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.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Okay, but who should you pick? Yesterday we talked about why every parent should vote. There's so much we don't control

in this world, so much about the future we're leaving to our kids that's not up to us.

But you know what is up to us? Our vote, our decision to participate or not. And our vote might

not impact the whole election, although the last election, as mentioned yesterday,

was decided by 44,000 people in a few states.

And local elections are decided often by just one or two votes.

But if everyone thought that way, if they thought that their votes did matter, elections

wouldn't matter.

But the trickier question here, at least in America in 2024,

is who to vote for? We try not to be partisan here at Daily Dad. And I understand that many

parents are going to have different opinions about different policies. So instead of wading in on

that, I thought I'd point out some things that Marcus Aurelius admired in his stepfather, his predecessor as the

emperor of Rome, because it's a timeless and inspiring look at what we should be looking for and

our leaders and the type of person we should be voting for. And it takes on extra resonance when

you imagine a young Marcus Aurelius looking up and admiring it, trying to emulate it in his own life. What Marcus writes in

book two of meditations, he notes how Antoninus respected tradition without needing to

constantly congratulate himself or safeguarding our traditional values, how he wasn't prone to go all off on tangents or pulled

in all directions. He noted his altruism, his dogged determination to treat people as they

deserved, listening to people who would contribute to the public good, his gentleness, his modesty

...