The Daily Stoic - Steven Pressfield Painted Porch Book Tour

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

📚 Grab a copy of Steven Pressfield's books at The Painted Porch.Books mentioned in this episode:Pontius Pilot (Ann Wroe)Asylum (William Seabrook)Conundrum (Jan Morris)Gift from the Sea (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition (Ulysses Grant)✉️ 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.

Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And we are really excited about our latest season because we are talking about someone very, very special. You're so sweet. A fashion icon. Well, actually, just put this on. A beautiful woman. Your words, not mine. Someone who came out of Croydon and took the world by storm. Kate Anna, don't tell them where I live. A muse, a mother, and a supermodel who defined the 90s. I don't remember doing the last one. Wow, Emily, not you.

Obviously, I mean Kate Moss. Oh, I always get us confused. Because you're both so small. How dare you. We are going to dive back into Kate's 90s heyday and her insatiable desire to say yes to absolutely everything life has to offer. The parties, the Hollywood heartthrobs, the rockstar bad boys, have I said parties?

You did mention the parties, but saying yes to excess comes at a price as Kate spirals out of control and risks losing everything she's worked for. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad free on Wandery Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wandery app. Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island? Well, that's exactly what Jane, Phil, and their three kids did when they traded their English home

for a tropical island they bought online. But paradise has its secrets and family life is about to take a terrifying turn. You don't fire at people in that area without some kind of consequence. And he says, yes, ma'am, he's dead. There's pure cold-blooded terror running through me. From Wondery, I'm Alice Levine, and this is The Price of Paradise, the real-life story of an island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder.

Follow The Price of Paradise wherever you get your podcasts, or binge the entire season right now on Wondry Plus. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here, recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope

this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. ["The Daily Stoke"] Happy Mother's Day, everyone. This is a special Sunday episode of the Daily Stoke podcast,

because I wanted to talk about Marcus Aurelius' mother. Stoicism is obviously a very male-centric, the history of Stoicism is obviously a very male-centric thing. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk about where Marcus learned to be Marcus, and the answer is that he learned from his mother. Marcus Aurelius' biographers all talk about how Marcus

was very much a product of his mentors and tutors. We've talked about his adopted father and his predecessor Antoninus. We've talked about his rhetoric teacher, Cornelius Fronto. We've talked about the stoic teacher who introduced him to Epictetus, Junius Rusticus. And while all three of these were crucial influences, they didn't enter Marcus' life until he was already chosen

as the successor to the throne at age 17. Before then, there was really only one person who shaped who Marcus became. And it wasn't his birth father who died when Marcus was just three. It was his mother. In Meditations, Marcus writes how often he thinks about his mother.

And when he does, how he thinks about her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability, he says, not only to not do wrong, but even to conceive of doing it, the simple way that she lived and not in the least like the rich. So where did Marcus get his profound and his lifelong commitment to doing the right thing,

to kindness, to charity, to justice? It was from her. Only one thing is important," Marcus Aurelius writes elsewhere in Meditations, to behave throughout your life towards the liars and crooks around you with kindness, honesty, and justice. That was him channeling his mom. And today on Mother's Day, it's worth celebrating that. For all our debates about how to do good in the world, about what rules create a fair system, Marcus learned from his mother

that doing the right thing was pretty simple. You have to be kind. You have to avoid the corruption that can follow wealth and power. You have to keep your heart from hardening. You have to do what's right, not just because there are consequences for doing wrong, but because it's inconceivable for you

to be the kind of person who would try to get away with something. We do what's right because it's right and we should do it right now. And anyways, look, that's the idea behind the new book, Right Thing Right Now. Good values, good character, good deeds. There's a whole chapter about Mark Surilis and this idea of wanting to be a good man, which I think he learned from his mother, not just a great man. And I hope that you check out the book. You can pre-order it now. It's got awesome stories from Harry S. Truman in Florida, Snytingale, Frank Serpico, Sojourner Truth, Cato the Younger, role models who like Mark Sturulius' mom, sort of both shame and inspire us. And we've got a bunch

of awesome pre-order bonuses. I'll send you the opening chapter, the intro to the book right now. You can get a video message from me on how to read the book, what you're gonna get out of it. And then you can get signed and numbered first editions at dailystoic.com slash justice. You can even get signed manuscript pages

from the writing of the book. Plus we can all have dinner together and talk about these very ideas and grab that. Discipline is destiny, the sign one sold out and same with courage is calling. So grab one now at dailystoic.com slash justice. I'm celebrating Mother's Day with my wife and my in-laws. I hope you are having a great Mother's Day also.

I appreciate all the men and women who listen to Daily Stoic every day. And I'm doing my best to live up to Marcus Riles's mom's example, Marcus Riles's example, and the example from my own family. And I hope you do the same. One of my prized possessions in my office, it's so prized, I don't know why I'm saying this

because I'm worried someone will break it and steal it, but don't do that. But hanging on the wall on the other side, like right across from where I write is a framed manuscript page, the final page of the first manuscript of Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield's amazing book about the Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans.

And I got that last page, cause I know Stephen, but I gave him the idea. He was like, hey, I'm trying to promote my next book and I don't know what I should do. Got any ideas? And he had been telling me earlier how he had just found the manuscript of Gates of Fire, which he'd written on a typewriter

this is how long ago the book came out. And I said, you know what'd be cool? What if you came up with a thing where if people pre-ordered a certain number of copies, they could get one of those manuscript pages. And he was like, I love the idea, I'm absolutely gonna do it. Couple of months later, he told me he was doing it.

And he said, I'd like to give, you can pick any page for giving me the idea. And I was like, I want the last page of Gates of Fire, because that's the one that has the famous poem at the end about how, hey, stranger passing by, tell the Spartans here obedient to their laws we lie. It's the epitaph to the sacrifice that these 300 Spartans made,

not just to their fellow Spartans, their fellow Greeks, but all of Western civilization, which was saved from being conquered by Xerxes and what was then sort of Eastern despotism. It's one of my favorite possessions. I love it. And I gave him the idea and then I stole my own idea because for Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, and now, right thing right now, the books in the Virtue series, that's what I've been doing. If you buy five copies of those books, you could only do it for the first two

when it was in the pre-order phase. And now that's what we're doing for right thing right now. If you pre-order it, you can grab this at dailystor.com.com. If you pre-order the book, you pre-order five copies of the book, you can get a signed manuscript page. Like the pages from the first drafts that I was doing,

then later when it got designed by the publisher and you do what's called the first pass pages, then the second pass pages. These are pages I'm doing notes on. Mine from Steven doesn't have like his handwriting on it. Each one of these drafts I'm making changes on that I'm sending it back to the publisher, sending it back to me.

Even the audio book, which I just recorded in the Paint and Port Studio, I was making changes. So you can get not just a signed manuscript page, but signed manuscript pages with, that were actually used in the production. You can see me making changes, tweaking things, adding sentences. If you want that, just grab it at dailystewick.com

slash justice. Eventually we'll run out, because I only put notes on so many of the pages, so grab those while you can. Why am I telling this story? I'm telling this story because I wanted to give you a little special Steven Pressfield episode. So when we do the Daily Stoic podcast,

basically we sit and talk with the guests, and then we were just finding afterwards, the guests wanted to just sort of walk through the bookstore and I'd be like, oh, have you read this book? Have you read this book? And I just recommend a bunch of my favorite books, and we sort of shoot the shit and talk.

And so finally we just say, hey, why don't we just carry mics and just record this? And it's a great conversation. You can be a fly on the wall for it and hopefully get some book recommendations. And I wanted to do this with Stephen because Stephen came to the Painted Porch before it was the Painted Porch.

I don't even think we had a name for it yet. I just bought the buildings and he came in to have this conversation about how he would market his books. And so we were hanging out at a restaurant up the street and then I was giving him a tour and telling him what I was planning to do for this. So it was sort of a full circle moment.

And anyways, he's one of my favorite people. I love seeing him. And that's what I wanted to bring you in today's episode. Here's me and Steven Pressfield walking around the painted porch, telling him a bunch of my favorite books. I give all the guests on the show, like a handful of books. They walk out with books I think they should walk out with. And it started out, oh, yeah, just take this one.

And then now the manager of the bookstore is like, you have to tell me which books you give the guests because we thought we had a shoplifting problem, but really the problem was I was being too you have to tell me which books you give the guests because we're one, we thought we had a shoplifting problem, but really the problem was I was being too generous with the guests. So I won't tell you all the books that I recommend in the episode right now, because you should just listen to it,

but I will link to them in today's show notes if you want links to them. But I absolutely love talking to Steven Pressfield and that's what I'm gonna do. We not only do the bookstore tour, but then I show my office, which had been built out. And I hope you like this chat with me and Steven Pressfield walking around the painted porch bookstore,

which you're welcome to come to anytime people come in and they know that they'll all be in the middle of one of these tours. So there's always someone cool at the bookstore to check out as well. Thanks to Steven, one of my absolute favorite writers. If you haven't read the War of Art, Gates of Fire, and any of Steven's books,

I don't know what you're doing with your life. He probably signed some copies while he was there. We sell out of them pretty fast. We might still have some, so check those out at paintedporch.com. I want to give you this Pontius Pilate book. I think you're gonna love it. Thank you. I want to give you this Pontius Pilate book. This one's incredible. You got to do this one.

Thank you. I swear there ain't no movie out of this. It would be an incredible movie. And you already got Deliver Me From Nowhere. You just haven't read it, right? Yeah, I got that, yeah. Okay. You've already got Deliver Me From Nowhere. You just haven't read it, right? Yeah, I got that, yeah. OK. How do you decide which books you're doing? It's either ones I read and loved,

or they're ones that Sam read and loved. So that's the test. Which actually makes it hard, because that book, when it was, I think it was successful when it came out, but it's like 30 years old. So I bought it and we talked about it and then it totally wiped the publisher, like it wiped, the publisher was probably selling 10 copies a month or something for like 10 years.

And then we sold so many, they had to do another printing. So and then we bought all those. So that's always cool when you take a thing that wasn't super well known or hasn't been moving and then it just blows out the sales trajectory. That's my favorite. I've done that with a couple books. I don't know if we have a...

We have this book Asylum that's really good. I never know where they are. Oh, have you read this book Asylum that's really good? I never know where they are. Oh, have you read this book? Do you know who Jan Morris is, the historian? No. Oh. So she was in the British Army and then was the news correspondent who climbed Everest with Hillary and then Wrote these three books These three like a history of the British Empire. It's like incredible and then in

1965 so somewhere in there Basically comes to, she'd known it since she was a kid, but that she's trans. And then so she gets gender reassignment surgery. But in like the 60s, like when it was like, and then- Before it was cool. Before it was cool. Before it was cool.

But it's like an incredible memoir from like one of this all-time badass. I love reading books about people who went through something that people are talking about now, but because when they experience it, when they wrote about it, there's no political baggage, there's no controversy, there's no phobia about it, it just is. So, like during COVID, you would read about

the Spanish flu, right? So you understand what's happening now through something that doesn't have any of the, that's like one of my all time favorite books. I just read it like maybe a year ago and it blew my mind, it's really, really good. I think you'd like that one. And I'm gonna give you one more.

If I can find asylum. I might have to have the mail in the suitcase. Oh, you don't have a suitcase? We'll send him to you. That's fine. I'll send him to you. I'll send him to you. I'm looking for the book Asylum.

That's another one. So this guy's name's William Seabrook. He was like the biggest journalist in the world in the 20s. But he's an alcoholic. And so that's not a thing. Like there was a pre-AA. And so he checks himself into an insane asylum

to treat his alcoholism. And he writes about the whole thing. And it's like this fascinating memoir of this person struggling with this thing, kind of like that, that nobody understands is a thing. It's called Asylum. Yeah. He was this crazy travel journalist.

He's the one who brought the word zombie to America. He wrote all these books that were, you know, you read them and you're like, oh, this book sold 200,000 copies in 1917. And you've never heard of it. But yeah, Asylum's another one that when I found it and started talking about it, there were basically no copies left.

And then this publisher brought it back in print. And then we seemed to not be able to keep it in stock. So maybe I'll just give you those two. Oh, have you read on? That book is incredible. So good. Yeah, he's already read it. He has a new one that's very good also.

This one. Have you read this one, Stephen? Thank you. That's Lindbergh's wife. I've read that a long time ago. Oh, you did? It was a huge book. I haven't read it in years.

Oh, it sold like 5 million copies or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it's beautiful. Yeah. You live in Melbourne. You like it. Would you mind sending this to me in the mail? Yeah, that's what I came to see. Oh yeah, yeah. But it's beautiful. Yeah. You live in Melbourne, you like it. Would you mind sending this to me in the mail? Yeah, of course.

Yeah, that's what we're here for. And you'll sign these? Yes. Write these? Write these? Just sign them and then we'll uh. Do we have a chair? Yes, do we have a chair.

Two important things. So we're doing that. Can you bring that chair over? Oh, you want to do that one? You spoke, you. We'll see, I guess. They definitely are. They definitely are. Yeah. Oh, you want to do that one? We'll see, I guess.

Do you think about that when you're writing books? Did anyone be interested in that? Oh yeah, all the time. I always figure nobody's going to be interested in this. I'm always amazed when they are. The memoirs of U.S. Grant, have you ever heard that? Yes, uh-huh. And he talks about Bastrop.

He talks about when he was here fighting the Mexican War. No, no, that's, there's, I think, I think there's a battle in Bastrop. I think there's a Mexico Bastrop. There might be. Oh, well, what did he say was in Texas? I think it was Texas. Really?

I mean, there was no battle. He was talking. I just talked about, you know, that they were here with the army, you know, on their way to fight Montezuma, whatever it was. Yeah. So Bastrop was of going concern. I got to show you two things. But I just read this book.

It's, I just read this book, wish you would look. It's called Grant's Final Victory. And it's about the last year of his life, when he's dying of cancer. So first off, you know what happens to him at the end, right? I don't. He basically, so after the war, he becomes, he joins this Wall Street firm,

and he puts his entire fortune in it, his son is running it, he's working with this guy named Ferdinand Ward, who's basically like the Bernie Madoff of his day, but he doesn't know it. So Grant becomes obscenely rich and then loses all of it. And so he's a broken man. He has to hawk his war mementos to J.P. Morgan,

just to live. And so he starts to think about writing his memoirs. Then he has this problem with his tongue, he keeps ignoring it, and then he finds out he's dying of tongue cancer. And so he realizes that he's going to leave his family destitute. So he starts to think of writing his memoirs. And so he starts to write the memoirs. He's thinking about it. And then Mark Twain hears that he's doing this and comes by to say hi and just ask him about the contract and he basically

realizes that Grant's about to get ripped off again and Twain is like I'll give you the money and we'll self-publish it and you can take 50% of the profits and sets him up to do like a self-publishing deal. He realizes that this publishing company doesn't know what they're doing. And so Grant basically dies like three days after he writes the memoirs and then they make the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars because Grant, because Mark Twain had set them up so well. But the memoirs are incredible, right? They're so good and people thought they were so good people thought Mark Twain wrote them.

Because he'd been involved. But yeah, it's maybe the greatest American military memoir ever. I mean the reason I read it was because of Mattis. So I'm talking to him and he said, what's a great thing to read? And he said Matt. Well I'll take you upstairs, I have a first edition of them.

Which you gotta see. And then I have, my other moment is I have a ticket to his funeral. Really? Yeah. I don't think it's that serious. A ticket to his funeral.

Yeah. It's pretty much. ["The Last Supper"] I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpann. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Cleopatra.

An iconic life full of romances, sieges and tragedy. But who was the real Cleopatra? It feels like her story has been told by others with their own agenda for centuries. But her legacy is enduring. And so we're going to dive into how her story has been told by others with their own agenda for centuries. But her legacy is enduring and so we're going to dive into how her story has evolved all the way up to today. I am so excited to talk about Cleopatra Peeta. She is an icon. She's the most famous woman in antiquity.

It's got to be up there with the most famous woman of all time. But I think there's a huge gap between how familiar people are with the idea of her compared to what they actually know about her life and character. So for Pyramids, Cleopatra and Cleopatra's Nose, follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wandery Plus. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Suriti. And we are the hosts of Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. From Idaho student killings, the Delphi murders, and our recent rundown of the Murdoch Saga.

Last year, we also started a second weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist? Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus short hand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music

or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Which edition of Grant's Memoirs are you reading? Which ones do you get? It's called the Personal Memoirs of... I don't know, it's a... I just wonder, I read a real quality version. I have like a Library of America version which is really good. If you had it here, I could tell you it's the same one. Okay, I'll show you.

This is my other one. I got a free French buy. Wow. It looks like there's word on it. I don't know what... Wow. Probably coffee. Yeah. Maybe it was Charles de Gaulle's coffee. This is a great little room right here. It's my favorite room. That's definitely not one of them. No, no, this is the first edition that I read. I read one like this from Library America.. Wow. But, isn't that crazy? So, what Twain's idea was that they sell them door to door by subscription.

That's how his books were selling. So, he was like, look, if you go with them, they'll slap it in a few bookstores. And he's like, the way for this book to really work is you gotta send salespeople out all over the country, pre-selling them by subscription. So, that was his whole plan. And that's why it became this huge book. And that's also why Grant's family was provided

for from this thing. Wow. I had no clue that anybody ever sold anything like that. Yeah. That's how books, you know, like back in the day, you know, this is, this is like probably 1887, 88. So there wasn't like big retail stores. So they would have to, they would, someone would come, if you lived in Bastrop, Texas in 1888, right? Like, how did you buy stuff? You had catalogs or someone would come to your door

and be like selling pots and pans. You would be on these different subscriptions. So that's how Mem was. And then this is, this is his, it's a ticket to his funeral. Wow. Now where did you come by this? Wow.

On an auction. A ticket to his funeral. August 4th. I'd love to go but I can't afford it. Well I imagine as a dignitary, you know, like, it was probably a pretty hot ticket to get. Political funerals are a big deal now, right? Like, you don't just allow anyone to treat. Yeah, I guess so.

But I didn't know you could buy a ticket. I thought you had to be Hillary Clinton or something. Maybe it was for, I don't know if you paid for it, but I think it's, maybe it was Friends and Family. There's a really terrible movie that I love called Midway. I don't know if you've seen the most recent Midway. This is just a very small thing. But one of the, they make a point in the movie, Admiral Yamamoto, whichever one it is,

is reading the memoirs of US Grant. In the movie? Yeah. I'm not sure why they make a point of this, but it's a big, you know, the camera zooms in on it. Sherman's memoirs are also incredible. Yeah, that's another thing. Ah, that's Sherman, yeah.

I also bought that book because of Mattis. Oh, really? Yeah, which I have not read yet. They're both incredible? Yeah. Which I have not read yet. They're both incredible. Yeah. And Grant, when you see Grant, you realize all this stuff about Grant being an idiot or a butcher or a drunk. You realize he's a genius. Just this sort of a simple, straightforward genius. It's incredible. There's a scene, I think I tell it in the book I just sent you, in the Justice book, I tell the story about.

Both of them talk about it in their memoirs. When Grant is sent to take Vicksburg, he has the plan. He says, we're going to run the gunboats. He has this complicated plan. And basically, Sherman's like, it's a terrible idea. It won't work. It's gonna end in disaster, we can't do it. And Grant's like, okay.

And Sherman goes back to his tent and he goes, I don't think he understands me. I'm gonna lay out my objections in writing so he can really understand. And he sends Grant this letter and Grant gets the letter, takes it seriously, but decides it's the right thing to do. And then of course, Grant does take Vicksburg, and it's the turning point of the war,

and it sends Grant on his path to ultimately take over the army of the Potomac. And so nobody remembers, even the next day, or like a week later something this foreign news correspondent is there and Grant comes over and he hears Sherman talking to him that to the reporter and he goes I just want you to know I thought it was a bad idea and I sent Grant a letter all the credit goes to Grant he was like he wasn't trying to say I told you so he you so, he was trying to make it clear

that Grant was the genius and there was no shared credit. And then when Grant is writing his memoirs, Sherman would come check on him because he lived in New York in the New York Times. He knows Grant and he knows that almost certainly Grant won't mention this. So he digs up the letter and the telegram and sends it to him again just to say,

you better include this in your memoir that you were right and I was wrong. And that was- And does he? Yeah, and that to me embodies their friendship and their collaboration because technically, even then, Sherman outrakes Grant. And so he could have,

and you know all the Civil War generals are constantly stabbing each other in the back, but Sherman is so loyal to Grant that even when he disagrees and he's proven wrong, always thinking about his... Good guy. Wasn't Vicksburg like a heavy, heavy, heavy casualties on it? It's kind of a disaster, but they won anyway.

That's Shiloh. Shiloh is the one that goes... Vicksburg is this slow, methodical siege, and then they take like 10,000 prisoners. It's probably the... it's the moment that the Civil War is lost, but then they fight for another two years. Like, the South, if they were at all rational, would have surrendered. Actually, Gettysburg doesn't matter at all, and once they lose the Mississippi River, the war is over. They just don't know it, and they can't accept it. Well, it's sort of interesting. I haven't gotten to this point yet in the memoirs, was my great grandfather fought in on the campaign to, in the Civil War, on gunboats to retake

Texas. Really? So he was on the same rivers that Grant was on. Yeah. The Red River, the Arkansas River, wherever the hell that was. Well, it's weird you read it and all these Navy guys are involved. You don't really get how the Navy's involved. And then you realize, oh, the rivers were just as

dangerous as the ocean at that point. And the ocean was how you traveled the, or the rivers were how you traveled the United States. So yeah, Vicksburg is effectively a naval battle. What Grant does is he sends the boats down. Vicksburg is on these bluffs overlooking the river. And so Grant, going with the current, sends them down past the gun batter. So they have to sort of go past this blast of gunfire, knowing that once they get past, they can't go back the other direction. So then it's kind of a burn the boats behind you moment where once he does it,

then they come up from the other side. But yeah, there's all these great naval battles. Yeah. In rivers. Yeah. And I guess the interesting thing was, at least when I was reading about this, was that what happens is the rivers would drop

and the gunboats would be stuck. Yes. And the Confederates would just, you know, just wail on them. They were like, you know, ironclads, right? But the sharpshooters putting bullets right through the little holes in the side, you know? Well, I have another book for you. I'll give it to you. Man, I'm coming out of here with things I could never finish.

No, and not only... I love this whole place up here, Ryan. Oh, you've got Walker Percy here. I think he showed me up here, Ryan. Oh yeah, Walker Pershing, I think he showed me that before. Yeah. Yes. The river would flood and there was, you know, it was like this, there was all these sunken things that sink your boat at any moment.

One of the plans for the campaign at Vicksburg is he wonders if he can dig it, like the river has this bend in it, right? And Vicksburg is at the bend in the river. And so he wonders if he starts to dig a channel, like at the top of the bend, will enough water come through the channel that it will just reroute the river?

So at one point, that's his plan. He sends his thousands of men and they start just trying to redirect the whole Mississippi River like something out of ancient warfare. And it almost works. But they don't have, like today that would have worked if they'd had tractors and dump trucks and stuff.

But yeah, he tries to re-route the Mississippi River. There's this amazing, there's this guy named Lee Sandlin. There's this guy named Lee Sandlin, he wrote a book called Vic and River about the Mississippi River in that era. I'll send you this one too. Beginning in the 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, brings to life a place where the river pilots brush elbows with future presidents and religious visionaries share passages with thieves It's totally changes your understanding They haven't done movies about this whole stuff. Yeah about yeah, I know Sherman or grant or what I you know He's very good. Can you do that? I know grants the grant story is incredible

It's because the reason there's no grant movie is because the lost cause bullshit like our Grant's story is incredible. The reason there's no Grant movie is because of the lost cause bullshit. Like our understanding of Grant is all basically Southern racism. Yeah, they would never sell a Southern movie. Southern movies, yeah. Yeah, Southern movie theaters. Yeah.

And only slowly now do we understand and appreciate him. I mean, we talked about the Klan in our interview. He's the one, he basically sets up the Department of Justice to go after the Klan. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Because there was no Department of Justice.

There was no federal, how do you deal with a multi-state criminal organization designed to deprive Americans of their rights to vote, especially when the southern government, state governments are tacitly condoning what they're doing. And so then 100 years later, this is the exact same problem that Kennedy and Johnson have to deal with because they realize, oh, like I just read this book,

Three Lives from Mississippi, about the murder of those three civil rights workers. Like, there's, murder is not a federal crime. So how did, but the state police and the local police are complicit in the murders. So how does the government investigate and prosecute? It's the same thing. This is basically FBI is,

comes a little bit of a quick. And the same fight is going on today, right? Sure. It's nuts. Well, it was amazing to see all million use. And anything else. Thanks for having me, Ryan. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke store.

You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The obstacles away, you go as the enemy, stillness is the key. The leather-bound edition of the Daily Stoke store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The obstacles away, you go as the enemy. Stillness is the key. The leather-bound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Guy Raz's How I Built This is a podcast where each week he talks to the founders behind the world's biggest companies to learn the real stories of how they built them. In each episode, you hear these entrepreneurs really go into their story and Guy is an incredible interviewer. He doesn't just dance around the surface. He into their story. And Guy is an incredible interviewer. He doesn't just dance around the surface. He has real questions,

because he himself is an entrepreneur. He's built this huge show and this huge company. In a recent episode, they talked to the founder of Liquid Death, that crazy water company that's become this billion dollar brand. Follow the show on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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