Steven Pressfield On Work Without Attachments (Part 1)

0:00I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock and he transferred him from the car seat to the bed and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a 8 Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is 8 Sleep's best product. I've used 8 Sleep for many years now and it's just totally transformed how I sleep, made me sleep better, made my wife sleep better. It's amazing. So basically, Eight Sleep is this topper that goes over your mattress. It can heat and cool both sides separately.

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1:19But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash daily stoic. You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact.

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3:01Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. 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.

4:14guest, Tom Segura. It's actually right down the street from right down the highway, really, from the bookstore. It's called Sushi by Scratch. Unreal good. Unreal good. It's like this, it's this tiny little 10 seat sushi restaurant. They only do like three shows basically a day. Anyways, super, super good. And then I'm back to give this to the producer just in time for it to go live. So bear with me. But this episode doesn't need much in the way of an introduction because the guest is the most popular repeat guest in the history of the show. He's been on the most times out of anyone. And yet I still feel like there's more to talk about, even though we did another two hours just a week or so ago.

5:01By the way, this will be a two-parter, so you get part two next week. But the one and only Stephen Pressfield. Stephen came to the Painted Porch right when we were beginning, like before we'd even started the demo of what set up the construction. So he did it in what's now the record store. You can see a video of it on YouTube. He and I just sat down and talked. We didn't even have heat in the building yet. It was quite freezing, if I'm remembering correctly. Then we did some remote during the pandemic. Then we did out back on the porch of the painted porch. Then we did a walking episode down along Town Lake in Austin.

5:38And then we may have done one other inside the bookstore. And anyways, this was his first trip to the studio to talk about a book, which I'll tell you more about the story of in the intro for part two. All you need to know, Steven Pressfield has a new book out called The Daily Pressfield. It's a page a day book of the best of Steven Pressfield. You can buy it at stevenpressfield.com. I will be carrying it in the painted porch as well, but he's got this high-end package gift edition available. You can go to stephenpressfield.com. It's really good. It's really good. This conversation is really good.

6:12If you haven't read The War of Art, Do the Work, Turning Pro, Gates of Fire, Government Cheese, Tides of War, A Man at Arms, what are you even doing with your life? Stephen Pressfield is the best. We had a great conversation in the studio. Check out The Daily Pressfield. I'll tell you more about it in part two. But for now, here's the first part of my conversation with the one and only Stephen Pressfield. i gotta say ryan it's an amazing thing you've done here you know i gotta give you well thank you major props i was i was thinking that you basically saw all the different things because you came right after we got the building when it was totally empty yeah and then we did one outside yeah i think and then we did one walking in austin yeah and then we did some inside and And then now this.

7:00Yeah. We didn't even know this would be possible. This building would be possible when we were doing the other two. But all the buildings were built together at the same time. Did you own this part before? We got the first two. And then this was third. This was a barbershop. Ah. And it had been a barbershop for 100 years. Ah, wow. And then. Four generations of grandfathers. Yes. uh it had been in barbershop for a very long time so then um it came on so we did this and we're gonna we haven't quite figured out what we're gonna do with it but studio here office space back there but yeah what i was telling you inside it's sort of a thing that you don't want to think about but it's like when you ever if you ever like open a business if you're taking over the space from someone by definition you're stepping into the shoes not in 100 % of the case but the vast majority of cases, it didn't work for someone before you.

7:59Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there's vibes there. There's a reason, right? It's foot traffic. It's something. Yeah. It's like you're, you're marrying a freshly divorced person. Yeah. And you're, you don't want to think about why someone was like, I don't want to be with them anymore. And yet there are so many instances where a space has failed over and over and then suddenly it works. Yes. You know? Well, and, And that is kind of a, like, if you think about how often it doesn't work, it's very intimidating. But then if you really start to parse why they didn't work, you know, it's, you start to see some space in there.

8:35But then that's a truism in publishing where people go, oh, books about X don't work. Yeah, right. You know, because they've had failure after failure in that space. And then you want to do it. And they're like, of course, it's not going to work for you. But if you've actually taken the time to think about what is not wrong with the other ones, but why it didn't resonate, maybe you have. Yeah. And sometimes the times come around. Yes. And people are ready for whatever it is that didn't work before. Yes. Yes. Yeah. When I was doing The Daily Dad, I went to my publisher with it maybe four or five years ago.

9:16I really wanted to do it. And my publisher just said, Adrian, who you know, just said, parenting books don't sell. And I was like, well, first off, that's just objectively not true. Some of the best-selling books of all time are parenting books. But also, why is that? And then you have to really think about why that is. And then you have to address that in how you do it. Yeah. And also, I think Adrian and a lot of other people reflectively say no to shit. Yes. They are. Yes. I don't blame them, but they do. Well, their job is to say no. Yeah. And their job is also not to say yes to anything that will get them fired.

9:57Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So it's like you think they're in the risk-taking business, but actually they're in the risk mitigation business. Yes. And so they don't want to say yes to anything that in retrospect makes them look dumb. Yeah. Yeah. I confess I have that same mechanism in my head. You know, when I have an idea of something, my first response is always, you know, so I'm just, I'm a believer that the goddess knows and I don't, you know, and I got to follow that. Yeah. Sometimes why you are called to do a thing is really the only thing that you are called to do the thing is what matters.

10:39Yeah. Not, and sometimes you get called to do a thing that's very commercially viable and sometimes you're not. Yeah. are we on camera yeah yeah we're going this is good this is great yeah start um also i don't think i've ever had a book dedicated to people well you deserve it you're the one that gave me the idea for this book it was a while ago wasn't it i feel like yeah this has been sitting around because of you know the ups and downs at my little publishing company you know yeah it's been sitting around for quite a while you know probably three years ago or something like that you know i was having breakfast with mark manson about a week or two ago and he said he said you told him the same thing you said hey you should do a book i did that's like a calendar book you know 65 tell everybody i don't i actually i remember telling you i don't remember telling him but i remember telling you because i wanted to read it because like i tend to reread the war of art or turning pro or one of your books like when i'm about to start a project.

11:39It's just like a nice sort of headspace to get into. And then, I mean, I've read them so many times. I was just like, you know, it'd be cool if this was like an ongoing thing. Yeah. Every time you blog about that or you do an Instagram post about that, I get a little spike. So thank you. Yeah. Well, so the other thing is, do you remember last time we talked, I was checking my phone all the time because I was bidding on something? Ah, yes, that's right. It was, what's her name's desk, right? This is it? The desk sold for$60 ,000. Joan Didion's desk. Joan Didion. The desk sold for$60 ,000, so I did not purchase the desk.

12:16But I did buy this table. From her? From her. From her estate. So this table and the chairs, and then my desk chair and the chair that I sit at and right in now is hers. Wow. Wow. So do you, I mean, do you believe like Jack Carr, my friend Jack Carr, he has bought Hemingway's typewriter. Really? You know, he doesn't use it, but he has it. Yeah. So, I mean, do you believe that there are like vibes in this table that somehow translate? I think so. I was, there's this comedian named Christina P and she was like, Joan Didion menstruated in this chair. And I was That's not what I was thinking about when I got it.

12:59But sometimes I go back and forth. One, should I sit in the chair or not? Is it okay to use the chair as a daily chair? And I say yes. I sit every day in Jodinian's chair and write. Because I feel like, although I am putting wear and tear over what was a very expensive antique, it's actually the most even she would probably look down on my writing she's very fancy but she it to me it's the way to do honor to the thing to have it as um a relic is not an insult but it's it's uh to there's to me sitting in it and working in it is yeah that's the way to honor of its purpose and of the tradition. Someday people will be buying your chairs, right?

13:56And they'll, you know, it'll be bidding on eBay for that. Well, I was, we had this chair in our house and I was like, why did we keep this? And then I realized I've written like seven books in this chair. And then I was like, should we get rid of it? And my wife was like, we should get rid of it. And I was like, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't get rid of it, which is probably the egotistical thing to think. But I do think there are vibes in it. I think there's vibes in a lot of stuff. And I have like on my desk, different like little, little totems or items that mean stuff to me. Most of them are very, very old.

14:34Like what's an example? What do you have? I have a little Roman. Epictetus's handcuffs. I'll tell you, I'll tell you. So I have a little Roman pen knife, like a knife. And like, sometimes I can, you can like, I can cut open the tape of a package with a 2 ,000-year-old knife. So I have this little knife. I have – what do I have? Oh, I have a rock. It's like a stone tool. It's like a rock that a caveman like chipped away and turned into like a hand weapon. Where did you get that? How was it authenticated? It matters that I believe the description. It's like when I bought a priest of the original cross when I was in Jerusalem.

15:18Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's a racket of old relics. Yeah. And they found, you know, there's like 10 different claims to the same thing. Because all those churches have that, you know, this is St. Peter's finger. We add them all up. There's 22 fingers. It doesn't work. But sort of that, I have a little memo from Truman where Truman is getting a note from his secretary. It's like, dear Mr. President, should I say because of too many requests, the president must decline? And then Truman underlined that and wrote the proper response is underlined HST. And so it's like a little reminder to say no to things.

16:02But to think like Truman signed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like a more meaning. I could just write no, but there's that. And then I have on my wall, I have the last page from the typewritten manuscript of Gates of Fire signed by the author. Ah, wow. That's really valuable. Yeah, I have a bunch of those little totems too. What do you have? Well, one, I have an acorn from Thermopylae, from not really the battlefield because there was so much sedimentation that's buried. but it's like a scrub oak hillside so i just picked up and actually i have two of them and i gave one to a dear friend of mine jim gantt i don't know if he's the special forces major and he has a theory to change the subject slightly he says when you give a gift to somebody it should hurt you it should be something where you go oh god i hate to part for this you know so i gave him that because he really deserved it but um yeah i've got a bunch of little things i I have a coin of Alexander the Great, you know, which that's amazing to me that it still exists.

17:08And in fact, it wasn't even that expensive. It was like$125. And you're like, really? You know, so I have that. I have various, a friend of mine has sent me sand from Iwo Jima. Wow. Things like that. And he just sent me something from Bella Wood, World War I. So I've got a bunch of those things. And I definitely believe it's like a little shrine that I have. If you ever visit, you know, I'll show you, you know, but I definitely believe that it puts out some kind of vibes, you know? I have one that I wear when I do talks. I have a signet ring from a Roman soldier that's still wearable, like a copper signet ring.

17:50And I just try to think about the person who wore this, you know, 1800 years ago that we have the same size fingers and the signet ring is still a style of jewelry that people wear it is amazing you know i could i could dip it and seal something if i wanted yeah think of what that ring went through and what it's off only it could talk yeah and then and then uh on my mirror in my bathroom it's got like a little sort of thing you can set stuff on I have a chunk of a tombstone that I bought on Etsy or something, you know, probably a cemetery got torn apart or a gravestone fell apart and they replaced it.

18:35And it's just a chunk of a tombstone. And the only word on it, it just says dad. Ah, wow. And it's just kind of a memento mori that I think about. You know, I see it, you know, a couple of times a day. Yeah. Somehow it's important for this stuff. You can call it superstition, but it reinforces stuff that you want to reinforce, particularly over time, something thousands of years old. Well, there's a story about Epictetus. So Epictetus has this little shrine in his house to the gods, and he has this golden or silver lamp. And he's in bed, and he hears someone rustling. Someone has broken into his house.

19:17And so, you know, he makes his way down the hallway and a thief has broken in and is in the process of stealing the lamp and he sees him running away with the lamp. And Epictetus says, I'm a fool. You can only lose what you have tomorrow. I will go and buy an earthenware lamp. And his point was that he had this thing that he didn't want stolen because it was valuable. It was the problem was him, not the thief. Right. So he buys a cheaper lamp the next day. You know, it's kind of a Diogenes the Cynic kind of thing. like have fewer possessions and you're less vulnerable to fortune or misfortune.

19:51And so, so that's Epictetus, that's his lesson. But then after he dies, an admirer of Epictetus spends thousands of dollars to buy, to buy the earthenware lamp, which is a stoic lesson, I guess you could say against this table and the mementos and the, the rings and this stuff. I think as long as you're, as long as you don't, to me, as long as you're not holding them up as these priceless relics that, you know, you keep in a safe somewhere, maybe you can kind of split the difference. Yeah. I can't think of any more relics than I have. That's it for me. No, don't you? I think last time we talked, didn't you have, don't you have like a World War II bomber jacket?

20:35I do. I don't really, I don't really think of that as like a real, I use it all the time, you know? Right. I look like Joe Biden when I wear it, you know? But isn't it cool when you have stuff that's old, but then it still has its telos. Like it's still just what it is. Yeah. It still works. Yeah. Exactly. There's something almost, there's something I think sacred in that, almost respectful in it, in that you're putting it to the use for which it was made. Yeah. And you have to have tremendous respect. Every time I put it on, I think, you know, who wore this thing and whatever it was. And I was, I saw a documentary about, I'm sure you know this, I never did, about, I guess it was the Ninth Air Force, the first, the Air Force that were flying missions over Germany.

21:22And the reason for those bomber jackets was it got to be like 10 below zero. Yeah. And, you know, there was no insulation, air conditioning or anything like that. And they were up there for like 10 hours, five hours one way, five hours back. And it was cold. Yeah. you know so and does yours have a map sewn in it yeah it does yeah yeah that also the idea of like let's sew in the lining a map so if you get shot down yeah you know how to get back and there was other stuff sometimes sewn in there yeah which i don't even know what yeah it was all there's all kinds of stuff in there yeah actually that jacket was a friend of mine's and this is and uh i just admired it and he took it off and gave it to me that's the gift should hurt yeah Yeah, I'm sure it did.

22:07Yeah, but it sure meant a lot to me. It was great, yeah. And there's also, I think, like I have my grandfather's car. It's like a 2000 Cadillac, which has no practical value whatsoever. I've spent way too much money just to keep it operational. I almost never drive it, but it just feel, it's like having it. That's another thing that you can still use, right? Yeah, sure. It still works. Yeah, it's not exactly practical you know for having two young kids but my favorite part is when you get in it's meant for like an old man the stereo raises up it just assumes you've got like a belly you know but I think just having there is this kind of a way to like keep the tradition a lot or the embodiment of the thing going and that's what that means to me anyway you hear that that's not just a Toyota truck.

23:04That's the sound of no crowds, no alerts, no distractions, and no telling what you'll find next. You know, like a detour. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks. Look, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of HelloFresh, right? They're the number one meal kit in America. They make home cooking easier with chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. This fall, they're serving up even more to love. It's not the HelloFresh you remember. It's even better. HelloFresh is bigger. They've doubled their menu. You can choose up to 100 options each week.

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24:27There's no last minute trips to the store. Plus the meals are delicious and easy to make. The best way to cook just got better. Go to HelloFresh.com slash stoic10fm to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. One box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's HelloFresh.com stoic10fm to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life. You know, I wonder there's a question I want to ask you. It's nothing to do with anything we're talking about. How did you originally meet Robert Green and how did that whole sort of mentorship thing i know you were 19 yes what tell me that story um so i read the 48 laws of power when i was in high school and i was like oh they make books like this i think some it's so amazing when you read something and people have this i think with music more often than books probably where you're like i didn't know that was a thing that you could do that that was possible to do that and you're like that so i read that and it was just a it's such an amazing book because it's a synthesis of so many other books it's kind of like a survey course of um ancient ancient history and wisdom so uh i was working for this other writer tucker max who ran robert's website at that time he had kind of like a blog and so tucker worked for robert and i got to tag along to a lunch that they had and uh robert was complaining about needing research assistant and how where was this now the alcove in los felis oh and this is where robert lives now right in los felis yeah yeah and um he was complaining about one terrible research assistant after another and i i remember i when i had read the 48 laws of power one of the things i went and did after i read it was i went and read all the books that were in it like you and And it was this weird exercise for me to go, oh, he just read all these other books.

26:25And these are the things that he took out of those books. So were you at Riverside then? Yes. UC Riverside. Yes. Okay. And so anyways, Robert was complaining about having a needing research assistant and I said, I'll do it. Like, please, you know, basically, like, how can I do it? And so he gave me a shot and it started like that. Ah, and he would just give you assignments and you would - He had me start, I transcribed hours and hours of interviews that he was doing. He was writing this book with 50 Cent. And so he just started sending me files and I would transcribe them. And that was sort of the test of whether, you know, could you give this person a task?

27:08Would they come back with it in a timely way? You know, it's kind of mind-blowing how often, you know, you'll give someone a shot and you'll be like, send this to me by next Tuesday or call me on Friday. And like, they can't even do that. Yeah, right. Just like, hey, be here at this time and we'll talk. And so I think 90 % of it was probably just, can you respond? Yeah. Yeah. And so so I transcribed that stuff at first. And then it was sort of like, how do you respond to feedback, all that. And then then he started giving me books that he thought there might be something in or probably thought there wasn't anything in, but wanted to double check.

27:52So it would be like, read this and tell me if there's anything in here that I might use. And so it just I just sort of worked my way. Now, were you a reader before that or did that influence you to become the reader that you are today? I mean, I was definitely reading a lot. Like I loved reading and I'd fallen in love with reading, but I think that was kind of like, that was graduate school for me, you know, like, cause he was having me read stuff that I would never have otherwise read, which would turn me on to stuff. like i had to go figure out it's funny i was in college when i started and ultimately left but i had never used the library at my college until he had me go he was like i need this and that book wasn't in print anymore or you know like i had to make copies like i just use the library of the college that i was no longer a student at i would use samantha's id card to to do stuff at the library so um i had to figure i had to figure out how to professionalize this yeah what you were doing the hobby that i already had yeah now were there moments when robert actually mentored you or sat down and you know you would ask him something and he would answer it or did it just come sort of organically the way i kind of conceived of it was i thought you know, what, what would somebody pay for Robert's advice?

29:24Like I knew he had all these sort of clients or CEO people that would, you know, give him like a monthly retainer. They'd pay him by the out to like, Hey, I have this problem. What, what is the guy who wrote the 48 laws of power thing? And so the way I thought about it was it's like, I'm earning a certain amount of credits for that. Right. Like, and so every time, you know, I'd, I'd have to go to his house to drop off some papers or something. I'd be like, I'd probably get like one, maybe two questions, you know, and I would go, Hey, you know, what, what's a good book about this? Or I remember one time I was, I was like, how does the index on a book work?

30:05You know, I was like, does the author, like, I just had all these practical questions about publishing, you know, yeah um like like who how do you have to like keep a running tab as you're writing a book like what you mentioned what page it's on you know he's like no the publisher takes care of all that um he didn't tell me later and i didn't realize so later you know the publisher charges you for that but uh uh so i just ask questions and then obviously you know like how do you research books and he walked me through like his system of note cards which i still use to this day so I would just, you know, kind of occasionally pepper in questions and then I would have career or work questions and it kind of just went like that.

30:46So I do tell people, you know, like in retrospect, he was my mentor or I was his apprentice, but that's not, that's not how it does. You know what I mean? Like it, it's not an arranged marriage or, you know, Benjamin Franklin is his dad sells him to like his older brother basically that's how apprenticeships used to go there was like in the way that weddings were a contract and there was a dowry and all you know it's a much more informal organic process you know and only as the years go by is it clear what happened and why it was happening yeah and usually it only counts if it works out like if You go on to do something.

31:32Have we talked at all since I had lunch with him? No. Yeah, I had lunch with him. It probably was like nine months ago or something like that. First time I've ever met him. Yeah. You know, I have tremendous respect for him, you know. Where'd you guys meet? Not in Los Feliz, but at the Beachwood Cafe, Beachwood Canyon. You know where that is in LA? Yeah. And yeah, it was great, you know. How'd it go? Nothing particularly came out of it or anything like that. But for me, it was just a pleasure just to meet him and see him in person. Yeah. What do you like about his stuff? First of all, that he, what he does, it's, and it's like you too.

32:11He invented that shit completely himself. There were no books like that ever. And I also utterly relate to his backstory, which I wish I knew more of. I know he had sort of like mine. He had like a million kind of low ball jobs all over the world in Europe. Right. Yeah. And somehow, out of that, he evolved. And I know that he tried being a screenwriter for a while. He tried being a novelist for a while. And then I guess it was somebody else gave him the idea for 48 Laws of Power, right? And he had an idea for the 48 Laws of Power. And that guy fronted him at Yost Elfers, who's his packager on the first three books.

32:51Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically was like... J-O-O-S-T, right? Yeah. Yeah, basically was like, I'll stake you for a year. Yeah. It was an expensive bargain, but. Yeah, but God bless him. It's like a VC or something. But that's why I admire him, that his odyssey, his internal odyssey is so interesting. Yes. And that how all of a sudden from like being nowhere comes this great thing, right? And now he's on the road and it's like nothing can stop him. Yeah. so yeah yeah the 40 L.A. of the Power was a book long underground yeah the one thing I wish he would do is write you know like I just wrote a memoir as you know government chiefs right where I sort of went back and told my stories I would love to hear his stories you should do that when is he in Europe, where did he meet, who did he meet it would be fascinating I think even just as an artifact for the future how does a guy get to wherever he's got to Yeah, or someone should just interview him and just get, if he doesn't want to write it, somebody needs to get it all on audio or something.

34:00So it's there. Well, I selfishly had him do a daily book also. And he talks a little bit about it in the different parts. But yeah, I think what's also so amazing about Robert is like the 48 Laws of Power should be, Robert should be a tenured professor at the Yale School of whatever, right? Absolutely. I don't know why he isn't. Yeah. For him to do it outside the system, there are not many independent scholars. No, there used to be. But God bless him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know what Robert's like? Robert's like the American equivalent of like, you know, you read these books and it's like some British lord.

34:43Or, you know, like who's just brilliant. Faraday or somebody like that. writes this incredible work of history this multi-volume series on some obscure thing that shouldn't be commercially viable but they're so smart and have independent means so they can do it robert is like the the um middle class american version of that story where yeah without any any sort of university behind him or major publisher behind him he just produces this work of both scholarship and history that is gonna stand for a generation yeah and a lot longer yeah yeah and then and what i also admire about robert's a different for me but like that's all robert does yeah like there he's kind of the last of i mean even for you like you do videos and you do he does some of it now, but, but like you've been blogging for, you know, 10 plus years.

35:46Basically Robert is, you know, there's Robert Caro and a handful of other authors from the old generation that just write books and they disappear for five years as they work on this masterpiece and it comes out and everyone's like, what is this? Um, no, almost nobody gets to do that anymore. Yeah. The other thing I admire him for is the self-doubt that he must have dealt with all along because of what he's setting off on these voyages into terra incognita, right? Where if you asked any commercial editor or publisher, they go, this is going nowhere, you know? And yet he, you know, perseveres and does it, you know?

36:27Yeah. And that's a thing that they don't teach you in school. Well, he's like... School. I think he's five years into a project he thinks is going to take seven years. And so, I mean, that's almost literally an odyssey, but it's this book on the sublime, which should not be commercially viable, just as the laws of human nature should not be. The Laws of Human Nature is a 600-page book about, you know, everything that makes humans both rational and irrational. That should not be a commercially viable book, you know? Yeah. Especially for someone who, again, he's not a New York Times columnist. You know, he doesn't have a TV show.

37:14Yeah. Like, so he just sort of bets on himself and these ideas that he finds, that he feels called to do. Yeah. And obviously he has this enormous fan base that goes from book to book, which is independently his. You know, you talk about going off in the wilderness. Each one of those books is this kind of self-imposed exile into the wilderness that he doesn't know if he's going to come back from. Yeah. And he doesn't know if he's going to be greeted with open arms when he returns. Yeah. And the laws of human nature literally almost killed him. Like two months before it came out, he had a near fatal stroke driving in his car in Los Angeles and like was resuscitated by the paramedics and very easily could not have regained function of his limbs, let alone his mind.

38:05I make up that that was the culmination of years and years of stress of that enormous, stress and strain of that enormous and ambitious project. That's another thing. I would love to ask him, what sustains you through that? Yeah. I have my own answers for that, but I'd really love to hear his answers. Well, knowing both of you, I think your answers are very similar because we just did this event. We did a talk in Seattle and a talk in Los Angeles. and he was he was saying that which i missed i couldn't afford it you didn't tell me it was 81 bucks i think it was no actually i was out of town okay good all i'll accept that yeah yeah he um he was talking i think one of the nights i forget which one but he was saying you know those days where he gets to live with those characters or in that era of history, it's the most wonderful, exciting, rewarding thing in the world.

39:10Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. You know, I was just, I made a new friend recently, a guy named James Beshara. I don't know if you know him. But he's a big student of Vedanta, which I had never really, you know, it's like the Upanishads. It's sort of, you know, adjacent to Hinduism. You know, it's out of India, ancient wisdom. And one of the principles of it, see if I can get this right, is work without attachment is worship. Without attachment to the outcome. Sure. So that I think in some way Robert is doing that. There's another principle like that that says, intense work, meaning for the higher level, not just digging a ditch, is rest.

40:02And that's fascinating too. Yeah. Because I think what it's really about is like when you're doing that work without attachment or intense work, you're on the soul level instead of the ego level. Yeah. And that feeds the soul. And so I would be curious to hear if that rings a bell with him at all, you know, in terms of finding the energy to keep going. It sounds like what you just said sounds exactly like that to me. Well, I think I found that starting a book or starting a project is scary and intimidating. Finishing or being finished with a project is a bit bittersweet or empty or even disorienting.

40:45Being in the depths of the project, like where you're not sure it's coming together, that's hard. But there is this middle period where you're well past having started. You have no idea where you're going to finish, but you're just lost in the day to dayness of it. And you're operating under the momentum of every day stacking on top of itself. That's the most wonderful feeling in the whole world, like being in the middle of a book or in the middle of doing something exciting. you know when i when google thinks that the people who start google think of the early days it's probably not literally the first day and it's not a year ago it's like a couple years in where you're you're starting to sense that this could be something and you're just lost in it and and you know the the the success hasn't come yet the problems that come with success haven't you haven't even gotten any outside feedback at all.

41:45You're just, that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. If it's very fleeting, but that, I think that's what sustains you. And there is something maybe holy about it. I definitely think there is. It's also very scary, you know, for me one day to the next, you know, I really feel like I've got something going, maybe I've hit that point. And each day we'll talk about resistance. Each day is like, you know well maybe i should take off today because we've got you know and then having to force yourself to get over that hump and then doing it you know and having that momentum you're right and the great part about that is that nobody knows about it but you right yes it's like you're in space you're on one in a capsule all by yourself and you're just thinking is this as good as i hope it's going to be and you know that's that is a great feeling or you're not even you're not even thinking about what anyone else would think at all, the ideal state is it's really lighting you up.

42:47You're really excited to get this thing down, to express this, to make this happen. And you're not close enough to the end to be going, are people going to like it? How's it going to do? How many copies is it going to sell? And that's the work without attachment phase. and that's probably the purest expression of any of it. And the longer you can be in that, you know, the better and you should protect it and appreciate it while you're in it. Yeah. That's where I think Robert is, you know, when he's working on something, you know? I'm sure you and I are in that place too, you know? But my books are shorter.

43:29So for me, that's a process measured by days or weeks, right? And for him, I think he gets, you know it it's a big it's a big chunk of time which is probably both scary and all of it's exaggerated right the the the starting phase might be a year for him so that could be a really uncomfortable uh disorienting phase too yeah yeah what is it in the in the gita it's like um you're entitled to the work but not the fruits of the work exactly which is the same thing as of what we were just talking about yeah so the longer you can stay with that idea that like no no getting to do this is the reward yeah that's what i'm excited about that's where i'm putting myself eventually you do have to think about how it's going to do and who's going to like it because it's a commercial world and you're making it for an audience but there is the longer you can stay in that sort of suspended state i'm thinking look at this studio that we're in now this is your little spaceship you know that you've put together here you know it's like a it's like an 11 year old boy's fantasy of what you know something might you know but that's you know this is it this is the spaceship you know yeah well i sometimes feel that too because like there's no windows in here and you know there's no phones and so you talk for an hour or two you come out it's like you know when you go to the movies you get you get to a movie at like four and it's light out then you leave the movie and it's dark and you're just like what happened but that because you just got totally lost in the world.

45:01You were immersed in the thing. You were totally present. Or you cut out the vast majority of external distractions. Anytime you can get that in some sort of productive or creative work environment, that's where the magic happens. Yeah. That's, again, the sort of the thing of intense work equals rest, right? Yes. And another thing I really admire about Robert Greene, because I agree with this completely, is, you know, there are a lot of people on Instagram and are putting out, you know, a cold plunge and, you know, all of that sort of stuff is going to, but Robert's thing is work. Robert's thing is it isn't just you breathe and you walk on the grass and that sort of thing.

45:46It's you have, you have something calls you and you get into it and you fight it and you do it, And that that's the way you find some kind of traction or some sort of soul rest or worship or whatever you want to call it. So I really admire him for that, too, because nobody sells you that. Nobody teaches you that. It's not like anybody gave him a check or anything like that. He just did it. Well, it's almost here. Christmas is just a couple of days away. And maybe you're scrambling. You're like, what should I get my dad? What should I get my mom? I got to get something to my sister. People love showing off pictures of their kids.

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48:15Yeah, well, I think seeing it as a battle, which you both share that idea. As do you. And I also sort of, I always saw Robert as being very monk-like. You know, he's sort of very, like as I was saying, this is all that he does. You know, he's not jetting off to this place or this place. He doesn't live in some big mansion. it's like it's very workmanlike uh solitary is not the right word but but it's workmanlike and it's somewhat removed and yeah he's just doing it yeah and what comes out is spectacular but it's um you know it's not um it's not all in pursuit of some like corporate consultancy or it's the opposite it's really like yeah and i his books are also like works of art like they're beautiful like not only did he invent this sort of writing style but then you know you open the 40 laws of power and there's different colors and the text is arranged in this weird way and and then it just it worked it worked at a level and for a group of people that not only should it not work for like these ancient chinese philosophies mixed with machiavelli mixed with these you know uh middle eastern or middle-aged uh middle ages figures you know all this stuff yeah like not only should that not be uh commercially viable at all like robert's books are um some of the most shoplifted books in publishing and they are the uh some of the most requested and the most banned books in prisons really and so you don't know that you go how do you how do you just write something that's relevant to people experiencing that for whatever reason but to um that that is applicable and usable and you know desire like yeah like he he has taken something again, that should be academic and elite.

50:26And he's not only made it, um, popular, but he's made it accessible to both ends of that spectrum. It is actually encouraging to me that those books have found a market, that there are people that do want to read it. It isn't like he's in a vacuum, you know, and they're not easy to read, you know, it's, it's, uh, you know, some of those stories you You gotta go, you gotta read through them. But it's not like he's, it's not like, oh, he's kind of got this like small following. Like Robert has sold probably between 10 and 20 million books. You know, like not like a couple, like one of the best-selling nonfiction authors alive.

51:07Yeah. And that's incredible. And then to, again, for that to be so spread out demographically, I think is really cool. Yeah, yeah. He's the best. He's one of a kind. There's nobody like him. It's a reminder also, though, that the audience is smarter than people in publishing want to tell themselves he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing about him is like the way he has lived his life, if you look at it from the outside, you would really have to admire it. And yet nobody does it, you know? It's sort of like in the ancient world, people would say the Spartan way, that's the way to live. And yet no other city in the whole world ever copied it because it's too hard.

51:59Yes. Yes, that's true. No, he's the best. But I mean, same with you too. I mean, when you wrote these books that I can't imagine most people in publishing were really excited for historical military fiction. Not in the mid-90s, early 2000s. Actually, they were at the start. I mean, at least once the book came out. Yes. But before it came out, no. But I mean, even now, it's not trendy. Yeah, true. It's very niche-y. Yeah, for sure. It's not what a 36-year-old woman who went to an East Coast liberal arts college and lives in Manhattan enters publishing to be able to champion. You know? Yeah. Like you're not their dream author.

52:58That's for sure. Neither am I. Yeah. this isn't what they would like to be publishing. So there's always this part of the market that is underutilized because they're not, or not under, under spoken to because they're not representative of the people who sit at the gates of whatever the industry is. Yeah.

53:26I was thinking about, I was thinking about, uh i was thinking about your books like they've had this weird life too where you've got generals reading them and then you've got new recruits reading them and then you've got regular people like also something that manages to work on multiple levels which roberts does is the sign i think of something that has some kind of deeper truth to it hmm i hope that's true yeah you know i mean do you does that do you ever think about sort of this the spectrum of people who are able to enjoy gates of fire or the war of art like you have people who have sold hundreds of millions of records that are a fan of the war of art and then you have someone who's literally never produced anything is just thinking about starting that and they can both come to the war of art and take something from them yeah i i don't i don't think about that too much, you know?

54:23Really? I'm just sort of doing it for myself in a way. I don't know. Do you write things that way? I'm certainly not. I don't have like an avatar in mind at all because it always surprises me. The people that read my books are always different than who I thought they would be. No, I'm also surprised. But I've found the more I've thought about Mark's Realist's Meditations, the more I am in awe of it, right? Because in one sense, the book should be inaccessible and incomprehensible to us. Like you have the most powerful man in the world in an empire 2000 years ago who believed preposterous things about where the universe came from and what even their sense of right and wrong.

55:07And, you know, like the Romans were like us and then were utterly not like us. Right. And so and no one was more removed from normal modern life than the emperor of, you know, of Rome. And so you have this man writing to himself in his palace or, you know, on the front lines in this tent at night. And he's writing in Greek to himself. Like he's not attempting to publish anything. That's the remarkable thing about what meditations is. Talk about not having any attachment to the outcome. Yeah. But because he has no attachment to the outcome, he's not thinking whether it could be consumed in any way.

55:50So he's writing in shorthand and he's referencing, you know, he goes, you know, like that time with the customs operator in insert distant province or, you know, he's like that story about Socrates and the coat, you know, and we don't know what he's talking about. He references plays and literature that is lost. It's the only instance of that line from Euripides or whomever. So he's writing in a foreign language to himself 2 ,000 years ago from his incredibly isolated, elevated perch on the top of Roman life. and yet you crack open this book meditations to himself and it's not just oh i get a sense of what he's talking about but he it sounds like he's speaking to you with what you are dealing with right now yeah um in a world where you have an iphone and you're driving a car and there's nuclear weapons yeah and you can travel it's supersonic speed how how does this make sense yet what it is ultimately is the specificity the the the total insularness of it makes it utterly generalizable and relatable he was he was authentically being himself and in that way manages to speak to millions for all time and then you have cicero who's the great speaker of that time, trying to create these works for posterity that basically nobody but the scholars reads or gets anything out of anymore.

57:34How did you originally come upon the meditations? I was at a conference in college. I was writing for my college newspaper. And I went up to the guy afterwards and I said, you seem smart. What books do you recommend? What should I read? Yeah. And he said, I'm reading this guy Epictetus. Maybe you would like Epictetus. And so I went to Amazon and I typed in, you know, Epictetus and it came up, but then also Mark Cirellus came up and I'd seen Gladiator. So I was like, maybe I'll start with that. So I got Meditations. Amazon Prime didn't exist. So like I had to buy some other books and they all came.

58:15I would have read Gates of Fire right around this time also, because I remember buying that on Amazon. And then it got lost and I had to buy it. I remember writing to Amazon customer service to get another copy, which is still the one that I have upstairs in my office. But it just came and I opened this book and it's not ancient philosophy at all. The first passage in meditations, Marcus, is when you wake up this morning, you're gonna meet people who are annoying and obnoxious and frustrating and weird and he just lists you know the sort of perennial you know types of human beings and you go wow like suddenly all the all the distance and all the centuries disappear and it's two humans yeah talking to each other yeah that's an amazing thing when that happens you know yeah when you're reading something from 2 ,500 years ago or something like that.

59:18And you just feel like that flash, right? Right across the centuries. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also something special in meditations in the sense that because he was writing to himself, he says you, he says you could die any moment. He's like, when you have trouble waking up in the morning, say to yourself, I was put here to get up and do things, not to huddle under the covers and stay warm. Since he's having a conversation with himself, the fact that somehow, and we don't know who preserved it and why, the fact that it was preserved and published, it now gives the effect of he's talking to you.

59:57yeah he's talking to himself he's talking to both of us but it's different than than um um your typical book which is addressed to the everybody and thus nobody yeah it's you yeah and you do that in your books you know i mean i first heard of it through jim mattis really when i asked him you know what book like you yeah what book you know marcus aurelius so now i had to now i had to read it because he you know he's got rooms like this you know you know him he's a friend of yours he's like a great great reader and he's read you know and for that to be like his book his number one book but for what he was doing obviously at the level he was at you know four-star marine general going up to baghdad being trump's you know living in that world trying being secretary defense against with that sort of horror that was going on yeah uh i can absolutely see why you know meditations is something that he would just imbibe you know straight uh you know into the bloodstream have you read thomas ricks you know his stuff i have but uh so i just remember the name remind me he wrote first principles which is about the beliefs of the founding fathers he wrote i think fiasco about uh the war in rackets anyways he he he wrote in one of his books he was talking about he's like you can imagine mattis stressed out life or death all this stuff's happening he's dusty and dirty he's thousands of miles from home and he goes into his bag or his tent or reaches into the car and he picks up this book this 2 000 year old book written by a guy also on campaign thousands from trying to center himself calm himself down remind himself of his values yeah and so that is kind of the warrior philosopher tradition and you know so if you're a warrior you relate to that part of marcus maybe a little more if you're an intellectual type you can imagine him you know falling in love with book marcus would would write and read at the coliseum like he had to go watch the games as part of his job today but but but he would he would read there and so instead of watching the gladiators yeah so you can just imagine you know the and then as you imagine thousands of years since people turning to that same book there's kind of this this tradition of of getting out of the moment you're in by the pages of the book so then you can go back to that moment a little wiser and calmer yeah yeah i um i don't think you mind me sharing this so i i i want to give it to you in the bookstore but i've read this i read have you read and have you read ann rose book on pontius pilot no you've never even heard of it it's it's absolutely incredible you would not think that that would be a figure that would be interesting are they making a movie out of this maybe what did i read that like brad pitt was playing Pontius Pilate or something like that.

1:03:08Well, it's an amazing book. And so I sent him this paragraph that I wrote down from that book because she spends a lot of time thinking about Pilate and the fact that he's basically a guy with an undesirable job with a shitty boss, right? He's the boss of one of the most capricious, evil Roman emperors. And so this is this paragraph. He He says, it's not hard to imagine dinner parties in Caesarea in which Pilate's guests visiting from Rome would regale him with blood-soaked stories and sexual details that would make the women cover their ears, while Pilate would listen in the awful sinking knowledge that this was the man to whom he owed his career, from whom he drew his authority, and whose safety he prayed for.

1:03:53doubtless in some sense he could disconnect from the man the man from the office as people under any regime can close their eyes to the personal sins of their rules of their rulers but there may have been times when he could not when amidst the genteel litter of wine beakers chicken bones roses and clowns the prefect of judea would find himself suddenly sickened by the obscenity of his protector so obviously this is a modern the book's maybe 30 years old but she's painting this scene this figure that in this predicament that is uniquely ancient but then utterly modern yeah and uh i sent it to him and i said i wonder if you could relate to this paragraph uh which he of course could.

1:04:40And you just think about kind of the timelessness of the dilemmas and the predicaments that we get ourselves into. And you think of Jesus coming suddenly before this guy who's got to make some decisions. Well, I think about the fact that he's basically a pro-consul in the Roman Empire. That's his job. Well, Seneca writes his letters to his friend lucilius that's lucilius's job in just a different like they're you know they're they're just we we think of these historical moments and figures as being utterly unique as opposed to multiple people were doing the same thing at the same time and then it's just happening over and over again and where we're history is kind of that history is the same thing over and over like there were multiple stands at Thermopylae.

1:05:36Yes. Over and over, even in the modern world. Yeah, exactly. And they will be again. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing new under the sun. It's interesting that I hope people will be interested in this conversation that we're having. You know, this is sort of like a Robert Greene book as well. You know, we're really getting out there into, you know, areas that people would say, does anybody really give a shit about this? You know, but I hope they do. Do you know Tyler Cowen's work? He does Marginal Revolution. He's an economist. He's a really interesting guy. But at the start of his podcast, with a lot of them he does live, he says to the audience, just so you know, this is the conversation I want to have, not the conversation that you want to have.

1:06:17And I think about the podcast that way. And obviously, you have to care about the audience a little bit. But I also find the less you care about the audience, and the more you are just interested in where it goes, and what gets you excited, that tends to be a good proxy for what people find interesting. So I'm interested. Like, do you have any idea how much time has elapsed? No, do you? I do because I can look right there, but it's more time than I would have guessed, which is also a good sign. I tell people like, if you don't lose track of time while you're working, you're probably not doing what you're meant to do.

1:06:55Yeah, I think it's absolutely true. Yeah, it's a great test. Yeah. During the pandemic, obviously there was the surreal experience where you'd be like what day is it again but i think i'm still having that experience but but as a writer that's also that's not a totally new experience you you should lose like the only reason i know is what i'm doing at the gym that day okay because i know it's a different thing each day well it's good to have something that roots you so you don't totally spin off the planet as a creative person but i'm all the time i'll more so on my earlier books but i would i'd you know finish my writing and then i'd go to go to lunch somewhere or whatever and it'd be like it's closed on mondays it's monday you know like i wouldn't of course i knew it's closed on mondays but i just monday sunday thursday friday what's the difference to me you know like how scheduled are your days ryan like today what what do you what will you do after we finish up here uh do you know already i'm basically i wouldn't say i'm done but like i have i have already won you know what i mean i mean you don't have something like scheduled from one to two and two to three and not really i mean i have like the kids have soccer and there's some activity you know there's like that stuff but like this morning you know i got up early i went for a run made the kids lunches i took them to school i wrote for two hours i ate lunch and now i'm here so like i have other responsibilities i have other things you know i have on my to-do list there's you know i have to call the accountant and i have to check in on something and i have to make a payment for i have like some little piddly things like that but i don't have anything that I can't push till tomorrow because I succeeded for the day because I weight the hard slash important stuff up front.

1:08:51I know that's what that's one of your theories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's all kind of it's all kind of gravy from there. That's how I think about it. Yeah. I've sort of I've sort of in recent years I've kind of flipped it around. like i always used to do the really hard stuff first but now i find like that i'm so tired when i'm done with my real work yeah writing interesting that i i don't have the strength to pay checks and pay bill you know yeah do my taxes so i have to so i do that first and then you know then i can but i can clear the decks but does that impact the state of mind that you bring to the work not really i don't know why but it seems seems to work okay i find like life wears me down right so or i get frustrated or distracted it uses a certain amount of willpower to you know call amex on the phone and then hold and then be like i already gave you this paperwork you know or what do you mean like now you have to cancel the card and then i gotta i gotta change the thing on every recurring payment you know like that if if i use up my energy on i would rather be tired when i do that than tired when i sit down to write the daily stoic email for the day somehow i mean it used to be that way for me but somehow flipped around i'm not sure how or why well you've been at this 50 years yeah how has which one of the things i love about writing is it's one of the only profession elite professions that you know compared to sports or being a model or something you know like you can get better at it you get better at it but then also there's not a cliff that you fall off of where they go you can't do it anymore like a musician can play their whole life but you're the chances of you being culturally relevant you know at 52 is less yeah Whereas a writer theoretically can be doing it always and can be doing their best work later, right?

1:11:03Yes. How has it changed for you? I mean, you're one of the people who's been lucky enough to do it a long time. I also started late. Yeah. You know, I was whatever, 52 or 53 when my first book was published. Yeah. So in a way, I'm kind of young from that point of view. So that's 30 plus years. That's 30. You've been a successful working writer for 30 years. Yeah, maybe not quite that long, but yeah. It's measured in decades, not years. I'm a believer in higher dimensions of reality and that we serve those higher dimensions. So as long as they're giving us stuff, we should be able to keep doing it.

1:11:52You know, I mean, when I see, you know, musicians and stuff like that who sort of burn out at a certain point where they were great for a certain time and then they haven't done anything for years. I just say to myself, I just I pray that's not me. You know, but I'm also not trying as hard to be relevant as I might have, you know. But I never really was because I was always picking such odd subjects that if they succeeded at all, it was amazing.

1:12:25Thanks 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. I'll see you next episode. My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner. And honestly, it's my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Around town, it's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded up with gear and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for.

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