You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the advisory opinions podcast. This is David French with Sarah Yesker and we have great news. Well, it's mixed news.

The mixed news is it's August, which is the worst month of the year for weather and sports.

But the great news is it's August because that's probably the best month of the year for advisory

opinion, Sarah. Certainly the most fun for us. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we're kicking off August in

style this year. So we have with us Steven Pressfield author of a lot of books. You know that you've read

that you've heard of, Legend of Bag or Vance, Gates of Fire, Tides of War, the Afghan campaign,

and most recently a book that I loved called A Man at Arms. A bunch of nonfiction books as well,

including, you know, books about a book, Do the Work, about how you kind of become the kind of

writer and that Steven Pressfield is. So Steve, thank you so much for joining us.

Hey, thanks, David. Thanks for having me, Sarah. Thanks a lot. It's like I say I'm a fan of you guys.

It's a real pleasure to be here. Let's just go ahead and start. Well, here's kind of what we want

to talk about. I want to talk about your new book. I want to talk about the process of writing

historical fiction because the thing that I love about your books is in addition to the story is,

you know, captivating. It's the detail. I walk away reading the book where I feel like I just

learned something about first century Palestine, for example. So I want to talk about that. I want

to talk about your most recent book. And then also some of the stuff that you've written about,

kind of how to write and how to do what you do. So let's just start. Without, I've read a man,

I read a man at arms and I don't want to give away too many spoilers. So if you could kind of set

up for the audience what your most recent book is about. It's set a little bit after a few years

after the crucifixion in Judea in the under the Romans. And it's really a Western. It's kind of like

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