Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where you 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.

Character is fate. Never forget that.

These are challenging uncertain times, no question. What's at the

root of it? How did we get here? What can fathers do about it? The answer comes to us, as it often does,

from an ancient prescription. Character is fate. Who a person is determines what will happen and what they'll be able to do.

Should it surprise no one that a culture that has put character at the absolute bottom of the

list of its priorities in our leaders, below whether they tell us what we want to hear, below how

clever their tweets are, below how they look on television, below whether they'll pass short-term

measures that benefit us financially, below whether they belong to this party or that one,

that such a society would find itself in crisis after crisis. Of course, Hillary Clinton and

Donald Trump let their respective followers, and by extension, millions of other people down. Look at their

character. Of course, that enormously overpaid college coach with a history of recruitment

scandals left a disaster behind them at your alma mater. Look at their character. Character

determines everything. So your job as a father, as you seek to create a better world for your kids and raise them to be good in that world,

it's to value character, to teach it to them, to model it for them, to reward it when you see it in them.

Yes, you want them to be smart. Yes, you want them to be ambitious. Yes, you want them to be creative and hardworking.

But these traits are worthless, even evil, if not yoked, beneath good character.

We're seeing the cost of ignoring that fact in every facet of life right now. We need to fix it.

And we need to start at home.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Dad podcast.

...