#317 Life Lessons From a Roman Emperor - Donald Robertson

Donald Robertson (0:00)

We know there's a large body of research that shows that when people get really angry, they exhibit measurable cognitive biases. So literally, you become worse at thinking, you become poorer at reasoning and problem solving, the angrier you get.

Siim Land (0:17)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast, I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is Donald Robertson. Donald is a writer about Stoic philosophy and an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy. He's written several books like How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. Donald has just now come out with a new comic book called Verissimus that talks about the life of Marcus Aurelius and the philosophy of Stoicism in a comic book format. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, formerly known as BluBlox. My favorite light and sea film station companies, BluBlox has rebranded themselves as Bon Charge. They're now involved with a huge range of evidence-based products to improve your wellness and life in every way. Their extensive range of premium wellness products helps you to sleep better, perform better, have more energy, recover faster, balance your hormones and reduce inflammation. My favorites are their red light light bulbs because they can be used to create a melatonin-friendly environment in your bedroom by shining only red and not blue or green light waves that will reduce your sleep quality. After starting to use these red light light bulbs, I find it much easier to fall asleep and feel less awake before bed. To celebrate their rebrand, Bon Charge has a 25% off rebrand sale happening right now until the end of June 2022

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Donald, welcome back to the show.

Donald Robertson (1:43)

Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation for the second time.

Siim Land (1:48)

Yeah, like the first time we talked, it was like more than a year ago. And then we just covered your books about Stoicism, how to think like a Roman Emperor and Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. And I recommend people to definitely check it out. But at the end of that podcast, you also said that you were working on like a graphic novel. So yeah, today we're going to just focus more on that and kind of cover those topics.

So maybe let's talk about what got you into writing a graphic novel and what made you want to do it.

Donald Robertson (2:26)

Well, I've just finished that actually. There's a little bit of an odd story to it. So maybe it's interesting just as a kind of a side to some of you listeners, how publishing can work or opportunities can work in life. So I've written several prose books. I've never written a graphic novel or a comic before.

And a guy contacted me a few years ago, a Portuguese illustrator.

And he'd done a graphic novel about a play by Aristophanes, a Greek play called The Assembly Women. And he said, would you be interested in having some illustrations done about stoic philosophy? And I didn't really think about it for a while. I couldn't come up with any good ideas. And then six months later, it just, I was probably lying in my bed late at night, just suddenly popped into my head. I thought, hey, I could get that guy to do some webcomics for me. His name is Zen Nuno Fraga. And so we got him to do some three little webcomics about Marcus Aurelius, bits from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and lessons from stoic philosophy, but centered around three of Aesop's fables. Marcus Aurelius quotes one of Aesop's fables in the Meditations.

So we thought that might work quite well because there are animals in the fables. So they look quite, it's quite visual and it's like a short little story.

And then I didn't think much more of it, but I was speaking at a conference in London about stoic philosophy. And I printed three of the panels out and made them into gicle, like high quality printings to hang on your wall when I put them out. And a guy came up to me and he was a senior editor for a publisher. And he said, are these yours? Like, would you be interested in doing a graphic novel? So it's a kind of interesting story because by complete chance, just by putting the artwork out there at a conference where there were some people who worked in publishing, I'd never, that wasn't my reason for doing it. I hadn't thought about that. Guy stumbled across it and said, would you like to do a graphic novel? So I stumbled into doing it by chance, really. And I hadn't read many graphic novels, but when I was a teenager, I read a British comic called 2000 AD, religiously, and that all kind of flooded back to me. And I immersed myself in the world of graphic novels. And there are a surprising number of books about how to write graphic novels. So I did a lot of research and I watched so many Sodden Sandals movies like Gladiator and every other one that I could think of, old movies and TV series and studied the shots, the angles and stuff. And that was how I went about doing it. And now we've just finished it. It's probably about two and a half years we've been working on it.