Illustrator Victor Juhasz on Marcus Aurelius and The Boy Who Would Be King

On today’s podcast, Ryan speaks to his collaborator and illustrator for his new book The Boy Who Would Be King about the process of creating the art for the book, imposing discipline on yourself, how he was impacted by Marcus Aurelius’ story, and more. Victor Juhasz is an artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, and Esquire Magazine, and more. He has illustrated many books including G is for Gladiator: An Ancient Rome Alphabet and is for Zeus: A Greek Mythology Alphabet. This episode is brought to you by Beekeeper’s Naturals, the company that’s reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B. LXR. As a listener of the Daily Stoic Podcast you can receive 15% off your first order. Just go to beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout to claim this deal. This episode is also brought to you by The School of Greatness podcast. Go listen to School of Greatness, it’s an amazing show and Lewis is an engaging host who really wants to help people. Subscribe to The School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or visit lewishowes.com/podcast. This episode is also brought to you by FitTrack, the best way to calculate your body’s composition accurately, reliably, and consistently. Every FitTrack smart scale uses advanced algorithms to offer insights into 17 different metrics indicative of bodily health. Go to fittrack.com/stoic to take 50% off your order, plus get an additional 30% with code BUILD30 at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Victor Juhasz:Homepage: https://juhaszillustration.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/juhaszillos Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juhaszillustrationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. What I wanted to do, in addition to sort of telling you the story of how the book came together, giving you a couple of different reads of it for the audiobook, I wanted to really explain sort of the behind-the-scenes process with Vic Yuhas, my wonderful collaborator, on the art, which obviously, listening to the audiobook, you would not have seen. But I do hope you check out the physical version of the book, because I think it itself is a work of art. I'm so proud of it. And Vic was an amazing collaborator to work with. He does sort of really funny stuff and really serious illustrations. He's appeared in every major publication you can think of. You may have seen some of his best work in Rolling Stone.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  Among the books he's also illustrated is D is for democracy, a citizen's alphabet; G is for gladiator; and R is for rhyme. He lives with his wife in the New York Berkshires. Vic is an award-winning illustrator, a great guy, and you can see, really understood deeply the material we were dealing with here in Marcus Aurelius. And I think you'll enjoy this discussion between two collaborators with a lot of respect for each other, and how this book came together, and what the Stoic characters meant to us, and some of the decisions that went into the book that you've just listened to. So here is me talking with Vic Yuhas. Hope you enjoy it.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I'm so happy it exists. By the time people are listening to this, it will be well into a year of the process. But it feels amazing to me to sort of hold. I don't have the finished book in my hands, but I have the final page, Bruce. And it feels incredible to me that the thing that was just an idea in my head is now a real book. And you helped make that possible. I appreciate it so much.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  My pleasure. It was an absolutely fascinating process. And I learned so much during it. And also, from my standpoint, it was such great fun to do. And it was one of those blessed experiences in an illustrator's life.

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the idea of it being somewhat blessed struck me in that afterwards, and I guess maybe I should have done more of my research, but you came so highly recommended by our mutual friend, Sean Coyne. And I saw your drawings on your site, and I was like, this guy can do it. But what was incredible to me was you sent me two, like last month, you sent me two children's books that you'd done about ancient Rome. I didn't even know you did that. What are the chances that you'd already studied this exact era and practiced?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that was years ago. I did those, one was on, actually, Greek mythology. Z is for Zeus. It was for Sleeping Bear Press. And the other one was G is for Gladiator, about the Romans, also for Sleeping Bear Press. And with both of those books, I did an awful lot of research. I think one of the great pleasures of being an illustrator and doing a book like this is the research time that I get to put in. I'd say 40% of the book is basically just looking up and reading and finding reference and just learning more.

• 3:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I was curious about that. So like, when you, like, let's say you set out to draw someone like Marcus Aurelius as a young boy. And I know I gave you some pictures of my kid as a loose inspiration, but like, when you go to like, hey, I want to get the essence of someone who's, you know, I'm trying to depict on the page, what do you look for?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I would think that most important for me is getting that as much factual reference as I can before I start interpreting the factual reference. Now, of course, we have the statues of Marcus Aurelius. I think we even have a painting or two, but I do know that we have statues. And actually, there I found something on Google, and God bless Google for all this access to information. I found reference, one sculpting of him attributed to him as a young man, a young boy.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So I said, OK, good. So now I can jump back and forth. As it turns out, I found his face very interesting and aged it appropriately to the older Marcus Aurelius statues. And from that point, it was a matter of just staying faithful to the sketches, the drawings that I had created so that we didn't veer off too far. I think during the process of sending sketches back and forth with you, it became apparent that I had to kind of pay attention to some of the details and not make Marcus Aurelius

• 5:49Speaker 01

  this zelig kind of character look in all sorts of different ways.

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  What did you find so interesting about his face? That's a curious statement.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  There was a certain sadness in that.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  An older soul, let's not call it sadness, let's call it an older soul characteristic in the sculpting of him as a young boy. And then, of course, you look at the older portrait sculptings of him, and he has definitely

• 6:25Speaker 01

  become a wise, a wise adult.

• 6:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you're right. I'm looking at this statue. There is kind of a sad, there is a sadness to it. I mean, it's partly because, I've got to imagine, it's partly because the eyes are missing. But, but if you think about what that must have been like, you're, this kid, you're, you know, you're, you're, if you're the prince, I'm watching the Queen right now, you know, if you're the Prince of Wales, you're born knowing you're the Prince of Wales. And there's a tradition and there's a sort of a burden almost from birth. It must, I, you know, my son's four, I imagine, okay, let's say he's nine or 10 years old. Imagine he just, you know, comes home from school one

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  day and he's been informed by the Emperor of Rome that he's going to be the next emperor. I mean, that would have been an incredible burden to place on a, on a child.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  In any era, you know, and especially in an era where the average lifespan, that was one of the other parts of the research, the average lifespan for a Roman was somewhere around 35 years old.

• 7:36Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, I mean, even, not to flash forward too much, but even Marcus Aurelius's life, I think he loses like between, like six children, he has six children not make it to adulthood. And you're just like, death, death obviously would have just been everywhere. So there's, there's probably a number of explanations for the sadness that you're, you're picking up on in that, in that statue.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And also the reference that you had sent me and then, which then became my personal rabbit holes of finding out more information about him, regarding his, his seriousness. He was a serious kid. He wasn't like Lucius, who was apparently more gregarious and a much more enjoyable personality to be around. I believe Marcus slept as a young boy on a very hard bed so as not to get himself too comfortable.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he did. I think, I think if, you know, obviously so much of this is projection, but that's what we do as artists. But it's, it's interesting to think like, so he's, he's, he's showing at an early age, this proclivity, this, this affinity for philosophy. And, you know, he's, yeah, as you said, he's sleeping on a hard mattress. He's reading these books. He's very studious. This is, from what we know, before he's chosen to be emperor. So who does that? It's an introverted, quiet, kind of intellectual kid. So to then be chosen for what is not just a public position, but at that time, the most public position, it must have been, it must have been such a difficult thing.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why, you know, we start the book with the idea of like, he doesn't want this. You know, so many kids, like, when I grow up, I want to be president. We think that, we think that that's the norm. But a bunch of kids, to many, many kids, if you said that, that would sound horrible. They would be, you know, they, they wouldn't want that at all.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  It's probably true, especially nowadays, you know?

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So, so, so you, you pick up on a sadness. What, what else strikes you about, you know, the art about Marcus Turriz, as you're trying to sort of capture this essence of, of a person?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Not a robust looking kid. I, I, as a matter of fact, my early sketches for you did not really portray a robust child. The more I read about him, again, compared to Lucius, he was not. And he had apparently a fair amount of health problems as he, as he got older. So I didn't want to, I didn't want to make him too, I didn't want this to be like a comic book, in a sense, like a superhero, a superhero kind of story, you

• 10:30Speaker 01

  know? This, I, I, I was trying to push as much as possible, a more accessible, human angle to it, to the drawings.

• 10:43Ryan Holiday?

  I love that, and I think I picked up on it for the same reason. Because, so again, it's like, there's only one person who's born the son of a king or of a queen, right? It's fair, in one sense, it's completely impossible to relate to. That doesn't happen to the vast, vast majority of human beings. What's so surreal, but also accessible, I think, about Marcus's story is, he was just a regular kid. I mean, he comes from a good family, and clearly, he was in the right circles. I mean, how do you even meet the emperor of Rome? But at the same time, you know, he is, this is much, this is much closer to almost something

• 11:28Ryan Holiday?

  out of a fairy tale, or, what is that, a Horatio Alger story, where, you know, the ordinary boy is selected for extraordinary things.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Right. And as we follow the progression of the story, when you first sent me the manuscript, and I was reading through it, and I kind of dashed off a number of ideas to you, when we were just in the talking process, I don't even know if I was, had been selected to actually do the book yet, but I dashed off a bunch of ideas to you, and they were of a much lighter vein, stylistically as well as content-wise. And then, once we really got into the book, the next challenge that I saw happening was,

• 12:24Speaker 01

  as the book evolves, as your, as your story evolves, the story becomes far more serious. And suddenly, where I started off, maybe in a more humorous, whimsical manner with the drawings, I had to start adjusting the drawings to complement and echo that

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Growing seriousness that's going on in the, in the, in the story itself. So even though this is a, technically a children's book, this is actually also a book that adults can read.

• 13:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I see it, I see it less of a children's book and more as a, as a fable and, or as a parable and, and parables are, are accessible to all ages.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:17Ryan Holiday?

  But you're right, it, I mean, it's, it's a serious story in, in that leadership is a serious thing and those of us who are selected to it, you know, to, on the one hand, look like art is fun and spontaneous, as, as you know, and you're, you're into it because you're passionate about it and all those things, but you also realize like, it's not that it's a burden, but that it's serious, you know what I mean? That there's sort of obligations and responsibilities attached to it that you sort of have to come to terms with and that, that's sort of always been my reading of the story. People think it would be so

• 13:57Ryan Holiday?

  fun to be the emperor and it's probably fun if you're a bad one, but to do it well is, is extraordinarily difficult and, and just think of the weight that you, you have to, you have to carry.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Well, the, the only proof we have in terms of modern times is just to look at how rapidly a leader ages.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, right. Yeah, those, those pictures of Obama, you know, when he gets elected in 2008 and then when he leaves office in 2016, you, you watch, you, you watch him go from black hair to, to almost solid gray hair.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't think of one. Leader who has not left office and not looked like they've been through a storm, you know?

• 14:52Ryan Holiday?

  Well, they have been through a storm, and not to flash forward too much, but Marcus Aurelius, of all leaders, you know, gets hit with storm after storm after storm. Cassius Dio says, you know, for all of his talent and brilliance, he's not met with the luck that he deserves, right? Marcus Aurelius is sickly, as you said, then there's the Antonine Plague, then there's a coup, then there's wars at the border. It's, you know, again, I think everyone thinks like, oh, it would be fun to be president. And then you look at the crises that are, you know, that define every presidency or emperor. You're like, whoa, you didn't just go through one storm. It was storm after storm after storm.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Right, right. And I just can't imagine that kind of existence. I think you and I, in our own respective fields as artists, we deal with the daily challenges, the daily obstacles in front of us to produce, to create. And we have those resistances on a daily basis and those distractions that we have to kind of put out of the way. By the way, you know, The Daily Stoic has been, since we hooked up on this project,

• 16:21Speaker 01

  The Daily Stoic has become like my morning Bible reading.

• 16:25Ryan Holiday?

  I love that.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 16:28Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 16:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, no, I think, I think people, again, people think it would be fun, but they don't. So, so people don't often, often, people are often attracted to, you know, power or something because they think they're going to be able to wield it's going to give them what they want. I think Marcus is a bit of a cautionary tale in the sense of like, no, he, he was reluctant because he knew what it was going to take out, out of him. So like, it's funny, you know, on, on the extreme end of the spectrum of the Stoics, you have Marcus realist on one end, extreme power and privilege. You have Epictetus on the other, you know, sort of extreme powerlessness. He's a slave, adversity, difficulty. But they're kind of both very similar souls in that they understand that, you know, they've

• 17:19Ryan Holiday?

  been dealt a hand by fate that, that people think is one thing, but is actually much more complex. And, and they're, I think they're aware of the burdens, but also the, they're just, they're just aware that, hey, look, life deals you a hand and you got to figure out how to play it.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Right, right. I was also, I found myself very intrigued by Junius Rusticus as well, and definitely wanted to create a character based on whatever reference we were, we were able to find. And I believe there is one statue of him that maybe, maybe him, maybe not. I mean, there's no real way to tell, but it's, it's attributed to him.

• 18:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And so when I, and I think that was the one I told you, I said, he looks like Roger Waters more than anybody else. He has that kind of long nose and chiseled out features according to the statue. So I kind of modeled, I wanted to model Rusticus in a Roger Waters kind of way.

• 18:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Rusticus of all of the characters in the book is the most.

• 18:45Ryan Holiday?

  Emphatically a character in the sense of Marcus Aurelius is real. Most of what is said or done in the book is either something he learned or something directly from the Stoic philosophy. I wanted, you know, the real story of Marcus Aurelius's life is unfortunately much more tragic and complicated than than we do in the fable, right? Marcus Aurelius loses his father at a very young age. He's raised in part by his two grandfathers. Then Hadrian sees potential in him. Hadrian selects him to be the emperor, but Marcus is just a boy and he realizes how insane it would be to, you know, to to put a boy in charge of the empire.

• 19:26Ryan Holiday?

  So he adopts Antoninus Pius, who in turn adopts Marcus Aurelius. And I suspect Hadrian thinks that Antoninus Pius is going to live for a few years, you know, that he might lead until, you know, Marcus is in his early twenties and then Marcus takes over. In fact, I think Antoninus rules for like almost two decades. So Marcus has this extraordinary experience with like basically a third father or a fourth father, right? His actual father is grandfather's Hadrian, then Antoninus Pius. So that was just way too complicated. And frankly, because I did want kids to read the book, I didn't want to get into, I didn't

• 20:07Ryan Holiday?

  want to, I didn't want to talk to my own son just yet about, you know, that your father can die and then your stepfather can die and then your other stepfather dies. That was a bit much. So I decided instead to sort of focus all of that sort of paternal mentor energy into kind of an Obi-Wan, you know, you know, guide, you know, education, educator mentor character, which I call Rusticus. In reality, I don't think Marcus meets Rusticus until he's like 25, but so.

• 20:45Ryan Holiday?

  For people listening, Rusticus is a composite character of many influences in Marcus's life.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 20:56Ryan Holiday?

  So when you're trying to project, when you're trying to, so Marcus, you can look at all these different statues and sort of get to the bottom of it. How do you decide to render Rusticus as you do?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  I wanted to render, to create a character that looked like he had a great deal of experience and information and wisdom to impart on Marcus Aurelius.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And that became a matter of, like I said, I used Roger Waters as a guide and that one sculpting that was found in reference. And then he became like this, he becomes like this foil, in a sense, to Marcus's acting out. And he comes in, if this was a movie, he comes in at the right time to kind of talk him off the ledge, or to get him to refocus, or to do something, to get back on course. And so he pops in and out, and at the same time, those scenes, those scenes that I was setting up

• 22:09Speaker 01

  between him and Marcus, where they're having those conversations, where Marcus, I mean, where Marcus is not really on board with doing what he has to do, and Rusticus is very patiently telling him, sometimes emphatically, but still, he's very patient, and he's like, you know, you've got to, this is not what you're meant to do in life. You've really got to get on the ball here and refocus.

• 22:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, in the concept of the... Of the hero's journey, there's that sort of, you know, you get the call to adventure. And to me, that's what Marcus being selected to become emperor is. And then you sort of struggle with it and you're not sure and you maybe you stumble a little bit. And then there's this sort of critical phase where you, I think Campbell says, you meet the mentor. And the meeting of the mentor is such a critical breakthrough. And to me, that's what, that's what Rusticus is. He's the sort of, the guide that helps Marcus realize that potential. And again, in reality, Antoninus Pius does this the most. Like when you read Meditations, the longest sort of page of thanks is to Antoninus,

• 23:19Ryan Holiday?

  although Rusticus gets quite a bit too. But, but he could not, he could not have become who he became without this mentor.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 23:31Ryan Holiday?

  What's so, what's so funny though is, is, is so go, oh, so you just have to find the mentor. But, you know, and I tell this story loosely in Lives of the Stoics, but Seneca, and you know Nero is, is not born to be emperor either. His mother marries the emperor and then she sort of, you know, helps him eliminate his rivals and, and sort of jostles. So eventually Nero is in line. But Nero meets Seneca, the, one of the greatest, wisest, wisest Stoics, roughly the same age, you know, a few years different, a few years earlier even. Then Marcus meets Rusticus in real life. And yet the two emperors could not have turned out differently.

• 24:11Ryan Holiday?

  So, you know, there's that expression, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. But the reality is Nero probably has a better teacher than Marcus has in Rusticus. But you get a very different result because ultimately it's about, you know, what is the student willing to do?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that we realized as we were art students was that it didn't really necessarily matter what school you went to. It was great to go to a very good art school.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But it was what you brought to it. I mean, if you didn't, if you were not there within the spirit of wanting to do something with it, you could have gone to the best school in the world and not produced, you know, and not come out of it.

• 25:06Ryan Holiday?

  Right. You gotta, you gotta do the, as Risticus says in the books, like, it's not going to be easy. I can show you the way, but sort of you gotta do it.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Which is good, which is good, which is what we hoped, we've imparted on, or well, you, you're a young father still, but I had hoped that I was imparting to my son and and maybe I didn't impart it in the most subtle ways at times, but the intention was to, this is whatever success is, and I'm going to harass you in a sense, but you're gonna, but in the long run, if you succeed, it's because you followed through on it, not me. I didn't, I didn't do your homework. You did.

• 25:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's right. I can show you how to do it, but ultimately you have to do it.

• 25:57Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things that we do know happened, again, it was at a different age, but you know, we have the scene where Risticus gives Marcus this stack of books. One of the things that I think is so incredible, just because it feels so modern, is that, and Marcus thanks him at the beginning of Meditations for this. Risticus is the one who introduces Marcus to Epictetus, and Marcus says, you know, thank you to Risticus for loaning me his copy of Epictetus directly from his own library. And we actually get the sense, because Epictetus didn't publish anything, that these may have not, this may not have been a copy of Epictetus. This may have been Risticus's own notes, like Risticus himself may have met Epictetus.

• 26:43Ryan Holiday?

  And I just think that's so incredible that here you have a slave influencing the most powerful man in the world through only a singular intermediary. And I just love the idea that it's like, this guy changed his student's life by recommending a book, because that's happened to all of us.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  All of us. Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  I think all of us can. Can thank certain people in our lives who saw something in us that maybe at the time we didn't see obvious or more certainly at the time we didn't see ourselves. But they they pushed us. They could they kicked us in the ass, maybe. You know, you could say.

• 27:25Ryan Holiday?

  No, to totally. And and I think that's a tricky thing with kids, too. And this is why I wanted to do the book is that like there are there are a lot of very entertaining kids books. There's a lot of very funny kids books. There where I think it struggles is sort of entertaining. Well done books that are also in any way educational.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right, right. Did you have any books that you want that you were modeling it on?

• 27:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I like the boy, the fox, the mole and the horse. I think I'm probably got them in the wrong order, but that that's a good one. It feels that book feels a lot more for adults than it feels for kids. I think it's a great book. It's clearly sold extremely well because it's resonating on both levels. But the big the big model for me, and this is why I wanted to talk to you about it, was The Little Prince, because you have this sort of fantastical surreal kind of adventure story for kids. It's also operating on this totally different level for adults. And your your son worked on the Netflix version of of The Little Prince. So that when you told me that the whole thing felt very faded. And I didn't even know that you'd done two kids books about Rome and Greece.

• 28:44Ryan Holiday?

  So if I'd known then we I think we would have we would have worked together even faster.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Well, just as well that you didn't know it right then and there. That it forced me to kind of.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Present myself without the advance information.

• 29:04Ryan Holiday?

  But but tell but your son did work on that, right?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Well, he yes, my son Alex was supervising the the stop motion portion of that animated movie. Yes.

• 29:18Ryan Holiday?

  Did you expect your kids to sort of follow in the the family business? Was that was that something you you wanted? Or did it surprise you? Or did you did you sense that that was the direction from the beginning?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Well, I have three sons and I never have worked anywhere else but in the home. So I've never gone to work someplace. I mean, going to work was going to the third floor or or yeah, basically going to the third floor and and into the studio. So I was always a presence in the house. I think in so many respects, they what they saw was somebody who was working a lot, sometimes under a lot, oftentimes under a lot of pressure.

• 30:08Ryan Holiday?

  Deadlines and such?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Deadlines, but also not necessarily doing work that that you wanted to do. You were doing work, certainly in the early part of my career, I was doing a lot of work to get known, to pay the bills, to to keep a family functioning. And so they saw that there was it was not always a lot of fun. I think there's another fantasy about artists that it's it's this great free flowing,

• 30:41Speaker 01

  wonderful kind of energy. And a lot of a lot of times it's work and it's work that you may not necessarily find all that much fun. As I was going on in my career, I kind of made a deal with myself or or justified the work that I didn't want to do, but was paying the bills with those that percentage of assignments that came in that were much more satisfying, you know? And that that kind of balanced it off. It made it made the process more amenable.

• 31:18Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 31:26Ryan Holiday?

  But as you've talked to your son as he wanted to get it, and I don't know what your other two sons do, but as, as this one was pursuing an artistic career, what was your sort of Risticus advice as far as sort of pursuing that call?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Alex, for Alex, it was, it was just being on his back, just to follow through. He had more than one Risticus in that situation. He kind of drove several of his instructors at School of Visual Arts kind of crazy because Alex was, and still is incredibly charming. And at the same time, there was a tendency on his part to let that charm cover, cover a lack of follow through.

• 32:15Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  As he got older, and, and I think once, once he went on his own journey, once he left the, the East Coast and went to the West Coast, his story really picks up where he, he leaves all his, he leaves those, those common temptations behind, the easy things that we can always fall back onto to distract us. And he just, he grew exponentially. Once he, once he came out to California and started working on, on animations out there.

• 32:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's sort of a lesson in the book too, that, that sort of Stoic discipline of discipline, like one of the, I think, again, people have this fantasy, whether it's being an emperor or an artist, you're like, oh, I work for myself. I get to do whatever I want. In reality, when you work for yourself, you almost have the fewest choices because so much is riding on you and there, you, what the right thing is, is so, so obvious and you just sort of have to do it.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, and it's on you. If you, if you fail, it's in a sense, it's on you. If you succeed, yeah, take a bow, you know, but.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Let's see.

• 33:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the ability to rule oneself like it's like, okay, if you have a regular job, you have to get there at a certain time, which means you have to leave your house at a certain time. And then you have these prescribed breaks. And then here's the sort of rhythm of the office. And here's when they do meetings and here's when this and blah, blah, blah, blah. But when you work for yourself, you know, now you have to impose all that structure. And so, you know, sure, there's not a tyrant telling you what to do. But you have to be the tyrant now, or else there's just chaos. And so there's this sort of this sort of self imposed discipline is almost a harder discipline, because you know, you could get away with not doing it. But then you also know you'd get stuck with the consequences if you don't. And so I tend to find being self driven is a little bit

• 34:20Ryan Holiday?

  exhausting. I don't know why more so than than anything else. But there is a kind of a just, you're just tired.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. I think there's something almost fearful, fearsome about imposing the discipline within yourself to get to get things done. There is something, I think, very comforting about going someplace where the format is laid out for you, like you were describing. When you are your own, when you create, when you're creating your own format, and you have to get up in the morning, and you have to get through the initial exercises of the day, be it the physical exercises, mental exercises,

• 35:15Speaker 01

  meditation, jogging, whatever. And I can't say that I'm the most strict follower of those, especially when it comes to the exercise. But

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Getting into a program is important. Even if, especially if you hate it every day and you're just doing it because you've got to do it.

• 35:39Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I wonder if, if part of why it's so fearsome or exhausting is also like, okay, so let's say you work at a company, there's kind of a ceiling, right? It's like, this is how many, this is how many widgets you're supposed to sell, this is, you know, what your salary is, blah, blah, blah. But then when you're, when you're a freelancer, you're doing your own thing, it's unlimited, which is good in one sense, but it's also, it makes it hard to not do it. Do you know what I mean? Like, it, it's like, you can always do more. And so that's sort of looming over you. And you're like, well, you know, this offer came in to do X. I feel guilty if I turn it down.

• 36:22Ryan Holiday?

  I feel, you know, there, there's just, the, the, the discipline never has an end as opposed to like, I put in my eight hours, I'm good to go.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And at the same time, you've, you've focused on that in, in the daily Stoic, that you have to learn how to say no at certain points. You have to protect yourself. You're not doing yourself a favor by, by just functioning in a constant forward motion. There has to be time to, to, to pull back and reflect and, and not be in that work mode all the time.

• 37:03Ryan Holiday?

  Uh huh. Yeah, that's where the stillness comes in. And I think for me, that's what meditations clearly was for Marcus. That was a guy who had an unlimited amount of work, who was always dealing with something, sort of carving out a little time for himself. And, you know, Brian Blanchard calls it in the midnight dimness. You know, he sat down with his, with his journal. And I think, I think that's what he was doing. And I think that's why it resonates with all of us, because we, we've been at that place that he clearly is coming from in the writing.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  It'll be curious what kind of impact you have on your, your, your own kids that the.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  How they'll pick up on your work ethic. I know with my eldest son, he's always wanted to be an entrepreneur. He never wanted to work quote for somebody else on that quote nine to five basis. And that was, you know, as, as time went on and we would talk, he would say that that was just watching me was one of those motivating factors to do that in his own life, to, to, to be his own boss.

• 38:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's right. And I think probably being like, like growing up, I didn't, I don't remember really seeing or meeting hardly anyone who didn't have a job. You know, Sacramento, where I grew up was a, was a government town and, you know, everyone else was a, was a, you know, had a job. They worked at a company, you know, Intel was there. There was a few big tech companies too. But the point was almost everyone had a job. So it wasn't like San Francisco where you're like, oh, this person started this company. It was this person, you know, it wasn't like, hey, this person started Twitter. It was like, oh, this guy works at Intel. And so, so I think I got to imagine watching your dad as your, your boys were able to do,

• 38:58Ryan Holiday?

  watching you work for yourself and, and, and not just be really good at it, like the craft of it, but to be successful at it, to make a living at it, not be a starving artist. There's probably something empowering in that. I've, I've talked about this with some athletes too. It's like, it's not that just that their dad or their mom passed on, you know, superior genes that made them tall. It's that, you know, Steph Curry grew up in basketball arenas, watching his dad play basketball as a professional athlete. That probably made the NBA seem a lot less intimidating and a lot more real to him than

• 39:38Ryan Holiday?

  it would have been to your, your average kid with the same height and the same skills. You know, Steph Curry just had an advantage. There wasn't a mystique about it.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Right, right. Interesting, interesting observation. I, I don't think I've ever thought of it that way.

• 39:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I wanted to talk to you about another relationship in the book because it's one I've been endlessly fascinated with, the relationship between Marcus and Lucius, because they're not technically brothers, although Marcus refers to him as his brother in meditations and in his letters. So he clearly had a great deal of affection for him. But, you know, we know what a king is supposed to do when there is a rival to the throne of, you know, an illegitimate rival or of a different bloodline. Even in the Stoic history, Octavian, who's advised by his Stoic teachers to eliminate Julius

• 40:39Ryan Holiday?

  Caesar's son with Cleopatra. You know, so there is a, being a king is a bloody effed up thing, right? And, and yet Marcus has a totally the opposite relationship with his brother. It's really incredible.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then as we get on in the book, I mean, they, they combine at several points in the book so that they're, the scene where they're practicing wrestling and Lucius is obviously stronger. The scenes where Marcus is not happy with the fate that he's been handed in terms of becoming the emperor, but Lucius is kind of pissed off because it's like, why is he getting all the, all the pomp and circumstances and all the special treatment? And so that scene where the mother, where their mom comes in and says, I don't want to hear either one of you complaining.

• 41:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yeah, no, it's, it's really, it's strange because they must have, you know, sometimes opposites get along very well, but I've got to imagine their personality types were so different that, that it almost makes it more impressive that they were able to get along and weren't openly antagonistic towards each other. Like, these were

• 42:01Ryan Holiday?

  If you were describing them on paper, you have this sort of austere philosopher who, you know, believes that being emperor is a burden, but that, you know, Stoicism obligates you to do, you know, this and this, and he feels this intense connection to the public good. And then you describe Lucius, who's this sort of, you know, maybe a bit of a drinker, and he's fun, and he's much more gregarious and personable, you know, isn't actually selected for the throne the way that Marcus is. It's, you would not think that they would then work well together. But by all, by all, you know, accounts, they did.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Interesting, because didn't Lucius, Lucius was not, in reality, such a great manager, right?

• 42:51Ryan Holiday?

  Well, they, they sort of split, from what I understand, they sort of split their roles, and Lucius sort of takes care of the army and is away from Rome for large chunks. He ends up dying, I think midway through Marcus's reign. But, but, you know, there, there's no accounts of them fighting with each other, plotting against each other, you know, trying to hurt each other. You know, I, I, I remember actually one of the last, let's, let's talk about that, because I remember one of the last notes that I, I gave to you, you know, I thought the book was really good, I thought we're basically done. And I said, Vic, I'm so sorry, I have a last minute change, which is that I really

• 43:31Ryan Holiday?

  noticed on the page where, where Lucius, where Marcus names Lucius co-emperor, spoiler alert, but I felt like the, the faces on the people observing this weren't stunned enough, because it's, it's totally without precedent in all of human history. I mean, imagine, again, I'm watching the Queen right now, so it's top of mind, but imagine if when Queen Elizabeth becomes queen, her father dies, she was just like, oh yeah, I'm not going to be queen, I'm going to be co-queen, and Princess Margaret is going to take half of the burdens. Like, people would, would be stunned, that, that's not,

• 44:11Ryan Holiday?

  we know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nobody willingly gives half of it away. And, and so I really wanted just the stunningness, the incredibleness of that to, to be conveyed, because it's almost unbelievable.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I hope I pulled that off on the revise. I know I changed a number of the expressions, but since it was already the crowning, I think my comment to you back then was like, okay, so let's not make it look like everybody just walked in and this is happening.

• 44:44Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  But we will show some amazement at this unique event, this unique kind of crowning.

• 44:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, even, right, it's not like there's a ceremony, right? There's a ceremony for when someone becomes emperor. What ceremony is there when you become co-emperor? It never happened, and I don't think it ever happened again.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. But now you got me a little confused. Was it Lucius who went off to fight the wars?

• 45:19Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Marcus did several, but I think almost all of the entirety of their reign was defined by wars of some form or another, which is kind of just the reality of Roman history, to be honest. But just, I mean, just, again, just the idea of sharing power, I just found to be so incredible. And there was a line in a much, much earlier version of the book, I don't know if you saw it, but which I basically have Marcus saying something like, "The job is big enough, is bigger than one person, and the more help you can get, the better." And I wanted to sort of capture, because there's something in Marcus's meditations where he talks about not being afraid to ask for help. And I think there's something

• 46:03Ryan Holiday?

  about that, too. It's not just the lack of ego, it's not just the willingness to share, but it's also maybe this sense that Marcus knew there were not deficiencies in his personality, but that he could use...

• 46:19Ryan Holiday?

  An extra pair of hands. And I think as a moral lesson, that's an interesting part of the idea. Because when I keep saying there's no precedent, the interesting part is there actually is a precedent in Roman history. You know, there was no president of when Rome was a republic, there was no singular head, there was two consuls. So in Roman sort of democratic history, the idea always was there was not one single person in charge. And when that happened, that was called a dictator. I mean, it was for emergencies. But but but that power was meant to be shared, and that it was actually

• 46:58Ryan Holiday?

  less dangerous when it was shared. It's just that was the system. So for Marcus to do it voluntarily is, you know, again, unprecedented.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And incredible bit of wisdom on his part, that he realized that there were strengths in that Lucius could bring into it.

• 47:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And and that he had his own strengths. You know, if I'm correct, the indigenous Americans, they had like the sacum. You had a sacum chief, a peacetime chief, but you also had a war chief, too. And they kind of, depending on the circumstances of the time, one would take over, or one would become predominant during a particular period of time.

• 47:57Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  There was a war going on with another tribe, then the war, the war chief would basically be running the show.

• 48:08Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Well, so one other thing on Marcus and Lucius, which I think is interesting is there's some precedent for it in Roman history, at least in the Stoics. You have this person who's sort of very strict with themselves. Marcus is very strict with himself, but he says in Meditations, he says, tolerant with others, strict with himself.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I love that line. I love that line.

• 48:36Ryan Holiday?

  I think that encapsulates his relationship with Lucius, where it's like, Marcus is like, here's my standard, here's who I am, but I'm gonna love my brother anyway. And there's a story, Cato is famously very, very strict with himself, but he had a brother, and he loved his brother so much, even though his brother, you know, was, his brother, you know, wore perfume and fancy clothes and was much more, you know, again, outgoing and ambitious. And when I wrote about him in Lives of the Stoics, I quote that great line from Springsteen, where he says, "Sometimes when it's your brother, you look the other way."

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:16Ryan Holiday?

  And I think that's what Marcus does with Lucius.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. An interesting relationship, and it certainly inspires me to continue reading about that period of time. I'm a big history buff anyway, so I've got just more material now to explore. But I love this because it passes on to the kids. I can't wait for the grandkids to be getting copies of this and to give it to friends who have children and stuff like that. And also just to pass it around. I think it's gonna look beautiful, and the last time I saw the proofs, I think we have a gorgeous book.

• 50:03Ryan Holiday?

  Well, thank you. Yeah, I think one other thing I was gonna say about Lucius and Marcus that's interesting too is, you know, the, the, the big sort of historical question about Marcus is, well, why, why is his own son so troublesome? Why, why does it not work for Commodus? And anyone who's seen the movie Gladiator certainly knows how the story ends. But there's also, it's also a big historical what if, because the, from what I understand, Marcus's original plan was that one of his sons and one of Lucius's sons would rule as co-emperors afterwards. So his thinking was, nobody should be all-powerful. Their, power should be shared. And then, when

• 50:47Ryan Holiday?

  Lucius either doesn't have a son or his son passes, Marcus thinks, well, then, two of my sons are gonna share it. And then that comes to, that fails to come to pass, again, because of tragedy. So I think Marcus clearly had this idea that power was best shared, and not wielded unilaterally. And then, he, he's, he ends up being proven right. He's the exception that proves that rule.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. And I, and I do believe that Commodus kind of broke his heart in terms of, of what he was developing into.

• 51:23Ryan Holiday?

  I suspect so. It's probably the final mercy of Marcus's life is that he, he doesn't end up, he doesn't know what happens to his son. He doesn't know how bad it gets.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Right. Right. Yeah.

• 51:37Ryan Holiday?

  Well, as we, as we wrap up, I was, I think, the sort of conclusion of the book, you know, it sort of concludes with the idea of the four virtues. And the idea that, again, this is a parable of leadership. This isn't, this isn't the, the one-off fantastical, you know, story of one boy chosen to be emperor. To me, this is, this is the, what happens to all of us. We're all chosen for something, whether it's art, or writing, or film, or entrepreneurship, or politics, or public service. We're all chosen for something. And, and in some respects, that's a burden, but it's also an opportunity, because it allows us to become who, who we can be. And it-

• 52:22Ryan Holiday?

  Calls from us, you know, courage and justice and wisdom and discipline.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yep. Yes, sir. Absolutely correct.

• 52:30Ryan Holiday?

  What do you, uh, what, what do you think, uh, is, is there anything in, in Marcus's story that you didn't quite get to capture or that you're still musing on any, any, any sort of questions that you're left with? I'm just, just curious about anything we, we haven't talked about.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  I'm kind of fascinated by the relationship he had with his mother. I, I get the impression he loved his mother dearly and, uh, but at least the way we portray her in the book, she's also not, uh, she's not a mushy kind of mother. She's, she's got that sense of the responsibility too, of what he's got to assume. So consequently, she's another kind of Obi-Wan in, in, in pulling him back to reality.

• 53:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yeah. No, that's really important. Uh, I mean, there, so there are these sort of adopted paternal influences in Marcus's life, but I've got to imagine that the absence of his father, losing his father early, it must have, um, he, he could not have become who he was without a strong maternal presence as well.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah. The scene, the scene where he's kind of like, are we, are we, uh, revealing anything? Uh,

• 53:48Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  The scene where he, he's being very mischievous and, and disrupts a shepherd's flock.

• 53:56Ryan Holiday?

  Which does, that's a, that's a real story, although I think it happened when he was much older.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Okay. And he comes, he returns home and mom's waiting for him at the gate. Like, uh, I, I, I thought that was kind of charming that we were able to include that and, and set it up that way.

• 54:12Ryan Holiday?

  No, and I think that, that probably drives with a lot of people's experiences where it's like dad would be angry, but mom would be disappointed and that was probably worse.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. Uh, it's so funny. Now, I, that's, this is a side story and it's not even, um, relevant to what we're talking about, but I, you just made me think of something else.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna say.

• 54:39Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, are you sure?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, because i- i- in, in, when I was a kid, when I was in grade school, I got involved in doing something really stupid that, that somehow brought the, the cops into the picture. And I remember one of my friends, uh, the, the, you know, he got, his father got the phone call from the cops. And the father went off on the, uh, on the police. And when my father got the call, I was watching him. And after he, uh, he listened, said, okay. And then he hung up the phone. And, uh, he looked, he looked so heartbroken. And he said, well, we'll just see what happens.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  And had he beaten me, I would have preferred to get the beating rather than the, seeing the expression on his face. And, and realizing that I had done something that had really, um, saddened him, uh, really disappointed him, you know?

• 55:42Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  That was, that was a far worse punishment than, than getting a strap.

• 55:47Ryan Holiday?

  But no, and that, that's where that sort of virtue of, of, of discipline comes in, sort of in all senses of the word. The, the discipline that your father had not to give in to what also must have been anger or frustration, and instead be restrained is far more powerful. Uh, and probably teaches you a, a lesson later with your own kids, but also just a, a lesson about your temper. How could your dad then ever, you know, if your dad's losing his temper at you all the time, what, what moral authority does he have when you lose yours?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Funny thing is-

• 56:18Ryan Holiday?

  Strength there says more.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Funny thing is, he did lose his temper all the time. And this is like one of the only times that I could remember where he didn't. I was so excited. And it, and it was the absolute opposite response.

• 56:33Ryan Holiday?

  That's funny. Yeah, I was gonna say, when you're bringing up Marcus's mother, that's, that's one story I remember, which is that apparently one, so we tell the story about Marcus not wanting to be emperor, and he sort of has this dream that makes him think he can do it, also a real part. But apparently, one, as a young boy, and this, this strikes me as so sweet, and I don't, I don't know what age he's happened at, but apparently, one of Marcus's main reservations about being selected for this, was that he didn't want to leave, he didn't want to have to move out of his house with his mother, and move to the palace. He wanted to be able to stay with her. And I just find that such a revealing,

• 57:17Ryan Holiday?

  if true, such a revealing insight into what a sort of a softie he must have been underneath.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just think of, just think of him as emperor. I, I think it was every year that he was emperor, there was, like you mentioned before, there was some sort of war going on. What a conflict that must have been. How, how so against his internal grain, that must have been to constantly be in a state of, of, of defense or offense, you know?

• 57:51Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. I mean, he spends at one point, I think, eight years away from Rome. And so imagine, you know, he's missing his family, he's missing his kids, he's missing his books, you know, he's missing his routine. This, this couldn't, this wasn't the job he wanted. And, and, and it's not like, oh, hey, I don't want to be president, but I was elected president, and I have to serve for four or eight years. It's like, it was the job he didn't want. And it's the, it's the job you can only stop doing when you die. I mean, it's such a, it's a, it's a, it was a tragic gift.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  And how, one can only imagine what, what will it took for him to keep pushing on every day.

• 58:45Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and the line we have, and you, you mentioned it where the mother says, you know, never be heard complaining, not even to yourself. Marcus writes that in meditations to himself. So we know he didn't want to be emperor and he says, never let yourself be overheard complaining at court, not even to yourself. So he, there must have been a part, he's like, I don't want to do this. I just want to go home. But he sticks with it and he doesn't even allow himself to whine about it.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 59:17Ryan Holiday?

  That's beautiful.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  So many lessons that will be of value from this book and in, in that kind of condensed life history. So I'm looking forward to it, to seeing it in print. When is, when is it coming out, actually?

• 59:35Ryan Holiday?

  So it, when people are hearing this and, and when it will come out are different things, but just is an interesting insight into the production process for people listening. So it went, one of, one of the big things, so typically I traditionally publish all my books. So I send them the manuscript and then that's sort of not my problem from there. And then this, this one I decided to self-publish. I wanted more sort of control over it. I wanted it to be on my own timeline. But then all of a sudden you're faced with all these decisions, right? Decisions that you didn't have to make before. I don't know what printer Penguin Random House uses, right? I don't know what they pay. I don't know the timelines of it. I know sometimes my books go out of print, but I don't, I don't know how that works.

• 1:00:17Ryan Holiday?

  So that was actually a big decision we made on this one was to print it in the US. So it went to the printer last week and it should be here. I think they said about four, three and a half to four weeks. So we should have, we should have books here very shortly. And then people who are listening to this are either listening to the podcast and then also this, this file is going to be attached to the audio. So we spent a bunch of time. I spent the last couple of weeks working up the audiobook. So I read it to my kids. I did a, I had two different narrators read it. We're going to do a version with sound effects and then did sort of an explainer, like sort of how, how the book came to be, but.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Oh, by the way.

• 1:00:59Ryan Holiday?

  A whole different experience.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  A shout out to the kids who, who offered critiques of their own on, on the, on the drawings that I was sending in.

• 1:01:07Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, my kids. Yeah, they definitely had feelings.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  I, I really appreciated that because that's always nice to, to get that kind of feedback. That kind of, they're very honest.

• 1:01:20Ryan Holiday?

  What is that?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:01:24Ryan Holiday?

  No, that, that honestly, like, you know, one of the things I, I don't know your experiences with this, but one of the ways I found you maintain your sanity as a creative is that you wanted to find your success as much as possible. This is a very stoic idea, uh, within the bounds of what's up to you, like what's in your control. And so where I got on this project, and again, we're recording this before it's out, whether it sells thousand copies or a million copies, whether it's a big success or, um, you know, take a bath on it. It's already a huge victory for me in that I got to spend so much time with my kid. One, so much time with the material, which I'm fascinated with. But every night during the, the early

• 1:02:09Ryan Holiday?

  months of the pandemic, you know, I started just writing this on, you know, just random sheets of paper. Going over and over and over it with my kids and, and them being involved in an evolve, in its evolution was just such a wonderful experience that I wouldn't trade anything for. That, you know, every copy that sells is just gravy because like I already got that. That part was already worth it. And, and, and just the satisfaction of like, now it exists. Like I got to work with you and I'm seeing my idea, you know, illustrated in a, in a way that I couldn't have done. But, but the experience was really the rewarding part, which is where you want to be, I think.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yep. And I really appreciate the op, the opportunity to have come on to this, uh, project with you.

• 1:02:56Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Sean Coyne has been a pivotal influence, not just in this project, but for people listening who are fans of my other book. Sean Coyne is partly the one who gave me the idea on Obstacle is the Way to split that book up into three parts, as I ended up doing. So that was a very lucky conversation and connection. And Vic, thank you so much. It was an honor to do this. I'm glad we recorded this episode as well.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 1:03:22Ryan Holiday?

  And let's start thinking about the next one.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'm game. I'm always game.

• 1:03:28Ryan Holiday?

  All right, man.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, sir.

• 1:03:33Ryan Holiday?

  What makes Marcus great are his teachers and the early influences in his life. Risticus, Antoninus Pius. I mean, the whole opening section of Meditations is him really acknowledging the people who were formative in helping him become the man that philosophy wanted him to become. And that's the story I tell in my new book, The Boy Who Would Be King. It's an illustrated fable about the early years of Marcus Aurelius, how this little boy was selected from obscurity and ruled the world and did so without being corrupted by it. He really did become the man that philosophy wanted him to be. And that book is now out. It's available everywhere. I've been working on this book for the last year. It came out of the pandemic for me, something I've wanted to do for a really long time. You can check it out.

• 1:04:17Ryan Holiday?

  Go to dailystoic.com/king, or you can pick up The Boy Who Would Be King anywhere books are sold, including on Amazon. But if you buy it from us at dailystoic.com/king, you get the audiobook for free, which has me reading it and a bunch of other cool people. So check it out, The Boy Who Would Be King. And we should learn to lead like Marcus Aurelius, and we should try to not just make Stoicism proud, but we should try to make the example of Marcus Aurelius proud.