BONUS | Jefferson Fisher's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  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, 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 DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  You mentioned melancholy. Did you read Lincoln's melancholy? Have you read that? I haven't. Oh, no. I don't know. Okay, so this is Lincoln biography of a writer. Have you read that one? I have 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. All right, so like my favorite factoid about that one, there's more pages in that book than words in the Gettysburg Address. But like, his basic argument is that Lincoln is making it... Like, we think of Gettysburg as this like inspirational... Of course.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  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. And he's writing, actually, no. He's saying, no, that we're dedicated to this proposition, that all men are created equal. And that's what we're on this battlefield. He redefined it. Yeah, Will's 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. Right. And 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. Right. And that that is sort of a second... It becomes sort of a second founding document.

• 2:26Ryan Holiday?

  But it's... If you can see it as... A legal argument from a lawyer. Right. It makes a lot more sense. Yeah, I can tell he's framing his argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he doesn't mention, 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, just let them do all the talking. Yeah. The guy before him gave a two-hour address. And 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 people, like, just lay it out.

• 3:11Ryan Holiday?

  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 at 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. And that's one of my all-time favorites. These are awesome. This is the Tina Rivas. Oh, yeah, Tina Rivas, of course, incredible. Her book Leadership is really good. Yes. Uh, because it's sort of a best of all of them. Yeah, I haven't read it, but I know it's, I know she has it. I'm gonna read her next week, actually. Are you really? Yeah, okay, this is an obscure, uh, legal book I think you would like, which is, uh... And you've read all of these, I think.

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  The premise is that they're all books that my wife and I have read and loved, as opposed to just any book. Are you just a speed reader? No, I mean, this is over the course of a life. I didn't all read these all yesterday. Yeah. I'm looking for furious hours. All right, 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. And, 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,

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  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, like, collaborator on In Cold Blood.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  Because they were childhood friends, like he's Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they're childhood friends.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  And so he's fictionalized in that book.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Wow, that's cool.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's nuts. So that one's super good. I think you'll like that one.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  These are all great books.

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's the idea. Only hits, all killer, no filler.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  I saw you interview Charles Duhigg, super communicative.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's awesome. I love these. And also like, um...

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  Robert's amazing.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Book. He's just a really cool guy. And then Sahil's came out.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  Have you seen, uh...

• 5:41Speaker 01

  I've not. Is this the 50th edition?

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, that's the 50th. That's the 50th. That was the first book. I was a researcher, so... But this one, so this is like the 25th anniversary edition of Forty Hours of Power. So it's like Mockingbird on this side.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I see what you did.

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  And then Robert on this side. It's my favorite. It's pretty cool.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  That's awesome. Do you nerd out on books now, like when you, when you look at the

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, now...

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Covers and like all that stuff?

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Because I've been through that process now of like what it really takes to build a cover.

• 6:09Ryan Holiday?

  Choices? Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  And you don't think about like just the white space, the font, the...

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or you have ideas like, I want to have colored pictures.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Now, you published your first one when you were like, what, 22?

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, my first book came out when I, I think I wrote it when I was 24, it came out when I was 25.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 6:25Ryan Holiday?

  That's Trust in Line. I actually do, so this is my only loosely related to the law book. The Satan is good. This is, uh, I'm looking at conspiracy. Which is about, so Peter Thiel is outed by Gawker. Which is this gossip website. And he takes friends as horribly offensive and doesn't like them, so he decides he's going to 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 he, they run a sex tape for Oregon. And he sues them for a hundred million dollars.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  And he tells Hulk Hogan in the lawyer, he's like, uh, I'll pay for whatever. He just looks for plaintiffs to take these cases with the idea of slowly bankrupting them. And so the Hogan case goes and like at every step of the way, Gawker is trying to settle and they can't figure out why Hulk Hogan is not settling.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  You never would get.

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  And it's because the one condition of taking the case was that you have to take it to a verdict.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  Which is like breaking the legal system.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  At every step of the way, both parties should be incentivized to settle. And he's, Hogan not, and eventually they, they win a hundred and forty million dollars. And it bankrupts the company and.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Now, there's definitely people who weaponize that.

• 7:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, what he realized, so the, the big sort of moment in the case is he realizes that he, 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.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  And so, uh, he starts pursuing the case and he gets the, the CEO, uh, and the, the editor, the CEO of the company's been around for like fifteen years. He gets them into 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, 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.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 8:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  That's awesome. That's a big story.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it was a crazy, weird book to do.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  That's a great list, man. What else are you into? Tell me, I just, I'm curious. I've always been curious about your coins. So that's how that kind of came to be for you.

• 8:50Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you know, like, uh, in the military, they carry like challenge coins. So it's sort of based on that.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  You just have that idea of just, you know, I should do, should just.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so, so in a lot of like, uh, Renaissance art and churches and stuff, they have like memento mori, like the reminder of mortality. And I was like, you know, you see, it'll be like a philosopher's table and he has a skull there. I said, oh, it'd be cool to have some kind of like memento mori.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Table something?

• 9:14Ryan Holiday?

  Something. I was like, I'm probably not gonna buy a skull. Uh, and I was like, what if I had like a challenge coin, like a carrier challenge coin? So that's where the memento mori one came from.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  That's cool, man.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  And I was like.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I don't know, eight or nine years ago.

• 9:25Ryan Holiday?

  I was like, let's just make like 500 of them.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  And that'll pay for me to have one.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  You know, like I'll just do it. And then we sold like tens of thousands. It's been crazy.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Ryan Holiday?

  You want one?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Incredible. I'd be honored to have one.

• 9:36Ryan Holiday?

  Which one would you want?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  So we have whatever you think kind of captures our talk.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Our talk, alright. Could you give me a Four Virtues one?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I've also been following this Daily Dad stuff.

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, thank you.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  I really like it a lot.

• 9:47Ryan Holiday?

  Is that like your passion project?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say so. In a good way.

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, totally.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Our kids are pretty much the same age.

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I would say it's maybe much better writing it. And so if it sells one copy, then great.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:59Ryan Holiday?

  But like in writing it, I had to always say the stuff myself.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Oh, of course. And do you ever like find, because I know you travel and I travel like with my kids.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  That something will happen and you're like, I need to remember that thought. I need to remember that.

• 10:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, all the time. Oh, here, this is a Four Virtues.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  So the Four Virtues of Stoicism are courage, discipline, justice.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:21Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what I have. I have this one in here, but.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:23Ryan Holiday?

  So I don't care.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. This is so impressive.

• 10:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  What a, what an awesome life you've carved out, man. It's great. And you're on Bastrop.

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I love it. When I found out you were on Bastrop, I was like, what?

• 10:37Ryan Holiday?

  Just saying, I thought the exact same thing when I found out you were on the boat.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. But that's why I was like, no, I'm not coming to Bastrop without bringing my booze.

• 10:44Ryan Holiday?

  There we go. Here, 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. But I can connect to what's happening in the world. And you could sign up right now at ryanholiday.net/readinglist.