# 852: Steven Pressfield, conversation 2: His new book, The Arcadian (and A Man at Arms) Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-sustainable-life-924670/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadian-and-a-man-at-arms Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-sustainable-life-924670/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadian-and-a-man-at-arms.md Podcast: [This Sustainable Life](https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-sustainable-life-924670) Published: 2026-05-28T14:08:46+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadi Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/5a481aca95dfbf9d13d4dc6f/e/6a16ec108084eb4dba9fcb34/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/this-sustainable-life-924670/episodes/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadian-and-a-man-at-arms Duration seconds: 3497 ## Resource It turns out Steven's readers split into two camps with little overlap. I figure most listeners belong to the  War of Art camp. If you haven't read the book and want to live a better life, I recommend it, in the top few percent of recommendations. It's powerful, engaging, memorable, and short. The other camp reads his fiction books. His latest is  The Arcadian , which stands alone but connects with his last book  A Man at Arms . I read both and now belong to both camps, proudly. One goal of this conversation is to entice listeners to join both Pressfield camps too. This podcast is about leadership applied to sustainability, not just personal leadership and art. Just because I like his books doesn't mean his fiction is relevant to this podcast. I found one part delivered a powerful gut punch that I found relevant to our lives. Blog readers will have seen my post about that part after reading The Arcadian Wounded Warriors, by Steven Pressfield, and Ourselves . That part describes what happens to people when we are induced to violate our values. Steven and I talked about that section. He described it as the core of the book. The situation warriors face and must deal with is more concentrated than we do, but their ways of handling it are similar to how we do, despite our violations being more diffuse. We would help ourselves handle our lives by facing that we are violating our values, even if, like the warriors, society rewards us for it. Only by facing it can we resolve it. In our case, we can change our culture to stop corrupting us. We can learn a lot from Steven. Not many people sell millions of books. Many followers is a top sign of leadership. Steven's home page His books His weekly blog My recent blog post about  The Arcadian , about the section… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/this-sustainable-life-924670/episodes/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadian-and-a-man-at-arms/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/this-sustainable-life-924670/852-steven-pressfield-conversation-2-his-new-book-the-arcadian-and-a-man-at-arms.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.