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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history,

current events and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week,

something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you're

happened to be doing. So let's get into it.

Have you read the books? We say we want to get better. We say we want to learn about this or that. We say we want to make a change.

We say we've decided to get serious, but is this true? The Stokes had an expression, act a nonverba, deeds, not words.

So it's ironic that most of us say we want to make these improvements, but we can't or won't do the bare minimum.

Remete say to Daily Stoke Podcast, it's spoken to thousands of people whose finances are a mess who claim they want to get things together.

He asked them, okay, but have you read a single book about money? It's like that scene in the movie knocked up. You haven't even read the baby books.

If you want to do something about your anger problem, there are books you can read about that. We even have a course about it for Daily Stoke. If you want better habits, there are books about that. We also have a course about it.

If you want to get started with stoicism, there are books you can read about that. And of course, we have a course about that too.

If you want to be a better parent, we have a book about that too. One page a day, just like the Daily Stoke called the Daily Dad 366 Meditations on Parenting and Love and Raising Great Kids.

And there's a bunch of pre-order bonuses. We can grab it daily, dadbook.com. Look, is reading a book or taking a course going to solve all your problems? No. It's not going to immediately transform you. They are, after all, just words.

But reading those words is an action. It is a first step. It is a small but essential commitment. And that's why Catherine Heigel and so many expecting parents have gotten so upset with their partners who won't read the baby books.

If you want to get better, if you want to get serious, then get the books. Read them. And then take the next most important step, which is to apply them.

Although I actually found so many of the parenting books to be not very good, which is why I've been working for the last four years on the Daily Dad.

The idea being that you don't read a parenting book once and you're transformed, but it becomes part of your daily routine, a daily ritual, and like the Daily Stoke, like stoicism, by returning to it over and over again, you're making a commitment to yourself about your values, about who you want to be, about what's important to you.

Anyways, please do pre-order the book. It's a huge help, especially the earlier you do them. I'm really proud of this book. I just finished recording the audio book, so you can pre-order that also.

But if you want to sign numbered first edition from me, you can grab that at dailydadbook.com. It would mean a ton. Check it out.

Hello, it is Matt and Alice from British Scandal here, and we wanted to let you know that this season we are very excited to be covering the Cambridge Spies.

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