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This is on Daunton Life, a man's podcast.
0:53
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:55
Let's get into it.
0:56
Today, we've got a very special guest on the podcast.
0:58
It is Stephen Pressfield.
0:59
So if you're not familiar with Stephen Pressfield, he is the author of a lot of different historical
1:03
fiction, nonfiction and screenplays, some of which he would be very, very familiar with.
1:08
The first book he ever wrote was The Legend of Bagger Vance.
1:11
So for a lot of you guys, you know that because you know of the movie that it was later turned
1:15
into directed by Robert Redford and also starred Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Matt Damon.
1:20
But his second book, his second book might be the real reason why most of you guys know
1:23
who he is because the second book was Gates of Fire, which is about the Spartans at the
1:27
Battle of Thermopylae.
1:29
And this book is on our list of the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list.
1:35
And so we absolutely love this book.
1:37
You know, when you're making a list of 100 books, you got to think about all the different
1:41
criteria that go into that because you want to have a nice cross section, a different
1:44
types of books.
1:45
And guys, there's a lot of historical fiction out there.
1:48
There's a lot of military fiction out there, but that is at the tippy top of that list of
1:52
books.
1:53
So it is and it's just an absolute treat that we were able to get him on the show.
1:56
But some other notable books that he has is the War of Art, which if you listen to the
1:59
Joe Rogan experience, he talks about the War of Art fairly often.
2:03
He actually appeared on the Joe Rogan experience a while back.
2:06
I think it was two studios ago and they've talked about that book quite a bit because
2:09
Joe Rogan has actually purchased that book and given it to a lot of people, but he's
2:12
also written Turning Pro, do the work, the warrior ethos, tides of war and about a dozen
2:18
other ones.
2:19
This was such an interesting chat with this guy because this is a guy that's obviously
2:23
very mindful about the things that he says and the things that he writes and he's written
2:27
a ton of books that are applicable to people and then a lot of other stuff that's just
2:31
there to entertain.
2:32
But in this interview, we get into, you know, whenever he knew the legend of Bagger Vance
2:36
was going to turn into a movie and what that experience was like and he gives it kind of
2:39
an surprising answer as to what he thought of the movie once he first saw it.
2:44
But this is a guy that that didn't just become a writer at an early age and just he kind
2:48
of set his path.
2:49
He had some real lumps that he had to overcome.
2:51
And this is a guy that by his own admission lives kind of a warrior lifestyle, but not
2:55
not maybe in the typical sense of if you know, you're in the military now or used to be in
2:59
the military, what you would normally think of as a warrior.
3:02
But this is a man that that leads a lifestyle that is indicative of what a warrior poet
3:06
would actually be.
3:07
I think that's the best way to describe it had a tremendous time chatting with him.
3:11
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
3:15
Steven Pressfield, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
3:18
Hey, thanks for having me, Kyle.
3:19
It's great to be here.
3:21
Absolutely.
3:22
And my guys are going to be so excited to hear this interview.
3:24
I've told a few guys here and there and they're, they're just super excited to hear what you
3:27
have to say.
3:28
So let's just go ahead and launch in.
3:29
And I do want to kind of go back to the very beginning because a lot of guys that listen
3:32
to this podcast, they're either retired military or they're currently serving in our United
3:36
States Armed Forces.
3:38
But in the mid 1960s, going back all the way to the early parts of your life long before
3:42
your career as an author, you joined the Marine Corps.
3:45
So I'm just curious what drew you specifically to the United States military.
3:50
Well, this might disappoint your audience here, Kyle, but I was dodging the draft.
3:58
And I wanted to get into a reserve unit, you know, so that I wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.
4:03
And so I joined the Marine Corps.
4:05
That's how I wound up in there.
4:06
It was like the last thing in the world that I ever thought I would do.
4:11
But oddly enough, it's in so crazy way, it has shaped my life more than probably anything
4:17
else.
4:18
Well, so give me a little bit more on that.
4:20
So in what ways, I know we're just kind of getting started here, but obviously the military
4:24
has a tremendous effect on a lot of people.
4:26
But what ways do you feel like it shaped you and molded you as a person?
4:31
You know, I think largely, I still think of myself as, I mean, particularly as a writer,
4:40
I approach it, you know, this might sound a little over the top, but I approach it as
4:44
a warrior, you know.
4:46
And I try to, you know, my day is kind of structured in the same way that you would
4:52
structure a day in the military.
4:54
I mean, I'm up at the crack of dawn.
4:56
I start off, you know, with physical stuff, you know, PT, doing that kind of thing.
5:02
And I have a, you know, my whole sort of concept of being a writer or how to manage the day
5:08
is very much a self-discipline concept, you know.
5:13
I have a plan of the day and I stick to it and I, you know, do all that sort of stuff.
5:20
The only difference, I think, from being in the military is in the military, your daily
5:26
structure and your overall structure is imposed upon you from without, right, by whoever's
5:32
in charge of you, whereas in the real world, you know, the civilian world, it's self-discipline
5:39
and self-motivation and self-reinforcement.
5:41
Well, that's a great, great thing because a lot of the guys that we encourage now, even
5:45
if you're outside the military, you don't want to become, you know, a slacker, you don't
5:48
want to become a slob and you kind of have to have that internal discipline that someone
5:52
else isn't going to give you.
5:53
But again, early in your life, really early in your career, I've read that you had just
5:58
a ton of different jobs.
5:59
I mean, you were, you know, everything from a bartender to, you know, a school teacher,
6:03
fruit picker, truck driver, you even have talked about how you were homeless for a stretch,
6:08
but you always seemingly had this goal in this North Star and that was that you were
6:12
going to be a writer and an author.
6:14
And so can you kind of give our listeners an idea of what that time period of your life
6:18
was like and did you have a lot of times where maybe you doubted if you were going to be
6:22
able to be the author that you always thought you could be?
6:24
Absolutely.
6:25
And that whole period, I mean, I could talk about it for a long period of time, but it
6:30
was maybe about a six or seven year period where I was just really completely lost in
6:37
terms of my goal of being a writer.
6:42
I had basically just given it up.
6:44
I sort of tried.
6:45
I had an initial period when I said how to write a book and that thing kind of crashed.
6:51
I blew it up, you know, my concept of resistance with a capital R from the War of Art, which
6:57
I'm sure you're familiar with, it's not an existence utterly defeated me.
7:02
And I sort of blew my life up and I was basically, you know, I sort of fell out of the bottom
7:10
of the middle class and got onto a sort of an odyssey, kind of an on the road odyssey
7:20
that was a lot of really low-rent jobs, one kind of followed another, and when I look
7:29
back on it, I think it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me.
7:35
But at the time, I really, I felt like I had sort of fallen out of the bottom of everything
7:42
and I never thought I would get back.
7:44
I was just struggling just to get from, you know, one day to the next.
7:50
Not that there weren't a bunch of good times in there too, there were, but, you know, you
7:56
talk about a north star.
7:57
I mean, I always had that dream and I always, that was what I wanted to do, but I definitely
8:04
felt through those years that it was never going to happen.
8:08
And then finally, I sort of got my feet on dry land again and I kind of built my confidence
8:15
back like one brick at a time.
8:17
But during that period, no, I definitely was not in charge of anything or really felt
8:26
that I was going to come out of it at all.
8:29
Yeah, and that's the thing that's always the encouragement I give to guys to feel like
8:32
maybe they're stuck in the milieu of their day, their life or whatever, it's that you're
8:35
putting in the reps, right, and you're, you're still kind of pointing yourself in a generalized
8:39
direction.
8:40
Because, you know, if you're traveling somewhere and you're trying to go on an exact heading,
8:44
if you get a little bit off base one way or the other, you can still correct back to,
8:48
to the original plan to the original platform.
8:51
But the thing is, is for you, you did work your way out of that and we'll certainly get
8:54
more into the resistance here in just a second.
8:56
But you hit an absolute home run with your very first book.
9:01
So your first book, a lot of our listeners are familiar with it.
9:03
It was released in 1996, the Legend of Bagger Vance.
9:06
And the reason why a lot of people know about it is because either they read the book or
9:09
they watched the movie, you know, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, I mean, you really
9:13
knocked it out of the park from the very, very beginning.
9:16
But I'm interested in the story about how you came up with the idea to even write that
9:20
book because it's such a unique storyline.
9:22
So what is the, what was kind of the impetus behind even starting and going into a story
9:28
like that?
9:29
Ah, it's a great question Kyle, actually when, when I started on that book, I had, I was,
9:36
I had had a career as a screenwriter for about 10 years.
9:41
And you know, I was out in Los Angeles, which is where I am now.
9:45
And I had kind of a B level or C levels screenwriting career.
9:51
And all of a sudden, well, I'll give you the longer version of this thing.
9:56
The Legend of Bagger Vance has really stolen from, the structure has stolen from the Hindu
10:03
scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, which is always a favorite book of mine that at every time
10:09
that I read it, I thought, this is such a great structure here.
10:12
I've got to do something with this.
10:15
You know, shall I give you a little bit of the structure of it, you know, a one minute
10:19
version of it?
10:20
Yeah.
10:21
Go for it.
10:22
So the Bhagavad Gita starts with two armies lined up across from each other in the ancient
10:29
days, warrior armies with chariots, spears, lances, horses, the whole thing.
10:38
And we're with the, we the readers are with the great warrior, Arjuna.
10:44
And as he looks across at the enemies on the other side, he recognizes kinsmen and teachers
10:50
and peoples that he knows and on the spot, he says, he refuses to fight.
10:55
He says, this is not no good is going to come out of this.
10:58
I don't want to fight.
10:59
He lays down his weapons, refuses to fight.
11:02
And he turns and he turns to his charioteer for advice and his charioteer turns out to
11:07
be Krishna.
11:08
In other words, God in human form.
11:11
And so God sort of reads Arjuna, the riot act and the rest of the story, the rest of
11:17
the Bhagavad Gita is kind of the great warrior, Arjuna, receiving spiritual instruction from
11:23
Krishna.
11:24
And it's all about concepts like previous lives, karma, duality, non duality.
11:32
It's very Eastern and it's very deep.
11:35
So I just thought one day I just thought, why don't I steal that structure?
11:39
And instead of a troubled warrior, it's a golf champion.
11:44
And instead of his charioteer, it's his caddy.
11:48
So that idea sort of came to me as a book rather than a movie.
11:54
And I remember having a meeting with my agent and telling him that I wanted to do this as
11:58
a book.
11:59
And he basically fired me on the spot in all seriousness, because he said, I've spent
12:05
you know, 10 years trying to get your movie career going, and now you want to go off and
12:09
write a book.
12:10
Nobody's going to buy this book.
12:11
It's the dumbest idea I ever heard.
12:13
And forget about it and get out of here.
12:15
So that was how the Legend of Agrubance came to be.
12:20
That's such an interesting story.
12:22
And then again, you got to see it on the silver screen, but really quickly, you know, what
12:26
was it like seeing your movie for the first time?
12:30
Well, I was actually quite disappointed in the movie.
12:36
I would not recommend the movie to anybody either.
12:38
I would recommend the book.
12:41
But you know, that's pretty much, I think, a really common phenomenon for anybody that
12:47
writes a book or writes a screenplay and then sees it on the screen.
12:51
It almost always, you know, once a director takes over, it becomes their project.
12:56
Robert Redford was the director on that, and he made it his movie, and it wasn't my movie,
13:01
you know?
13:02
It wasn't what I thought it would be.
13:05
So it was great to see a movie, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't what I had in mind.
13:11
And I'm sure that's what every writer, any writer of you that's had a movie made will
13:16
say the same thing.
13:17
Right, guys.
13:18
Well, you heard it here first, avoid the movie, but buy the book and read the book.
13:22
We'll go ahead and transition on to one of your most notable works, and that's the War
13:26
of Art released in 2002.
13:28
And so really a large through point of that book is helping people, especially those that
13:34
consider themselves artists, defeat what you mentioned earlier, what you call the resistance.
13:39
So for those of us that have not read the book, for those of our listeners that haven't read
13:42
it, what is the resistance?
13:45
If, you know, when I first started thinking about this, I thought about it only from a
13:50
writer's point of view, but as I got letters back and feedback, I could see that this is
13:56
like totally universal across all fields, but let me just take it from the writer's point
14:01
of view.
14:02
We're not on video now, Kyle, but if you could see me, I'm sitting in front of my laptop,
14:06
and I have a keyboard right in front of me.
14:09
And when I sit down to confront the blank screen, or anybody, you roll a piece of paper
14:15
in a typewriter and it's a blank piece of paper, radiating off of that blank screen
14:22
is this negative repulsive force that is trying to stop you from doing your job, doing your
14:30
work.
14:31
And it will tell you, the voice in your head will say something like this, who do you think
14:37
you are sitting down to write this thing that you have in mind?
14:40
You're a loser, you're a bum, you're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too
14:44
thin, you never went to college, you had too much college, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
14:50
Every idea you've had has been done before and done better than that and so on and so
14:53
forth.
14:54
So in other words, resistance is this force of nature that stops us or opposes us anytime
15:02
we want to move from a lower level to a higher level.
15:06
Another classic thing is if you join a gym and you commit, oh, I'm going to really commit
15:10
to a course of fitness or whatever it is, right?
15:13
The first day comes and it's impossible to get out of bed, right?
15:17
That's how many people have bought ab machines or a treadmill, and/or another thing is to
15:26
give up a vice, to give up drinking, to give up drugs, to go on a diet.
15:33
Anytime you try to move from a lower level to a higher level, morally, spiritually, creatively,
15:41
ethically, anything like that, this force that I call resistance with a capital R will
15:49
contest you, and the form it will take will be a voice in your head, and the large component
15:56
of this voice will be fear.
16:00
I say at the very start of the War of Art that there's a secret that writers know, that
16:05
wannabe writers don't know, and the secret is this, it's not the writing that's hard,
16:11
it's sitting down to right, and what makes that hard is resistance, this force that will
16:17
try to stop you.
16:18
So I would say to make it the short version I'm blathering on here, I know, but the real
16:25
skill that a writer or an artist has or that learns that you teach yourself is not the
16:32
skill of putting together stories or anything like that, it's just the ability to sit down
16:38
every day and work your jet.
16:42
That's the secret.
16:43
When that's the thing is, is most people treat it like it's a secret, right?
16:46
Like, you know, people will ask me, Hey, how can I get in shape?
16:48
Or how can I do this or that?
16:49
It's like, put your shoes on and go to the gym or walk out into nature and go throw some
16:54
logs or rocks around.
16:55
Like, this isn't a hard thing, but you're right, that resistance is, is right there in
16:59
front of you.
17:00
And that's why I think, you know, a lot of guys know your name because of your appearance
17:03
on the Joe Rowan experience back in 2013, and he's talked about you a lot since then,
17:08
he always talks about the war of art and how many copies of the book he's given away.
17:12
And he's, he's literally one of the most famous people in the world of entertainment.
17:15
And he gives a lot of credit to your book to helping him break through that.
17:19
But you know, I've heard a lot of people say that this book, the, the war of art has lit
17:24
a fire under them.
17:25
And I mean, the thing is, Steven is in a world full of, you know, self-help books, you know,
17:30
the shelves are full of self-help books.
17:32
Why do you think your philosophy that you shared in this book has had such a lasting
17:36
impact with people?
17:37
That's a great question.
17:38
You know, sometimes you don't, you just don't know.
17:40
I mean, I think, I mean, all, a lot of self-help books we'll talk about, give you, put you
17:45
on a program, you know, do this, do that, do the other thing.
17:49
And I think all the war of art did was it just gave a name to the enemy.
17:54
You know, it just called it resistance and, and, and so that when we're, when you're hit
18:02
by that, when you have those waves of self-doubt or fear or, or procrastination or complacency
18:11
or stuff like that, at least now it has a name and you can say to yourself, all I have
18:17
to do is defeat that and each of us will defeat it in a different way.
18:23
You know, there are different ways of doing it.
18:26
That's my best guess.
18:27
I don't know.
18:28
That it helped people and yeah, I'm just glad it helped.
18:34
Yeah.
18:35
It's certainly a lasting work and even to transition out, there will be people that would be surprised
18:39
that know you from the war of art transitioning into a lot of war novels.
18:42
You've written a lot of historical ancient warfare novels.
18:46
A lot of our listeners have read and listened to a lot of those, but you've done a lot of
18:50
writing and reading on ancient warfare.
18:52
You know, why do you think that you're so interested in that?
18:55
Because that's a very specific type of a category.
18:58
Why does that appeal to you so much?
19:00
That's another great question, Kyle.
19:01
You're smoking hot here today.
19:02
I'm doing my best.
19:03
I'm doing my best, okay?
19:06
You know, it's a really good question.
19:08
I'm going to answer it in kind of maybe a crazy way and I believe in previous lives.
19:14
You know, I can't say that, you know, like I remember any, but what's sort of interesting
19:20
to me is that I was drawn to this one specific era, ancient Greece, Sparta, Athens, Alexander,
19:27
the great, the Macedonians, but I'm not drawn until much to Rome or, you know, an adjacent
19:34
area.
19:35
And I think, you know, when I would read the ancient works, you know, Thucydides, Ennephon,
19:42
Plato, all those things, from that era, they just resonated to me right away.
19:48
You know, I kind of understood it.
19:49
I got it.
19:50
I read them over and over.
19:52
And, you know, when actually Gates of Fire was a book that came for me after Legend of
19:58
Bagger Vance, and before I wrote it, I had no conception in the world that I would write
20:05
anything in that ancient era or that military thing.
20:09
It wasn't like something I dreamed of since I was a kid.
20:12
It just sort of came out of nowhere.
20:14
I just had to do a book too.
20:16
I didn't know what the hell it was going to be.
20:18
And I just kind of did that one book, Gates of Fire, and then I did like five more.
20:25
And it just is very congenial to me for whatever.
20:28
I only stopped and kind of moved into the modern world a little bit just because I thought,
20:32
you know, I don't want to repeat myself forever and forever and forever.
20:36
But, you know, that era is just very congenial to me.
20:41
I just feel right at home in it.
20:43
Well, I think if you did continue forever, forever and forever, that guys would really
20:47
enjoy it because Gates of Fire, which you release, I was your second book back in 1998,
20:52
that is one of the 100 books.
20:53
It's on our list.
20:54
It's 100 books that every modern Christian man should read.
20:57
We have a list and that is one of the ones that is on there.
21:00
And it's for a lot of guys, you know, it's a thing that they didn't really know about
21:04
before it may be the movie 300 came out or something, but it's the story of the Spartans,
21:08
the battle of the 300 warriors against the Persians at Thermopylae.
21:12
And again, it's just a history that most people hadn't heard of.
21:16
It's not really something that's covered in elementary school.
21:18
So I guess for you, how did you hear about the battle of Thermopylae?
21:22
And why did you think that that was a great story to turn into such what ended up being
21:27
an amazing book?
21:28
Like I say, I'm a reader of the ancient texts.
21:32
I love it, you know, and the one book that really covers that is Herodotus, the Histories,
21:39
which he talks about all of the wars between Greeks and Persians.
21:44
And he goes in a pretty good detail about Thermopylae.
21:47
And just when I was reading it, I just thought, this is a freaking great story, you know?
21:52
I mean, what could be better than like an army of 2 million people and the Greeks and
21:57
300 Spartans and about 4,000 allies?
22:00
And they fight it out in this, you know, one area about the size of a basketball court.
22:06
You know, it's such a great story.
22:08
In fact, here's the voice of resistance going back to that.
22:14
As I started on the book on gates of fire, I said to myself, nobody's going to be interested
22:18
in this.
22:19
You know, it's just like you said, Kyle, nobody's ever heard of this battle.
22:24
They can't spell it.
22:25
They can't pronounce it.
22:27
It's not, you know, Americans only like to read about Americans.
22:30
They're not going to want to read about this.
22:32
And that's, again, is a kind of the voice of resistance.
22:35
So but I thought, you know, this is really a dumb idea to write this book to spend two
22:39
years writing it, but I was just, you know, seized by the door, I just had to do it.
22:45
And but the real sort of the real central aspect of this, of what really appealed to
22:51
me about that battle, sorry if I'm waxing long windy.
22:55
This is great.
22:56
This is great.
22:57
You know, and I asked myself, you know, why is Thermopylite different from other battles?
23:04
And I really believe it absolutely is.
23:06
The only parallel to me is maybe the Alamo, but any other battle you can think of, each
23:12
side goes into it thinking either that they're going to win or that they're at least going
23:18
to survive, you know, if they lose, they'll get away somehow.
23:22
But that battle from the point of view of the 300 Spartans, you know, they were all chosen
23:28
as fathers of living sons because they were sent there to die.
23:32
They were sent there to stand and die and they knew was going to happen from the start.
23:37
And that's what to me made it such an amazing story, you know, that they went there and
23:43
they absolutely did what they said they were going to do.
23:47
And the famous, you know, epitaph that Simonides wrote of that go tell the Spartans, stranger
23:55
passing by that here obedient to their laws, we lie.
24:00
That really sort of said it all to me, the idea of obedient to their laws that they set
24:06
out to do something, you know, this was what, you know, what their aspirations was, what
24:12
their morals, what their ethical code said they had to do, die and they did it.
24:19
And that to me was why it made such a great story.
24:23
Well, and the great thing about reading that book, Stephen, is it no matter what, it kind
24:27
of makes you put yourself in their shoes, even though this is thousands of years later,
24:31
and you know, we live in a very cushy and comfortable marshmallow world now.
24:35
But just thinking about, do you have the internal constitution to do something like that?
24:39
Would you do that for your people, regardless of what the consequences were going to be?
24:44
And before we move off of Gates of Fire and move on to some of your other works, I do
24:48
want to definitely get your thoughts on the graphic novel 300 and the movie adaptation
24:52
of that graphic novel back in 2006, because that is where I heard about the Battle of
24:57
Thermopylae the first time.
24:59
That's whenever, you know, the history channel and National Geographic and everybody had to,
25:02
you know, get their stuff together to kind of teach everybody about what happened historically.
25:06
But from your perspective as an artist, what did you think of the graphic novel and the
25:09
movie adaptation?
25:10
Well, I'll tell you sort of the behind the scenes Hollywood story of that, for whatever
25:17
it's worth it.
25:19
They have a term in Hollywood called development.
25:24
And what that is is like a project starts from maybe an original book or original graphic
25:31
novel and, you know, a producer or an actor or a director.
25:36
Somebody gets involved and they say they are, quote unquote, developing it.
25:40
And what they mean by that is they're trying to get a script written that they like.
25:44
They're trying to cast an actor or actors or they're trying to get a budget together.
25:48
They're trying to, you know, it's a whole long process that can take years.
25:53
And what happened was that gates of fire and the graphic novel 300 were sort of competing
26:01
with each other behind the scenes, you know, and they went on for a couple of years where
26:07
there were sort of two parallel railroad trains going down the tracks.
26:12
And it was a contest.
26:13
Whoever got the financing first was going to be the movie that got made.
26:17
And whichever that was was going to kill the other one, right?
26:20
Because there wasn't going to be two movies on the same subject.
26:23
And so it just turned out that Zack Snyder was the director of 300 and that they got their
26:30
act together before gates of fire goods.
26:33
So they kind of won the contest.
26:35
And now what do I think about it?
26:38
It certainly was an entirely different way of treating the same historical material,
26:47
you know, whereas gates of fire kind of took it really seriously and really tried to like
26:55
put you, the contemporary viewer, reader in that world and really understand it in depth,
27:01
you know, what Spartan Society was about, what the whole underlying culture was, et cetera.
27:07
300 went for a, you know, a really unique graphic look and a really unique and the graphic
27:14
novel was set like that too.
27:16
And I can't knock it.
27:17
It was a big hit.
27:19
But it was a whole completely different way of attacking that material and how seriously
27:26
you wanted to take it and whether you wanted to do it in a kind of a comic book-y form
27:31
or if you wanted to do it in a more realistic form.
27:34
Sure, well, I appreciate the, the peak behind the curtain there, a little bit of inside
27:37
baseball.
27:38
That's very interesting to know about.
27:40
And really just to transition on into another work that I think has a lot of the same gusto
27:46
and the same energy is the Warrior Ethos from 2011.
27:49
Obviously, this isn't a novel.
27:51
This is a book that you wrote that a lot of our guys have read.
27:53
It's, it's anecdotes from ancient war and the ancient world.
27:57
And the thing about it is you've given this book away to a lot of people.
28:01
I read somewhere or maybe it was even on your Instagram where he talked about you gave like
28:05
18,000 copies of this book to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
28:09
I know that some of, yeah, some of our military universities, they will use this book a lot.
28:15
But could you just maybe just sum up what the Warrior Ethos is and what you mean by that?
28:20
Um, well, let me tell, I'll sort of tell you a little bit of the backstory on this one too,
28:28
Kyle.
28:29
My partner, I had Sean Cohen and I are partners in a little publishing company called Black
28:35
Irish.
28:36
And we had this idea around that time when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were going full
28:43
more that a lot of our men and women over there on the, you know, down range were, and this
28:53
came from emails that I would get and stuff like that, we're struggling with kind of disillusionment
28:58
and that, you know, they joined because they had a kind of a concept of what, uh, Warrior
29:04
Honor was or what service was.
29:07
And when they got over into these wars where there's a lot of gray areas and it's not,
29:11
it by no means like, you know, any sort of glorious thing that people were sort of saying
29:17
to themselves, you know, what do I got myself into and how do I keep my spirits up?
29:22
And so we thought, maybe we should write just a short little thing and give it away to kind
29:28
of keep, to kind of help people connect to the sort of the ancient way, the way it used
29:34
to be, what honor was for real.
29:37
So I, rather than having it sort of come from me, like me shooting my mouth off about what
29:46
I think the Wari ethos was, I sort of pull stories from the Spartans, from Alexander the
29:54
Great, from the Romans, from the Athenians and so forth.
29:58
And they all were sort of trying to, to be a little bit inspirational and to back, to
30:04
go, to kind of flash back to the days when honor was for real.
30:09
And then I also tried to define Dore ethos myself, which is probably what you wanted
30:14
to be there to answer here, Kyle, but, um, there are certain warrior virtues, I believe
30:22
that, um, and that I am fighting my own kind of inner war, in my just my regular life,
30:29
that I use those myself, and I'm sure you do too, and I'm sure all your readers do too.
30:35
Your listeners do too.
30:37
And some of those virtues, I mean, the obvious one is courage, but there are a lot of other
30:41
things like patience, selflessness, um, the willing embracing of adversity, um, that comprise
30:51
kind of the warrior, the warrior ethos.
30:54
And the other aspect of the warrior ethos that was very important to me, and I really
30:58
wanted to get out there, was the moral aspect of it, that, um, the aspect of, of, if, if
31:07
an enemy surrenders to you, you take care of that enemy, you know, you don't brutalize
31:12
them or go, you know, like, I think one of the reasons we, we all hated ISIS so much,
31:17
and that whole thing was to us, it seemed like they had no ethic at all, you know, just
31:23
massacre people, you know.
31:24
Now, I can understand that from their point of view, it's asymmetrical warfare, et cetera,
31:28
et cetera.
31:29
But I really wanted to, in the warrior ethos, get those, the ethical and the moral elements
31:36
of it.
31:37
And particularly, you know, Alexander the Great and the Spartans and so on and so forth.
31:40
They did a lot of bad things, but their, their hearts were in the right place in a lot of
31:46
cases, and I tried to emphasize those aspects.
31:50
Well, I think you did a fantastic job.
31:52
And for those of you listening that maybe haven't read any of your, your work before,
31:56
this is a great place to start because it's a short book.
31:59
It's very accessible and it kind of gives you an idea of what your ethos is.
32:03
As you, you talk about the warrior, you certainly talk about it in your novels, but you've been
32:07
talked about it from the beginning, how you treat your life like a warrior would.
32:10
And I think that dovetails nicely into something that you're currently doing and that you just
32:14
release not that long ago, which is the warrior archetype.
32:17
And so this is a new video series that you're putting on your website and on, on YouTube,
32:22
and this will span, you know, several months, but you basically said that this series will
32:26
look at the idea of what a warrior is in ancient times and modern times.
32:30
So you're going to kind of be bridging that gap for a lot of people.
32:32
And so the first episode was just kind of introducing the warrior archetype and then you've released,
32:37
as of the recording of this podcast, you've released episode two and three, which was talking
32:40
about the women of Sparta and the types of things that were going on in those cultures.
32:44
So what can we, I guess, kind of give us the impetus as to why you wanted to do this video
32:49
series and what we can expect with future episodes?
32:52
It's another great question, Kyle, thanks for that.
32:56
You know, the series kind of started just with the fact that we're in this kind of COVID
33:02
situation here today, you know, where a lot of people have time, more time on their hands
33:08
than they expected they would have and are kind of looking a little bit for education
33:14
or for inspiration or for something like that.
33:16
And I thought, you know, how could I contribute here?
33:19
What do I, what do I know, right?
33:22
And so I thought, well, I know about this, I know about the ancient world, I know about
33:26
that whole concept.
33:27
So this series is going to go on for, I don't know, all the way into the next year, I'm
33:32
going to, I'm probably going to do 50 little, you know, five minute, seven minute videos.
33:37
And what I really want to do, we were talking before about resistance where the capital are
33:43
in and the whole concept of the inner war, the war against our own selves.
33:48
And I'm going to take this series kind of starting with the ancient Spartans.
33:53
That's why you say like my first two episodes were about Spartan women.
33:57
Starting with the ancient Spartans, who to me were sort of the supreme warrior culture,
34:03
you know, short, you know, maybe the samurai, maybe the zulu, the masai, might be on the
34:09
same level with them, but who where the entire society was a warrior culture, the women,
34:15
the children, everybody.
34:17
And starting there in what would you call, what I would think of as kind of the pure warrior
34:22
culture in terms of both fighting an external enemy and the internal enemy.
34:28
And I'm going to just try and take it through history and introduce other elements and bring
34:35
it down to the inner war that you and I are fighting today.
34:39
You know, when we wake up in the morning, every, every morning, we have to, you know,
34:45
refocus, get it together, keep our, keep the, the dark stuff at bay and keep our focus
34:51
on what we're trying to do.
34:52
And a lot of times we use those same warrior virtues to keep ourselves together.
34:57
We, like I said at the start, we switch from externally imposed discipline to self discipline
35:04
and externally offered reinforcement to self reinforcement and externally offered motivation,
35:11
you know, a sergeant or somebody kicking our ass to our own self motivation.
35:17
And so that's, I'm going to try and take it all the way down to that at the end, to,
35:23
to the inner war that we all are fighting today.
35:26
And guys, if that sounds interesting to you, which it should make sure that you go ahead
35:30
and follow and subscribe to his channel there on YouTube, but there was one comment that
35:35
you made in episode one.
35:36
And the comment was that you, you say that the two of your most popular books don't really
35:42
have crossover audiences.
35:43
So people that read gates of fire, don't read the war of art and vice versa.
35:48
Why do you think that is?
35:49
You know, that's a great, it's a great question because I've, you know, it's very frustrating
35:54
to me because I think of these two books, one is about the external war and one is about
35:58
the inner war.
35:59
You know, and to me they're the same book, you know, it's, it's the same thing.
36:05
But there's a tremendous resistance.
36:07
I don't know why.
36:08
I've been trying to figure this out for 20 years.
36:11
Why people who like the one just don't want to crossover to the other.
36:16
I think people who read the war of art are largely, I think, aspiring writers, inspiring
36:21
artists and so on and so forth.
36:24
And they, they don't want to read about, you know, some ancient battles or battles that
36:28
they've never heard of.
36:29
And I think by the same token, somebody that might read about, read gates of fire about
36:35
the Spartans or Alexander the Great or whatever, they might, oh, I love these stories.
36:39
They're great.
36:40
I don't want to read something about, you know, the inner world and the inner war, you
36:43
know, that's not up my street, you know, but in any event, it's a real, it's a real issue.
36:49
And I, it frustrates me, not just because I want to sell books, but because I think each
36:56
one of those books would appeal to the people who don't think it's going to appeal to them.
37:01
Well, the other thing that I think if I were to venture a guest, which you kind of alluded
37:04
to it, it's guys that read gates of fire.
37:07
They don't want to, you know, seem like they want to be a wussy artist and read the war
37:10
of art.
37:11
Read, read the war of art don't want to seem like but then if you're reading the war of
37:17
art and that appeals to your sensibilities, you might think that, you know, gates of fire
37:21
is kind of knuckle dragging brutish, you know, writing or something like that.
37:25
Yeah, it's like that this must be a different Steven press field type of a thing.
37:28
But the thing that I tell my audience all the time, because again, our audience, as I told
37:31
you off air is a little bit more rough and tumble rougher around the edges.
37:35
I always try to drive home the point of nuance with people to where it's like, I don't care
37:39
how much you can deadlift or how good you can shoot and all those different things because
37:43
if you can't be a tender warrior with your wife, then then you're not really doing it,
37:47
right?
37:48
If you're not nuanced in your discussions about large topics, you know, whether it's spiritual
37:52
topics or religion or finance or government or whatever, it's like then you basically
37:57
are able to tackle one thing.
37:58
And for with this ministry, we talk about spiritual, mental and physical resilience all
38:02
the time.
38:03
So I got a lot of guys that, you know, maybe gates of fire type people that they got the
38:06
physical on lock, they can run forever and they can lift all the weights and they can
38:10
do all the things and they can do Jiu Jitsu and wrestling.
38:13
But maybe they haven't read a book in years.
38:15
And I tell them all the times like, no, no, no, that's not acceptable.
38:18
You've got to be able to be resilient in all these different areas and it's not acceptable
38:22
to just be a bookworm either.
38:24
If you're a bookworm, but you can't sprint to the end of the parking lot to save your
38:28
life or someone else's life, then you're worthless to me as well.
38:30
And so I think that might be some of the motivation for a lot of people as to why they don't do
38:35
that crossover.
38:37
But one thing I want to transition into because this is a really a through point for a lot
38:41
of your writings and a lot of the times that you talk about, you do either talk about it
38:45
directly or anecdotally, you talk about the muse, right?
38:49
So give our listeners a short synopsis of what you mean or what people normally mean
38:55
if they're unfamiliar with the concept of the muse.
38:58
Okay.
38:59
It's another great question.
39:00
Kyle, you're a smoking hot today.
39:01
I'm doing my best just for you, just for you, Steve.
39:06
You know, I have found, like I've written now, I think like 20 books, something like that.
39:12
And the question that people ask is, well, where do you get your ideas?
39:15
You know, how do you know what the next book is going to be?
39:18
And that is a real, it's a real mystery.
39:21
You know, you read stories about songwriters, they're driving along the freeway and all
39:26
of a sudden the song will come into their head and they have to like screech to the side
39:30
of the freeway, you know, and home a few bars in a tape recorder or something before they
39:34
get home.
39:35
So that's really the muse.
39:36
It's sort of a real mystery where ideas come from and why you're inspired by to do a certain
39:43
thing.
39:45
Like I said, when the idea for gates of fire came to me, even though I thought this will
39:50
never sell, I am wasting two years of my life, I was utterly seized by it and I just had
39:55
to do it.
39:56
And the same thing with really basically everything, every book that I've done, always, it always
40:01
surprises me.
40:03
Like the idea, sometimes people say, "Well, I have a five-year plan, I'm going to tell
40:07
you exactly what I'm going to do for the next five years."
40:10
That never works at all for me because when the time comes and you're looking for that
40:16
next idea and you have no clue, you just don't know where it's going to come from or what
40:21
it will be.
40:23
And I usually, the sort of the criterion that I apply for new ideas, what ideas scares me
40:30
the most to write as my next project.
40:33
But I do believe in ancient Greece, the muses were nine sisters, they were goddesses, daughters
40:41
of Zeus and Nemasini, Nemasini means memory.
40:45
And each goddess was, her job was to inspire artists and there was a muse of dance and
40:51
a muse of music and a muse of epic poetry and so on and so forth.
40:56
So the concept of the muse is this mysterious force that you can't name, you can't command,
41:04
but that will inspire you and guide you to what you're supposed to do next in your life.
41:10
Not just writing books or anything like that, but what's the next phase of your life?
41:15
And I'm absolutely a believer in that.
41:19
If somebody would ask me how I define myself, what my occupation is, I would say I'm a servant
41:26
of the muse and I just, whatever she tells me to do, I do.
41:31
And anybody who has written or had done anything, songwriting or singing or they, you're familiar
41:38
with that experience.
41:39
I'm sure you've had it too, Kyle.
41:41
Sure.
41:42
Where you're, you're in the middle of doing your work, you're in the middle of doing writing,
41:45
let's say, and you get a run, you're like, you're in a zone and you get a run of four
41:51
or five pages, you don't even remember writing them, right?
41:55
And when you look back at them, you go, wow, this is good.
41:58
Did I do that?
41:59
How could I do that, right?
42:01
And that's the muse.
42:03
It's some mysterious thing that we can't measure and we can't weigh and we can't, you
42:10
know, put on a scale or take a photo of it.
42:13
But that really is, in my opinion, the real core of our being.
42:19
And so thanks for asking that question.
42:21
I hope I didn't normally belong to the law.
42:24
No, that's great because you kind of went into the area of like a flow state.
42:28
So a lot of times, you know, I'll have people ask me about my podcast like, Kyle, you know,
42:31
how do you, you know, sit in your studio by yourself and talk for 30 or 45 minutes about
42:35
a complicated subject.
42:36
And I'm like, guys, if you knew the preparation level that I give for some episodes, because
42:40
some episodes I will spend months working on and others, I'll walk into my studio with
42:44
basically five bullet points on a sheet of paper and then I just flow and I just go.
42:49
And then you do, you get to the end of it and you're like, I just talked for 45 minutes
42:53
and my notes, I could have scratched on the palm of my hand.
42:56
How did that happen?
42:57
Where did that come from?
42:58
But I thought this was interesting.
42:59
And so I want to get your comment on this in 2013, yet a blog post on your website and
43:04
it was entitled how resistance proves the existence of God.
43:08
And so there was one quote that I pulled out here that I want to get your thoughts on.
43:11
It was this, I refuse to believe that we humans are alone and bereft in the meaningless cosmos.
43:17
If we were, there would be no such phenomenon as resistance.
43:21
What possible purpose could resistance serve in a universe devoid of meaning?
43:26
Hell exists, yes, but heaven does too.
43:29
So in light of what you just said and in light of some of the things that you've experienced,
43:32
again, that was a blog from seven years ago, does it seem possible or reasonable to you
43:37
that the muse is actually God?
43:40
Yes, it does, absolutely.
43:41
In fact, it's, I think, I don't know, I mean, if we look at Greek mythology, there's always
43:47
Zeus, who's the father of the muses.
43:50
So the muses are sort of at least a channel for God.
43:53
I absolutely believe that.
43:55
And I think that, you know, we, I believe that we all, all of us, everybody listening,
44:02
you, me, we all have a destiny.
44:04
We all came into this world with a, you know, I like to say that as a writer, that before
44:13
you even start to write your first book, you have a body of work.
44:18
You have a bookshelf of books that you will write, and they're kind of there already.
44:25
They exist already, but they only exist in potential.
44:29
And it's your job, the writer on the material plane, to bring those things into material
44:35
being.
44:36
And so to me, that absolutely has been the experience of my life, you know, absolutely.
44:42
And so I ask myself, how could that happen if there weren't some greater consciousness,
44:49
some greater intelligence, call it God, call it the all, call it whatever you want, there's,
44:55
that there is, there is meaning in this life.
44:59
And when I say why resistance proved, why resistance proves the existence of God is resistance
45:06
is like the opposite of that.
45:09
This is what's trying to stop you from doing that and resistance is absolutely real, as
45:14
we all know, from buying our treadmills and our abrollers and bringing them home, right?
45:21
And if it's real and it is real, then it's opposite has to be real too, which is the muse
45:28
which equals God.
45:29
Well, and I think one thing that a lot of Christians hear, kind of a typical Christian
45:33
saying is God has a plan for your life.
45:36
And you know, if you're a serious Christian, you don't take that as just kind of a cute
45:41
statement.
45:42
You believe that that God has a specific plan for your life.
45:44
So I think that really dovetails nicely with what you were saying about the bookshelf like
45:48
for a lot of guys, you look at your bookshelf and it's empty, but you're writing the story
45:51
of your life every single day.
45:53
And one thing I tell people as a kind of a thought experiment is to always look at your
45:57
life as if it's five chapters of a book, because when you're like 12, the five chapters of
46:03
your book, you know, it's like, well, I was born, that's chapter one, and then I learned
46:06
how to not put my pants anymore, that was chapter two.
46:09
And then you kind of move on.
46:10
But when you're 70, your five chapters include a whole lot more things and there's these
46:16
kind of larger through points and larger topics.
46:18
And so for the listeners of this podcast and for me, you know, we believe that Jesus was
46:23
a real man that lived in the Middle East and died on a Roman cross and was raised three
46:28
days later.
46:29
And that's the God that we believe in, and so whenever I feel the muse, I feel like
46:33
it's God directly talking to me and the resistance that I feel, I feel like it's coming from
46:37
a dark spiritual force that we call Satan.
46:40
And so for you, would you say that when you're talking about, you know, call it whatever
46:44
you want, good or evil or darkness or light or whatever anybody's talking right now, do
46:49
you feel that it's that specific that it's like God, you know, God in three persons, Father
46:54
Son, Holy Spirit and Satan, or is it more of a generic type of God versus, you know,
46:59
good versus evil?
47:00
How would you kind of, you know, construct that?
47:02
I mean, I don't know if I put faces on this sort of thing, you know, I myself, I'm not
47:08
a Christian.
47:09
I'm a Jew.
47:10
And I would also say that, you know, a lot of the ideas that I'm talking about here go
47:15
across the board, go through Hinduism, go through Buddhism, go through, you know, it
47:20
isn't just an entirely a Christian concept, but in like in Jewish mysticism, there is
47:28
the concept of the Yechar Harah, are you familiar with that, Kyle?
47:33
I'm not.
47:34
It's, but it's comes from, I wish I knew the verse in the Bible, it comes from Genesis.
47:40
And I think the, it's the quote, I think it's the one where God is about to send the flood
47:48
and says that, you know, I regret making the human race at all, right, that they, they're
47:56
all their thoughts are turning toward evil all the time.
48:00
And in, in, in, in Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism, that phrase, the Yechar Harah is that it's
48:06
that step force that it's a, the quote is a turning toward evil.
48:12
And my rabbi, Rabbi Finley X. Marine and wonderful guy, he said to me, the Yechar Harah is what
48:21
you would call resistance, Steve.
48:23
So I see it kind of as, I see it, if we were on video now, I'm, I'm holding one hand level
48:34
horizontal at a kind of a low level, that's the material plane that you and I are on right
48:39
now with physics, we're in a physical body, right.
48:42
And above that, I'm going to put another plane.
48:45
And that is what you might call heaven or what you might call whatever the next highest
48:50
level.
48:51
In Christian terms, it's, it's the kingdom of heaven, it's where G, it's Jesus, where
48:55
Jesus got to, right.
48:57
But in, and we on the lower level are striving to reach that higher level and the higher levels
49:03
reaching down to us, trying to pull us up to, to itself, you know, in Jewish mysticism,
49:09
they say that above every blade of grass is an angel saying, grow, grow, right.
49:17
But in between those two levels is this force of resistance, this negative force, what do
49:23
you call it?
49:24
Satan, whatever it is, it might as well be Satan for my money, I mean, it is absolutely
49:29
evil.
49:30
It's whole intent is to stop us from moving to the next higher level, from contacting,
49:36
you know, whatever we call it, the divine.
49:39
So I guess I see it more in sort of, not necessarily having a human face to it.
49:46
It's more of a force of nature.
49:48
Well, Hey, Stephen, the last section of the podcast today of the interview is it's a segment
49:53
I like to do with guys that are just like you.
49:55
And that's what would you say to someone that said?
49:58
So basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to say that and then I'm going to end
50:01
the sentence with, with something about a random topic that is still applicable to you.
50:05
But here's the thing, you only get 30 seconds to answer.
50:09
Okay.
50:10
So this is not, you know, a time for going into a lot of different side bars.
50:13
This is just the meat and potatoes of the answer.
50:16
What would you say to someone that said blank?
50:18
So you up for it?
50:19
Okay.
50:20
All right.
50:21
Let's do it.
50:22
First one here.
50:23
What would you say to someone that said, I just can't get into reading fiction?
50:26
Well, you should, you know, kick yourself in the ass and start doing it because fiction
50:34
in many ways is nothing replaces it because it goes to the deepest level of, of the human
50:42
being that you're telling the story about, you know, if it's pure history, you only can
50:46
see that academic history.
50:49
You only see that person from the outside, but fiction takes you completely inside.
50:53
And some of the greatest writers are fiction writers.
50:56
So get over it and read something.
50:58
All right.
50:59
Next one here.
51:00
What would you say to someone that said, as an artist, I have a hard time getting out
51:04
of my own way.
51:06
That's, I would say another thing.
51:08
You've been to kick your own ass and get out of your own way.
51:12
But the main thing to do is I think it's just surrender to the material, whatever it is,
51:17
whatever idea seizes you, commit yourself to it, surrender yourself to it and just get
51:23
into it and you will get out of your own way.
51:25
Good deal.
51:26
Next one here.
51:27
What would you say to someone that said the resistance is too strong for me to overcome?
51:31
That's [inaudible], excuse me, I don't know if it's supposed to say that on here.
51:35
It's okay.
51:36
No one's going to be too offended by that.
51:39
Resistance.
51:40
Here's the interesting thing about resistance.
51:42
Resistance comes in response to a dream that we have.
51:46
Like if you have a business you want to start or a book you want to write or a movie you
51:51
want to make, resistance comes after that.
51:55
Once you have the idea, resistance immediately follows like the shadow of something of a
52:00
tree or something like that.
52:02
So whatever resistance you feel, big as it is, guaranteed your dream is just as big or
52:09
bigger because that's a law of physics.
52:12
So you have got the power or whatever much you think resistance is, you have the power
52:17
to overcome it.
52:19
All right.
52:20
Next one here.
52:21
What would you say to someone that said talent doesn't matter?
52:24
I don't think it really does matter to a certain extent.
52:27
I'm living proof of that.
52:28
I don't have talent worth a [inaudible].
52:31
I think hard work is far, far, far more important than talent.
52:36
But of course we all do have talent when we follow our joy, whatever it is, if you want
52:41
to build a motorcycle in your garage, if you want to refurbish a park in your neighborhood,
52:47
you've got the talent to do that.
52:49
But hard work 10 times more important.
52:52
I certainly appreciate that sentiment.
52:54
Next one here.
52:55
What would you say to someone that said some people just aren't creative?
52:58
Not true.
52:59
Everybody is creative.
53:00
It just forms a, it just might take a different form.
53:04
Sometimes when we think of creative quote unquote, we think, oh, it's being a dancer.
53:08
It's being a movie maker.
53:09
It's being a writer.
53:10
Not true.
53:11
There are a million, million ways to be creative, including just being a father or a mother
53:15
or a mentor to somebody or just living a crazy life like Dennis Rodman, being a Heyoka,
53:22
being this, you know, backward walking guy, you know, there are a million ways to be creative
53:26
and we all are.
53:27
Well, that is the first time Dennis Rodman has been mentioned on this podcast.
53:30
So thanks for breaking through that glass ceiling for us next one here.
53:34
What would you say to someone that said ambition isn't a curse.
53:37
It's a driving force.
53:38
Absolutely right.
53:39
Couldn't be more.
53:40
I couldn't agree more.
53:42
I mean, if you think about an acorn, you put that acorn in the ground, potentially it's
53:49
a gigantic oak.
53:51
And what makes it that oak?
53:53
There's a drive and that acorn, God put it in there, whatever you want to call it, to
53:58
become this mighty oak.
54:00
And whenever we feel ambition, I think that's a gift from God and we got to cling to it.
54:06
I don't mean ambition where you're, you know, destroying everybody in your path, scorched
54:11
earth, you know, competition, but just living a dream, living a dream, having a vision and
54:17
following it.
54:18
All right.
54:19
Two more left here.
54:20
What would you say to someone that said Stephen Pressfield should write a novel about the
54:23
spiritual battle between heavenly forces and demonic forces?
54:28
I think in many ways, that's what I've been doing all along.
54:32
Okay.
54:33
Like I say, you know, you never know what the news is going to assign you.
54:38
You know, a year from now, that may come absolutely true.
54:42
All right.
54:43
Well, the last one of the day, what would you say to someone that said, gates of fire
54:48
is the best war novel of all time?
54:51
I would say, I'm glad you think that.
54:55
I certainly think that it's worth a read.
54:58
That's for sure.
54:59
All right.
55:00
And we certainly think so as well.
55:01
That's one, that's why it's on our list of books to read.
55:03
But hey, Stephen, we have gone through a lot of material here.
55:06
We've covered a lot of ground, but that is all for me.
55:09
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
55:12
Nothing except that I'll let's do this again, Kyle will stay in touch.
55:15
And like I say, I had this new book coming in March and I would love to get it to you.
55:20
And we'll talk about that again.
55:22
It's okay with you.
55:23
It is certainly okay with me and I cannot wait, but Stephen Pressfield, thanks so much
55:27
for coming on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.
55:29
Great.
55:30
Thanks for having me, Kyle.
55:31
All the best to you and to your listeners.
55:33
Well, there you go, guys.
55:37
I hope you enjoyed the interview I had with Stephen Pressfield as much as I did.
55:40
It was such a fun conversation.
55:41
We talked a lot off air as well about just the stuff he has coming up, the stuff in the
55:45
pipeline, the book that he has coming out before too long.
55:48
We're definitely going to get him back on here to talk about that.
55:50
And we can't wait to share that information with you before we let you go.
55:53
We are going to do a quick resilience boost as you know by now.
55:55
We are immense ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience specifically.
55:59
We do that by providing you content like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual, mental
56:04
and physical toughness.
56:05
So to help you with that, I've got some links for you today.
56:07
The first link is to Stephen Pressfield's website.
56:09
So that's a great center point for all of this content and all the things that you can
56:12
go out and buy like the majority of his books.
56:14
And then we've got four YouTube episodes for you here.
56:17
So it's episodes one, two, three and four of the Warrior Arc type series.
56:21
That was a series he talked about that he's going to have dozens and dozens of episodes.
56:25
And guys, by the time this episode comes out, this podcast episode comes out, there will
56:28
be more of these there, but at least I'll get you started, but that is introducing the
56:31
Warrior Arc type.
56:32
That's episode one.
56:33
Episode two is the women of Sparta part one.
56:36
Episode three is the women of Sparta part two.
56:38
And then episode four is add a step to it.
56:39
Then I've also got another YouTube link for you and this was to his appearance on the Joe
56:43
Rogan experience all the way back on episode four hundred and five.
56:46
And so it was him and Aubrey Marcus.
56:48
So that's an interesting listen for those of you guys.
56:50
I've got the blog that we made reference to.
56:52
So how resistance proves the existence of God.
56:55
And then we've got a link to his Instagram page.
56:57
Thank you guys so much for listening to this podcast.
56:59
If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcast, iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast or Stitcher
57:03
and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media.
57:06
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57:10
us know why you like the content.
57:11
I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2020 in the beginning
57:15
of 2021.
57:16
So if you want me to come speak on your podcast, at your men's event, at your team, at your
57:19
business, whatever, hit me up via email info at undaunted.life.
57:23
That's I N F O at undaunted.life.
57:25
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57:28
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57:32
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57:33
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57:35
Just search undaunted life under plans.
57:37
And as always, we want to thank the band, August Burns read for allowing us to use their
57:41
entire music library for our content.
57:43
The interaltro track on this podcast is our song defender, which is off our latest record
57:47
entitled guardians.
57:48
The links are in the description.
57:50
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
57:52
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
57:58
toughness.
57:59
And seeking the lion of Judah.
58:16
Thank you.