The Daily Stoic - Men Are Reading Less Fiction. That’s A Problem. | Steven Pressfield

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

Men may be looking for answers in all the wrong books.  In this episode, Ryan is joined by bestselling author Steven Pressfield to talk about how great fiction can teach us about courage, honor, sacrifice, and the human experience in ways that facts and advice often cannot. Steven Pressfield is an American author of historical fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays. Steven wrote for 27 years before he got his first novel published. During that time he worked 21 different jobs in eleven states. Steven taught school, drove tractor-trailers, worked in advertising and as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He worked on offshore oil rigs, and picked fruit as a migrant worker. You can follow him on Instagram: @steven_pressfield and check out more of his work on his website: https://stevenpressfield.com/📚 You can grab signed copies of Steven’s books at The Painted Porch:Turning ProThe Daily PressfieldPut Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To BeThe War of ArtThe Warrior EthosA Man At ArmsGates of Fire The Arcadian🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailSee 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, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm about to hop on a plane. I guess the car should be here in about 25 minutes. And I'm reading this novel, this bit of historical fiction. I don't want to say what it is yet because I don't know if I like it enough yet.

But I do love reading historical fiction. I love it. And one of my all-time favorite writers of historical fiction, probably one of the first great bits of historical fiction I read, and nothing against the westerns that I read as a kid or whatever, was Stephen Pressfield's The Gates of Fire. In fact, I have the last page of the original manuscript signed on my wall, one of my prized possessions. And I think I love that book because, look, there's things that we talk about, but what fiction does is it shows you, right? That book is honor and courage and shame and sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, greatness, what it means to keep your word, what it means to fail, what it means to care about something,

what it means to be committed to something, what it means to be the kind of person that other people can count on. Look, I think all of us need to watch less news, maybe even listen to fewer podcasts, and read more, right? And we need to read more fiction, myself included. I'm not lecturing you. I'm lecturing myself here. Because a good novel puts you inside of a life,

puts you inside of a time, a place. It makes abstract virtues feel real. And you can show the consequences of choice. You can show struggle in a way that a lecture or list, or even one of my books never can. And I think Stephen Presfield understands this, as well as just about anyone. He's one of my writing heroes,

not just his novels, Gates of Fire, a Man in Arms, tides of war, the virtues of war. He has this great new one called the Arcadian. And these are books that I think they're really popular with the military, but with people in all walks of life because they talk about some of that old-fashioned stuff. And Stephen Presfield was out here in Texas recently, and we sat down and we talked about why we should read more novels, especially young men, what fiction can teach us and why sometimes stories are a better way of carrying the truth than facts alone. He's got an incredible story. I love his nonfiction, too, turning pro, put your ass where your heart wants to be, the war of art, the warrior ethos. All this stuff is great.

He signed copies of many, many, many of them, which you can grab at the painted porch. Steve doesn't just talk about these things. He's lived in a fascinating life. He was in the Marines. He worked 21 different jobs at 11 states before he got his first novel published. He had school.

He drove tractor trailers. He worked in advertising. He was a screenwriter. He worked on offshore oil rigs, picked fruit. He's just a lovely guy, one of our greats. And if you haven't read him, maybe start with the new one, the Arcadian, or the classic, The War of Art,

and Gates of Fire. You can follow them on Instagram, Stephen underscore Pressfield. Go to Stevenpressfield.com and read more. Have the men in your life read more. It'll make you better. We're traveling internationally this summer and some of those places like in Europe, you know, you can't just go dress like you're slobby American. You got to dress up a little bit. Can't show their shoulders. Can't wear shorts. So I'm going to take some of the stuff I bought from Quince because it holds up well, looks good, it's fancy, without being uncomfortable. I'm going to try to pack clothes that are light, airing uncomfortable. I can use them in multiple settings.

You've certainly seen me in some of these things, if you've ever watched the Daily Sto of video or seen me talk live. I want something that looks good on stage that I'm not going to sweat through. That's not going to get super wrinkled. Quince has got great t-shirts. They've got great light sweaters. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar. brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you're paying

for quality, not brand markup. And Quince goes way beyond clothing. They've got sofas and ceramic cookware, premium betting. It's the kind of brand you end up recommending to everyone for everything. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash stoic for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Stoic for free shipping. and 365-day returns, quins.com slash Stoic. So apparently everybody that works for us at the bookstore and Daily Stoic

is using whatnot. And I guess I'm out of the loop. But once you flip open the app, you see why. There's something like super exciting about live sales. Like, whoa, you can get this right now that they're talking about it right now

and the sellers look like they're having fun. And, you know, it's not edited photos and videos. Like, you see it right there. in the seller's hands. It's like a really cool estate sale or like the coolest fair you've ever been at. And that's just like not what the online chopping experience is normally like. Check it out today. Just search What Not. W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the app store. Download it and you can start selling right away. I was reading someone they were talking about that young men aren't reading enough fiction, that like sort of muscular masculine fiction. used to be, you know, you have your Hemingways and you had these great sort of larger than life

writers. Not only was that an aspirational occupation for people, but that the fiction was speaking to what it means to be a man, what it means to be a human being, and that that's not what it is today. Like most of the best-selling fiction writers are women and most of the fiction is written for women. I would put you up as an exception to that. But how do you think about the role of fiction in people's lives. Well, that's really interesting. I haven't even thought about that, but it is true. You think about James Jones, you know, from here to eternity or John Irving and all the

stuff that he did. And actually, that sort of male writer has now really really fallen into dispute. It's like it's a bad thing, right? I just reread all James Salter's novels. Do you know who that is? Yeah. A fighter pilot who leaves, he has a Russian mig to his name. like he leaves the Air Force to be a novelist.

That's not a career trajectory so much anymore. Yeah, it sure isn't. But I certainly think those pieces of fiction were formative for me. Yeah. I mean, now it's like male fiction is sort of like telling the story of your struggle with drug addiction or, you know what I mean? All the novels are about young novelists living in New York City. Yeah, really. or they're serial killers or whatever they are, you know.

I wonder what that's about. I haven't really thought about that. I mean, I guess it's the masculinity, quote, unquote, has been so, you know, whatever, de-platformed that it's almost embarrassing. It's like, for me, writing gates of fire and setting a story in ancient Greece with the Spartans, part of the reason I did that was

so you could talk about honor with a straight face. Yes. If you wrote a contemporary story and some character says something, you know, well, we have to stand, you know, to get laughed out of the room, you know. But yet readers, particularly men and women too, want that, you know. So to put it in ancient characters mouths, that kind of dialogue. Yeah. And written in sort of an archaic format, it works. Finally, you can say something like that.

And then people are moved to tears, you know, and people are, you know, so. Yeah, it's like if you'd written a non-fiction book about honor, that might have sold, even if it was a big hit, it might have sold 50,000 copies or 100,000 copies. But you put it in a novel, and it's sold millions of copies over it. And it would have been very much of its moment, right? Like if you'd written that non-fiction book, it would, when did you write Gates of Fire? 1998 or six or something like that? It would have a 90s field, you know, and you read Gates of Fire because it's not, just a novel, but it's a novel said in the past. It has a timelessness to it that allows it to

reach not just a bigger audience, but I think, as you said, reach them in a much more earnest emotional way. I think it does, or books like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The idea of like when you said writing a book about honor, I mean, it's like I would even dream of it. That would be lame. Yeah, it wouldn't be, yeah. Forget it. And there'd probably be some imposter syndrome as The author, like, who am I? Yeah, right. Who am I to lecture you? Unless you, Jim Mattis.

He's like the only guy or, you know, McCraven or somebody like that. That's about the only people who could do it. I mean, even in my, I don't do fiction exactly, but I try to tell stories about the ideas. Uh-huh. Yes. Because it's a way in as opposed to. You ever think you will write fiction someday? I have a novel idea.

I want to tell you about it. Uh-huh. Not on camera. Not on camera. It's a weird idea. I was curious about your advice on it. But yeah, the novel as a way of teaching is obviously how we learned most lessons for all of human history. I think you miss something when that goes away.

Yeah, I think I didn't answer your question, I think, but I definitely believe fiction, not even as teaching. I think it's more than that, you know? I mean, now, of course, we have movies like Star Wars has certainly influenced bazillion people or Harry Potter or something like that. but a novel obviously lets you get into the head of a character or multiple characters. You never could in any other medium other than maybe movies. Yes. You know, that's what makes people really learn something, I think, you know, really let it sink in. Yeah.

Like a legend, like a myth, you know. It's a character. It's a human being. Because then to carry you through the novel, it's usually like the two virtues or values or whatever it is fighting each other out. Who are you rooting for? Who's going to win? What's going to happen? Where's this going to take this person? That's what the novel allows us to do. And you get involved emotionally, right? You start rooting for somebody. Oh, my God, don't let that happen. You know, that kind of thing. And that's where things sink in. Plus, I don't know, from my point of view, it's just fun. Yeah. Yeah. I did this piece a couple of months ago where I wasn't talking about novel so much, but I was talking about some of those poems like Longfellow's, a Psalm of Life or Invictus. In the 19th century and 20th, century, there were these kind of like, even muscular, masculine, like, earnest poems, too, about, like, the struggle and the fight. I mean, Kipling's famous, obviously has a lot of racist poems, too.

But if is such a famous example of, like, an encapsulation, a distillation of, like, the values of what you want a young person to do. And, like, I don't read a lot of poetry now, but if I walk to the poetry section of a bookstore, that's not what most of the poems would be about. Yeah, I'm sure, yeah. Most of them would not be for young men. Yes, too bad. It is.

By the way, I saw, I don't know, it was on a talk show or something. It was Michael Kane. Yes. And he read, did you see this? Yes. When he read that if. Yes. And it was, you know, brilliant.

I mean, brought you to tears, you know? Oh, man. I had this crazy experience. Anthony Hopkins read a couple of my books. And he would, for a while, he was emailing me. And I told him. that I was reading one of these poems to my kids, and he, like, sent me audio of him reading it.

When you have a poem, and then it's read by some, like, incredible voice. Yeah. Like, yeah, if by Michael Kane is crazy, there's a bunch of, like, really, like, poems you thought you got emotionally, and then a really good voice actor. Yeah, it's amazing. And it just hits you at this whole other level. Yeah.

Have you had Anthony Hopkins on the podcast? No. But I... Better get them. I would have a... on in two seconds. Yeah, I'm in his, in his memoir. He wrote about one of the exchanges. It was great. Someone was like, you know, you're in. That can't possibly be real. But yeah, I just feel like so much modern fiction is like these kind of unlikable anti-heroes or it's like these whiny

losers, you know, who are in publishing. It's like, I don't need to read any more novels about a spy New York City or whatever it is. But there's something, I think done right, there's something earnest about the medium that's very moving. But they tend not, like, yeah, you hear about these novels that win these awards, and then you look at the sales and you're like, sold like 6,000 copies. You know, it's not even actually speaking to a large audience. Not that that's always the metric of whether it works or not,

but, like, you know, your F. Scott Fitzgerald's and your Hemingway's and those, they were trying to speak to people, you know, and they did. I've never quite understood this phenomenon that there are certain writers and movie makers, too, that are like the darlings of the critics, you know? And you can never shake that in any way. Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know what it's, it's, it's woke. Yes.

In some sense. Yes. Although I'm not sure, you know, in a bad sense, you know. There's something about like, yeah, if you read like what the New York Times. Like, your novel will sell more copies than most of the books reviewed in the New York Times. Most of the novels reviewed in the Times over the next three or four months, right? Because you have an audience. You've done this a long time.

I hope so. Yeah. But they would never think to review this novel. Oh, yeah. No chance. And so I do think that does create some of the media backlash and some of the resentment and where it's like the things that is celebrated in the media or in the culture or the elites is not even close to matching what people want and like and know is good.

Yeah. But there has to be kind of a middle area, too, between, you know. But it's also like when movie critics write, the 12 movies you should see, right? Yes. You never heard of any of them, right? Yeah. Or what's nominated for Best Picture is like a bunch of movies you didn't even heard of. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, obviously there's a space for discovering great underappreciated things. but there's also something I think about the medium or the culture where the people that are writing novels are almost deliberately not trying to speak to a wide or ordinary audience. Or the critics that are praising these things are trying to show how smart they are. Yes. That they get something that you and me don't get, you know?

Yeah. But I think generally people should read more fiction and fiction should reach a larger general audience. Although I understand why people don't, you know. What do you mean? I think people will say, oh, it's made up, it's not real. I want something that, you know. Yeah. And, you know, it's tough to argue against that, but except made up stuff a lot of times is realer than real.

It gets closer to the big truths. Yeah. When it's right, it is. Yes. It does. And I would put in the middle category, I talk about Plutarch a lot. Like most of what Plutarch tells us. is probably not true, right?

Or you read History of the Peloponnesian War. None of those speeches happened. You mean in Thucydides? Yes, the words of... How do you know that? Well, because he wasn't there. Ah, I mean, the way I heard it was that he went to great pains. If he wasn't there to talk to people who were there and who were I with...

What I mean is that there was never a recording of Perikus' funeral oration, right? So what we have is Thucydivis's... is his version of it, which I would say gets close or closer to the big T truth, even if it's not the literal recording. So what I mean is that I think also historians have taken as their job to capture literally what happened. And everything has to be footnoted. And if it can't be footnoted or verified, they'll spend a lot of time trying to disprove it when really the purpose of history is actually the same purpose as literature. Do you know what? Like the purpose is to capture the essence of what happened and to trans, to communicate the lesson of the event and the personality

and the struggle. I mean, you must be dealing with this with the Stockdale book, you know, every day, right? But I even think in the stories that I'm writing in the book, sometimes I know it didn't literally happen that way. Or there's this story that I tell in Right Thing Right Now, do you know the story of Regulus, the Roman general? Yeah, who turned himself in after, yeah. Yes. Yeah. That is an amazing story, yeah. There's not that much proof that it happened.

It's a story told over and over and over again in these different ones. Cincinnati is another great example. story of Cincinnati. He's the Roman general. Rome's army is basically captured or on the verge of defeat. And so there's an old Roman general name Cincinnati, who they make dictator of Rome to save the country. And he leaves his retirement. He saves the Roman army. And he lays down his powers 17 days later and returns to his farm. And it's this myth, Cincinnati, that Washington is referring to. He resigns his commission and then when he leaves the presidency. So it's not like we have monuments and scrolls and documents.

There's not a lot of historical evidence for Cincinnati. But it doesn't matter because generations of Romans believed in the myth of Cincinnati to the point that it was true enough that 2,000 years later, Washington makes it as a model. If it wasn't true, it should have been true. Exactly. Exactly. It's like if it wasn't true, you would have to invent it. So I'm telling the story as per the ancient sources. I'm telling you what the ancients believed. I'm not adding details and inventing things. You know, I'm making it real by describing, I don't know, the sea, the wind at its back. You know, I'm coloring the story, but I'm not telling the story and then going, and by the way, this is bullshit and you're an idiot if you believe it. Because I think the essence of that story is. is really important. Yeah.

So I think there's, there's nonfiction and fiction, and then there's actually kind of a fluid. What is the thing from the man who shot Liberty Valence, the quote of, if you have a choice between the fact and the legend, print the legend, I forgot. That was a line from the movie or was a true newspaperman said that? I don't know. Right.

But I'm from that school, too. Print the legend, you know, it's a lot more fun. But, yeah, the purposes of those, across those three different types, the mission is the same, which is you're supposed to teach people things about the human experience, I think, ultimately. If not, why are you doing it? Yeah. Like Braveheart is a great example of that. You know, who knows what the actual story of William Wallace is.

Yes. But I'll take the movie any time. Yes, totally. Hey there, just a heads up. I'm going to be on tour this fall. You can see me in Australia, in New Zealand, in October, in August. I'm mixing my months up here. But in August, you can see me in Chicago, in Minneapolis, and Detroit.

Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, DailyStoicLive.com. I hope to see you there.