Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

Today is Father's Day.

Yesterday, we did a deep dive

into Marcus Riales and Antoninus, what Marcus learns from his stepfather. That was a sort of

how-to father episode. And then the second half of that episode was maybe a little bit what

not to do about Tom Junoad's complicated relationship with his father when he came on the Daily

Stoic podcast.

Today, I am talking to Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling.

He spent almost 40 years in the U.S. Army.

He started as a tank platoon leader, became commander of U.S. Army Europe and the 7th Army.

He did combat tours in Desert Storm and Iraq. And then he helped support

military transformation across Eastern Europe, spent, you know, many years in uniform, many years

deployed, was in combat many times. Thankfully, he came home, but there were many moments, I'm sure,

where he didn't know if he would return. And that's, he has this great

book called, If I Don't Return, a Father's Wartime Journal, which were the thoughts that he put down

on his first deployment when he was told there would be casualties as high as 50% in his unit.

You know, what did he want to leave to his two young sons? It's sort of an ethical will.

It's a great book. You should definitely read it. And I'm going to bring out a fuller episode later, but he and I wanted to talk about some fatherhood stuff. I think you're really going to like it. It's a pallet cleanser after Tom Junoad's sort of complicated relationship with his father. But you should definitely read Tom

Juno's book in the days of my youth. I was told what it means to be a man. It's a great book. And so is

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