The Daily Stoic - Steven Pressfield On Work Without Attachments (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Ryan speaks with book athour & screenwriter Steven Pressfield on fewer possessions, superstition in memorabilia, the impact of working without any attachments to the outcome, and his new books The Daily Pressfield. Steven is an American author of historical fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays. He’s most known for The War of Art, Do The Work, Turning Pro, Gates of Fire, and Government Cheese. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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purchase of $20 or more using the code daily stoic 20. Hello listeners, this is Mike Corey of Against the Odds. You might know that I adventure around the world while recording this podcast and over the years I've learned that where I stay when I travel can make all the difference. Airbnb has been my go-to place for finding the perfect accommodations. Because with hotels, you often don't have the luxury of extra space or privacy. Recently, I had a bunch of friends come down to visit in Mexico. We found this large house, and the place had a pool, a barbecue, a kitchen, and a great big living room to play cards, watch movies, and just chill out.

It honestly made all the difference in the trip. It felt like we were all roommates again. The next time you're planning a trip, whether it's with friends, family, or yourself, check out Airbnb to find something you won't forget. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Suryuti. And we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases.

But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Find, download, and binge-read-handed wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics.

We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holliday. Here is part two of my interview with the one in only steam press field. I promised you I would tell you the story of his new book, The Daily Press Field, which as you find out in last week's episodes, it's actually dedicated to me. This would have been 2018, 2019, Stephen and I were talking and he said, hey, let me know when you're going to be in LA. And I said, hey, actually, I'm going to be in LA like next week for something. And while I'm there, I'm also going to this event. It was

like a town hall for people who were alarmed at the direction that the country was going sort of fascistic, authoritarian, and just all the other awful, anti-steroic stuff that we've been talking about here for many years now. So the idea was, let's get a bunch of writers in the room to talk about how to tell a better story, how to beat these movements. And anyways, I invited Steven. He came and as we're sitting there, it was some theater on Wilshire and we're sitting there. I was some theater on Wilshire and we're sitting there, Diana, his girlfriend, also the unsung hero of all Stephen Pressfield's publish work these days.

Anyways, we're sitting there and I said, Stephen, have you ever thought about doing a daily book? Like, I love your stuff. I would love to read one piece of advice from you every single day in book form. And he said, I haven't thought about it, but I'll think about it. And then I saw maybe a year later or something and he said, I'm doing the book. And it's going to happen. And I'm going to dedicate it to you.

And I said, oh, okay, sure. Well, flash forward quite sometime later. It exists. I have it on my desk. It's awesome. I read the War of Art or Turning Pro one of the Pressio books usually before I start any creative project. Steven someone I've consulted for advice on all my books, blurbed, obstacle, and you know, as the enemy from remembering correctly,

it gave me a ton of advice over there. Plus, writing is just absolutely fantastic. And so the idea that I wouldn't have to reread one of the old books, I could just read up page a day, I could sort of get that kick off that jolt of motivation. Every single day, it's part of one cohesive book. I just thought it was an awesome idea. I didn't participate in any way, I just thought it would be awesome.

And it exists. And it's so crazy full circle for me that this guy whose work I read in 2007 or eight, I would be mentioned in one of his books, let alone like the first page you see has my name and it's just absolutely incredible. You got to read the daily press film, grab it at stevenpressfield.com. I'll be carrying them in the pain and porch as soon as I'm able. Steven signed a bunch of copies of his books when he was there at the painted porch so you can grab those. I'll link to those in today's show notes. Check out the daily press field and here is hour two of my conversation with our most popular, most repeat guests. Enjoy. But I mean, you watch a young quarterback versus an affection quarterback, right?

Young quarterback scrambles, you know, maybe throws long passes, you know, can take hits. And all their quarterback gets rid of the ball quickly, throws a lot of slant routes. You never see Tom Brady, you never saw Tom Brady run for the ball, ever run with the ball, ever. But definitely not in his last season. He adjusted, right? How have you, how is, you know, the difference between a 50 year old writer

and a writer today? How is that different for you? You know, it isn't very different. Really? You know, it isn't very different. Really? You know, because I always start something with tremendous self-doubt, you know? I always think, first of all, I think, I'm not good enough to do this,

or I'm the wrong person to do this. Or then I think this is an idea that's never gonna fly. It's like the 48 laws of power, you know, who's gonna be interested in this? So I'm sort of always dealing with that. But it's always, I feel more confident, like I can do four hours of work now and two hours, you know, I definitely feel that. You're more efficient.

I'm more efficient. I think that I can handle the self doubt more than I used to. It wouldn't drive me completely crazy. But I'm still just a believer in sort of being led by something, and trying to be a servant of that, whatever it is, and keep the faith. It gets more mystical over time, I think. But I don't feel like I'm any better. I don't feel like I'm any better as a writer. When I go over a page that I've written on third draft or something, I look at it, I go, what the fuck is, you know, I still realize, I still feel like I'm a guy with very minimal amount of talent

that's making it work like Steve Kerr calls himself an overachiever in basketball. He didn't have the ability, but he just worked so hard that he, and so that's still the way I feel. And as long as I have the energy to keep doing that, then I'm okay. And I do think it energizes you. That thing I said about rest before, it does, I've been just here in Austin now for two days, away from work and it's already I'm getting a little drained by it, you know?

I wanna get back and get, can you work on the road or no? I can't, you know, I just can't. It's like I lose fitness on the road too, you know? Maybe it's my own resistance, I don't know, but I can't, you know, I just can't, you know, it's like I lose fitness on the road too, you know, yeah. Maybe it's my own resistance, I don't know, but I can't on the road. I think like the last page in the Daily Press field is about that Spartan King who was still fighting. Yeah, yes, Spartan King's at A2. It's hard to believe, but true, yeah.

Yes, yeah. Yeah, some people have a remarkable staying power, but maybe that's the idea. It keeps them young. Like the rolling stones are still doing it because they're still doing it. And if they stopped, is that where I wonder how much it'd be, I'd really be curious to know how much are they still doing it? Do they still, I know they have a new album. Yeah.

But do they still get together in the studio? Do they still, are they still producing new material? Do they live their separate lives and? But even just playing I mean music the cool thing about music. I'm like what we do is music is something you can make new music of. But also performing the old music. That's right. Which we can do.

Yeah. And so yet the ability to they have been playing music in front of people for. Yeah. 60 years. I don't know. Long, long time. And they're still starting with their 16 or something. Yeah, and they're still doing it. Paul McCartney is still performing. Yeah. And so is perhaps the idea that because they're still doing it, it keeps them young in some way. I mean, I feel that way, you know, my own work, you know. And if I were to stop, I think I would go off a cliff, you know,

psychologically or emotionally, spiritually, you know. Yeah, you don't see, you're 80, right? Yeah, I just turned 80. You don't seem 80. Well, as I started so late, you know, maybe I don't know what it is. But I'm hoping this is, this is, this is, this is sort of my challenge at the moment. I put this out to you for whatever this is worth.

Yeah. You know, the floating in the air is a concept of what you should be at 70, 60, 80, whatever it is, right? And it ain't a good concept as you get up higher and higher, right? It's like now. The expectations start lower. So I'm having to sort of every day, reprogram or counterprogram that, you know, and say, that's not me. I'm not going to, I refuse to do that, you know? And, you know, so far I'm not going at Joan Didian's desk. So far so good. But I certainly believe that work for me is the answer. That's what keeps me energized, what keeps me sort of connected to the source of power.

So I'm going to keep doing that as long as I can. Well, what's remarkable about Joan Didian, right, is she's this great young successful writer. She's like the hottest new journalist on the planet. And she is for many, many decades. And then in the early 2000s, you know, she's could have deservedly retired, you know, is, is, you know, people think that best work is behind her. And then she gets knocked by two horrendous tragedies. Her husband may have even been sitting at this table, you know, and, and, and drops day. And then within 18 months, her adopted daughter also dies.

And it's not like a good thing that it happened, but perhaps her two greatest, certainly her most moving books come out of that terrible tragedy. She writes, a year of magical thinking, and then she writes, Blue Nights, which are Joan Didian, marshalling all of her talents and experience to explain and communicate the worst and hardest thing that she's ever gone through.

And these are the books that people now give to people when they lose someone, when they're struggling, when they're facing their own mortality. And she took this experience and turned it into something. It's not an experience. I think as I've come to understand the idea of the obstacle is the way, now 10 years post writing that book, it's not, it's great that this happened because,

it's that this happened and from that, what I was able to do is this right? It's you didn't choose the obstacle and the obstacle was terrible and painful and awful But you made something come out you were the best version of you inside that and because of that you did something good you inside that because of that, you did something good largely for other people. And that's what those two works are. But I think there's kind of this, like the historian's argument would be that everything she went through and did up until that point

was leading her to be able to respond to that moment with the height of her artistic power. Yes, I mean that would be true to some extent. To me, what I would just say about that is that that's art. Yes, that's what art is, I think, painting from pain and producing and like, you know, a lion can't do that. AI can't do that. And producing this gift, I mean, that's talk about the soul level. This gift that, like you say,

you can hand that book to somebody in pain. And this is gonna actually mean something and help them somehow. So God bless her for being able to do that at that, you know, under, under those circumstances. But that was what everything in her life led to up to that point. Well, one of the things Robert Green told me, it's one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from him. He said, it's all material.

The best thing about this job is that you take all the shit that life throws at you, all the heartbreak, and the pain, and the problems, and the mistakes, and you find a way to get something out of, to turn it into something that you have this superpower in that you can take the worst moment of your life and make something of it. Whereas it, as an ordinary civilian, you might be somewhat at a loss. You're not, because actually everyone can learn and grow and change by what happens. But as an artist, your path is so much clearer.

How do you, how do you speak about this? How do you make something from this? This is also true as a parent, as a leader, as a sister, but like, it's also true for regular, it's just less clear as an artist. It's so obvious. Go make art from this. And yet, and yeah, the interesting thing, at least for me, in my experience, is it's not like you take it directly. It's not like X thing, I mean, Joan Didian did this. But you know, X thing happened to you. And then you write about that. For me, it's like X things happen.

And then you write something over here that seemingly has nothing to do with that whatsoever. But in some crazy way is informed by that. And I don't know how. It's a mysterious thing. I'm reading about Hemingway right now. And I guess early in his career, he was in one country, his wife was coming from, his wife is traveling to meet him, and she has all of his main disrespects in a satchel,

and she leaves it in a train station, and he loses everything. And there's this letter he's talking to one of his editors, and he says, like, don't tell me this is good. I'm not there yet. But with time, he does come to understand that it was good in the sense that he had to start fresh. He had to, it's Cortez burning the boats.

Yeah. You know, it's wiping the slate clean. What book are you reading? Everyone behaves badly. It's a book about it. I just read that a little while ago. Yeah, it's a great book, really by a young gal, it pulled it out of nowhere.

Yeah. Have you read that summer in Paris? I think it's called by, I'll send you that thing. It's, what's it about? I forgot the guy was kind of a minor writer who happened to know Hemingway and he and his wife went to Paris and sort of hung out with all of those people. And this is his version of what it was really like. And he's boxing with Hemingway and that kind of thing. I'll send it to you when I, because I can't remember the guy's name now,

I blank it out. That's summer in Paris, it's called. But I really like that idea of, I'm not there yet. Because eventually you do get there, right? Enough time passes and you see how... I don't know if I'd get there without that thing shapes you or Informed you or forced you to go in a different direction like most of in retrospect We look at most of the things that have happened to us and we go that was making me who I am in that moment though We wanted nothing more than for the opposite. So the model is save everything to the clouds.

Yes. I try to do that actually. I try to have multiple places that I see. Me too. But I have lost stuff. And what does it do? It forces you to go back and redo it. And in some ways, it's like a, you know, a forest fire.

It clears it all out. And you, you, you only the essence remains. I find I can never get to the level that I was the first time. Do you think so? Is it actually the same? I don't know. It's never been better for me. It's like always a disaster.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the book. Hemmanway has always come off as a complete dick to me though. I'm not. I like Hemmanway's writing and I like Hemmanway as a person less. Yeah, I sort of feel the same way. Yeah. Yeah. But it's writing is so great. When it's great, it's so great. It's so much better than anybody else was doing at the time, you know, or even now. Yes. Well, she's talking about in the book,

speaking of like the obstacles, the way, he discovers his writing style almost accidentally in that he would have to send these international cables. Like, they'd send him to cover a war in Greece and Hemingway would go and he he obviously consume all this information, and he'd have to cable back, you know, like troops route up thousands dead or whatever, right? And then they would translate that into several paragraphs of right. He would have to figure out how to, in as few words as possible, because they're charging

him, unfortunate word, express the essence of the event. And he's talking to another writer, he's showing him the cables. And the guy's like, yeah, yeah, isn't that cool? How, like, they go from the cable to all this paragraph? And he goes, no, read the cables. The cable's great. And so it's the constraint of having to wire information

across the Atlantic and not being able to say everything that he wants that makes Hemingway a great writer. And so, the obstacle is the way isn't just, you lost everything and now you have to start over. It's just the guard rails that you resent at first. You know, the publisher tells you you got to cut 10,000 words out of the book or it's gonna be too expensive.

And you think, how dare you? But it actually forces you to go back and solve all these problems that were caused by the fact that you had unlimited space. Yeah. And Joan Diddy and you should copy Hemingway word for word right to learn her stuff too. Yeah.

I do that. I'll be at this table. Maybe. Yeah. I do that myself. I do take, like, like, I was reading that passage that I said to that. That's because when I finish a book,

I go through and I type up all the stuff that I like out, either by hand or I type it up. And I get this experience, like, that's that's also to gather material, which I use in my books. But the real benefit is that I have typed multiple books worth of other people's writing over the last 15 years. And I feel that going through my fingers. Yeah. Yeah. I do that too. Or I did that too. I don't do it anymore, but I used to. Yeah. It gave me a, I'm still thinking

about it, but it gave me a weird take on AI, actually, you wouldn't think it would. But so oftentimes I'm, if I'm, if it's a long paragraph, and I'm going to print it out, send it in the wall, or I'm going to, I all type it up in Gmail. Like I'll open up my Gmail and I'll write it there, right? And Gmail has a predictive AI layer on top of it. So if you go, if you send me an email and you say like, you're, you, you, you're, you're like, Hey, do you want to meet here at 11? And I'd be like, yes. And then it would, it would show in light gray, like see you there.

And I can hit a button and it light gray like see you there. And I can hit a button and it'll just type see you there for me. It guess is based on millions of other things that other people have made. What it thinks I'm going to say or what the right thing to say is right. So let's say I'm sitting down and I'm writing a passage from Hemingway because I want to get that to Jews' moon. You'd think it would be able to know how to finish this sentence, right? The first draft of anything is, it should say shit, right? Because it's actually, you know, but it's not, it never knows. It never actually knows.

Unless interesting. What we all kind of agree is perfect writing. Yeah. So there is, I think, something fundamentally irreplaceable about great writing. Yeah. So there is, I think, something fundamentally irreplaceable about great writing. Yeah. Maybe bad writing is replaceable or mediocre writing is replaceable, but something unique and new and different is at least up till this point technologically. Yeah. It is a replaceable. When they figure out how to do that, that's when we can throw in the towel. It is a very place when they figure out how to do that. That's when we can throw in the towel

You know, I don't think him in a way gets enough credit for how how great it isn't just that it's short words or it's simple things You know like I guess it's the opening to Affair well to arms we talked about the dust on the trees that summer and the troops walking along the road Blump and bump and then it comes back to the dust and the trees at the end. No AI can't do that, you know? I mean, it's it's it's pro-a-tree. I don't know what it is, but it's it's not just simple stuff, you know? It's genius to get to where he where he got that. So I have to forgive a lot of his other bullshit, you know, anti-Semitism, anti-blackism, anti-gay, anti-no. Also, he's just fundamentally a bully.

Like, he's just like, they talk about in the everybody behaves badly, he's like, he likes to just, oh, we should box. And then, oh, I'm going to just punch you in the face when you're not listening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, he was an asshole. Yeah. I think if you met Heming, if you were one of Hemingway's peers, you'd probably be like, fuck that guy.

You know, there's that term art monster. He was an art monster. Yeah, he was. He was. Yeah. But the art was great. Yes. Yeah.

He's like an inverse of Fitzgerald, who was, it's like Fitzgerald turned the energy inward unfairly on himself and Hemingway turned it outwards on other people, but they were both fundamental users. One just chose himself. This book, that summer in Paris also talks about Fitzgerald. They're all there together, it's really interesting. Yeah. The first, the guy's first name is Morley. I'm trying to bring it back. Okay. Remember what his last name is. You know, what is the, the names back then were just incredible. Like John Doe's Passos. Yeah. The Sicknet Ford Maddox Ford. Yeah. You know, which I don't think was his real name anyway. Yeah. Ernest Hemingway. I've got it. just the names are so great. No, they seem great. Yeah. No. Gertrude Stein is a good name. They're just so good. The names

are so good. You know, you mentioned anti-Semitism. I was thinking about how I was going to write about this too. I have a daily stoke email where I was messing around with it, but I was going to make this argument that anti-Semitism is the oldest virus. And that, you know, it infects the Romans at different times. And like, that it's this virus that you kind of watch consume societies, cultures, and then every once in a while, like a historical figure, like a brilliant mind, you know, Henry Ford. Where does he pick it up? And it warps and it breaks his brain, Elon Musk, you know, like it's this, it's a, it's,

it's, it's, we might be on to something. It is like a virus. Yeah. In meditations, when I was realist talks about, he says, there's two types of plagues. There's one that destroys your life and he's talking about the Antonine plague. And then he says, there's this other one that destroys your life and he's talking about the Antonine plague. And then he says there's this other one that destroys your character. You know, it makes you hate other people or it turns, makes you commit injustices or inhumanity. And anti-semitism strikes me as this kind of perpetual, sometimes it's dormant, sometimes it's not.

But it kind of warms its way in. And once it's there, it's hard to cure. What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the designer clothes, the worst dress list, big house. The world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account,

the people trying to get their grubby mitts on it. What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous. the bursting banker count, the people trying to get the grubby mitts on it. What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous. It's not always easy. I'm Emily Lloyd-Saini, and I'm Anna Lyong-Rofi, and we're the hosts of terribly famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favorite celebrities

from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it? Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hey sweetheart.

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Must be 18-year-old or ended Ontario resident in the province at time of purchase. It's true, there's no other people. Yeah, on the planet that somehow You know are the target of that same thing for back to Nebuchadnezzar in the Babylonians, you know Yeah, that's why That's why Israelis act the way Israelis act and why Jews act the way act, me included. Yeah. You can't, it's an indelible thing, you know. And it's so easy to pick up, right? And like I saw this meme and it actually changed how I think about things.

But it was something like, all my life, we never had cats because my dad was a allergic to cats. So I didn't like cats. This is what this allergic to cats. So I didn't like cats. This is what this thing is saying. So I didn't like cats. I always had this aversion to cats. I was suspicious of cats. And then, and then, uh, then he's like, then I got a cat and I love it. And then I realized, that's what racism is. Like, you just pick up this thing. You, you caught it in transmission from a family member from an environment

from an area you're in and it gets in there. And obviously there's more severe cases than others, but it's this thing that kind of, it's a mind virus, it gets in there and it messes with how you see the world and how you see people who, if you could zoom out just enough or you could look at it for just saying, you would realize are utterly indistinguishable from you in every, every way. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a strange how

that's the one that doesn't go away. Yeah, and it definitely does not go away, you know? Yeah, and it finds ways to reconstitute itself and mask itself or the symptoms look different in different times. But there is this underlying condition. Yeah, you can see that it's sort of stopping me. Yeah. I don't know why.

Why is that? Maybe it's emotional for me. Yeah. Maybe I don't want to go there. Yeah. Okay. I guess I mean there are other forms of it, right? Obviously racism is another form of it. And you can see how the original sin of America is the way that this idea has permeated

into the institution. That's why it's so ineradicable. Yeah. Nothing seems to change it. You know, you can have Michael Jordan be, you know, the idol of XYZ, a million people across the American South or wherever it is, but yet nothing changes in terms of, you know, I remember when I was in college, which is a long time ago, I went to a clan rally, just like to laugh at it. Hey know, hey, let's go out there having one, you know? And I thought, this is gone.

This is, you know, and now it's back with the vengeance. It actually, it was kind of funny in a way. They actually had the grand wizard, whoever it was at the time was there. And he was, believe it or not, he was kind of funny. I mean, there was like the clan was out in this field. And there were various Duke students and UNC students hanging around. And he said, I remember he said, you know, the Republicans have their conventions and the Democrats have their conventions to Cal Palace.

We have ours in the Cal pasture. It says, but at least we know what we're stepping in and how high to roll our pant legs. And everybody thought, that's pretty funny, you know? Yeah, that's right. And actually, it was not a hate-filled event like you would have thought it was sort of embarrassing more than anything else. But that was why I thought, this is over. This is like something from a hundred years ago. Yeah. And I never thought it would, you know, be back with of engines.

But that is the thing about the clan is, it's, it's like, it's this insidious virus. Yeah. Or think that it was like, it was semi-comical when it was started. And it came serious. And then it was, they thought they erad-comical when it was started and it became serious and then they thought they eradicated it, but there was a little, and then it goes through these, these like herpes, you know, it just never goes away. Yeah.

I remember my father was a police detective so he would get the sign to these different divisions and he worked in the hate crimes division for him. I was a kid. And I remember he took me to this sort of community meeting once where they had asked him to speak about, maybe there had been a hate crime in the neighborhoods, and I forget what it was.

But he was saying that one of the ways that these groups recruit is like they would go into a high school or a public park or something. And they would graffiti on the walls like kill whity, fuck white people. They would write racial slurs against white people. And that's how they would seed, like sort of people go, what is this? And so they would create a kind of a defensiveness. It's almost like, what is it,

a false flag, is that what they call it? Hitler does this, right? Like, you write about it and trust me, I'm lying, right? Creating a sort of a sensational thing to get people to react to it. Yeah. And so that's how they would drive recruitment in the areas is then they would make white people feel persecuted. And so I always remember that. And then I just saw like in South Africa, some university, someone had written all these things on and it's I saw it first as a news story that someone had written all this

stuff. And then a few weeks later, they catch the culprit and it turns out it's this racist apartheid that's doing it. And you realize also just like how timeless in a sense, the ways in which, I don't wanna say good, but ordinary people are caught up in these movements or they're exploited by these movements by the same kind of fundamental triggers or human weaknesses.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, which are also indelible. They never go away. The trick always works. Yes. Yes. How do we make it? Somebody is the end again. Yeah, somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Right. It's like, you know, shingles, like you have it. You have it in your body and then you get exposed to something and it re-triggers you. Yeah. Right. And I know what I want to ask you about re-repending about something. One of the things they talk about in Videnta that we were talking about before is like that what they call, what I would call resistance, what somebody would call the monkey mind, you

know, the crazy, and that stuff, they just call the mind. That's the source of all sort of negative stuff. And what they would call, then there's a level and everything above the mind called what they call the intellect. And this is sort of like Marcus Aurelius in a way where the whole goal of Videnta is to live in the intellect and not, you know, and rise above this.

Do you, is there in stoicism, a parallel to that? Yeah, there, the, the, you're ruling reason or your rational center, um, marks the realist calls it, uh, in one of the translations, it's rendered as the command center. All right. If you were talking about the gladiator and the arena today, yes. Yes. And so yeah, you have this, the gladiator in the arena today. Yes. And so, yeah, you have this, you have this sort of, the, oh, this happened. So, I think this,

right? But then, wise people or, you know, smart people have cultivated the ability to sort of check that against this thing. Yeah. Is that really true? Which is really what Robert Green's philosophy is about too, right? Sure. Getting to that level zoom back to the 30,000. Yeah. Yeah. Like a therapist, you'll tell something to a therapist that you think, and then a therapist will go, is that true? You know, why do you think that?

What makes you think that? So the skill is to do that for yourself. Do you think everyone thinks? You know, like these kind of questions that get you to realize, oh, this is just a thing that I made up. This is just my unconscious system operating under a stimuli or a trigger or whatever.

And sometimes that's the right one. Sometimes your mind is, as we said, you have this idea, this calling to do something and your mind is saying, well, that won't work or what about this and then actually you should kind of follow that sort of deeper, you know, instinct. But I think more often than not,

it's about sort of, I don't know, someone wronged me. I must seek my vengeance, you know, is that actually the right way to do it? And that where we get ourselves in trouble, it's where we get ourselves in trouble is not just where we as individuals respond that way, but where something happens at such a profoundly shocking way that everyone but when something happens at such a profoundly shocking way that everyone is in locks that really work out like Trump is sort of a master instigator. You know at creating that sort of virus thing you were talking about that people are all gonna sort of react out of the amygdala whatever it is. And I suppose journaling I'm not a journal or but is a way of Getting to that level of intellect where you do it for yourself, you know What do I really think you know what happened today? What's uh?

You know I when you're putting what journaling is fundamentally is putting your thoughts up for review It's it's it's interrogating and myself a shit to think this type of thing Meditation is a form of that. I think going for walks is a way to do where you're having to sit with those thoughts a little bit. And the socratic method is this, right? Like, what about this? Oh, so you mean this?

And as you play that out, you realize it's not as sound of footing as your emotional sense would have you believe. So I think that's what you think about how important it would be for someone like Mark's to be doing that in meditations. He, whatever he wants, he can do. Yeah. Like there's a moment where Hadrian, his predecessor, gets angry and he just grabs the pen and just stabs it in the eye of a secretary. Like he's so obnoxious, just what the fuck is wrong with you? Right? And nobody, like, no consequences. You can't get impeached, you know, you can do whatever you want. And so Marcus trying to not be like that, but knowing that he could need Tiberius or Nero, he could do whatever he wants. I think the journaling practice of meditations

that notes to himself is the process by which he filters out the intrusive thoughts or the destructive urges. And we all need that. Yeah. And society needs some mechanism by which it does. Yeah. This is what leadership is, but this is also what elders are for and literature is for. I mean, I think again, you go back to the Greeks like this is what the the tragedy is there to make you go, oh, yeah, or the oracle. You go to the oracle and the oracle gives you this riddle and it forces you to actually think about what you're doing and why you're doing it.

You know, well, we need you. This is one of my pet feeds. We need in America is the practice of ostracism like they used to have ancient Athens. You know, for our audience, let me tell us about this out here. They used to do once a year in ancient Athens, they would have an ostracism. And what it meant was everybody would vote, and there would be one person in the society

that they would then exile for 10 years. Because they thought it was for the good of the, if somebody got too much power, somebody was too much of a pain in the ass, whatever it was. And it was interesting in that, not only was it, there was not so much appropriate in attaching this, like they didn't confiscate the guy's property.

In a way, it was sort of an honor in a kind of a sense. And a lot of times, some of these guys that would take the 10 years, they would travel around the world and go to various, you know, go to the pharaohs in Egypt and gain knowledge into all that sort of stuff. But what they would, but it got somebody out of the city for 10 years. And I can certainly think of at least one person.

And we would love to ostracize right now. Well, yeah, I mean, you think the American system is predicated on the idea that if you lose multiple elections, if you are criminally investigated for dozens of felonies, if you have been impeached twice, if you have been revealed in the court proceedings to have been an inveterate liar and fraud and flanderer and sexual abuser, you know, all things that are now factual statements about Trump who I've viscerally disliked from the beginning, but like the idea is

you would leave in shame. Aaron Burr is probably the only similar American. Aaron Burr and maybe Jefferson Davis. So the only two people that kind of reached that level. You know, Jefferson Davis tries to flee and actually Lincoln's plan before he's assassinated, he goes, if he were to accidentally make it to Cuba, that'd be all right with me.

He realizes that he needs to go with Aaron Burr, had South and goes to explore and sort of wraps up his days that way. But we don't have a strong discharge method. It's supposed to be the founders wrongly assumed that character and the sort of a social cohesion, a shared sense of values would make it impossible for someone or someone so humiliated and so repudiated to continue to show their face. But I would argue we were up against the next essential threat, the second that he managed

to walk on that second debate stage after the access Hollywood agency. Yeah, yeah. I know Billy Bush actually, he read the Daily Stone in his own ex-so, and he was, he wasn't the one doing it, but he was humiliating. He sent him into a whole spiral of self-examination and questioning and it collapsed his marriage.

And he had to do all a bunch of stuff, right? But for Trump, his superpower is that he could get up in front of 70 million people and go, yeah. And you can't. It's the whole mega superpower of shamelessness. That's what it is. The founding fathers thought that there would be shame. People would feel shame. But if you don't feel shame, you just stay there and you say, Hey, three strikes, I'm not out. Yes. Throw it again. I'm not leaving. You know, and then it calls the bluff of the system. Yeah, it does. And the system terrorism, you know, the system really doesn't have a way to

enforce the bluff. You know, like, yeah, with Jackson tells us a Supreme Court, you enforce it. And they go, yeah, we don't really have a way to do that. The whole system relies on voluntary effort. And so in that way, he's Shakespearean or belongs, maybe even in the Greek or the Roman place where you have, he's so bigger than all these human vices in every way that the this the rules designed to contain ordinary humans even what they would call men of ambition. It can't no longer apply. Yeah. There's nothing. Yeah. There's no

yeah. So we need ostracism. I gotta tell you once I'm sure you know this story but I'll tell you. Yeah. There's there was one character or a person, an ancient man named Aristides. And he was called Aristides the Just. It was a very super honorable guy. So the way ostracism came from the word Ostracon, which was a potchard, they would break a potchard apart, and you would write the name of whoever you wanted to

ostracize them, and throw it into a big jaw. So supposedly, an Athenian guy from the country, a farmer who didn't know how to write, it was that day when they were, and he came up to Aristides on the street, and he said, I got to write, would you help me write the name? And he said, sure, so, he said, Aristides.

So the guy, so he writes his own name, and the guy says, thanks a lot, and Aristides says to to him just for curiosity Why do you why do you want to ask this guy? He says they're always call him Arasdadi's adjust and I'm just tired of hearing that shit So mega existed even then what and as the just he is obligated to participate Yeah in his own removal, but he respects the, maybe the subject of the story, is he respects the system enough, even though it calls for his head. Yeah, yeah. There's a Stowec named Agrippinus, who is sort of a foil of Nero.

And he, you know, he's asked if he wants to attend this Nero's party by this other philosopher who's sort of like, should I go? Should I not go? They all hate Nero. And he goes, yeah, you should go. And he goes, why should I go? And he's like, because you thought about going. For me, it's not even a question. So it's inevitable he would find himself, you know, in Nero's crosshair. He's brought up on these Trump charges.

He's working. He knows they're deciding his fate. They're casting the votes or whatever. The Senate rubber stamps whatever Nero wants. So he's working out, you know, as he's waiting for the, the, the input to come in. And it comes in and they say, um, you've been exiled. And he goes, and my property, and they say, you know, you get to keep your property. And he says, very well, we shall have our lunch on the road. And then he goes, he just accepts, he accepts the fate. And then there's another stoic named, I'm Rutilius Rufus, who's sort of the only honest official in sort of pre-seasers' room. And the idea in Rome was that you would get a political job, not because you wanted to be of service at that time, but because it was the way to get rich.

And you wanted to get sent to one of the provinces which you would proceed to loot. You would come back to Rome, a rich man. Just like today. You would, yeah, you wonder, someone so enters Congress with a net worth of $200,000 and 12 years later, they have $32 million and you're, how does this work? So the idea was you would go and loot and come back and then you would throw the games, you would start to throw this money around and then you would run for higher up. So, Rutilius Rufus is sent somewhere at Smirna or Asia, somewhere like this.

And he's not interested in corruption. He wants to do a good job. Put aside the ethics of colonialism, he does a good job and he's a good governor, which immediately runs him afoul of all the lower-level officials who also got this posting for their their their uh, looting. He's like Sarpico. Yeah exactly exactly. He's he's getting in the way of the not honest. His honesty is troublesome brother other people. So they bring him up on charges of corruption, right? They frame him for the one thing he would not do. And you know, he's he's sent to trial and he refuses to utter a word in his defense. Cicero begs him, he says,

you got to fight and he says, you know, Socrates didn't fight. I'll take, I'll take, he wants it to be an indictment of the system. And so it's the, you know, it's the big trial, everyone's watching. The full, a farcical nature of all of it is, is, you know, unavoidable. It's a show trial, everyone knows it. And the sentence comes down, he's, he's to be exiled. But there's one mercy. They know that what they're doing is wrong. So they offer him one mercy, which is, they won't kill him. It's exile. And he gets to choose where he's going to be exiled.

So you know where he chooses? No. The province he was brought up on Trumbo. Where the people the province he was brought up on Trondor Trondor, where the people accept him with open arms because he was the only honest official of that story. That's a great story. And it's the idea that the stoic is supposed to be the last honest man that you do the right thing, whether they love you for it or hate you for it,

and you should probably steal yourself in advance for the fact that they will hate you for it. Yeah. I was thinking when you were starting to tell a story, how would he get executed? Yes. I know he's going to get executed one way or another. Yes. I wasn't he, somebody's mentor or tutor, Routilius Rufus.

Yeah. Rousticus was Marcus Rufus. Oh, that's what it was. I knew it had an RU at the start of the name, yeah. Yes. But the argument, like, this is happening, the generation or so before Julius Caesar and Cato and the clad, so there's this great book by Mike Duncan

called The Storm Before The Storm. And he says, it's wrong to think of the republic simply collapsing because Caesar made it so. It's a steady decline of a collapse of norms. People who could have stood up and done did something but didn't. It's the widespread acceptance of political violence. It's the rule of the mob. This is what is setting in motion,

you know, the inevitability of us, Caesar. Not Caesar. You know, Caesar obviously has choices along the way, but if Caesar had not been Caesar, somebody else would have been Caesar. And there were people who tried before Caesar. There's the Catalan conspiracy and all this, but it's a very haunting book that I both recommend

reading until people don't read it if you want to continue in your feel good now even today. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus replacing conventional fleets. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy. Everyone leaves a legacy.

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Binge and Tire seasons of, add free on Amazon Music. All listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Should we talk about this a bit? Yeah. What did you, I mean, I have come to love the daily format. And so I'm excited to have this on my desk, because I like to sort of alternate between different ones. But how is writing for it for you? Did you write them one a day, or did you write a bunch and a rope?

I wrote it just almost like a work of fiction, you know, where I definitely thought that I wanted to start, I wanted the book to be, since it is a one day, you know, in a row thing, that somebody that was going to start a project, like write a novel or write some kind of long form thing, that they could start and we're, and we're going to have to deal with all forms of resistance the to deal with all forms of resistance along the way, all forms of self-sabotage. To start like a day one and kind of address the first chapter in here, the first day is called Resistance Wakes Up With Me.

And it's like when people ask me, when do you first experience that sort of thing? And I say, as soon as I open my eyes, so it was something that on your first day, you could start there. And then it's sort of the middle of this book is all about use it. You were just saying, you don't have act two horrors, but everybody else does, you know, and all of the panic that you have in the middle of work. And then it takes it through to the end where the sort of the big question at the end is, what if you never succeed at all? What if you're doing all, you know? And then it's- You're right and it doesn't work.

Addresses that kind of issue of like writing or any form of art, any form of creativity as a practice, as a noble practice. And so I just thought that everything I've written in my various, you know, turning pro, do the work, all those things, I want to try to bring it all together in one book that you could start a day one and go all the way to day 365, and it would guide you through and would make sense in, as a cohesive piece of thing also, I wanted to cite, you know, my stuff is in two silos, the stuff I write. There's an award of art stuff about creative process, and then there's my kind of ancient

history fiction. And the two really are the same, because there are ones about the external war, ones about it, internal war. So in here, I take a bunch of passages from Gates of Fire and from the Lion's Gate about Israel, you know, and all sort of war themed stuff and bring that into this internal battle situation. So that I wanted to do too to get sort of a whole thing across everything that I've done. Is that why you did it as like day 266?

You did it on days, like the daily still is April 8th. I did it. I rooted it in dates, in months, but yours, you were thinking about it more as a year journey. Like if somebody picks up the book on April 4th, I don't want to think, oh, shit, I can't start this until, you know, January 1st. So day one is whenever you start, you know,

that was my theory. The number of emails I have gotten in the last seven years, when people go, I just got the daily stuff. What day should I start? Almost makes me wish that I did it that way just so I wouldn't get that email anymore. But it's like it says in the intro. Literally three paragraphs. The idea is you start on the date that you're on and you go around because the idea is you're supposed to keep doing it. Like the goal, like the the first thing you're supposed to do when you you actually have some more days, but when you get today, 365, you have a bonus week, or when you get to 366, if it happens to be a

leap year, the idea should be, and then the next day, you start the next one, because it's supposed to be like, I've now had people who have gone through the daily stoic for seven consecutive years. They should. And I've had to do a leather a leather reading because they don't hold up that well. You can't carry a book with you every day for seven years. One thing I did want to say before I forget this is the illustrations in here also about Victor Juhas, who you worked with. He did. I give my partner Sean Coyne great credit

for turning me on to Vic. Vic is a great illustrator. Yeah. So you did it at the boy it would be king and then the Reptidus book. Yeah. Yeah. Vic is great.

But there is something about doing loops that I've read, Tolstoy's calendar of wisdom, four or five times gone through. And every time I go, how did I miss this book? Yeah, right. How did I miss this the last time? Yeah, it's because that day, that wasn't what I needed to hear. And maybe that day for three consecutive years,

it wasn't. And then, as they say, when the student is ready to teach her a few years, that same thing, now it resonates, because I brought it an experience, or I have an openness, or it somehow, even though it wasn't intentional for that moment, it's perfect for that moment.

Yeah. And the other thing I've tried to do in here is like make it work in a sequence. So it isn't like just a, you know, that day seven, day eight, day nine, day ten are all actually about the same thing. It's all carrying the same process forward. So that it isn't just a random, you know, like your horoscope in the newspaper. Yes, yeah, exactly. They're, they're, they're building, although the chances of someone reading it every day, you know, no one's going to be perfect. So that's also part of the process of coming back is you're probably not going to miss the same days,

right? So you come back and you realize you're your vacation, you left it at home so you missed these eight days. But now it's exactly what you need it. Yeah. And then there's the other crazy serendipity thing that a lot of times like you were just saying that day somehow your horoscope pops up and it's exactly what you need to hear. I hope that's the case. Well, that happens with the daily stoke email. So every day, so I finished the daily stoke and then every day for the subsequent seven years I've done this email. And, which I subscribe to every day. It means a lot. It's only like three things that I subscribe to. That's one of them. I love that. Yeah. Well, it's my it's my favorite thing to do. I do a parenting version of parenting. I'm amazing. I'm amazed that you do it every single day.

Well, I don't do it every day. Like today I wrote four. I wrote two daily dads and two daily stills. And those, I write them in the doc and then the editor, Kristen, for daily stoking, daily dad grabs them, edits them, sets them, adds links to them, and then sets them for me to record them

for the podcast version. And then she decides, the schedule, hey, you've been talking about this theme too much, so we're going to space them out. In October, we're doing a lot about Momentumori, because Halloween, she kind of picks the rhythm of how she wants it to go. But I'll get emails from friends usually, because I try not to get emails from lots of people who get them, it would drive me. I couldn't handle the daily, I can't have a conversation with everyone who likes me today.

But anyways, I'll get an email from a friend, but this is absolutely perfect for what I, how did you know? And it's like, I wrote that, 76 days ago. That has been sitting there. I didn't know that 76 days ago. That has been sitting there. I didn't know that three days before, this event would happen,

or I certainly didn't know what you were going through. But that is what is so cool about literature, but also art is that you're making something that means something to you in this moment. And then it's like this time release capsule, you know, and it's kind of this slow, and then it's exactly perfect for some person at a moment down there. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have entries that you think are your favorites or that you that mean the most to you? Well, there's one in there called prostitution.

Okay. And I don't know, I don't know where it is, it's halfway through, but yeah, I do have a bunch of things like that. The one about prostitution is I just say that what I sort of you gave me this thought, you know that what I do is I or in each, each daily entry is a or in each daily entry is at the top of the chapters of things like from a particular work of mine, from the War of Art from Gates of Fire, and then the bottom half is my sort of commentary on that. And so in this one, it was, I think the top art

is something like to work in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution, you know? And then I say underneath that, something the effect of that I've sold out a million times. I've worked for Mr. Charlie, you know, I've done things like wouldn't tell my mother about, but I was a whore to do it and I can't excuse myself in any way. And that's one of my, that's one of my favorite ones of that. But I hope that something like that, you know, hits somebody and encourages them in the moment, you know. But there are some things you wouldn't do for money, I imagine, creatively, right?

There are, but I certainly, yeah, there are. There are a lot for me, but certainly I used to work in advertising, you know, used to work for Dove Charnier or whatever his name was. We've all worked for the man, you know, and we have to forgive ourselves, I suppose. As long as you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, I think it works. You know what I mean? As long as you're... You've got to keep body and soul together one way or another. Yes. Yes. You know, you need the money or whatever to then be creatively free.

The problem is you actually get it and then you don't want to give it up. Do you know what I mean? Like, do I never had that? Nobody wants to take the step down. Right? Like, you think, I guess what I'm saying is you think being financially successful would make a person would raise your risk tolerance because you can afford to. But you actually tend to be more risk-aversed. That's true, you get spoiled by it. Although I never made enough money that I had to worry about that kind of stuff. But actually, I think about it this way.

It's not just money, though. It's like you think having a hit, right? And you've had many hits that it would allow you to then comfortably do whatever you want creatively. But actually, no, now you have this thing that you measure yourself against, right? You go, oh, this sold this many copies. Are you, like, I love this book. I've been raving about it, deliver me from nowhere about Bruce Presley making Nebraska. You read it? Yeah, in fact, I got it because if you I haven't read it yet, just to think about what a punk

courageous move it was to come off born to run. His first sort of hit album, his first charting album, his first world tour, and then to go for my next act, world tour and then to go for my next act, I want to release these acoustic songs I recorded in my bathroom that are dark and disturbing and weird and utterly unviable commercially. That's my next project. Yeah. Good for him. Good God. Good God.

Good God. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, that wasn't, maybe he couldn't have done it after born in the USA, but he could do it. He was just successful enough that he felt comfortable going in that direction, but maybe not so successful that he had to look over the edge that he was jumping. I'm gonna, I just want to say one thing for whatever this is worth, that since I actually started writing novels that were coming from my heart, I've never done that.

Really? Yeah, I've never written one for money or any, you know, because I never worked that way for me. You know, when something was a success, it was a complete surprise to me. But I, I, you know, before that, I did what I had to do. But since then, I have never done that. So you didn't have any sophomore jitters after the Legend of Bagger Vance. Your first novel comes out. It sells. It gets turned into a movie. There was no, I got to top that. It was totally artistically. You had, I'm not saying you made the wrong

treat. You had nothing, you know, no wrestling about what to do. Not once, however, because if you think about, like the second book was Gates of Fire for me. And as I was writing it, I thought, who's going to possibly be interested in this? This is as uncommercial in a place that nobody can pronounce, spell, Americans hate stories about anybody but Americans. So it's a whole, nobody's going to like this book. So I just thought, I was just seized by the story.

I just had to tell it. So no, because I've no, I've never really said, oh, I'm going to sell out this time, you know, but by that time, I was so old, you know, that I felt like, what's the point, you know, to do anything other than what I want to do? It is with with the obstacles the way. In retrospect, people think things that are different, right? So like, with the obstacles the way it ended people think things that are different, right? So like with the obstacles the way it ended up being much, it ended up dwarfing the success of my previous two books. Oh really? And then obviously I've written other ones and it's become sort of a niche that I'm now identified with. So people think, oh, he must have done that for money. Like that was you were doing that

because I was seeking a bigger market, right? But in reality, it's actually a much scarier thing. Like, okay, Taylor Swift is now the biggest musician in the world. So you might, someone who's into country music, Michael, oh, she was into country and she sold out by becoming a pop star, but in fact, to leave the niche in which you are comfortably insconced and which people want you and are willing to pay

for you to do more of, it's actually the scary thing. Only if it works out and it dwarfs what you did in the past, then it seems like you sold out or jump ship. When I went to my publisher and said, I want to write a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, they were not like, thankfully you've decided to get commercially ambitious. And they were at least willing to back me, you know, Adrian did by that book. Yeah. But you can imagine the market was not like, yeah, yeah.

We are eagerly anticipating this work of philosophy from an Uncredential college dropout in his early 20s, you know, it was an uphill battle every step of the way So you you really do have to have the interior motivation that says I want to do this because it's important to me It I always say the only reason to write a book or to do something is because you can't not do it I agree completely factored. I think if you don't have that thing, you're in the realm of prostitution. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but you probably won't work. But that's the only motivation that I think that's pure, that's valid, and that is coming from a sole level. Well, that goes to what we started with, so it's a good place to wrap up,

but that is work with attachment. You are doing it not because you want to, not because you are indifferent to how it does, but you think it'll mean something to you, it'll fulfill you in some way, you think it's important, you think it'll help people, you're doing it because you think it's justified by an outcome, which is, as you said,

not only not guaranteed, most things don't work. Like most 90% of things fail. So you might as well do it because you want to do it and because you are motivated to do it and you enjoy doing it. To do it only for the promise of the potential upside, which is almost certainly not coming, is a bad bet. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you,

but I've hardly ever done a book that I had a contract for. It's almost always been a spec thing for me. So I have to sort of ask myself, if I don't make any money at all on this, am I still okay with myself doing it? And I have to look at the bank account and say, can I afford it, you know? But that's, you know, I think, I don't know, that's the way I work. It's funny when I had, I wrote the obstacles away. I'd sold, you go as the enemy,

which was in the middle of writing, and my agent Steve Hanson, one came to me and said, you should do this a book of a daily devotional of stochism. And he's like, I'll do the translations. I was like, what? You'll do the translations. I didn't even know that he spoke Greek or that. And he goes, it'll be your bestselling book. And I said, sure, Steve. That sounds like something an agent would say.

So that I, when he said that, it seemed so preposterously untrue. It did not, it was not part of my calculus in any way because I could not conceive of how that could be true. And certainly the publisher didn't buy it either because the advance was like not very much. Certainly not very much compared to what it ultimately ended up selling. Like it, you know, and so I wrote it because I was captivated by the idea, by the challenge. It seemed like an interesting puzzle. Like how do you break a philosophy down into 365 pieces? And I was also interested in solving this problem, which happened to me a lot, which is people go, where should I start

with the stoics? And it wasn't like, oh, you should start with my book. The idea was, it was problematic to say it marks really or epictetus or Santa, because maybe that wasn't the right, like, I wanted a sample, a survey sample of it. So I was motivated by that equation and I really got into it. And I got so into it that I'm still doing it to this day. I'm still doing it.

And then the irony is that Steve ended up being right. Like like two million copies later, he was right. But again, I don't know how there was any evidence that that would have been true. I have no idea. I didn't believe it. And that's the important thing. Yeah. Ironically, I didn't believe it. And that's why I did it. I don't know if I would have done it. I don't, if that's why I was doing it. I don't think, I think a different book would have emerged. 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. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Psst. Hey you.

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