Lead Them This Way
The Daily Dad
Daily Dad
4.8 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Not all readers are great parents but all great parents are readers. We have to be.
If you are struggling to put down the phone and pick up a book instead, try the Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, Read to Lead has been our most popular challenge, taken on by almost ten thousand people.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent. |
| 0:14.8 | I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from |
| 0:23.4 | parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps. |
| 0:31.3 | There was a famous exchange between the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus and the king of Syria. |
| 0:37.1 | The king traveled to ask Musonius,ufus and the king of Syria. The king traveled to ask |
| 0:38.5 | Musonius, is it appropriate for a leader to study philosophy? Not only is it appropriate, |
| 0:43.6 | Musonius said, but for no one is it more appropriate. What is the leader's duty? Musonius asked, |
| 0:50.4 | and then he answered, to be able to protect and benefit his people. |
| 0:55.0 | Through countless situations that they have never been in before, |
| 0:58.1 | trying, difficult, stressful, baffling dilemmas and difficulties unlike any they have ever known. |
| 1:03.2 | But you'll notice that this is nearly verbatim of what we say, |
| 1:07.9 | it means not just to have kids, but to be a parent. |
| 1:10.7 | A parent makes a commitment, a commitment to protecting and benefiting their children. The person who intends to protect and help people, Musonius says, must know what is good for a human being and what is bad, what is helpful, and what is harmful, what is useful, and what is useless. Well, Musonius continues to be able to protect and benefit your children. You have to know what is good for them and what is bad, what is helpful and what is useless. Well, Musonius continues to be able to protect and benefit your children. You have to know |
| 1:29.0 | what is good for them and what is bad, what is helpful, what is harmful, what is beneficial, and what is |
| 1:33.3 | detrimental. And where does one go to arm themselves with this knowledge? Well, one place is books. |
| 1:40.3 | Harry Truman famously said that not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. |
| 1:45.0 | It's also true that not all readers are good parents, but all good parents are readers. |
| 1:50.0 | We have to be. |
| 1:51.0 | We have to learn to read for our own benefit and so that we might also benefit our children. |
| 1:55.0 | We have to read to have insights to offer them, to be able to help learn good from bad, |
| 2:00.0 | helpful, from harmful, and |
| 2:01.3 | useful from useless. We have to read to lead at work and at home. If you want to be a great reader, |
... |
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