The Daily Stoic - How The Stoic Virtues Became Ryan’s Greatest Test | Billy Oppenheimer & Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

What does six years of studying and writing about the Stoic virtues really teach you? In today’s episode, Ryan sits down with longtime research assistant Billy Oppenheimer to look back on how the Stoic Virtues Series came together, from the first hike where the idea was born to the final chapter of Wisdom Takes Work. They talk about what it means to grow up alongside your own work, how each book became the lesson Ryan needed at that moment, and why wisdom can’t be outsourced.Billy Oppenheimer is Ryan Holiday’s research assistant and the writer behind the newsletter, Six at 6 on Sunday. To read more of his work, check out his website billyoppenheimer.com.📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show, but not listen to ads. Well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic.

We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive

bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show of descriptions to make those ads go away. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students

of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I heard you guys. I have heard the overwhelming number one piece of feedback. that you have given me on this podcast, at least on the interview episodes,

which is that there's too much of the guests and not enough of me, right? I get it. I don't interrupt them enough. I don't answer my own questions enough. I don't give my point of view enough. I just ask really short, tight questions, and then I turn it over to the guest. And that's what I've been doing here on the Daily Stoic podcast for years and years. And you want to hear more of me, right?

I mean, look, obviously, I know that's not the feedback. I do occasionally see the comments. They trickle back to me in some form or another that I'm not turning it over enough to the guest. I do say, as Tyler Cowan's great line is, that this podcast is the conversation I want to have, not necessarily the conversation you want to have, and that it's, I try to see it less as an interview and more of a discussion, but I am trying to get better. I have one of the, actually one of the chapters in Wisdom Takes Work, which is out this week, is all about Zeno's famous dictum about having two ears and one mouth for a reason that

we have to listen much more than we talk. I do try to practice that restraint. I think I'm getting better at it. So this really drives you nuts. This is probably not the episode for you. But I was excited to do this. And I'm actually excited for you to hear this one because it involves someone whose work I like, who I think is promising and sort of an up-and-comer. And I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the interviewer here because this is a turn-the-table's interview. Billy Oppenheimer has been my research assistant for many years now. He has done all sorts of great work for the Daily Stoke.

He helps me prep my articles. He helps me track down leads or ideas. I'm really bad at finding out how to get things that are behind various paywalls or out of print. He finds all sorts of obscure stuff for me. He was just out of me out this weekend. I'm going out of town first to Los Angeles to do a week of promo for the book and then to New York for a week of the promo of the book. And he is printing out my big collection of research for the book that I'm working on now.

He's amazing at it. He's great. He also, I will say, has a great newsletter that you should subscribe to called the Sunday at 6, which I have seen grow from a tiny little thing. I could take some credit. I was the one that sort of pushed him to start doing it. And now when podcast guests come into the studio, they go, is Billy here? Because they get his newsletter, which is always delightful to see.

But my point is, Billy and I have worked together a long time. None of the books in the Virtue series would have been fully possible without him, where they are good. In many cases, that was a direct contribution from him or they're bad. I'll take the hit for that. But Billy and I sat down and had a long conversation in early October. before the media tour really started. So I could kind of work through what I was thinking on the book.

He had some questions for me. We talked about the process and this project we've been working on together. And I think it's a great interview. This question, is it getting harder for me to be lit up by stories? I like to get excited about stuff. To which my answer is unequivocally no. I fucking love doing this. I love doing this.

And I am, as we talk about in the interview, like, pumped about what I'm working on now. In fact, the only thing I don't like about tours is that it distracts me from getting to write the next thing. Hopefully you've picked up on this by now. You haven't been listening very closely if you haven't. But the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, Learn, Apply, Repeat. The fourth and final book in the Stoac Virtue series is out. We've got a bunch of awesome bonuses that we're continuing at dailystoic.com slash wisdom. You can get dinner with me to talk about the book.

You can get pages from the manuscript, which have my notes on them. Sometimes they have Billy's notes on them. and a bunch of other awesome stuff, including some chapters that I've been working on for a long time that I didn't get to put in the book. All of that,

right now, daily stoic.com slash wisdom. It would mean so much to me if you could pre-order the book. And then I want to get into this episode right here, right now, and I hope you enjoy it. And as I said, sign up for Billy's newsletter.

I get it every Sunday. I'm recording this on a Sunday. It will come two and a half hours from now, and it's always great. And it's always fun for us to talk about that email. that he does. I reply most days. Anyways, let's get into it, and I'll bring you part two later in the week. Did you think we'd ever actually get here? No. Because you were at the beginning of the

whole series, right? You started right as I was starting the research for courage. Yes, 2018. You had just finished stillness. Stillness came out in 2019. Yeah. So wait, were you, so you were there before even had the idea? Yes. That's actually where I wanted to start. Oh, did I have you fill in some stuff on the proposal? Yes. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's the summer of 2019. Yes. I remember one of the first articles I worked on when I started working for you was a piece you had, you were writing about having the idea for the series. Oh. After sort of just of the articles, like you stepped away from working one day to go on a hike with your kids. And you had the idea on that hike. Yes. And then I remember a line in that piece. I was like, and just like that,

my next four years had been laid out in front of me. Wow. And it turned out to be six years. Yes. Well, and there was a pandemic in there and a lot of other stuff. That's really interesting. It was funny because I was just, I just went for a run in that park over the weekend. And there's like trees that weren't there before because the whole forest burned down in 20, 11 and then some other parts of it burned in 2015 so like it was striking to me like how much it is changed and then I made a joke in the talk that I did in Austin that like I can measure the whole series in inches because my my youngest was like a baby when I had the idea and so he's like this tall yeah he was like in a backpack on the hike I was thinking about that because I said that to

Samantha and he he would have been in a front carrier and the oldest would have been in a backpack because he would have been way to, he was born in May. So he would have been too young to put in a backpack. But yeah, I thought that would be four years of work, but I ended up in the middle, right after discipline, which discipline came out of the gate much faster than anyone thought. Like, it sold much better than even I thought. And so my publisher said, do you have any other ideas?

And I told them I had these other two ideas. But part of the condition of those other two was that I would get an extra year off. So I took a year off between discipline and justice, which is actually more like 18 months, say push. I slowed the whole thing down. Yeah. And so it took longer than. Well, you would put the justice book in the metaphorical drawer for a little bit. Which I had talked about in discipline, yeah.

So I also kind of liked following my own advice a little bit. It's crazy that you've been working on the series Jones' whole life, essentially. Yes, that's what I'm saying. He's like this tall. I mean, he went from not being able to walk to being able to walk to not being able to walk to not being able to talk to being able to talk to being able to like read words in the final book you say in the afterward to justice that that book was a kind of ethical will yes to your kids and I wondered if wisdom is sort of like the way you were thinking about education yes a little bit

although you know it's funny in in the Taylor branch series on Martin Luther King at the end of the last one and these are like that's like a if you want to talk about a trilogy that's like an epic trilogy Is it four book? I think it's a trilogy. Anyways, in the acknowledgments at the end of the Taylor Branch book, he talks about how his son, who was born as he was starting the first one, helped with the research of the final book, like his senior year of college or something.

And you're like, so you're like, that's like an adult life, like from infant to functioning member of society, like the arc of it. So I remember being struck by that. So this is just a much smaller version of that. But yeah, well, one of the reasons I wanted to save the wisdom book for last in the series is that I just thought who I would be for five years later, I would have more to say about it. And then I also knew my kids were little. And so some of the thoughts on education and setting up an education would be more relevant to me. Weirdly, it's turned out, every book in the Virtue series has been exactly the book that I needed.

to be thinking about in that moment. So courage during the depths of the pandemic, discipline during the other depths of the pandemic, that's sort of where, you know, you're working from home, reimagining, just like as it had dragged on and then justice in the middle of a sort of social justice awakening and then a political turbulence and turmoil. And then wisdom as my kids are, you know, sort of now fully in school. And the mainstream integration of artificial intelligence and also, you know, a time of political misinformation and disinformation and making sense, you know, Orwell talked about how to like see what's right in front of your nose is the hardest thing to do in the world. That's the wisdom that I was interested in when I was writing the book, not just like knowledge for knowledge sake, but like how do you make sense of the moment that you were in, which is a both.

timely and a timeless moment yeah if you had started with wisdom like AI wasn't yet in the conversation sure the way and now this book opens with that great story of of Seneca yeah which is just like how ancient the desire for shortcuts is yes yeah yeah he's talking about this guy who hires these slaves to basically be his chat chp t yeah like to just be the repository of knowledge that he could have at any moment. And then he could be smart without having to do the work to earn the knowledge

that he was throwing around. Yeah. Each slave is like an LLM for like... Yes, totally, yes. And, you know, Seneca is laughing about how, you know, it's not something anyone can do for you. And there's no shortcuts. And he says, you know, no one was ever wise by chance.

Like no one's beat the system, basically. Yeah, that came very late in the book, I think. Mm-hmm. There was a different intro. Which I don't remember what it was built around exactly, but that came later. I remember forwarding you an email. Somebody had sent me. Yeah.

And it made me think of the Seneca story. Oh, is that what happened? And I was like, probably a chapter on this. Yes. And then when I saw the first galleys, it was in the intro. Well, credit where credit is due, that was a great find. And there's something my relationship with the Stoics, having read them many times, is that it's all kind of there and why you have to reread the Stoics is that the thing you're looking for or that would explain the moment

you're in, it kind of pops out at you. Right? Like, and so, so that's why that you have to have this kind of ongoing relationship with the text. Because when I first heard that story, however many years ago it was, I didn't go, oh, this will perfectly explain modern America's relationship with technology and wisdom in the year 2025. Obviously, that's insane. Yeah. So, but it makes an impression. And then comes back to you and you're like, oh, this would work perfectly here. I used to write very intentional intros for my books. Robert Green is the opposite.

Robert Green, if I remember correctly, does the intro last. And I'm now kind of split the difference. Like I do kind of a light intro or a basic, it's like a warm up. Like the intro is really just warming up the vibe and the tone that I want. And then I understand that almost certainly the ideas that it's going to be built. around are going to come later. So that was like, oh, yeah. Because I do like it when the intros have a story.

Like, discipline, I think, is mostly built around Eisenhower, if I remember correctly. Courage is Churchill and justices. Who's the main person in justice? I don't remember. Florence. No, no, no, in the intro. Oh. There's usually a story in the intros.

Let me see for. This is more than you can have in your head. Oh, Hyman Rickover. Do what you think is right. Slammed down the phone. What was it like to have it? I mean, you have an actual copy there. Yeah. So this is my experience on all of the books, which is that, you know, I see them in Google Docs as you're working on them. Yes. And then my sort of role, I sort of off ramp and you have a lot more work to do. And then I see the galleys. And it's like. Right. Because it leaves, it leaves, in my process, it leaves Google at

some point and it goes into Microsoft Word. Yes. And then there's really no sort of research-assistency tasks pertaining to the more or less complete manuscript and then all the edits and stuff. Yeah. And so when I see, when I get the physical book, like, I don't recognize. I don't recognize. It's like a new book to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I did find that on Robert Green's books. It was hard because I, yeah, I would see all these different things. or I'd read it as a galley, but then I would never actually sit down and read it as a finished physical book. And there was something sad about that to me that I didn't, like, I loved the access and the appreciation, but the cost was that I didn't get to experience it like everyone else.

Like if you work on a movie, you don't get to watch it for the first time in the theater with everyone. That's never going to be your experience. And so there's a little bit of that with seeing a book get made. Yeah. But even, I mean, I sat here in this room to do the audiobook and there was like still changes I was making. Yeah. I also was going through the box of no cards and the section of where you're kind of kicking around different structure ideas.

And what ultimately became the structure of this book, there was like a note card and it was like on bike ride in like 2020 or something. Really? Yeah, I forget the date. But it was like, and there was, you know, you had one that was like internal and external. Yeah. So do you remember like name? nailing down, because I know the importance for you of, like, cracking the structure. Yeah, we should find that no card. That's cool. I forgot about that. Yeah. And I'm trying to do

better at saying when I found stuff, because, like, it's cool to me going back to it. It's a lot of it you just forget. But no, I do remember that for the three other books, the three-part structure was obvious and pretty clear. And for this one, it was not. And actually, when I was talked to Rick Rubin, I was talking about doing the fourth book. And he was like, have you thought about for the fourth one just like doing something totally different? Which I liked the idea. That's a very Rick Rubin thing. And I considered it. And there just wasn't anything that called to me that like really felt like that would be right. And it wouldn't just be like sort of performative weirdness. You know, like there was, I had this fantasy like, what if I just did

like really short, you know? Yeah. And then that was like one of the lessons, you know? And then I wouldn't have to do a long book. And so I thought about a bunch of different ways. And there was, it just didn't feel like it would come together. But the idea of like quite like, and that is an idea in the book, it's just like, you respect precedence and and tradition, but you question convention. And so I had done the same style in the same structure for the first three. And then you go to first principles, you go, what is actually the best way to organize this book? Putting aside what has been done before. What is the best way to do it? And I think doing it as a three-part structure, I eventually found the things that I wanted to say. And I knew from the outset that

I wanted Lincoln to be a main character. Lincoln was originally going to be at the beginning as the self-education person, because that's what he's so famous for. And then I found that actually I wanted to talk about him more in moral terms. So he became at the end. So then it was who's going to be at the beginning, and that's where Montaigne came in, and then it was sort of who's going to be in the middle. I guess all of which is to say the structure took a lot longer on this book and was a harder puzzle to crack, but the idea of sort of, here's how you inform yourself. Basically, it's like that thing from the office where Dwight says, like, what I figured out is I asked myself, what would a stupid person do? And I don't do that. I wanted to spend a lot

of time, not just sort of talking about what wisdom is, but as I did in the ego book, like what is anti-wisdom, like what is the opposite of wisdom, and how do we sort of lionize one and then steer clear of the others? So it took a while. Yeah, that's funny that it came together on a bike ride. Yeah. I wonder when that was. better help. I've talked here before. We've made whole videos about it. Therapy has been incredibly helpful to me. It's given me emotional awareness. It's helped me process my feelings. It's helped me deal with stuff as a parent, as a spouse, and just a person in a crazy, busy, noisy, sometimes demoralizing world. And my therapy practice is part and parcel of my stoic practice, right?

analyzing and putting your feelings, your impressions, your views, your values to the test. That's what therapy allows you to do. And there's a reason I use online therapy because it's more efficient. It takes less time. That's where today's sponsor comes in. BetterHelp is built around making starting therapy easier. They connect you with a licensed therapist who is trained to listen and give you helpful, unbiased advice. You just fill out a questionnaire and you can match with the therapist in as little as a couple of days, you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost if it's not the right fit. With over 7,000 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Trust Pilot, BetterHelp is a platform you can trust. You can click the link in the description

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no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. People were hired on Indeed while you were listening to this. That's how fast it is. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoak. Just go to Indeed.com slash daily stoke right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, Indeed.com slash daily Stoic. and conditions apply, indeed is all you need. Part one opens with Montaigne, a most unusual education. Yeah.

And in some ways, it's very relevant to education today. Sure. His upbringing, his dad instills like a love of learning that almost gets snuffed out in the schooling system. Well, you know what's funny is his dad like travels. He was like a soldier or something. His dad had traveled around Europe and was, like, fascinated by, like, these breakthroughs that were happening in education. Like, he talked to all these educators.

In the 1500s, he talked to these experts on education and then brought home these, like, cutting edge strategy. So there's something, like, kind of timeless and timely about, like, well, what the old way is obviously not working. What's the new way? And it's like, this new way is 500. years old. But also, when you're reading it, it feels radical. And this was actually something that my editor, Adrian, he was asking, my wife, Samantha, was asking her about what we were doing for education for our kids. And she was like, well, you know, we tried this. We're wondering about this. We don't know about this. You know, do you do private? Do you do public? Do you do tutors?

What do you do? And he was like, the one thing I know is that there's not anyone of any socioeconomic status high or low, you know, that is like things that they're like crushing it. Like no one's like, we figure it out. It's perfect. We are totally happy with the auction. So I guess the idea is that people have been struggling since there have been people to try to figure out the best way to teach their kids. Yeah. I did the hard part about writing part one of the book is like, I didn't just want it to be about your kids and I didn't just want it to be about how your education should have been I wanted to think about the principles of learning generally because like the epigraph of the book is like if you think it's too late you don't understand what wisdom is like it's an

ongoing pursuit and it has to be seen as an ongoing pursuit but like with learning language it's like younger is better yeah there's a great chapter on finding your classroom which seems related here like and it the emphasis on like your classroom yeah you know like it's it's relative and it's specific to like your interest and inclinations and finding that place being crucial. Yeah, you know, it was funny. I was actually just talking to this parent at my son's school and he was thinking about writing a book.

He's a very well-known athlete. And I was thinking about doing a book. And so I sent him the Chris Bosch book that I had worked on. And he said, your name's not in this. Did you work on this? And I was like, yeah, I was the ghostwriter. And he was like, I don't want to like hurt your feelings, but like, why would you ghost write a book?

He's like, you could write whatever you want. Why would you work on someone else's book? And I said, well, someone has to pay for my kids to go to this school because it's not cheap. But I was saying that the reason I ghost wrote for a long time was that it was not just free reps, but it was like getting paid to get reps, you know? It was that I was learning the craft, even though obviously I was pretty good or I wouldn't have been being paid to work on someone else's book, but I've done all the books that I have done that scene. And I've also done, you know, a half dozen or more. I've had consulted and edited many,

many others. Like, my breadth of experience is wider than just the things that have my name on them. And so my classroom was not just working for Robert Green. And then, you know, I think I've gotten better at each one of my books. But my classroom was also, you could call this like a sort of publishing 101 education where I'm learning the proposal process and I'm learning the writing process. and I'm dealing with difficult editors and great editors and what happens when you have too much, like, how do you solve a, how do you work on a project where you have too much material? And how do you work on a project where you don't have enough material? And how do you work on a project where the person's super engaged and then where they're not engaged? And, you know, how do you work on one for this kind of

audience and then an older audience and then a younger audience and, you know, just like just doing it different ways. Yeah. My secret in life, I think, is been that I figured out how to get paid to learn a lot of things. And Robert Green paid me to teach me how to be a researcher. And then I started getting paid to give talks from like the first talk that I ever gave. And so then I spent, you know, probably five or six years getting good at it. And then the last five or six years, you know, taking that education and, you know, like whenever you can bite off more than you can chew and then have to scramble to learn on the job, that can be a stressful experience, but it's a pretty wonderful experience. And it's like the ultimate sort of career slash life hack.

Like I think about it like, I was studying all these sort of military guys and just like the idea of like the Navy or the army or whatever sending you back to get it to. It's like you're getting paid to go to school not like you're getting your school for free yeah like they're getting paid to go to this university that's like the dream i think right like to you know and so i've always kind of sought those experiences out yeah there's there's a makes me think of a a foot no i think it's in the afterward uh you also paid to leave school that is true yes when i dropped out of college i went into the registrar's office to to leave and i was like you you know, I'm here to drop out of college.

And that's not really a thing, which I was surprised to find out. Like, I would have been nice to know before I told my parents that I was dropping out, you know, like, because then I could have said, oh, I'm taking a semester off. And, uh, yeah, that would have been a slightly lower stakes confrontation. But yes, I went through a bunch of papers that I had when we moved from my old office to this office. And I found the form. And there was a receipt stapled on.

and it was like $40 to leave. You see Riverside. Yeah. The other thing, which I told at the Austin talk that I just gave, which is, you know, as you get older, just certain mortifying things that you did, just like going through your life, you're on a walk, you're falling asleep, you're talking to someone,

and you just get like viciously attacked by the memory of something stupid that you did when you were younger. And you're just like, oh, no. Yeah. You know? And I don't remember exactly where I was, but it just, I just recalled one day that I had written my college admissions essays on the difference between schooling and education, which I thought was so clever. I remember thinking it was clever. Yeah.

And then when this, I was like, oh, that, that's why I didn't get into the places that I wanted to do. You didn't know your audience. Not only did I not even know my audience, it didn't even conceive to me that it hadn't been positively received. Like, I was just thinking, like, oh, it must have been my grades or my SATs. And then in retrospect, it was like, probably all the essay as a disqualifying, like, just what a what a presumptuous, petulant, like, conceited, dumbass 17-year-old thing to do. Yeah. And I don't think I thought there was anything trans.

Maybe I thought there was something a little transgressive about it. and I thought they would appreciate it. But, like, in retrospect, why would they appreciate it? I was literally saying that I don't think school is important. Yeah. Please allow me to come to your school. But I ended up. I mean, I went to Ushur Riverside on a scholarship, and I met my wife there.

So it worked out. But that was a dumb thing to do. You tell the story of a conversation. I think it was when somebody in Hollywood of, like, you can pay to stay in school and learn these things or go get, like, real world experience. And that was kind of the design. He said, do you want to, so I was working at this talent agency in the summer of my sophomore year. I was about to go back.

I put a deposit on the house that I was going to live in. I'd gone back. Samantha still lived there. So I got back. I picked out an apartment. I was excited. I think I'd enrolled in my classes. And he's like, so you're still thinking about going back?

And I was like, what do you mean still? Like, that's obviously what I'm doing? And he's like, what if you didn't? And what do you mean? And he said, well, you could work for me. as my assistant. And I was like, you have an assistant. She's sitting right there.

And he was like, yeah, she's not going to last very long. I would like you to be my assistant and not go back. And I thought about it and I think I decided not to do it. And I remember, this could have all been one conversation, you know, a few, but I said, yeah, I think I'm going to go back. He's like, if you want to go back to school and read in the newspaper, this is an example that I guess made more sense of the time. But he's like, do you want to read in the news?

newspaper about stuff you could have been a part of. It's kind of like, you know, the Steve Jobs thing where it's like, you want to go sell sugar water for the rest of your life? Yeah. You know, he was like, look, do you want to go read about people doing stuff or do you want to do stuff? And I thought that was a pretty, I think it was right. And basically, like a couple of days later, Robert Green asked if I wanted to be his research

assistant. And so my calculation was actually less thinking about the Hollywood thing and more thinking about, like, if I wanted to be a writer and I was going to get a minor in creative writing, if the end of this education in politics and creative writing was that I could get a job for someone like Robert Green, my parents would be like, good job. Like, that's why you went to school. And I would think the same thing. So I'm going to say no to that. Go back, finish the thing, and then hope that the offer still here or that lightning strikes twice. I get a similar offer. That seems crazy. So I dropped out.

I remember being very, very stressed about the $900 deposit that I didn't get back, which in retrospect was just like silly, which is actually a great lesson because I remember I was just talking to someone, you knew that when they worked for us for a brief time. They were like making this major life decision about like, they were like, well, I have all my stuff, you know, I can't do this. I have to put all my stuff. And I was like, a storage unit is $80. Like, you're going to alter the course of your life because you don't want to.

to put boxes in storage to see where this goes. That seems dumb. Yeah. You know, and $900 just a lot of money to me in 2005 because I'm making nothing. But, but anyways, the funny thing is I, so I decided to drop out and he was like going to let go of his assistant and then tell everyone. And then I, so I went back to college, pack on my stuff to come and, you know, blew up my life, basically. and then I came back and that Monday he wasn't there and the assistant was there and everyone was very confused as to why I was there and he had checked into rehab over the weekend and was totally unreachable and had not informed that had not informed anyone and no one knew what his future slash you know what had happened why had happened why it had happened why it had happened

and why I was there and obviously this somewhat perceptive person picked up on the, you know, and it was, you know, it was like a rest of development. I may have made a huge mistake. Yes. When did like your sort of voracious reading? Because there's, you tell a story of a teacher

catching you reading a Louis Lamour book, right? Yeah. And then I've heard you talk about like later being introduced to like maybe hire books. Yeah. I mean, not that he, and actually his memoir education of a wandering man is incredible. And it's totally a memoir about self-education and how you can get an untraditional and interesting education that fits you perfectly to do difficult, unusual, interesting, even lucrative thing. It's one of the great memoirs, actually.

If we don't carry in the bookstore, we should. What's it called? Education. Education of a wandering man, I think. It's amazing. You're reading that Eric Hoffer book, right? Yeah. They're kind of similar. Yeah. Like, he's like reading books like in these mining camps.

and, you know, like working on dude ranches and stuff. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah, in fourth grade, I was reading a Louis Lamour book, and my fourth grade teacher caught me reading it in class instead of paying attention. And instead of being upset, she was, like, proud of me. At first, didn't believe that I could possibly be reading this book. and that was like the first time anyone sort of took any notice of me,

and she put me in some special classes and stuff. But I mostly just read more books like that for like the next 10 years because I don't think my parents had read, not that they're not smart or anything, but I think like if it wasn't like at Costco, it wasn't like the kind of book they were reading. Or like you're stealing your sister's books. Oh yeah.

Like yeah, I read all the Nancy Drew books and all the babysitter. I would just read whatever was there. The idea that there was like this rabbit hole that you could go down, that you could follow different subjects, you just don't know what you don't know. And my parents didn't know stuff, and then I didn't know that. And I mean, I had the experience of going to the library, but they would be like, come over here to the kid section, you know.

And so I read a lot of young adult stuff, and some of it was informative. And I read a lot of westerns. I do remember. So I loved Westerns because I love those little more books. We would go to the grocery store. And there was always a little book section. And then I remember I'd read all the Louis Lomor books. So I grabbed this other one.

It was this other series. But it turned out to be like a ladies western. Like it was like an erotic book. And that was pretty scarring and weird. Because I was like waiting for the gun fights. And then there was just like a lot of, just a lot of sex scenes, which was both eye-opening and unnerving as like a fifth grader or whatever. Waiting for the gun scene. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, when is it was just like, it was like the Westerns, but instead of the gun scenes, there's just a lot of scenes in the Bordellos and things. But so, yeah, I read mostly, I wouldn't say trash as that seems to me. And reading is reading, but I read mostly a lot of those kind of books until, yeah, I just fell down, I started getting exposed to other books at some way. Yeah, the reason I was bringing, like when you were talking about getting paid to learn through ghost writing and real world, like, so I was thinking of the.

Da Vinci thing in the book of being a disciple of experience and the disciple of received wisdom. So at some point, like, the combining the real world experience, but also all this reading you're doing. Well, one of the things that working for Robert was amazing at is, like, first off, he would be like, I need you to go read about this 16th century, you know, astronomer or this cleric from this, or read about this. They were just assignments, so it was like being in college. there was much more unusual.

And then I'd be like, that was really interesting. Is there anything else like that? And he'd be like, well, if you ever read this? And the answer was like almost always no. Yeah. And so, you know, there was that. And then obviously when I went to college and then, you know, obviously the Stoics, but, you know, just reading these philosophers and then just being interested,

oh, let me read the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. There's a scene in one of my favorite stories in the book, one of my favorite stories ever, is this story about Harry Belafonte, where he's in the Navy and someone gives him a copy of W.E.B. De Boise's memoir. And he's reading it, and he gets to the end, and he's like, I've got to read more stuff like this. And so it gets to the bibliography. It just says, like, I bid, I bid, I bid, I bid, I bid a lot.

And so he's like, well, I'll just read that. You know, who's that? And he goes to the library and he asks her, give me all the books you have by I bid. And she goes, I'm sorry, there's no author like that. And he thinks he's being stonewalled by a racist librarian, which would have been a reasonable interpretation of the events in the 1940s. But, and I'd never actually, I just, I knew what it was. No one, no one ever told me this either, that it stands for ibis or ibis.

I don't know. I don't even know how to pronounce it. It's a word I've never heard a human being say. Yeah. I've only seen in the back of books. But that just means like, like the book above or, you know. Yeah, it's like we've already used the title. It's a shorthand for like, same.

book, different page. Same title, yeah, same title, different footnote connected. And so he just didn't, he didn't know that. And he stormed out of the library in anger. And he later tells W.B. DeBoise's story. And he said his dying regret was that he never got to meet the librarian again to apologize. But I had that experience of just like reading a book and then being like, I love this scene. And I learned this to do this with Robert, too, where you're like, you read something. And it's just, this section is really interesting to you. And you go like, well, where do they get this section? And then you go to the, like, for many years, I would almost always find my next book

from the bibliography of the book that I just finished. And not always the bibliography. Sometimes it's just mentioned in the text itself. And I would circle it and go back to it. But once you get connected to a couple good books, you almost don't need anyone else. Yeah. Because you can follow that chain for the rest of your life. Yeah.

Well, that made me think of the John Wheeler thing of, like, as you're sure of knowledge grows, so does, or island of knowledge and the island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. As the island gets bigger, it touches more shit that you don't know. Yeah. Which is kind of an interesting way. It's an interesting, I think I put this in the, with the bibliography of ego, do you know where I heard that, that quote? No. So, again, this is the idea of Tracy's, okay, I was on a Southwest flight, and I was reading. the Southwest Magazine, again, this is a long time ago, apparently, because they don't even do that

anymore. But I'm reading the Southwest Magazine, and there is a interview with Neil de Gras Tyson, and he says, he's like, it's like that famous quote, you know, he mentions it in some way, not directly, but he alludes to it or he rifts on it. And I was like, I've never heard that before. What is that? And I went and I found, like, the original source for it. So many of my books come from random one-off. Yeah. Well, another good example of that is the Izzy rabbi story. Oh, yeah.

That was a weird one. Where you first came across it, and it was told as if it happened to someone else. Yes. And then you track it down. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, I read it in the Patrick Radin-Kleaf, oh, Patrick, whatever, Empire of Pain.

Yeah. About the Sackler family. And, yeah, what was really interesting about that story is he tells it as if it has, happened to him in that book. Arthur Sackler tells that story as if it happens to him, but we traced it. I think Christo did that research on that, right? That's my other research assistant, my first research assistant.

And I was, usually what you'll do is you'll find an anecdote or an idea, and it's not like the primary source. You've got to go back and find more about it. And so we went back, and it turns out he'd first told the story like in the 60s or something. But it had been about his friend growing up, a different scientist. Yeah. And then over time, and this is something that keeps me up at night. Over time, he told the story so many times that he just made himself the center of it. Yeah. And he cut out his friend. And the book I'm doing now, I'm like, it was interesting. We just found, like, in his oral history, he tells this story

about being on the block where this famous person lived. But then we found a letter that he wrote in 1952, where he vividly describes to his parents meeting the person and shaking his hand. So which one do you trust? Yeah. Do you trust the memory of the person in their 80s, even though in their 80s they're telling the less interesting version of it? Or do you trust the younger version, the contemporaneous version, which is more interesting? And then you go, well, which one would they be a lot?

Like, you would, you'd probably normally defer, you'd play it on the safe side. But then you're like, is that actually the safe side? Like, because, like, this is a pretty detailed lie if it's a lie. Yeah. So anyways, this is all the inside baseball of whatever. But that one was interesting where it's like, that story was really good. But the problem with that story is that the Sackler family sucks. Like, they're directly responsible for the opioid crisis.

Yeah. And although Arthur. Sackler dies before, what's it called, oxycontin is invented. It's his nephew that does it and his brothers. But I had a way, if it was him, I was going to circle back to him as an example, as a cautionary example also. So I was going to do positive and negative. But then to find out that actually, it's about a different Nobel Prize winning physicist.

It was him asking Isidore, why did you become scientists and not a lawyer or a- Yeah. And he says, well, my mother every day when I would get home from school would say, you know, did you eat your test or how are your grades? She would say, did you ask a good question today? And I love that story. It's an amazing little anecdote. And then, yeah, all of this. You know, when Hemingway talks about the iceberg, this is all the underwater part. This is all there that the reader doesn't see. But you have to checking and cross-checking and whatever. I think I've gotten better at that. I would say my books are there's more submerged than. was on the earlier ones. What do you mean? More submerged? Like, I found when I went back to do the obstacle as the way, there were some things in there that I wouldn't have let myself that, like, maybe I was right, but I was, I didn't actually have the facts at hand to be that right, to be that certain then, or I wouldn't have

written that sentence. I would have needed more information or evidence to support that assertion. So when I went back and did it, there was just changes that I made that, like, I would just say, like, I think one of the things that I don't like about the space that I'm in is that a lot of the people who write business books don't hold themselves to any academic or intellectual standards whatsoever. Like, if it sounds good, they'll go with it. Yeah. If they heard it somewhere, they'll go. Like, I was just reading a book the other day, and he was, like, quoting a Twitter account. And I was like, I would never do that.

But maybe I would have thought about it a while. You know, I tried to get more stringent with my standards as I've gone on. Yeah. Well, it's one of my big lessons from your process is just like the rigor of, like, you see a story in one book and you're like, let's find everywhere this is told. Yes. Not only to confirm, but like maybe there's a detail that's left out in this book and it's over here. Yeah. And so now my bias is like a reader is to like go find where the story is told.

And often it's like you can't find it anywhere else. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. And you go, oh, this person just, you just like we talk about AI hallucinating stuff. Yeah. You go, oh, this was hallucinated or this was deliberately manufactured to make a point. And I don't get it always right.

I mean, we're just going through the bibliography now and we found out that there's a quote that's like not. as firm as I thought it was. Yeah. So we'll have to change that in the future editions or whatever. But yeah, Robert was like that. Robert, I do this whole thing and be like, no, not enough, not enough, not good enough. Yeah. I've heard you talk about like being surprised by like, he just paid me to do all this work and he's not going to use it.

Yeah, right. But like that's the, yes. It's not just because you put in a lot of work that like warrants using it. No, you've got to have really high standards. Yeah. And I think a lot of people are writing books because they wanted to be a business card or they wanted to get speaking gigs. They don't actually care. And so they're just, they're just producing slop before AI slop exists and that I like books, you know, I like, I respect the medium.

I was thinking of the story of like another example of triangulating, like the story you tell in the marathon video and article. Yeah. Of first coming across like that run. Yeah. In Robert's book. Yeah. strategies of war. Yeah. Finding it in like John Green, some other green. Peter Green? Yeah, I forget who it was.

Yeah, that was like a big moment for you as a writer. I mean, that was like the light bulb moment for me. That's when I, I think that was the first time that I understood how it worked, like how the pieces came together. Because, yeah, I remember I was in a pizza restaurant in Santa Monica. No, no. A pizza restaurant in, on Las Siena in Beverly Hills. Philly's.

What? Philly's pizza. Yes, Phyllis Pizza. Because that's what Philadelphia is known for. This is when I was a research assistant and an assistant at that agency. And I read this story about the Battle of Marathon, which, of course, I'd never heard of and I had not learned about in any class, college, or high school. And Robert Green vividly tells the story of the Battle of Marathon.

And I just emailed them and I said, like, hey, what should I read about this? Like, where did you get this? And that's actually been one of my favorite questions to Robert. like, what books did you read when you were working on this? And whenever I go to his house, his books are organized largely by books he wrote. So it would be like, as he's writing 33 Strategies Award, he would get a bookshelf. And then they would all go there. Oh, wow.

So, like, you know, obviously he has all his books from his whole life. But, like, you end up reading so many books when you're working on a book that it kind of messes up your whole system. So he would just be like, this is mostly the stuff. from the war book. This is mostly the stuff from the seduction book. And so I would kind of be like, oh, I'd never heard of that, you know, and I would read them. But I, and I found so many of my favorite books that way. But yeah, I asked him what book he'd read, and he recommended this book by this academic about both the Persian invasions of Greece, and I read it. And then that was

the first time that I was able, because the 40 laws of power had been out for a long time, by the time I read it, 10 years. Yeah, about 10 years. And, which is crazy, by the way, that would be like, if Obstacle is 10 years old, that would be like you starting working for me now. That's where Robert was in his, because it came out in 98, and this was in 2007 and 2008. But, yeah, I read that book, which is obviously about, you know, Roberts' section on the Battle of Marathon is like two pages, three pages, and I'm reading a 300-page book about it. and and then I go oh this is like as I'm reading the whole thing I'm seeing the little pieces that informed that condensed you know synthesized version and there was one sentence I remember jumping out at me that like Peter Green or whatever the guy's name was wrote it did it pretty

well and then Robert you're like oh this is why this book sold 800 copies and this book sold 800,000 copies like that's why yeah because you did it better yeah um and you took not just that and then i went and red herodot it there's obviously other tellings of it but i was like oh this is how the source material gets compressed down to this yeah like have you seen that video where um dave grohl is explaining the drum sound on smells like teen spirit yes and And then Farrell, like, immediately knows what he's talking about. And you're like, fuck. Oh, like, you just realize there's like, oh, there's a lot.

You think it was this Sue Generous thing. And then when you're able to see the combined influences, the equation suddenly makes sense. It doesn't make it less impressive. It makes it more impressive in some ways. Yeah. Because you realize, oh, this person is, like, a genuine connoisseur of, music and they just happened to be expressing it in this style. Yeah. So it demystified totally for you. Yeah, I mean that that's I think working for Robert what it really showed me is how it

worked as a craft. Like if you are working like like when I walk by a house that's under construction, that's as mystical to me as and as much a form of art as writing or music or whatever. But, But if I, I'm sure if I shadowed a contractor, you'd be like, oh, this is how they start this phase. And this is, you know, you just, you, I just watched it happen. And then you realized it's a, it's a series of discrete tasks and a set of skills. And there's a map, you know, and then there's somebody making the creative decision. And like, that's, that's not to say that it's any easier once you know it.

like it's still a shit ton of work but it is suddenly not magic yeah you know yeah the output's still magic but you realize oh this is a thing that you do yeah I've heard Greta Gerwig tell a similar story of like that moment in her life and it was she she's the metaphor just like it put a mountain in front of me yeah it didn't make it easy to climb the mountain but it was there whereas before that it was like she didn't even know where she was going Brian Kauffleman's podcast I don't know if he still does it. I think he does it sporadically because he doesn't need to. But it's called The Moment, and it's about those moments.

Yeah. And I remember there's one, he was interviewing Bill Hader. And Bill Hater was, like, obsessed with movies, and he's watching some movie. And he, for the first time, understands the shot the director is doing. It's like, oh, the camera is here, and it's moving on a track this way while the person. And he was like, oh, a movie is just, is that 900,000. or however many shots are in a movie. Yeah.

And there, yeah, that moment where it gets demystified, that's pretty magical. And that, I'm not sure if that's wisdom. I was going to think about that as an element of wisdom. And I think I'm going to save it for, I think what that is is excellence. There's this idea of phronesis, like practical knowledge. But the ability to sort of technically understand how a thing works and the component parts and how they come together. That's a component of wisdom.

That's not, I wouldn't exactly call that wisdom the moment like it snaps in where you get it. But like someone's ability to conceive of a path forward or a way to do something where everyone else is either hopeless or can't see it or missed. That's like, that's, I think, what you're working towards. Yeah. It's the more specific knowledge, which I, I mean, Elon Musk is a cautionary tale in this book. We should talk about that in a second.

But I do, we talked about that, the Pharrell video. I watched another one. I love those videos where it's like shots of musicians in the studio. And it was Billy Joe from Green Day. And he's just fucking around on the guitar as the early chords of Boulevard of Broken Dreams come in. He's fucking around. And then you just watch him figure out the guitar riff. he's obviously done it so many times that

at some level you notice that he recognized it but it's not like a fuck that's it it's like messing around and then not messing around anymore and then the riff that you've heard on the radio a bunch of times exists those moments are real like you kind of figure it out

those are great that's why I love cracking the structure on a book where you're like this is going to be the main character this is going to be the main character this is going to be the main character and then you don't you haven't figured it all out but you've solved suddenly in a moment it's like you're doing a puzzle and you're like and like it now is a rectangle yeah or whatever and you're like okay I now I just got to connect these two these two it's that a bunch of times that's still a lot

of work and it might take you yeah six months but like you are now at least heading in the right direction yeah that example the billy joe is that name makes me think of the discernment like yes him messing around but then having the ear to decide this is let's grab onto this and move more in this direction yeah these two things go together yeah usually like on my books like for a while I'm just generally writing a lot of stuff down on no cards or I'm just reading and thinking and then there's some moment usually it's forced where you're like okay today I'm going to sit down and think about it and I'm going to start and then you're like oh I'll start going through the cards And I'm like, these two connect, these two connect, and these five connect.

Oh, this is obviously a chapter. And you don't get it all at once, but you might get set. Like, on Monday, you just had, you know, 2,000 no cards. And then on Tuesday, you still have 2,000 no cards. But 300 of them or 200 of them are in chapters. Yeah. And now you have 10 of the 30 chapters you're doing. And now it exists.

There's, it's like you're walking by a construction site, and one day it's, you know, flat. And then you see them pouring the foundation, dig it, they're putting in the pipes, and then you see the foundation. And then you see like a bunch of wood arrive. And then you drive by like two days later. And the whole thing is, like a three-story house is suddenly scaffolded it up or framed up. And you're like, oh, wow, that went fast. Yeah.

That's usually what happens. Is it getting harder to, because you've read so much. harder to have the experience of being, like, lit up by a story. I mean, I'm in the middle of it right now. I'm fucking loving this book that I'm doing. Yeah. No, I don't think so. I was talking to Rick once about how this happens to musicians,

whereas they get more and more technically proficient. Yeah. To stimulate themselves gets harder and harder. Oh, sure. And they kind of, like, make stuff that's way above the heads of audiences. Rush did that. Yeah. There's a documentary about Rush, where at one point they were, like, they all got together,

And they're like, we took this as far as it's technically possible to go. This can't, this is no longer the, like, they're like, the music can't get weirder and harder. It's got to get, it still has to be challenging and interesting, but we're, this is a dead end. You know, like, we're in a cul-de-sac. Like, this is, we're either going to kill ourselves or it's just going to stop being interesting. It's just turning into, like, you know, theoretical physics or something. Yeah. And so, like, the music went in a different route.

who is it servicing to make it harder and harder? Harder to play. Yeah. What you're doing is you're thinking about yourself and not the idea that this is to be consumed by anyone. Yeah. Like you might as well be doing like cryptography or something. Yeah. So yeah.

I mean, what I'm excited about in the book that I'm doing now is that it's just, it's a different, it's not a different medium, it's just a different style of writing. Yeah. And so that's challenging. And it's all sort of one person. But I guess maybe the fact that I'm as. surprised at how lit up I am is maybe a sign that I was less lit up the last couple years, but I'm like really liking it. So it hasn't gone away yet. Yeah. Well, I also mean just like as a reader. And I guess an example of like how this doesn't happen is we've been working on the

bibliography of like just how many Lincoln books you have read. Oh, that was a total surprise. Yes. Well, especially because I just, I just redone obstacle. And Lincoln is the, main character in the third chapter of part three of obstacle. I think I told myself, and this is when you're running, like the last two miles downhill, it'll be easy. But actually, like, chances, you don't know that. You're just lying to yourself to, like, keep you going. So I think I told myself that last part would be pretty easy because I'd already written about a bunch about Lincoln. And then, like, I maybe made it like two sentences. And I was like, I don't, I don't have it. Yeah. Like, I don't have it in a way that's interesting to me. Like, I probably could have

done it but I just didn't I didn't have what I needed was it a block a writing block and then no I don't believe in writer's block really yeah but I definitely know the feeling of not having the material yeah like writers block doesn't exist you just don't fucking have the material and when you have the material the writing comes together that's not to say it's always easy and fun but if you have the material and so like I found this on um part two of um of uh discipline I was going to write about Queen Elizabeth, and I'd read one book, and I read another book, and I started to write. I was like, 900 pages on the queen seems like enough, you know? Yeah, to write like 20 pages.

Yeah. And I think I read like 4,500 pages on Queen Elizabeth or something. There wasn't one, I emailed Andrew Roberts. I was like, the biography, I was like, what is the best book on the queen? And he referred me to one. And then that guy had another book coming out. so I had to wait for a book to be published. Also on the queen.

Also on the queen. The guy had to say, so I think I read two books from him that were like eight or nine hundred pages. And then I read a lot. And then I'm also reading articles and watching things. But yeah, I think I tallied it all up in there about Lincoln, but it's like several thousand pages. They stacked up all the books in the bookstore. They did an Instagram post of like all the books that I read about Lincoln. And it's like this tall.

Yeah, you had something in one of the reading lists. emails about like every time I think I've read enough on Lincoln yeah you find something you are continually fascinated well if you go to the the museum at ford's theater they have it's like three stories or something and they have this spiral tower made up only of books about Lincoln wow and that's where the ideas for this and for the tower in the bookstore came from yeah it's pretty crazy yeah it's crazy that like every writer that comes along is like there's not there's still something to be written about Lincoln. Yeah, I think he's, other than the Bible, he's maybe, this was a long time ago.

Oh, yeah. Look at this. All Lincoln. Those are all Lincoln. You scroll a couple ways. Those are all books about Lincoln. So what's the date on the photo? Can you see the top?

April 4th, 2017. So that's where the idea for the book tower came from. That's insane. But someone told me once that every sentence or phrase in the Gettysburg address and maybe the second inaugural are book titles. Like, these honor dead, full measure of devotion of the people for the people by, like that every phrase has been turned into a book by someone. Whoa. And I mean, just you think about how what that says about the caliber of writing that like multiple sentences could be, or phrases could be broken down to be their own booktiles. So obviously

a lot of people write about Lincoln. But yeah, I think every time I read about him, I take something else out. Yeah. So yeah, it's been a lot. It was a lot. But I definitely got lit up. I mean, it wasn't a slog. Yeah. You know, like I had fun. Yeah. And I think it's some of the best writing that I've done in that chapter. I'm pretty proud of it. Yeah. That Tolstoy story is fucking incredible, though. Which? Well, Tolstoy is like visiting these, this tribe in the Caucasus Mountains. And they're asking him to tell them stories about, like, the great conquerors from history. And then he finishes. And the chief goes, but you haven't told us of the greatest of them all. And he goes, who are you talking about? And this is like 1905 or something, the end of

Tolstoy's life. And he's, who's the greatest hero of all? And he says, you know, the man with a voice like thunder and deeds as strong as the rock. And Tulsa says, who are you talking about? And he says Abraham Lincoln. And he just goes, the idea that Abraham, they would even know Abraham Lincoln's name. Yeah. And Tolstoy sort of concludes that, that what separates Lincoln from all the other people that he'd been talking about is that Lincoln, unlike Napoleon didn't like, I mean, Napoleon is a great man of history and Alexander the Great is a great man of history. And, but most of their accomplishments were fundamentally selfish. Like they, they're impressive. Julius Caesar, who he was and what he did is impressive, but the more you look at it, the more you're like,

oh, he's also a war criminal, you know, like all those characters share this ambition. And Lincoln has this great quote about it. He says, every man has his peculiar ambition, but he says, mine is to, like, leave the world better than I found it. Actually, Lincoln has a speech where he talks about these great men of history, like the man on horseback, basically. And he says, some men's ambition will lead them to. to make slaves of other men, and other men's ambition is to free the slaves, or something

like that. But you go, oh, Lincoln is great, not because of who he conquered, but is one of the first great heroes of history to become great because of who he freed. Yeah. Wow. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us. and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.