Muse

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm about to hop on a plane about, I guess the car should be here in about 25 minutes. And I'm reading this, I'm reading this novel, this bit of historical fiction. I don't want to say what it is yet because I don't know if I like it enough yet. But I do love reading historical fiction. I love it. And one of my all-time favorite writers of historical fiction, probably one of the first great bits of historical fiction I read, and I'm nothing against the Westerns that I read as a kid or whatever, was Steven Pressfield's The Gates of Fire. In fact, I have the last page of the original manuscript signed on my wall, one of my prized possessions. And I think I love that book because, Look, there's things that we talk about, but what fiction does is it shows you, right? That book is honor and courage and shame and sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, greatness. What it means to keep your word, what it means to fail, what it means to care about something, what it means to be committed to something, what it means to be the kind of person that other people can count on. Look, I think all of us need to watch less news, maybe even listen to fewer podcasts, and read more, right? And we need to read more fiction, myself included. I'm not lecturing you. I'm lecturing myself here because a good novel puts you inside of a life, puts you inside of a time, a place. It makes abstract virtues feel real. And you can show the consequences of choice. You can show struggle in a way that a lecturer or a list or even one of my books never could. And I think Steven Pressfield understands this as well as just about anyone. He's one of my writing heroes, not just his novels, Gates of Fire or Man in Arms, Tides of War, The Virtues of War. He has this great new one called The Arcadian. And these are books that I think they're really popular with the military, but with people in all walks of life because they talk about some of that old-fashioned stuff. And Steven Pressfield was out here in Texas recently, and we sat down and we talked about why we should read more novels, especially young men, what fiction can teach us, and why sometimes stories are a better way of carrying the truth than facts alone. He's got an incredible story. I love nonfiction too turning pro put your ass where your heart wants to be the war of art the warrior ethos all this stuff is great he signed copies of many many many of them which you can grab at the painted porch steve doesn't just talk about these things he's lived in a fascinating life he was in the marines he's worked 21 different jobs in 11 states before he got his first novel published he got school he drove tractor trailers he worked in advertising he's a screenwriter he worked on offshore oil rigs picked fruit he's just a lovely guy one of our greats and if you haven't read them maybe start with the new one the arcadian or the classic the

war of art and gates of fire you can follow him on instagram steven underscore pressfield go to stevenpressfield.com and uh read more have the meta in your life read more it'll make you better this year is going to be the 10 year anniversary not just of the daily stoic book but dailystoic.com the email the podcast all that stuff and i don't think we would be standing here 10 years later if it weren't for shopify shopify has been the back end of so many things we've done from the new year new you challenges to the medallions to posters even right now you're going to buy a signed book for me you're going to be checking out through shopify at dailystoic.com or if you're buying something from daily dad there or if you come to the painted porch we even use shopify at point of sale in the store and if you've been sitting on a business idea shopify makes it easy to make that happen you've got everything you need to start selling and shopify handles the setup and the checkout and you can focus on growing the business and they've got all the tools to help you with what you need which is why shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide from household names like mattel and gymshark to small businesses just getting started like daily stoic was not that long ago with shopify nothing stands between your idea and real business so go make it one start your free trial at shopify.com slash stoic that's shopify.com slash stoic to start your free trial so apparently everybody that works for us at the bookstore and daily stoic is uh is using whatnot and i guess i'm out of the loop but once you flip open the app you see why there's something like super exciting about live sales like whoa you can get this right now that they're talking about it right now and the sellers look like they're having fun and you know it's not edited photos and videos like you see it right there in the seller's hands it's like a really cool estate sale or like the coolest fair you've ever been at and that's just like not what the online shopping me.

experience is normally like. Check it out today. Just search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the app store. Download it and you can start selling right away. I was reading someone, they were talking about that young men aren't reading enough fiction, that like sort of muscular, masculine fiction used to be, you know, you have your Hemingways and you had these great sort of larger than life writers, not only was that an aspirational occupation for people, but that the fiction was speaking to what it means to be a man, what it means to be a human being, and that that's not what it is today. Most of the best-selling fiction writers are women, and most of the fiction is written for women. I would put you up as an exception to that, but how do you think about the role of fiction in people's lives?

Wow, that's really interesting. I haven't even thought about that, but it is true. You think about James Jones, you know, from here to eternity or John Irving and all the stuff that he did. And actually that sort of male writer has now really, really fallen into disrepute. It's like, it's a bad thing, right?

I just reread all James Salter's novels. Do you know who that is? Yeah. A fighter pilot who leaves, he has a Russian MiG to his name. Like he leaves the Air Force to be a novelist.

That's not a career trajectory so much anymore. Yeah, it sure isn't. But I certainly think those pieces of fiction were formative for me. Yeah. I mean, now it's like male fiction is sort of like telling the story of your struggle with drug addiction or, you know what I mean?

All the novels are about young novelists living in New York City.

Yeah, really. Or they're serial killers or whatever they are, you know? Yeah. I wonder what that's about. I haven't really thought about that. I mean, I guess it's the masculinity, quote unquote, has been so, you know, whatever, deplatformed that it's almost embarrassing. It's like, for me, writing Gates of Fire and setting a story in ancient Greece with the Spartans, part of the reason I did that was so you could talk about honor with a straight face.

Yes.

If you wrote a contemporary story and some character says something, you know, well, we have to stand, you know, they get laughed out of the room, you know. But yet readers, particularly men and women, too, want that, you know. So to put it in ancient characters' mouths, that kind of dialogue, and written in sort of an archaic format, it works. Finally, you can say something like that. And then people are moved to tears, you know, and people are, you know, so.

Yeah, it's like if you'd written a nonfiction book about honor, that might have sold, even if it was a big hit, it might have sold 50,000 copies or 100,000 copies. but you put it in a novel and it's it's sold millions of copies over it and it would have been very much of its moment right like if you'd written that non-fiction book it would when did you write gates of fire 1998 or six or something it would have a 90s feel yeah you know and you read gates of fire because it's it's not just a novel but it's a novel set in the past it has a timelessness to it that allows it to reach not just a bigger audience but i think as you said reach them in a much more earnest, emotional way.

I think it does, or books like that, you know? Yeah. The idea of, like, when you said writing a book about honor, I mean, it's like I would even dream of it. That would be lame. Yeah, it would be. It couldn't be, yeah.

Forget it. And there'd probably be some imposter syndrome as the author, like, who am I? Yeah, right. Who am I to lecture you?

Unless you're Jim Mattis. He's like the only guy, or, you know, McRaven or somebody like that. That's about the only people who could do it.

I mean, even in my, I don't do fiction exactly, but I try to tell stories about the ideas because it's a way in as opposed to.

Do you ever think you will write fiction someday?

I have a novel idea. I want to tell you about it. Not on camera. Not on camera. It's a weird idea. I was curious about your advice on it. But yeah, the novel as a way of teaching is obviously how we learned most lessons for all of human history. I think you miss something when that goes away.

Yeah, I think, I didn't answer your question, I think, but I definitely believe fiction, not even as teaching. I think it's more than that, you know? I mean, now, of course, we have movies like Star Wars has certainly influenced bazillion people or Harry Potter or something like that. But a novel obviously lets you get into the head of a character or multiple characters. You never could in any other medium other than maybe movies, you know? And, you know, that's what makes people really learn something, I think, you know, really let it sink in. Yeah. Like a legend, like a myth. It's a character. It's a human being. Because then to carry you through the novel, it's usually like the two virtues or values or whatever it is fighting each other out. Who are you rooting for? Who's going to win? What's going to happen? Where's this going to take this person? That's what the novel allows us to do.

And you get involved emotionally, right? You start rooting for somebody. Oh, my God, don't let that happen. You know, that kind of thing. And that's where things sink in. Plus, from my point of view, it's just fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I did this piece a couple of months ago where I wasn't talking about novels so much, but I was talking about some of those poems like Longfellow's A Psalm of Life or Invictus. In the 19th century and 20th century, there were these kind of like even muscular, masculine, like earnest poems about the struggle and the fight. I mean, Kipling's famous, obviously has a lot of racist poems too, but If is such a famous example of like an encapsulation, a distillation of like the values of what you want a young person to do. And like, I don't read a lot of poetry now, but if I walked to the poetry section of a bookstore, that's not what most of the poems would be about. Yeah, I'm sure. Most of them would not be for young men.

Yes. Too bad. It is. By the way, I saw, I don't know, it was on a talk show or something. It was Michael Caine.

Yes.

And he read, did you see this? Yes. When he read that If. Yes. And it was, you know, brilliant. I mean, it brought you to tears, you know?

Oh, man. I had this crazy experience. Anthony Hopkins read a couple of my books. And he would, for a while, he was emailing me. And I told him that I was reading one of these poems to my kids. And he, like, sent me audio of him reading it. When you have a poem and then it's read by some incredible voice, like If by Michael Caine is crazy, there's a bunch of really poems you thought you got emotionally and then a really good voice actor. Yeah, it's amazing. And it just hits you at this whole other level. Yeah. Have you had Anthony Hopkins on the podcast? No. Better get him. I would have him on in two seconds. Yeah, I'm in his memoir. He wrote about one of the exchanges. it was great someone was like you know you're in that can't possibly be real but yeah i just feel like so much modern fiction is like these kind of unlikable anti-heroes or it's like yeah where did these whiny losers yeah yeah you know who are in publishing yeah trying to it's like i don't need to read any more novels about aspiring novelists cheating on their wives in new york city or whatever it is yeah but there's something i think done right there's something earnest about the medium that's very moving but they tend not like yeah you hear about these novels that win these awards and then you look at the sales and you're like sold like 6 000 copies you know it's not even actually speaking to a large audience not that that's always the metric of whether it works or not but like you know your f scott fitzgerald's and your hemingway's and those they were trying to

to speak to people you know and they did i've never quite understood this phenomenon that there are certain writers and movie makers too that are like the darlings of the critics you know and you can never shake shake that in any way yeah and i don't know i don't know what it's it's so it's it's woke yes in some sense yes although i'm not sure you know in a bad sense you know

there's something about like yeah if you read like what the new york times like your novel will sell more copies than most of the books reviewed in the New York Times, most of the novels reviewed in the Times over the next three or four months, right? Because you have an audience, you've done this a long time. I hope so. Yeah. But they would never think to review this novel. Oh, yeah. No chance. And so I do think that does create some of the media backlash and some of the resentment and where it's like the things that is celebrated in the media or in the culture or the elites is not even close to matching what people want and like and know is good yeah but there has

to be kind of a middle area too between sure you know but it's also like the when movie critics write the 12 movies you should see right yes you never heard of any of them right yeah or what

what's nominated for best picture is like a bunch of movies you haven't even heard yeah yeah yeah Obviously, there's a space for discovering great underappreciated things, but there's also something I think about the medium or the culture where the people that are writing novels are almost deliberately not trying to speak to a wide or ordinary audience.

Or the critics that are praising these things are trying to show how smart they are that they get something that you and me don't get, you know? Yeah.

But I think generally people should read more fiction and fiction should reach a larger general audience.

Although I understand why people don't, you know. What do you mean? I think people will say, oh, it's made up. It's not real. I want something that, you know. Yeah. And, you know, it's tough to argue against that. But except made up stuff a lot of times is realer than real. It gets closer to the big truths. Yeah. When it's right, it is. Yes.

It does. And I would put in the middle category, I talk about Plutarch a lot. Like most of what Plutarch tells us is probably not true. Right where you read History of the Peloponnesian War, none of those speeches happened. You mean in Thucydides? Yes. How do you know that? Well, because he wasn't there.

Ah, I mean, the way I heard it was that he went to great pains, if he wasn't there, to talk to people who were there and who were...

What I mean is that there was never a recording of Paracus's funeral oration, right? So what we have is Thucydides' version of it, which I would say gets close or closer to the big T truth, even if it's not the literal recording. And so what I mean is that I think also historians have taken as their job to capture literally what happened and everything has to be footnoted and if it can't be footnoted or verified they'll spend a lot of time trying to to disprove it when really the the purpose of history is actually the same purpose as literature do you know like the purpose is to capture the essence of what happened and to to to trans to communicate the lesson of the event and the personality and the struggle. I mean, you must be dealing with this with the Stockdale book, you know, every day, right? But I even think in the stories that I'm writing in the book, sometimes I know it didn't literally happen that way. Or there's this story that I tell in Right Thing Right Now. Do you know the story of Regulus, the Roman general? Yeah, who turned himself in after. Yes.

Yeah. That is an amazing story. Yeah.

There's not that much proof that it happened. It's a story told over and over and over again in these different ones. Cincinnatus is another great example. You know the story of Cincinnatus. He's the Roman general. Rome's army is basically captured or on the verge of defeat. And so there's an old Roman general named Cincinnatus who they make dictator of Rome to save the country. And he leaves his retirement. He saves the Roman army and he lays down his powers 17 days later and returns to his farm. And it's this myth, Cincinnati, that Washington is referring to when he resigns his commission and then when he leaves the presidency. So it's not like we have monuments and scrolls and documents. There's not a lot of historical evidence for Cincinnati. But it doesn't matter because generations of Romans believed in the myth of Cincinnati to the point that it was true enough that 2,000 years later, Washington makes it as a model. If it wasn't true, it should have been true. Exactly. It's like, if it wasn't true, you would have to invent it. So I'm telling the story as per the ancient sources. I'm telling you what the ancients believed. I'm not adding details and inventing things. You know, I'm making it real by describing, I don't know, the sea, the wind at its back. You know, I'm coloring the story, but I'm not telling the story and then going, and by the way, this is bullshit and an idiot if you believe it because i think the essence of that story is really important yeah so i i think there's there's non-fiction and fiction and then there's there's actually kind of a fluid what is the thing

from uh the man who shot liberty valance the quote of uh if you have a choice between the fact and the legend print the legend i forgot yeah that was a line from the movie or was a true sure Newspaperman said that. I don't know. Right. But I'm from that school too. Yes. Print the legend, you know, it's a lot more fun.

But yeah, the purposes of those across those three different types, the mission is the same, which is you're supposed to teach people things that about the human experience, I think, ultimately. If not, why are you doing it?

Yeah. Like Braveheart is a great example of that. You know, who knows what the actual story of William Wallace is? Yes. But I'll take the movie anytime. Yes, totally.

Hey there, just a heads up, I'm going to be on tour this fall. You can see me in Australia and New Zealand. in October. In August, I'm mixing my months up here, but in August, you can see me in Chicago and Minneapolis and Detroit. Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, dailystoiclive.com. I hope to see you there.

We'll see you next time. every week so yeah keep playing games just maybe get rewarded for it download Mistplay today and enter for your chance to win