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.

Provide them with this unusual advantage. Over three decades after their famous flight, a journalist

asked Oroville and Wilbur how they did it. How did two brothers with no money, no influence,

and no other special advantages do what specialists with all those things couldn't do? It isn't true,

Orville corrected, to say that we had no special

advantages. We did have unusual advantages in childhood, without which I doubt we could have

accomplished much. And what was that? What was their unusual advantage? Their father, as we talked

about a while back, had a job that required him to travel widely.

And on the road, he always looked for cool toys, toys that taught them things, introduced them to new worlds beginning.

It so happens with the toy helicopter.

The greatest thing in our favor, Oroville explained, was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity. If my father had not

been the kind who encouraged his children to pursue intellectual interests without any thought of

profit, our early curiosity about flying would have been nipped too early to bear fruit.

Longtime daily dad readers will say, we've heard this story before.

It's true.

It's the story of Zeno's father bringing home the works of Socrates.

It's the story of Jennifer Dowden's father dropping off a copy of a science book he thought his daughter would be interested in.

It's the story of John Adams, Sr., helping his boy find his lane, his interests, his curiosities.

It's the story of Albert Einstein's father, giving him a compass as a present when he was five years old. We have to do this. We have to

cultivate their curiosities, whatever they may be. We have to encourage their interests without

...