transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] When we bought our house, it had some lovely plants in the front yard, some lovely trees, but then, you know, storm after storm here, freeze after freeze, and then probably some neglect on my end. They have slowly but steadily died, and it's looking worse for the wearer. And we decided we're going to replace them, but we want to replace them with stuff that's natural to where we live. Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants, and they have over 2 million happy customers. Have all the plants you yard and home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and houseplants, all grown with care, guaranteed to arrive healthy. Right now, Fast Growing Trees has great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to this show get 20% off their first purchase when using the code DAILYDAD at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at fastgrowingtrees.com using code DAILYDAD at checkout. fastgrowingtrees.com code DAILYDAD. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use code DAILYDAD to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions apply. 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. They need stories. They need food, they need water, they need safety, they need security, they need a new bike, and more Robux for their Roblox account. There's all the things we talk about our kids needing, but too often in our modern world, we forget something essential. We forget it because it feels old-fashioned, or it's not politically correct, or it's not scientifically accurate. It's not conducive to the classroom model, or a world where everything is digitized and bite-sized, or everything has to be testable and trackable. But they need it because humans need it. We need stories like we need food and water, the great historian David McCullough writes in his amazing little book, History Matters. I carried it at the painted porch. You can check it out. Consider, he said, that for nine-tenths of all the time that anything like humans existed on this planet, all their information, all they knew about who they were and how to survive, came to them through stories passed down generation after generation. We've done our kids and ourselves a grave disservice by puncturing every myth and subjecting every story to the lens of political correctness. We did them a graver disservice when we made school about what was testable and trackable instead of what it's supposed to be, a way of conveying the wisdom and ideas and values you need to be a good person in a difficult world. McCullough writes that we become something less than human when we ignore this part of ourselves, the part that needs and craves stories that is part of a tradition of stories. Well, that's what's happened to our society. And it's what will happen to our children if we fail to raise them in a world of stories, of literature, of myths, and legends, and heroes, and histories. And that's why I did those two kids' books, The Boy Who Would Be King and The Girl Who Would Be Free, which are fables about Stoic philosophy. That's why I read Aesop's fables to my kids, why we spent so much time on The Odyssey. We were talking about Greek and Roman myths over dinner tonight. My son proudly goes, Dad, I think I know more about the Greek gods and the Roman stories than my teacher does. I'm sure you did. Boy, that's really cool. Anyways, I was proud of that. If you haven't read The Boy Who Would Be King or The Girl Who Would Be Free, I can sign both of them for you. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But go tell your kids' story, and be well. Hey, thanks for listening to The Daily Dad Podcast. You can get this via email every day as well at dailydad.com. Please leave us a review in iTunes. Most importantly, if you know any dads or parents who would benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.