Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you with your most important job being a dad.

These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy, by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Why you must bring this home? So many moments of greatness can be traced back to this. Where did an athlete's love of the game

come from? Where did the scientist's curiosity come from? The novelist passion for story,

the philosopher's quest for truth, a politician's love of history. It came so often from a book

given by a parent. Zeno was brought home the works of Socrates

by his father who traveled as a merchant. Margaret Thatcher had her love of reading kindled by her father.

Jennifer Dowdna, who we've talked about before, was introduced to the science of DNA by the same process.

As Walter Isaacson details, her father, an English teacher,

curated a reading list for his young daughter. Often he would bring home a book, he writes,

either from the library or the local secondhand bookstore for her to read. And that is how a used

paperback copy of James Watson's The Double Helix ended up on her bed one day when she was

in sixth grade, waiting for her when she got home from school. When I finished, my father

discussed it with me, she said he liked the story and especially the very personal side of it,

the human side of doing that kind of research. So talk about multi-generational impact. A father gives a book to

her daughter, which inspires her to pursue a field of study that would win her a Nobel and save

millions of lives with her research in MRNA. And it's from that casual recommendation that you can

trace in some way your COVID-19 vaccine.

Children will be born who would have otherwise not existed because of that recommendation.

Grandparents will be around to see those kids who would have otherwise perished.

All because of a book.

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