Ryan Holiday

Abraham Lincoln read a lot of books as a kid, and that's how he became wise.

Now, he spent 25 years as a lawyer in on the circuit back then, like there wasn't enough people and resources in each town to have like a functioning legal system.

So I didn't know that.

Oh,

The judges and the lawyers would travel to little town to little town and then for like three weeks handle all the cases they have until they would come back.

In the old days, even the Supreme Court justices traveled.

It's called riding the circuit.

And you would have to sit on lower courts.

There wasn't just, hey, you work in this courthouse and enough cases come to you.

And so his understanding of human nature and how to resolve conflicts

came from, yeah, representing cases that involved some weird twisted shit, right?

My favorite Lincoln story in the book, just to let you know that he's not this saintly figure.

He loved practical jokes, right?

And he was funny.

And he tells this story about he's riding the circuit with another lawyer and they're having to camp outside.

You know, they're sleeping up on this rock or something.

He waits for his friend to go to sleep.

And the prank, he's going to climb down from where they're camping.

And he's going to shit in his friend's hat.

That's going to be the friend's going to wake up and find that someone took a dump in their hat.