Let This Always Be The Answer | I Was the First FDNY Chief on the Scene on 9/11

Today, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, let us be full of love. -- Chief Joseph Pfeifer was the first FDNY chief to arrive at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He watched the first plane hit the North Tower, took command of the initial response, and that morning, he also lost his younger brother, Lieutenant Kevin Pfeifer. 📚 Grab a copy of Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11 by Chief Joseph Pfeifer https://www.penguinrandomhouseretail.com/book/?isbn=9780593852804 Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from ORDINARY HEROES by Joseph Pfeifer, read by Fred Sanders and Joseph Pfeifer. © 2021, 2026 Joseph Pfeifer, ℗ 2026 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. -- Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoic This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features. Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues—courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom—into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  On this day 25 years ago, Brian Sweeney was a passenger trapped on hijacked United Airlines Flight 175. He knew something was wrong, but he could not have fully understood that he and so many others were about to be murdered in one of the most hateful and deranged acts of terrorism in history. But in those final few short minutes of his life, he managed to leave a beautiful message on his wife's voicemail.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Jules, this is Ryan. Listen, on an airplane that's been hijacked, things don't go well. I'm looking good. I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good. So happy to find. Thanks to my parents and everybody, I just totally love you and I'll be your angel. Hi, babe. How are you?

• 1:03Ryan Holiday?

  In Book One of Meditations, where Marcus Aurelius catalogs the most important things he learned throughout his life, he said that he learned from a teacher named Sextus to be free of passion, yet full of love. Imagine the terror of that moment. Yet, when you hear Brian's voice coming through the phone, there's not a trace of fear. It's free of passion, free of anger, free of despair, free of everything, yet full of love, because everything else has been stripped away, rendered irrelevant and insignificant. Pure love, Seneca said, careless of all other things, kindles the soul, makes us selfless, it emboldens us, makes us courageous, inspires us to be strong, instills us with purpose.

• 1:47Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't always win, as Sweeney's tragic death reminds us, but it is an antidote to terror and cruelty and evil. It is the thing that keeps going, that lives on after us, that brings meaning and comfort, even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of 9/11, let us, as Marcus Aurelius said, and Sweeney was, let us be full of love. Let us tell those we love that we totally love them. Let us bring love to every situation we face. Indeed, there is almost no situation in which passion helps, but almost every situation is made better when it is full of love.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today is the 25th anniversary of September 11th. I remember I was in my room getting ready for school on the West Coast, and I was listening to this radio show I would listen to every morning. I could just tell the instant I turned it on that the tone was different. Something had happened. They'd mentioned something about a plane crash. I went out to the living room. I remember we'd just moved to a new house, and our cable TV hadn't gotten set up. So we had like a TV in the living room, and when we wanted to watch TV, we were waiting. We had these like rabbit ears. I remember adjusting the rabbit ears to get network television and watching this somewhat

• 3:20Ryan Holiday?

  scratchy broadcast of, I guess, I think, the second tower. This is between the first and second tower, but I don't remember. And I do, I do remember that I didn't remember, right? And I know how tricky memory can be, so I don't want to sort of paint a scene that I don't have an actual sense memory of. I do remember talking to my father there in the living room and going, I wonder if this will be like Pearl Harbor for my generation. And he said, no, I don't think so. I think this will be an isolated incident. The weight of what had fully happened, I don't think the towers had come down yet. My dad had worked in some terrorism-adjacent stuff. He was an explosives expert.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  So I think he, he had, you know, an understanding that there'd been terrorist attacks before. He didn't know what it was going to be. And I remember a couple of months later, a year later, he said, you know, I remember you said that. And it turns out, it was. Like, one of the first discussions I remember having with my father, where we're sort of both equal participants in what was happening in the world. And then I went to school as a freshman in high school, and some of the teachers had us watching it. Some of them were like, no, we have to do school. I remember that. And, you know, everything that, that came after remained to come after.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  That's the thing you have to remember about history is that in the moment, it's just a moment. As it's unfolding, nobody knows where it's going to go. And, and as David McCullough says, it could always go differently. So today's going to be kind of a special episode. We're going to hear from Chief Joseph Pfeiffer, who was the first FDNY chief to arrive at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He watched the first plane hit the North Tower, took command of the initial response. On that same morning, he also lost his younger brother, Lieutenant Kevin Pfeiffer. He is the author of Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11, which is a new 25th anniversary edition. And in the years since, he's taken some of those lessons he learned in some of the most

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  extreme circumstances imaginable, along with conversations he's had with leaders around the world. Chief Pfeiffer and Penguin Random House, they were nice enough to share this excerpt, which I appreciate, to make this special episode. And I'll just get into it, right? The first section is going to be from an early chapter in the book. It's read by the audiobook narrator. And then the second is the epilogue, which is read by Chief Pfeiffer himself. You can grab a copy of Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But here is Chief Pfeiffer's incredible story.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Arriving in three minutes, we dismounted the rigs into a glorious September morning. Pristine blue sky, bright sun, mild temperature, summer just heading into fall. One of those top 10 days of the year that makes you feel alive, ready to tackle anything.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Standing in the street, I pulled out a gas detector about the size of a firefighter's portable radio with a very sensitive probe on the top, which I carried in my vehicle. After a few minutes walking up and down the street, I got a buzzing sound, a hit, over a sewer grate, and a whiff of sewer gas, a normal false positive. I sent some firefighters into basements and nearby restaurants, looking for the source, and they found none. As was standard practice, I asked my aide to contact Con Ed to check it out with their equipment. Suddenly, I heard the thunderous roar of jet engines at full throttle. In Manhattan, you rarely hear planes because of the tall buildings.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Looking west, I saw a low-flying commercial airliner so close that I could read the word "American" on the fuselage. Racing south above the Hudson River, visible just above the buildings on Church Street, the plane zoomed past us and disappeared from my sight for a couple of seconds behind some taller buildings. When it reappeared, I saw the aircraft was aiming for the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was 8:46 a.m.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  I stood on the street and watched as the airplane intentionally crashed into the upper floors of the World Trade Center. The aircraft slammed dead center into the building, the wings carving a huge gash through the upper floors of the 110-story skyscraper. A massive fireball erupted, followed a second later by an ear-splitting explosion. Black smoke billowed from the wound the aircraft had ripped in the steel and glass building.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  The impact took my breath away. Time seemed to stand still as we watched the flames. Then the firefighters around me erupted in a chorus of, "Holy shit! Oh, my God! Holy shit! A plane hit the building!" In horror and disbelief, I tried to comprehend what I had just seen. One of the tallest buildings in the world was struck by a commercial jet and on fire. Thousands of people were in that building or arriving to begin their workday. We were only a few blocks from the World Trade Center, almost certainly some of the closest firefighters to the disaster.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  As the closest chief in Lower Manhattan, I knew instantly I was going to be the first chief on the scene and would have to take command.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  "Get back on the rigs!" shouted Captain Tardio to Engine 7's firefighters, who grabbed their equipment and scrambled into their places on the vehicles. Lieutenant Walsh did the same thing with the firefighters of Ladder 1. I jumped back into my red SUV, followed by Jules. "Go, go to the Trade Center," I told firefighter Ed Fahy, who that day was driving me for the first time as a battalion aide. His job was to drive with lights and sirens, so I could talk on the department radio.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  I looked up at the smoking North Tower and grabbed the radio. I needed to give concise orders to command and control our response. "Battalion 1 to Manhattan." "Battalion 1," the dispatcher responded. "We just had a plane crash into upper floors of the World Trade Center," I said. "Transmit a second alarm and start relocating companies into the area." "10-4 Battalion 1." "Battalion 1 is also sending the whole assignment on this box to that area." I was informing the dispatcher that the units with me at the odor of gas were now assigned to the WTC. This box, referred to the location of the red fire call box on the corner.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  All the rigs on that box were now heading to Box 8087, the North Tower of the World Trade Center. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, our convoy raced south on West Broadway to the WTC. In seconds, my mind flooded with 100 pieces of information as I thought about my next moves. Biting thousands of fires had taught me to recognize danger, to pick up small details and process them at lightning speed. The more experience you have, the faster you can process the information by matching it to past incidents and envision a possible course of action. But this was a novel event. I had to slow my thinking down and anticipate the unexpected.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  "That was an American Airlines plane," I said. "That looked like a direct attack." I had no idea who was responsible, but I knew it was a terrorist attack. I could feel my heart rate subtly increase. At the height of the workday, there were as many as 40,000 people in the World Trade Center complex. Hundreds of people had probably died as the plane bulldozed through the building. Many others were likely in danger. Of one thing, I was certain: we were going to the biggest fire of our lifetime, the biggest fire since the FDNY was founded in 1865. I was in charge of the FDNY response for now.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I had to gather situational awareness, inform the dispatcher, request additional alarms, develop a plan, and deploy firefighting resources. As we drove, I watched white and black smoke billowing from the building. After the initial fireball, I saw no more flame. It was difficult to identify exactly which floors were involved, but certainly, multiple floors were now internally ablaze, and the fire would quickly spread.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Over the years as a firefighter, I had learned how important it was, in a crisis, to be flexible in my thought processes. I learned when to rely on intuitive gut feelings: “That wall is about to collapse! Get out!” And when to switch to deliberate or analytical thinking. Especially as a chief, being able to step back and see the big picture is crucial. I forced myself into a deliberate calm. Though I had extensive experience with high-rise fires and taught the subject at the Fire Academy, none of us had ever been confronted with a massive high-rise fire on numerous upper floors. My focus was: what do I need to do right now?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Sixty seconds after giving the first radio transmission, I got on the radio again. “Battalion 1 to Manhattan: We have a number of floors on fire. It looked like the plane was aiming toward the building. Transmit a third alarm. We’ll have the staging area at Vesey and West Street. Have the third alarm assignment go into that area. The second alarm assignment to report to the building.” The dispatcher and the incoming units needed to know what I knew in my gut: this was not an accident, but a deliberate attack by a plane aiming for the building. With those two orders, I’d asked for about 150 firefighters to go to the scene, with

• 13:49Speaker 02

  two-thirds reporting to me in the building, others reporting to a staging location where they would await assignment.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  This is the author, Joseph Pfeiffer.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  On 9/11, I was called to lead in extraordinary times. Thrust into a world of extreme events, I made critical decisions in the heat of the moment when lives were on the line. My memoir would not be complete without revealing the profound lessons I learned from this unforgettable crisis. Forged in fire, I found that when every minute counts, the three most important leadership skills are connecting, collaborating, and coordinating. These lifelines of leadership allow us to find the resilience needed to lead in a crisis.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Connecting to voice, video, and data for situational awareness is the initial lifeline. Information must be shared in real time among agencies and with the public. The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” is so true. A few seconds of video and voice communications could have made a difference in our evacuation on 9/11. And today, our ability to connect to information is even greater. Agencies can transmit images from helicopters and drones, along with radio messages and building data, to each other and to handheld devices at the scene.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Since 2002, I’ve advocated for safety technology to track firefighters inside burning buildings, which could also benefit the public. Imagine being trapped by fire or floodwaters, and your phone sending your location to first responders. With so many advances in technology, it’s more important than ever to leverage these innovations to connect to information, which helps prevent blind spots about the severity of the incident, its life hazards, and the dangers we face. While connecting provides better situational awareness, collaborating to exchange ideas with others is the second vital lifeline.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  This reduces the tendency under stress to engage only with one’s own group. In a crisis, leaders must gather near each other and flatten command to encourage communication across different groups and ranks. Effective collaboration involves practicing crisis empathy, by understanding your counterparts’ objectives and fears, then verbally acknowledging their perspectives and concerns. When people feel included and their voice is valued, we gain insights into the subtleties they observe. Appreciating others and their diverse roles creates an atmosphere of trust for collaborative decision-making to manage the crisis.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Once leaders collaborate effectively and empathetically, they must coordinate efforts across multiple agencies, which is the third lifeline. Crisis leaders should ask organizations: “What can you do? How much can you do? How quickly can you do it?” Leaders can then rely on a network of teams based on location and function to implement tactics, move in the same direction under a unified command, and stay out of one another’s way through decentralized control. Incident management teams can facilitate this network approach by creating incident action plans to inform responders about objectives, strategies, and resources.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  On the morning of 9/11, these three core principles were missing, but even that imperfect response saved 20,000 lives. As the towers fell, it demanded a massive response of unprecedented unity from countless organizations, shifting emotions from grief to collective action.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  On the rubble pile of crumbled concrete and twisted steel, leaders emerged to create a deliberate calm, ensuring that responders connected to critical information, agencies collaborated to develop innovative solutions to novel problems, and teams coordinated to carry out those solutions. After encountering extreme events like 9/11, we carry those experiences with us. However, through storytelling of lessons learned, they carry themselves. These same three principles from 9/11 have taken themselves to profound crises, including

• 18:54Speaker 03

  the historic 2019 fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, where leaders made critical decisions to send firefighters into the burning bell towers to save the 860-year-old cathedral. As the spira collapsed and fierce orange flames raced across the wood frame roof, General Jean-Claude Gallet, the head of the Paris Fire Brigade, realized that the only way to fight the fire was from the inside. Yet, connecting to structural information indicated there was a risk that the multi-ton bells could fall, crushing the firefighters and reducing the cathedral to ashes.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  General Gallet said, “This was the moment of truth: to go or not to go.” He later confided in me saying, “At that moment, I thought of you on 9/11, making critical decisions in the World Trade Center North Tower.”

• 19:54Speaker 03

  In a glance, it was clear what General Gallet had to do. He quickly met with President Emmanuel Macron, Mayor Anne Hildago, Monsignor Patrick Chauvet, and other senior officials. He explained the risk and said, “We only have 20 minutes for firefighters to put out the flames in the cathedral’s towers to save Notre Dame.” The decision-making process was collaborative, with religious, local, and national leaders considering the risks and potential outcomes together. President Macron took the general’s arm and said, “All right, go ahead.” With a deliberate presence of mind, General Gallet ordered the coordinated deployment

• 20:39Speaker 03

  of firefighters into the North Tower to save the cathedral.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  According to Galet, it was as if we were experiencing Victor Hugo's novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You could imagine seeing the shadow of the hunchback above the bells. As firefighters climbed the narrow spiral stairs of the bell towers, the lights from the helmets were a flicker of hope as they put out the hot, scorching flames. While the flames were still raging, other firefighters ran back into the cathedral under a rain of fire to rescue Jesus's crown of thorns along with other priceless treasures. Once the fire was extinguished, the rescued relics and artworks had to be safeguarded,

• 21:28Speaker 03

  leading to coordination between the church and the state for their transport and security. Maya Hildago offered Paris's city hall, the Hotel de Ville, as a secure place. She later said, "This was the first time in centuries that the religious and secular were together in one place." Ordinary heroes implementing the three principles of crisis leadership saved the cathedral and its relics that night. But these crisis leadership lifelines, honed from the experience of 9/11, are still urgently needed today. The next extreme event looms on the horizon, calling us to respond bravely once again.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  These lifelines will be necessary whether we are confronted with terrorist attacks, including the use of fire as a weapon, cyber attacks, or perhaps our most existential risk today, climate-related disasters. Our ability to manage the effects of more frequent and extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, flooding, or higher temperatures will depend upon leaders adopting the leadership principles we learned from 9/11.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  To that end, I have traveled the globe since 9/11, teaching these three principles of crisis leadership at universities, organizations, and government agencies. This journey moved me to design a handheld challenge coin, a tradition often done by senior leaders in the military and fire departments to represent their commands and values, forming a bond among those who possess them. For my coin, with the Brooklyn Bridge and the new One World Trade Center in the background, I carved, "The art of crisis leadership is to connect, collaborate, and coordinate," reminding us of our duty to extend these lifelines in

• 23:31Speaker 03

  dangerous times, preventing the forces of a crisis from pulling us down. I shared these insights worldwide with the hope of making a difference, and in doing so, I find it also lightens the burden of knowledge I carry from that day. During a speech I gave at the United Nations to the Global Congress of Victims of Terrorism, I spoke about the courage of our collective voices and put into words what was in all our hearts. "We do not ignore the pain of being victims of terrorism. Instead, we give

• 24:09Speaker 03

  it purpose to bring about change, because without purpose, there is no hope, and without hope, there is no call to global action." The purpose of sharing my story and the three crisis leadership principles I learned through 9/11 is the hope that these lessons will prepare current and future generations for the challenges ahead, and for the moment when they too may be called to be ordinary heroes in extraordinary times.