The Daily Stoic - BONUS | Jefferson Fisher's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

After their conversation for The Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan gives communication expert and The Next Conversation author Jefferson Fisher book recommendations at The Painted Porch.📚 Check out all the books mentioned here: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/collections/jefferson-fischer🎥 Watch this on Ryan Holiday's YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbWjFCkLjEk📖 Get signed copies of Jefferson Fischer's book The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More, at The Painted Porch! Follow Jefferson on Instagram and X @Jefferson_Fisher, on YouTube @JeffersonFisher and on TikTok @JustAskJeffersonSign up for Ryan's free monthly reading list newsletter - https://ryanholiday.net/the-reading-list/🎙️ Listen to Jefferson and Ryan's full conversation on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎥 Watch Jefferson Fisher and Ryan's full conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs6rPU1lH3Q📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStstoic.com. You mentioned melancholy. Did you read Lincoln's melancholy? I have it.

Okay, so this is Lincoln biography of a writer. Have you read that one? I have not read that? I haven't. I don't know. Okay, so this is Lincoln biography of a writer. Have you read that one? I've not read that one. Okay, so that's like just looking at him as a writer, which is of course an amazing writer. He wrote all his speeches down.

So it's him as like a thinker. But this is my favorite one. This is a good one. President Lincoln. You read that one? Okay, that one's incredible. That one's so good. Lincoln's virtues by Miller is also very good,

but have you read Lincoln at Gettysburg? I have not. So my favorite fact right about that one, that there's more pages in that book than words in the Gettysburg address. But his basic argument is that Lincoln is making it, we think of Gettysburg as this inspirational speech, but it's actually a legal argument

in which he subtly redefines what the war is about, like right in front of everyone's noses. Right. Right, like everyone thinks they're fighting to keep the union together. Yeah. And he's writing actually no, he's saying, no, that we're dedicated to this proposition

that all men are Korean people, and that's what we're on this battlefield. He redefined it. Yeah, Wills' argument is that most of the people who died at Gettysburg would not have agreed before the speech that that's what they were there for. In fact, many of them were probably explicitly against that. Very, very opposite. But like, he's doing this beautiful thing in a lawyerly way of just redefining and then proving

in the address that, hey, no, no, we're actually here. And that is sort of a second, it becomes sort of a second founding document. But if you can see it as a legal argument from a lawyer, it makes a lot more sense. Yeah, I can tell he's framing his argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he doesn't mention Gettysburg, doesn't mention any of the people who fought there,

doesn't mention anything about the battle at all. It's just an argument as to why they're there. That's incredible. Yeah, and the guy that spoke before him, your point about like, they just let them do all the talking and then. Yeah. The guy before him gave a two hour address.

Yeah, here comes Lincoln. The prayer was longer than the Gettysburg address. Jeez. And so it's also this mastery of, I think probably as a lawyer too understands like, juries get tired. Oh yeah. They don't want to hear from you.

Like just lay it out. Even long prayers. Yeah. And so his point of like, like that it's so short, I think his mind is also, how do you print this in a newspaper? Right.

Like, so is he speaking to the 5,000 people of Gettysburg? No, he's speaking to us now, right? Like it's this masterful sort of foundational document and he's seeing it that way. That's one of my all time favorites. These are awesome. This is the team of rivals. Oh yeah, team of rivals, of course, incredible.

Her book, Leadership, is really good. Yes. Because it's sort of a best of all of them. Yeah, I haven't read it, but I know she has it. I'm gonna read her next week, actually. Are you really? Yeah, okay, this is an obscure legal book I think you would like, which is...

And you've read all of these. The premise is that they're all books that my wife and I have read and loved, as opposed to just any book. Where is this? Is this speed reading? No, I mean, this is over the course of a life. I didn't know I read these all yesterday. Yeah.

I'm looking for Furious Hours. Okay, Furious Hours. So, after Harper Lee writes To Kill a Mockingbird, Yeah. she doesn't write for a very long time, but she has this idea for a book. She wants to write about this preacher in Alabama who is murdering family members to take the insurance money.

Oh. And she goes to write this book. in Alabama who is murdering family members to take the insurance money. And she goes to write this book and so half the book is about the case. Okay. Like about the, it's like a true crime book about the true crime and then the other half is about her and writer's block and how she never ends up publishing this book but she moves to this town and she goes to the trial every day. Yeah. She's gonna write a book about it, but she never does.

But it would have been an incredible book if she had. Wow. Because she doesn't get enough credit. She was Truman Capote's collaborator on In Cold Blood. Oh. Because they were childhood friends. He's Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. Is that right?

Yeah, they're childhood friends. And so he's fictionalized in that book. Wow. That's cool. I didn't know that. So that one's super good. I think I'm going to like that one. These are all great books. Yeah, that's the idea. Only hits. All killer, no filler. Yeah, it's beautiful.

I saw you interview Charles Duhigg, super communicated, very good. Yeah, he's awesome. I love these. And I also like, um, Robert's amazing book. He's just a really cool guy. And then The Hills came out. Have you seen, uh, I have not. Is this the 50's Sanitation? No, no, that's the 50's.

That's the 50s. That's the 50s. That was the first book I was a research assistant on. But this one, so this is like the 25th anniversary edition of 40 Elevens of Iron. So it's like Machiavelli on this side. Oh, I see what you did. And then Robert on this side.

It's my favorite. It's pretty cool. So it's awesome. You nerd out on books now, like when you look at the covers and like all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I've been through that process now of what it really takes to build a cover. And you don't think about just the white space,

the font. Yeah, or you have ideas, like I wanna have color pictures. Exactly. You publish yours first? When you're like, what, 22? My first book came out when I, I think I wrote it when I was 24, it came out when I was 25. That's crazy. That's Trust Them Line, down here. My first book came out when I wrote it, when I was 24, it came out when I was 25.

That's crazy. That's Trust Damn Line. I actually do, so this is my only loosely related law book. The safety is as good. This is my book from University of Tennessee. Which is about, so Peter Thiel is outed by Gawker, which is his gossip website. And he takes his friends, is horribly offensive and doesn't like them, so he decides

he's gonna destroy them. But instead of suing them, because what they did to him was perfectly legal, he searches out cases where they have done things on the wrong side of the law and funds them, because he's a billionaire. And so they run a sex tape for Hogan, and he sues them for $100 million. And he tells Hogan and the lawyer, he's like,

I'll pay for whatever. He just looks for plaintiffs to take these cases, but the idea of slowly bankrupting them. And so the Hogan case goes, and like every step of the way, Gawker's trying to settle, and they can't figure out why Hogan is not settling. And it's because the one condition of taking the case was that you have to take it to a verdict.

Which is like breaking the legal system. Every step of the way, both parties should be incentivized to settle. And he's not, eventually they win $140 million and it bankrupts the company. Oh, it has to. There's definitely people who weaponize that. Well, what he realized, so the big moment in the case is he realizes that he deposes like that. Basically, it's this gossip website and they've sort of broken the system, which is they realize

that. They can basically say anything they want about anyone because you never sue a media outlet because it just makes the case more popular. And so he starts pursuing the case and he gets the CEO and the editor, the CEO of the company's been around for like 15 years, he gets them into a deposition. You know the first question of a deposition is have you ever been deposed as part of a lawsuit before? And he goes no. And then he realizes oh nobody's ever gotten this far before and that's what like this So they seem invincible. They're actually not invincible just no one's ever no one's ever challenged them in any way

So they they weren't following the rules. They were actually very reckless because they thought they were invincible, but they weren't that's incredible Yeah, that's awesome. That's a story. It was a crazy weird book to do. This is a great list What else you you into? Tell me, I'm curious, I've always been curious about your coins. How that kind of came to be for you. We know like in the military, they're like challenge coins, so it's sort of based on that.

You just have that idea of just, you know what I should do, I should just. Well, so in a lot of like Renaissance art and churches and stuff, they have like memento mori, like the reminder of mortality. And I was like, you know, you'll see, I'll be like a philosopher at his table and he has a skull there.

Oh, it'd be cool to have some kind of like memento mori. Table something. Something. I was like, I'm probably not gonna buy a skull. And I was like, what if I had like a challenge coin, like a challenge coin? So that's where the memento mori one came from. That's cool, man.

And I was like, I don't know eight or nine years ago I was like, let's just make like five hundred of them. Yeah, and that'll pay for me to have one right, you know Like I'll just see it. Yeah, and then we feel like tens of thousands. Yeah crazy. Yeah, you want like incredible I'd be honored which one would you want? So yeah, whatever you think kind of captures our Talk. All right. Can you give me a four virtues one? I've also been following this Daily Dad stuff. Do you know a lot of it? I really like it a lot. Is that like your passion project?

Yeah, I would say so. In a good way. Yeah, no, totally. Our kids are pretty much the same age. Yeah, I would say it's maybe much better writing it. And so if it sells one copy, then great. But like in writing it, I had to just say the stuff to myself.

Well, of course. And do you ever like find, cause I know you travel, and I travel like with writing it, I had to say this stuff to myself over and over and over. Oh, of course, and do you ever like find, cause I know you travel, and I travel like with my kids, that something will happen and you're like, I need to remember that, I need to remember that little. Yeah, all the time. Oh, here, this is a four virtues.

This is cool. That's the man. So the four virtues of Stozen are courage, discipline, justice, and that's what that one is. I have this one in here, but. Yeah, yeah. So I don't care what you think about it. Yeah, this one in here, but. Yeah, yeah. So I don't care about that one. Yeah, man.

This is so impressive. Yeah. What an awesome life you've carved out, man. It's great, and you're in Bastrop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. When I found out you were in Bastrop, I was like, what?

The same, I thought the exact same thing when I found out you were in the Boma. Yeah, I know. But that's why I was like, no, I'm not coming to Bastrop without bringing my boots. There we go. Here, we gotta take a picture. I read not coming to Bastrop without bringing my boots. There we go. We gotta take a picture. I read a lot.

It's sort of my job. You can't write without reading. For almost 15 years now, once a month, I send out an email with my favorite book recommendations for that month. Books that I've been reading, books that I've been going through, books that changed my life, that inspired me, that I can connect to what's happening in the world. And you can sign up right now at Ryanyanholiday.net slash reading list.