Let This Always Be The Answer | I Was the First FDNY Chief on the Scene on 9/11
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Why does the episode begin with a focus on love and stoic virtues on 9/11?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. On this day, twenty-five years ago, Brian Sweeney was a passenger trapped on hijacked United Airlines flight one seventy-five. 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.
If you're over to sign uh with on an airplane that's an hijack, that things don't go well and it's not looking good. I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have a good time. Uh, same to my parents and everybody 'cause I just totally love you and uh I won't be always done there. I did. I call you.
In Book One of Meditations, where Marcus Realis catalogues 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.
How does Ryan Holiday introduce the 25‑year anniversary and set up Chief Joseph Pfeifer’s story?
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. 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 to Even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of nine eleven, 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.
Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of September eleventh. 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 just moved to a new house and 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, like we had these like rabbit ears. I remember adjusting the rabbit ears to get network television and and watching this somewhat 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? Like and I know how tricky memory can be.
What did Chief Pfeifer see and hear as he arrived at the North Tower moments after the plane hit?
So I I don't want to sort of paint a scene that I don't have a 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 I think this will be an isolated incident. The w the weight of what had fully happened. I don't think the towers had come down yet. My dad had had worked in some terrorism adjacent stuff. He was an explosives expert. And I so I think he he had a you know an understanding that there'd been terrorist attacks before. He didn't know what it was gonna be. And I remember a couple of months later, a year later, he said, you know, I remember Remember you said that.
And uh it turns out it was. Um 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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does the episode begin with a focus on love and stoic virtues on 9/11?
0:00–1:28
2
How does Ryan Holiday introduce the 25‑year anniversary and set up Chief Joseph Pfeifer’s story?
1:28–3:34
3
What did Chief Pfeifer see and hear as he arrived at the North Tower moments after the plane hit?
3:34–5:51
4
How did Pfeifer take command and organize the first fire‑ground response at the World Trade Center?
5:51–8:56
5
What leadership lessons did Pfeifer learn about connecting, collaborating, and coordinating during the crisis?
8:56–10:48
6
How are the three crisis‑leadership lifelines applied to the 2019 Notre Dame fire?
10:48–12:38
7
Why does Pfeifer emphasize storytelling and the “ordinary heroes” mindset for future emergencies?
12:38–14:21
8
What final message does Pfeifer leave listeners with about preparing for the next extreme event?
14:21–27:17
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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You Must Read To Lead | 10 Stoic Strategies To Deal With Anxiety
BONUS | 3 Life-Changing Lessons From Seneca in 3 Minutes
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