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.

For thousands of years, humans have been expressing wisdom to each other through fables.

Whether it's Aesop or the Bible or Leonardo da Vinci or Hans Christian Anderson,

smart people have been packaging moral lessons in the form of quaint little stories or parables.

And for just as long, parents have been passing these fables on to their

children. But for whatever reason, this form of storytelling is lost favor. The stories are violent. People

complain or a tad dark. They're full of weird historical anachronism. They're racist. They're not funny.

Where are the pictures? But Washington didn't really chop down a cherry tree.

Talk about missing the point. Our job as parents is to teach our kids the timeless truths of the

world. It doesn't matter that the frog and the scorpion didn't really exist. What matters is that we

have to see people's true nature. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God or not.

The lessons in the Bible have served humanity very well over thousands of years.

Make an effort to start bringing these fables into your house.

You can listen to them on Spotify in the car.

You can read them together before bed.

Or you can tell the stories yourself from memory.

Don't just focus on the plot. Talk about the lessons, too. Talk to them about Da Vinci's

fable of the stone and its message about the importance of solitude and quiet. Talk about the fox

and the stork and how when you play a prank, you'll get pranked to talk about sour grapes.

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