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, 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 Presfield'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 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 a 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 novel, 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

that 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,

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