal that this engine that could create anything and that could bring people's aspirations to reality. And he sold it and people bought it and it worked. Well, that's what's so tricky about patriotism

or nationalism. You know, these actually aren't necessarily evil things. I mean, a few people think patriotism is inherently evil, but if you say nationalism, people, especially today, you have an immediate negative reaction, but nationalism could of course be a positive thing. You know, there's a lot of nationalism that motivates, you know, the US engagement in the second world or. And there certainly can be positive. Yeah, you could argue the nationalism of Athens and the

in the Peloponnesian war. It can be positive. It's just you're playing with fire. It can be positive. It's just you're playing with fire. Yeah. I mean, think about even like sports teams, like the Oakland Raiders, let's say, I guess it now, the Las Vegas Raiders, the black hole, right? Yeah. Now, people dress up into, I mean, it's true for all sports teams, right? And their whole identity becomes, you know, consumed, but that's at least a positive, harmless thing that's contained within the world of sports or the games over, you shake hands with the other team and you go on, you know.

Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs

working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. I remember a few years ago as with my wife and we were in London, and we were just walked

up from the Tower of London, we were near the London bridge and I could just hear this I could hear this stomping, you know, this loud noise. I couldn't figure out what it was I mean, it's getting louder and I'm hearing yelling and very confused and I look up and one of those, you know, those red double-decker bus those by and It's filled with raider fans Doing the raider's chant because the raiders were playing and you know, they had a lot of them. And it's like, man, you just can't get away from these.

That's a scene out of a novel, man. That's really good. It's great. But you do, you're right, those, those things are, those are, that's a real powerful force. I told this story one time, there's the general Belisarius in sort of Byzantine Rome, there's a chariot match that ends in a sort of a bad outcome that leads to the overthrow of the Roman government. If the Bucks win the Super Bowl this year and people are angry

about it, and it somehow leads to the Biden administration abdicating. Like that. That's how integral. Yeah, really. You know, politics and sports are because I do think they play on the same sort of tribal infertile. Yeah. Yeah. And we're like Rome, America's like Rome, and that we're Cray sports fans. I mean, the gladiatorial games, it's not that far away from what we're doing now, you know, and blood and circuses. Yeah. All right, so, so how do you think about the resistance in your career today? Like what what obviously you've done 20 books now, now so and you have the compulsion,

you can't not do it. But where do you get hung up on a on a project? Um well I can tell you one I'm getting hung up on right now. It's uh I have this idea for for a book that I've started to work on and um the voice in my head is saying, this is a dumbest idea you've ever had. You've worked all these years to create a certain reputation. When this book comes up, you're going to trash your reputation forever. Everybody's going to see it. You're an imposter, you're a loser. You know, nobody's going to care about these stories that you want to take. So I'm really fighting that. And what I sort of tell myself reading my own book, The War of Art, is that when you feel massive resistance, it's a good time because it shows that the dream that you have, the work, the book is meaningful to you.

If you had very small resistance, it would show that the dream was not meaningful to you. If you had very small resistance, it would show that the dream was not meaningful to you. So in other words, I'm still fighting it exactly like I always did. Well, because I remember reading in the War of Art, you say something like, you originally thought you weren't qualified to write that book. You were going to do it as historical fiction. So is there a confidence that you develop that goes like, I thought it was crazy when I did this one and it turned out not to be crazy. And so now I don't have to be that afraid of that feeling now.

That's a great question, but it does somehow it doesn't work that way. Even I tell myself that I'm still so overwhelmed with doubt that I think, oh, this is not resistance, this is real doubt. This is me really telling the truth. But to go beyond that, what has sort of helped me in this particular case that I'm dealing with right now is my dreams. I've had like two big dreams that sort of, you know, that woke me up and I had to write them down

and whole thing that the sort of the bottom line of the dreams was it was my unconscious telling me, keep going, have faith. This is okay. You're doing the right whole thing that the sort of the bottom line of the dreams was, it was my unconscious tell me, keep going, have faith, this is okay, you're doing the right thing. Right, I've talked about this a bunch of times, but I was, I just finished the, the Taylor Branch series, I'm Martin Luther King, and there was this moment in the third book, where King is deciding whether he's going to speak out about Vietnam or not, which ostensibly has very little to do with civil rights. And he's just made all this progress.

You know, he's just got white people and political establishment on his side. And now he's going to do what was much more controversial then, which was to question, you know, the United States at wartime. And what ultimately sort of pushes him over the edges, he remembers, he's like, when we were gonna march on Selma, they said, it's a bad idea, don't do it. Really?

He noticed that at every critical juncture in his life, the reasonable influences told him, just wait, don't do it. You know what, but it's tricky because sometimes maybe it's one out of 10 times or it's nine out of 10 times. It really is a bad idea. And your friends are trying to say they're like, Steve, don't do an interpretive dance version. You know, please don't write poetry. That's not what we want from you. So how do you know how to filter through what's the resistance and what is actually something

you shouldn't do? I have a little rule of thumb here that is, I say, winning doubt its resistance. In other words, none of the times that attend, you know, it is. not many times that attend, you know, it is. And I find even sometimes when I take on projects that are losers and I look back and I said, gee, I really shouldn't have wasted it those two years, if you look back on it, I'm sure you've had the same experience. So I like, you say, it was all to the good. You know, I learned something, it helped me move along the road

a little bit, even if I didn't make any money. Well, I'm just finishing this other project I haven't told you about, which I'll show you soon. And actually, by the time people listen to this, it will be out. So, I just did this sort of children's, or I guess, I just did this fable about Marcus Aurelius as a young boy. Really, really? That Sean Coin was hugely helpful on. I had this great. Yeah, I got this offer for my publisher about it, and I was thinking about doing it, and then, but I was thinking, I wanted to do it my way,

and he told me I should just do it myself, not think about money, just do it right. And it was great advice. He even connected me to my illustrator, who you're also working with, Vic. All right, yeah, Vic, you lost, yes. So it was this, it was a great project, but anyways, as I was sort of kicking it around,

I called Neil Strauss and I said, you know, like, here's my dilemma. I want to do it this way. My publisher wants to do it this way. I don't know if I'm being negatistical and wanting to insist on it doing my way or if, you know, or they really are, or I'm really right and I should listen to that voice. And he said that you're

even asking the question means you're probably not doing it out of ego, right? And so I think what I've noticed to go to your point is that like, you're saying when it's when you're in doubt its resistance that you're having the doubt is a good sign. Usually I find when I'm doing something out of ego and I'm not listening, I'm so certain I'm not even questioning whether it's not you know, like that's the problem with ego is that it doesn't even entertain the doubt. It just knows. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. Well, I'm there. I'm going to, I'll send you the kids book. It's called The Boy Who Would Be King. And I'm very, I'm very happy. I think it's a great idea. It's a crazy idea. I give them credit

for coming up with it, you know, and I can see how you would think, wow, am I doing the right thing with this? But yeah, it sounds like a great idea. I bet it would, it'll go great. I think, I think so, but you're right. Anytime you do something outside your comfort zone, there's this sense of, am I about to commit career suicide? Exactly. Well, okay, so I want to talk about the new book, which I loved. It's filled with notes. I think what struck me most about this book, and I guess a lot of the characters in your books are like it. It just maybe it strikes me because it's something

we're so missing today. But a man at arms is really a book about a guy who lives by a code, right? Is a guy who lives by a code. It's somewhat of an incomprehensible code and an ancient code. And yet, it's very clear that it's guiding him through the darkness of the experience that he goes through.

I'm just curious what is, what does it mean to live by a code? Why is that so important to you? Well, I think that actually the key thing about the character Telemann, who's a lead character, he's kind of a one-man killing machine, like a Clint Eastwood type of gunslinger, the ancient world, is that he changes his code. The whole book is about him evolving beyond this code. He starts with this code that's like a semi-code.

If you think about any of those samurai movies that are the, it's usually an isolated warrior that's had some terrible experience and that becomes kind of a law unto himself, right? And he's always ready to move, to go to violence as the first, you know, first alone wolf, right? And so telemon's code, I really sort of pattern this, I don't want to ramble on too much. I really started pattern this after Western, it's after American Westerns. And his code is, he sort of comes to the end of it.

It's a totally self-protective man, a law onto himself type of code. And what breaks him out of it, as you know, from a book, I won't give away too much, is a form of love, you know, of reaching out towards another character that kind of pulls him out of that code and makes him say, well, what's beyond this? Right. So, but I think, characters that have codes are always great characters.

You know, a detective, you know, the man who walks down these means streets, but he is not, you know, not mean. You know, those are always great characters. Yeah, because that gives you so much room creatively, because do they uphold the code, do they violate the code, or they tempted away from the code? There's a logic to the character.

Right. Plus you also, as at least I, when I watched those, I stayed myself. Should I adopt that code myself? Yeah. Is that a cool code? You know, the way Clint Eastward said, and that kind of thing.

Yeah, it strikes me that, because I think this is, this is my second favorite book from you. This is my second favorite fiction book from you. I think this is this is my second favorite book from you. This is my second favorite fiction book from you. I think this is right up next to Gates of Fire and in how riveting it is. It's funny though to me that both books which are ostensibly about warriors are really books at at the at the level underneath their books about love. Yes a love story, but about the power of love. They definitely are.

I mean, I mean, they're to link them with soicism. And of course, everything I know about Stoicism I've learned from you from the daily still, I get a lot of those jokes. But they are these characters, and I'm saying it's of any Western character, death is a huge, it's sort of the unspoken presence constantly through their threatened bite or whatever,

and they have to come to terms with it by in their codes somehow. Like for the Spartans that they're not believe it's a fire, they were willing to give their lives for a cause greater than themselves, right? And that was part of the whole Spartan ethic. And in my character of telemon in Amanda Arms, he is like sort of like a stoic in a sense that he's always at the brink of death in his mind. He's always ready to face that.

And he's not really afraid of it. In a way, he's almost, you know, seeing it as a mystical experience of some kind. So that, when you have death, you're going to have love somehow. That's going to be an answer to it. Well, you'd think that the Stoics, and this is the stereotype of them, is sort of unfeeling, disconnected, detached, but there's this line from Marcus Aurelis that I've thought quite a bit about over the last year. I think it's been the thing I've been sort of meditating

on most as far as Stosis and we go, he says that he learns from sexist, the philosopher who as a history nerd, you will love sexist, the philosopher is Plutarch's grandson and he is Marcus Aurelis's philosophy teacher. Yes. Isn't it weird how small the philosopher is Plutarch's grandson. And he's Marcus Aurelius's philosophy teacher. Yes. Isn't it weird how small the, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he says he learns from sexist

to be free of passion, but full of love. And that's great. What did he mean by that? Tell me, I know you were thinking about this. What does he mean by that? To me, that's actually kind of the end state of Telemann in the book, which is that he's, the anger has gone away. The lust for power or control or violence has gone away. And what's left is the love for another person in gates of fire.

It's the anger, the ambition, the drive, the jockeying for power amongst all the different sparks. By the end, all that's left is the love, the camaraderie, the connection. So the Stokes have this, and I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, but the Stokes have this concept of meglos, uh, meglop sculpture or meglos sculpture. And it basically, it's like a greatness of soul. So it's sort of like beyond courage, beyond ambition, beyond power and skill and mastery,

is this sort of selflessness, this transcendence of one's kind of earthly constraints into that higher plane, and that's where your character gets at the end of the book. I think that's exactly right. We were just talking about the word agape, right? This actually, Sean Coyne, who we were talking about, is my editor. He really edited this book and that was the word that he used. And it's really sort of not to get too mystical here, but you know, let's go talk about it, right? Let's do it. It's really the the the the limited element you were talking about is really an ego standard thing. The gunslinger, the god the man of violence, the ambitionlinger, the god, the man of violence, the ambition, or whatever, even nationalist, even patriotism, is really an ego thing where you see you identify with whatever side it is.

And there's an enemy that you're going to kill at any moment, right? But beyond that, and this gets into Christianity, into Hinduism, and that sort of thing, beyond that, is the idea that we are all one, the idea of karma, and the idea that, and that sort of thing, beyond that is the idea that we are all one, the idea of karma, and the idea that, and that becomes that sort of all-engracing love, or it isn't even just love for one specific person, your wife and kids, whatever it is, it's a love that goes beyond that to embrace,

you know, everything in the universe, you know? The environment, the future generations, whatever. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, there's a quote from Seneca. He says, we should cherish the body with the greatest care. We should also be prepared.

He says, when reason, self-respect, and duty demand the sacrifice to deliver it even to the flames. And to me, that's obviously sort of heroism in the highest form when one lays down oneself for someone or something else. And obviously that's extraordinarily rare because it violates every evolutionary impact. But I think it can almost be a little intimidating for people because they go, well, nobody's throwing any grenades near me. So there's not a grenade for me to throw

myself on top of to save other people. And so I think we also need to kind of, like I was thinking about that even in the pandemic, it's just like like I've had this business I've been trying to open, which you know about and not quite talking yet about, but you know, every day that I don't open, it hurts me financially, but it's also not the right thing to do. And you know what I mean? And so there's this, can you, to me, can you just put something or someone above yourself at a cost to yourself? That's, that's, that's what love is, even if you, it's not acknowledged, even if it's not understood, even if you're not appreciated. I mean, if you think about what a story is, you know, And what sort of principles guide a story?

There's always a hero in a story, and there's always a villain in a story. And what's the difference between a hero and a villain? And the difference usually is that the hero is capable of sacrificing himself or herself or their happiness or whatever for something else or another character. Where is the villain is not? The villain is hanging on to his thing. So the fact that we need stories and with hunger for stories tells me that that must be the quality of our soul of all of us, the universal quality of soul of wanting to sort of prepare ourselves for that moment when we may be called upon to do that.

But even just evolving in our lives to get out of the ego, which is natural enough in the younger part of the years you wanna start a family, you wanna have a business, you wanna establish your identity, I'm this and I'm not that. But at some point,

it does need to kind of evolve beyond that. And to something that is for something greater. Yeah, and there's almost a bafflement of the authorities and the almost every person that Telemann meets in the book is baffled that he is protecting these people, that he's doing, like, it's like, what is in this for you? We don't understand why are you doing this, you know? And I don't think he even knows, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, no, but it's shocking how rare it is. I mean, to go back to what we were talking about with, with, you know, the events of January 6th, you had some police officers guarding the capital who said, I'm not gonna stop this. I'm gonna open the gates. I don't wanna put myself in danger.

And then you have, you know, the day we're recording this, you have, you know, Brian Siknik, who gave his life to preserve not just the capital in the strictest sense, but gave the ultimate sacrifice to protect, you know, the very idea that this thing was worth protecting. I mean, yeah. And it's not quite, you know, the sparsons at Thermopoly,

but here was a person who, his individual sacrifice, in one sense, made no difference. It stopped nothing in no difference. It stopped nothing and nowhere. And yet he said, I'm not going, there's this famous soldier Knitz in line where he says, let evil come into the world, but not through me. Right? And I think the Spartans,

the Spartans who died at Thurmapli had no idea that the fleet would be victorious at Salamis, right? They had no idea that a week shouldn't have been enough time. Like frankly, they may have gone well aware under the impression that they had failed. They were supposed to hold out for much, much longer, and they're obviously betrayed. They probably could have held out for several weeks. Instead, they only managed to hold out for a week.

They didn't know it was enough, but they said, even if this is futile and hopeless, we're not going to be a party to it happening. Yeah. And do you feel me, I should, do you feel in your life? Because I know reading your blog posts and reading all this stuff, that you and some level are training yourself and preparing yourself mentally and emotionally, or a moment that may come when the shit really hits the fan and you maybe call upon like Senegal or like any of the of the of the stories that you admire. That's a good question. I mean, it's a little bit, it's almost sort of delusions, like delusions

of grandeur to say that you are, you know, but it could be a very small moment. It could be a moment when you're driving and you're picking up into town and something happens, you know? I think that's right. I think if one goes through their life thinking, I am training myself for a moment. I don't know if it'll be a big moment or a small moment, but how could I possibly expect to do the right difficult or, you know, selfless

thing if I've not trained for it? So yeah, I do think that. I mean, I think that's a natural, normal thing. And I think in a lot of families, particularly families where military families were like the father and the grandfather and it's a whole tradition have all served. The son, as he's growing up, kind of imbibes that, that there's going to be a moment. Probably you're going to join the military and you're going to be, you know, and, and they're sort of rehearsing, well, my dad did it. He flew B-17s, you know, my grandfather was in the Spanish-American, whatever. I think there's a lot, a lot, like you saying, like the capital police.

Think about what it must have been like. First of all, the overwhelming force of people here, one guy, and there's like 500 people out there, you're not really trained for this. It's not like a scenario that you've run in your mind, all of a sudden, holy shit, there it is, you know? Sorry if I'm using propaneity here. And so God blessed anybody that stood there ground or even those that yielded a little trying to sort of hold people back, you know,

slow it down a little bit, you know, because it was something I'm sure they had not prepared for mentally at all. No, I'm thinking of the video and I'm forgetting his name, but you also saw him at the inauguration. He was the honorary sergeant of arms. He was the one who led them up the stairs. Right. God bless him. Yeah. Yeah.

That's one of the moment. That's a moment we're talking about. Yes, exactly. Yeah, really. Like I should get the Medal of Honor for that, you know, just turning one way instead of the other. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, it's funny. You bring up this point about about tradition. And I wrote this down because it's something I wanted to talk to you about. It's a moment I underlined in the book. I'll read it in a second. But, but, you know, I don't really come from that tradition. My grandfather landed in Normandy. I think D.D. plus three or four, which was, you know,

that's sort of part of my experience, but I don't come from sort of a strong military background. So it's not something I think about, but there is, I'm trying to find this, let me find this quote, because it's so good. And it seemed like a very, very stoic idea, is something I wanted to kick around. And I'm very, very much appreciate you reading the book so, so thoughtfully, you know? There it is, I found it. I've folded the page and I marked the line.

It says, if the child indeed can identify no father of blood, it seems to me that heaven will take scant defense if she chooses now one of her own. And there's a line from Senekai love thataqa says, you know, we can't choose who our parents are, but we can choose whose children we would like to be. And your book is about this man at arms, but it's also about the two young characters who choose to follow in his tradition. Yeah, exactly. You know, and when I was writing that scene, and I was thinking about the scene in Lawrence of Arabia,

if you remember, I think it's after that they come out of the Nephoo Desert or something like that. And the Lawrence gets to choose a new name. And they're telling him, El Orons is much better than Lawrence, you know, and he says, and somebody says to him something like, you're free to choose your own name. Now, you've earned the right. And he says, okay, El Iran. So I'm El Iran. And I thought, that's great. We all are looking for that name, you know?

Yeah, we're, you know, we don't, most of us, we're not born to some great, you know, aristocratic family or some long tradition of warriors or public servants or something. You know, we're not the Kennedys. And in a way, Ryan, you have chosen the Stoics as your fathers and landfathers. You picked them. That's your family. Well, that's what I was going to say. We have the ability to choose whose footsteps we want to follow in.

And I think your books are a great example. Your books are almost like a fiction. A lot like you can pick Alcy Abides or this, you know, Leonidas. So you can pick Alexander the greater. You can pick Telemann. You sort of putting meat around the bones of one of these traditions. So we can really understand who these people are. You know, I've never even thought about that until you just said it, but I think it's probably true.

I have probably, like you've chosen the stories, I've chosen these certain characters, book by book, not even knowing it, not even consciously doing it. But I sort of, I wanted to get to know them. So that was why I wanted to write about them But I think that's true. They are kind of my family Seneca says you have to choose yourself a Kado and If to choose a hero because without he says without a ruler You can't make crooked straight and so I like this idea of sort of who are your heroes? And then how are you measuring yourself against those heroes?

How are you either upholding the tradition or in monitoring yourself for falling short of the tradition? Yeah, I think it's absolutely true. I mean, you and I have a kind of a person in common general gym madness, we have mine. You know, that's a living person that you actually can know and talk to. And you know, he's a living person that you actually can know and talk to and You know, he's a hero for me and I kind of I sort of you know using him as a ruler

Not falling way short of it, but I do think of him as somebody that I'm trying to You know be do like what he does what's so inspiring and I think humanizing about that though is so You had this living person who's inspiring, living people today. But then if you asked him who inspired him, he would have a list of names. And if I'm a surrealist, is one of his, you know, number one goods. Right, or famously, you know, as Secretary of Defense, he had in his office, Sherman's desk and Grant's desk. And one of the desk that he sat out and the other was these like sort of conference table desk.

And you could imagine sitting at that table and feeling that energy coming, like I have a little statue of Marcus Aurelius on my desk, you can make little sort of totems that kind of emanate the energy and the reminder that you want to have. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. If you look at speaking of Marcus Aurelius,

if you look at the movie Gladiator, and when Russell Crowe is his tender wherever it was, he had numerous busts of, I'm sure, you know, various seizures or, you know, maybe Senna Goh, who knows what it was, but that was, you know, something that you can draw on. Well, what's funny is Marcus Aurelius, I would say almost certainly doesn't have Seneca in his, his bus because he of all the stoics, Seneca's the only one he doesn't talk about.

And we think that the interpretation is that this is a, this is a deliberate choice that Seneca is more of his antihero, the more the Seneca who doesn't deliver. And so there's another part of it too, where I think you want to have your heroes, but also your antiheroes. So like, I loved your book tides of war, but like, Alcy Abides is to me a little bit of an antihero. He's brilliant and wise and ambitious, but it always seems to be in service of himself and never anything really of any greater significance. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of truth to that. It's a tough call whether he was really about himself. I like the guy. So I think that maybe it was in the service of Athens at least partly.

But you're right. He was kind of an anti-hero. But I just think it's you have your heroes and then you also want to have your anti-heroes. You know, who are, and you talk about sort of heroes and villains, and I think you had this great piece a while ago where you're saying sort of, the villain is zero sum, and the hero is non-zero sum. And I think, you know, so like who is making the selfish choice, who is not making the selfish choice?

What would so and so do in this situation is I think a really helpful guide as you're struggling with things or you find yourself in the mold that we're talking about. And even to bring it back a little bit to love to the topic we were talking about all the before, if you think about it,

when I say a villain is there's zero sum, the season world and zero sum terms, he sees it then, if's going to gain three pounds, he's got to take the three pounds away from you. He sees that it's a world of limited resources, a pie. If I'm going to take the pie, I'm taking it from you. Whereas love is limitless. And when we're in that dimension of love,

the more love there is, or the more love dimension of love the more love there is or the more love we give the more love there is so that's why I think somebody like a fd are is a is a non zero sum leader you know that felt that the more that he could help people the more those people could help other people in the more the snowball roll in a good direction. Yeah, you could kind of, I was thinking about this recently, I'll probably write about it somewhere. At the core of Hitler is the, Hitler is the apotheosis of zero sum. For Germany to rise again, it must come at the expense of the rest of Europe, right? Yes, to take from all of these places. And so obviously that's a bad strategy, the famous joke of like maybe we're the bad guys, which I love, you know, eventually that's a narrative that doesn't work in

Germany unites the world against it basically and falls. But then you have this moment where the United States is now in unparalleled in the history of the world. The United States, for this brief moment, has not only defeated Germany and Japan, but is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons. So we're indisputably the most powerful empire that the world has ever or will ever known, will ever know. In that moment, the United States could have destroyed every single other enemy that ever existed and made itself uniformly the dominant nation for all time, right?

And yet it doesn't. In this moment of supreme triumph, you have Rome in your book as sort of Rome is really the main villain. I'm going to go ahead and ask. You know, the merciless Hegemon that is crushing everything that gets in its way, even a small girl. But Churchill famously says of the Marshall plan that it's the most unsorted act in the history of the world. So not only does the United States not dominate the way that it could at this moment of triumph, but it uses its might out of love to rescue

all these impoverished nations and war-torn allies from the abyss essentially. To me, that's not just the opposite of zero. That is what a story or something driven by love is fundamentally capable of doing. Yeah, that's an amazing moment. I hadn't even thought about that, but the Marshall Plan really was a high water mark probably of American civilization really. I'm sure that there were self-interested motives. I'm sure that people, though, well, if we rebuild Germany and Japan, that, that, that, that, that.

But nonetheless, it was an amazing thing that that gesture, and it certainly worked. And I, but of course, there were voices, I'm sure, within the American government, it said, let's drop a big one, and see what happens, you know? Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show.

Stay tuned. No, I think in a thousand years, some of these moments will be on par with Leonidas, or the idea of this federation of countries coming up and deciding to stand against a million invading troops is an incredible moment. And as you said, a lot of moment, a lot of the other Greek nations sided with the Persians. I mean, the number one advisor

to Zerxes is a Spartan defector. So for every hero, there's also a coward or a traitor who's willing to go the other way. Yeah. a coward or a traitor who's willing to go the other way. Yeah. I'm tempted to last, but get into politics, but I'm not going to do it. Let's not do it. Well, let's keep going about this moment because I do think it's also, it is a little incredible. There's a few moments like that.

And for Eisenhower and with Marshall, but I, there's also, when, when Eisenhower is thinking of running for president, the isolationist wing of the Republican Party is attempting to undermine all these institutions that have come out of the war. And there's another great moment. Eisenhower goes, is it Senator Taft? And he says, if you agree to preserve NATO and these institutions, I'll let you be president. Eisenhower offers to not run,

if this guy just concedes to these things. Wow, a very Washingtonian move there, yeah. Yeah, and he can't do it. And that's why Eisenhower ends up running for president. Wow, I didn't know that. Huh, see, this is where you're such a great reading. You read all these things. But I think, you know, you asked me, what am I doing? I think part of what I'm doing is I read, when I read, I don't really take up the dates or the names or, you know, the specifics. I'm,

I'm just fascinated in moments like that. And I squirrel them away in my mind, hopefully, to do something like that, my own life. Can I tell you what Eisenhower moment here that has nothing to do with anything we're talking about? Okay. When in 1967 Israel, when Israel was on the brink of war, Egypt and Syria and all the Arab nations, Jordan, were lined up against and ready to wipe them out.

They appealed to America to help. They also appealed to England and France, and they turned them down immediately. Is this the Sixth Day War? This is a Sixth Day War in 1967. So because the United States had guaranteed the sovereignty of Israel, et cetera, it's right. And the United States told him, this is true. Secretary of State, we lost the letter. We don't have the letter where we promised you to do this.

So this is true. A Jewish businessman, I forgot his name in New York. He drove to Gettysburg, the Eisenhower's farm. Eisenhower was a former president at that time, and they literally went through the drawers in Eisenhower's deaths, with me, me there, you know? Yeah, and he found the letter and brought it back. But the bottom line was it didn't do any good

because the US still didn't help. But that's my Eisenhower story. Well, to nerd out, there's another moment I'm thinking about using in not the next book, but then book after that. At the pivotal moment where it comes for the United States to recognize Israel as a country, the almost uniformly, including Marshall, the political foreign policy establishment in the United States is like, this is a horrible idea. Because it would upset the Middle East, it might, they thought it was not a good idea.

And I'm forgetting his name, but it's Harry Truman's Jewish army buddy who drives to the White House and basically says, you got to do this., you gotta do this for your old friend. And basically the country of Israel and some part owes its relationship to this mind opening friendship that Harry Truman gets as a young boy from Missouri in the First World War. He's never met a Jewish person before. And this connection leads to decades later

the personal appeal and the threat of no-one of political courage. Oh, that's a great story. I didn't know that Truman was like, he made that decision very fast before just about anybody else recognizes what he did. And I was sort of wondered, why? Why did he do that? Oh, that's great. This is Jewish friends.

Oh, wow. And so I was going to take that to me. There's a great LBJ quote where he goes, the way to have power is to be close to the people who make decisions. And so we think justice is about being right, being correct, having the most moral of the arguments or whatever. But really, it was a friend convincing another friend and access to power.

What else should we talk about? I do think the cruelty of Rome is an interesting, very well-captured part of your book. You know that you can you can watch, you know, you, sorry, you can read about Rome, you can feel a kinship with a Marcus Aurelius or, or, or what have you. And it can obscure from you just how violent and depraved the opposite of love. So in love in some ways this world was. I mean, I think, you know, I sort of created my own Rome in this story. You know, you have to kind of bend reality, but certainly Rome's whole reason for being was kind of conquest was an ever-expanding conquest, and within that, what made Rome great, among other things, was that they was order.

They were, you know, like I say in the book, there's a moment where a Roman detachment was surrounded in a waterless place, and the enemy, which was Jewish zealots were bombarding them with them. And the commander sent a detachment out to get water and bring it back. And they did. And the guy who's telling the story says, you know, nobody in our world, nobody would have done that. If you were in the detachment, you would have run as fast as you could have. So that so Rome sort of the idea of discipline, which is absolutely what the legions were built upon and all that sort of stuff was,

that it makes a great villain, Ryan, because it's like a machine, it's like the alien or the shark and jaws that's just not gonna stop, you know? So I don't think it was, in my mind it wasn't so much evil as it was just self-propeptuation, you know? Any rival, any threat,

we're just gonna steamroll over these sons of bitches. Well, I tell the story in lives of the Stoics of this sort of terrible, unfortunate clash between the Stoics and the early Christians with Julius Rousticus, who's Marcus Aurelius' philosophy advisor and sort of the mayor of Rome and Justin Martyr, who is the early Christian, but sort of thinker, but had actually trained in Stoicism as well.

Justin Martyr is accused of worshiping Christ and the Christian God. And he's drawn before this tribunal. And on the one hand, he's totally powerless, who cares what somebody else worships. And the Roman state just could not, like the idea of religious liberty, or the idea of mercy and compassion was so in opposition to the idea of Roman order and efficiency and unity. Yes.

It sets on this, this, this heinous collision where Justin Martyr is martyred, that, you know, that the Stoics have to rightly be criticized for. But to me, it's also sort of an allegoria metaphor for why order is good, but if taken too far becomes a vice and an almost a self-imposed prison that blinds you to the reality of what's in front of you. Yeah, I mean, it's all about threats and how you respond to threats. You know, and there's another, I mean, I probably stole this mentally from Ben Hurr, or something, but there's another moment in the book

where somebody where this tribute says, the emperor doesn't fear armies. He doesn't fear hosts from anywhere over the world, but a new faith, a new belief in what's happening, what's hell, that can overthrow them. And that's what needs to be crushed. And I think that that's the way they thought about it. And so it feels so in human and cruel,

the injustices that the Roman state inflicts upon the Christians and the Jews. But there was something about it where the Romans, I think thought they were doing the right thing. Their logic had become so twisted, their sense of insistence on order was so ingrained in them that they couldn't see what they were doing.

And I think, again, this is a cautionary tale that we have to see as a society, you know, Marcus really says, and remember, you can commit injustice in doing nothing as well. The idea of even questioning the impulse or the law. You know, there are how many Americans, you know, in the civil rights movement said, sure, we don't think black people should be discriminated against, but law and order is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think, and we're seeing that today too. Why are they so angry? Why are they upset? And we all get along. There is this sort of desire for keeping things the same, keeping that clamping down disruption that you're telling yourself is coming from a good place,

but it's actually enabling a grave injustice. Yeah, the other thing I think about Rome at that time and sort of a parallel for us today, was I think that even though people in Rome might not have articulated this or admitted it to themselves, they knew that on a spiritual level, their own gods were dead. That was over Jupiter, Minerva, whatever it was, nobody took them seriously anymore.

So that the idea of a kind of a new God quote unquote, that was going to come along, that did have energy and that people did believe in, that was absolutely terrifying to them. have energy and that people did believe in, that was absolutely terrifying to them. Yeah, I'm going to read something to you. There's a great novel by Naomi Merchison. Let me get this. By Naomi Merchison, and she says, the Christians were being persecuted because they were against the Roman state. No Roman ever really bothered about a difference of the gods and religious matters. They were profoundly tolerant

because their own gods were not of the individual heart but only social inventions or had become so. Yet politically they did and must persecute and equally must be attacked by equally all who had the courage. I think she was just saying like they knew that their gods were just part of the civic structure of Rome in life. There was no potency in them because no one sincerely believed that any of these things were real. And I think when you see a new movement, whether it's Christianity or again, non-violence as Gandhi

originates or as Martin Luther King pioneers in the United States, was seen as so threatening because it was sincere and real and earnest and thus had the power to potentially turn everything upside down. Right, and even more so, it was just like with Rome and with Christian and Christianity became adopted by Rome by the people of Rome, right? I mean the Pope, the papal thing, it's some Pobaticanism in Rome, right? Yes, and likewise with Martin Luther King, I think what people really was afraid of, what, I mean, let's say the white people that were opposed to him was our own daughters are going to be seduced by this non-right by this thing. And that's the absolute terrifying moment. Well, or that it's communist influence. Or, you know, we came up with all these ways to not

have to wrestle with what it really was. which is challenging our most deeply held assumptions and forcing us to look at our own morals and our own selves. And I think, you know, in a way, that's a, not to, not to trivialize it, but that's a form of resistance as well. We would rather go, we would, and this is what's so fascinating about that period to me of United States history, we would rather send an army to Vietnam, 500,000 men, we'd drop more bombs than we did in all of World War II to fight the communist menace, right, to fight for the self-determination of some other people, thousands of miles away in a former colony from the 19th century,

then we would ask ourselves, hey, why do we have an apartheid system in our own country? Why are we not living up to our own creed in our own country? Why are we blocking the self-determination of millions of Americans? So the resistance says, I will focus on anything and any problem, no matter how far distant, provided it does not require me to make any personal

changes or look at that. That's it. Let's bottle what you just said. That's exactly, exactly true. And of course, we're living through that same thing today, right? Better to burn the capital to the ground and to change anything that we were clinging to and have to actually change. It's strange how timeless it is, right? Yeah. That people, the resistance is real and it's always been with us.

And the other thing, so interesting, is like the kick, like you were talking about Martin Luther King trying to make a decision, whether he should speak out against Vietnam, and then you think about Muhammad Ali, where there was the exact moment, right, when he refused to be drafted, and because no Vid Kong, you know, ever called me the end word, you know.

Right. And so there's this great expression I love, where it's not a principle unless it costs you money. Right? And so I think one of the big questions when it's great to have an ideology, it's great to have a belief, but what are you willing to pay for it? And you know, on the other side of that, John McCain, he can leave the Hanoi Hilton at any moment. He just has to betray his own internal code. He just has to accept special treatment. And instead, even though he doesn't really support the war, even though, of course, he doesn't enjoy being tortured, he chooses the code says you stay. Yeah, yeah, God bless him. What a guy, huh?

Yeah. So last thing I wanted to ask you about, I don't want to give too many spoilers away in the book, but you have at the end of your book, one of my favorite Bible verses, the idea, we all stare through the looking glass darkly and then face to face. I just love that. It's such a, whoever wrote that, such a good writer. It's such a beautiful expression.

I just, I don't know, I just wanted to, I just, I love that expression so much. Yeah, all of that, you know, I don't wanna give too many spoilers either, but what happened where that sort of came from was a couple of years ago in my niece, that man, and she asked me to be the performance ceremony. Actually, her own dad had performed it

sort of a secret ceremony, and I was gonna do the public ceremony. So I thought, well, what am I going to say? What am I going to do? So I went to the book of common prayer and I just went to look through those various things that people say in so much of it came from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, first Corinthians, where that quote comes from that you just cited. And so I just I I just felt like that stuff is so powerful. And it's about love. Yes.

It's about the primacy of love. It's not because beyond the cross or the resurrection or any of that stuff, to the idea that we are all one. And it's all about love in the end if we can ever get there on mine. The Marshall plan, you know? Well, there's a moment I tell the story in my next book where and and uh, Theodore Roosevelt talks about it in a letter afterwards or Theodore Roosevelt is

considering whether to invite Booker T. Washington to have dinner at the White House. And he quotes that letter to a friend as he explains his thing. He says, we all look through the looking glass darkly and then face to face, meaning that you don't know until you get up close with it, you know, and then you have clarity. And I just, it's just such a beautiful expression. And I think is that timeless thing. You know, the Stokes talk about wisdom. And wisdom is the hardest thing to see what's before you. Clearly, I love that movie, Lincoln, he has that speech, he pounds on the table and he says, that to see what is before you, that's the only thing that counts. And Lincoln has the ability to see through all the political considerations of the time and

get to the truth, what the right thing is. That's what we're all doing and resistance gets in the way. Yeah. And if you think of what's going on in this country today, there is stuff sitting right before us. Yes. And we can't see it. You know, we should be refused to see it. We refuse to see it. You know, we'll come up with anything else. Any other, it's like the thing of, we're going to believe me or your lie and I's, right? That's why everything is about lies and conspiracy theories these days, unfortunately. And at the root of that, at the root of that hate is an absence of love.

Yes. And a refusal to change or to even entertain changing at all. That's right. Steven, thank you so much. I love the book. I will tell everyone about it. Here it is. You should absolutely read it. It's one of my all-time favorites from you. I read it in like a day and I read it in October and it's been hard for me to sit here and not talk about it for five months, but I'm very glad I am. Well, thank you so much for having me on and for your last and such a great question to take us in such interesting directions. Of course. Can I say one thing to plug the book a little bit just that if anybody wants to know any more about it,

just go to www.amanandarms.com. And as I learned from you, there's all kinds of pre-order bonuses and all kinds of good stuff there that you can find out about. Killer, that's my plug. Thank you so much. Thank you, thanks Ryan.

My new book, The Boy Who Would Be King, It's an illustrated fable about the early years of Marcus Aurelis, how this little boy was selected from obscurity and ruled the world and did so without being corrupted by it. He really did become the man that philosophy wanted him to be. And that book is now out. It's available everywhere. I've been working on this book for the last year. It came out of the pandemic for me.

Something I've wanted to do for a really long time. You can check it out. Go to dailystoke.com slash king or you can pick up the boy who would be king anywhere. Books are sold including on Amazon. But if you buy it from us at dailystoke.com slash king, you get the audio book for free, which has me reading it and a bunch of the cool people. So check it out, the boy who would be king

and we should learn to lead like markets are really, and we should try to not just make stoicism proud, but we should try to make the example of markets are really as proud. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.