The audio companion to DailyDad.com’s daily email meditations on fatherhood, read by Ryan Holiday. Each daily reading will help you find the wisdom, inner strength, and good humor you need in order to be a great dad. Learn from historical figures and contemporary fathers how to do your most important job. Find more at dailydad.com.
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The Daily Dad podcast is a valuable resource for parents looking for insightful strategies and wisdom in navigating the challenges of raising children. Ryan Holiday speaks with thoughtfulness and insight, providing practical advice that helps listeners grow and mature while still embracing their playful side. The podcast offers daily reminders to be better parents and shows gratitude for the important role of parenting.
One of the best aspects of this podcast is Ryan's ability to connect ancient philosophical teachings with modern-day parenting experiences. He takes short thoughts from philosophers and applies them to current situations, offering guidance in a concise and relatable manner. The episodes are short, typically ranging from 2 to 4 minutes, making it easy to incorporate into a daily routine. The messages provide a positive start to the day, framing it with a focus on the most important job: being a parent.
One potential drawback of The Daily Dad podcast is that there are frequent advertisements throughout the episodes. While these ads help support the podcast as a free resource, they can sometimes disrupt the flow of the content and feel obtrusive to some listeners. However, considering the valuable insights provided by Ryan's messages, many listeners are willing to accept this trade-off.
In conclusion, The Daily Dad podcast is an excellent resource for parents seeking daily inspiration and guidance in their journey of parenthood. Ryan Holiday's thoughtful approach and ability to connect philosophical concepts with practical parenting advice make each episode impactful and meaningful. Despite occasional interruptions from advertisements, the content provided far outweighs any negatives. This podcast has made a positive difference in the lives of many parents by helping them focus on their most important job: being a parent.
Let's stop getting so hung up on whether this or that really happened. Let's focus on what it means.
For all time, having kids has forced parents to make changes. But does that mean we have to lose ourselves, lose all our freedoms? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
Specially planned days can be special. It's great to go to cool places. It's fun to treat our kids. But you know what's best? Tinker, create and innovate with KiwiCo! Get $15 off at KiwiCo.com with code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
As parents, we worry about having all the answers. Being a great parent is actually more about asking the right questions and not necessarily even of our kids, but of ourselves. In today's episode, Ryan shares 15 powerful questions that any parent can ask to become better at their most important job. Because the right questions at the right time can change how we think about things. They can change how we understand things. They can give us a new perspective.
Our children and grandchildren will live in the world created by your choices.
You don't have the average kid. You have your kid. They have their own timetable, their own schedule, their own journey.
Our kids don't grow up at some point, they are growing up. Vessi | Get an instant 15% off your first purchase at Vessi.com/DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
We want our kids to be tough…but only as tough as a situation calls for. We want them to be practical too, to use their brains as well as their brawn, their words as well as their will. A happy, healthy, resilient life requires a balance of both. Our Luctor Et Emergo Medallion will help you remember to slow down and take advantage of teachable moments with your children. Grab your Luctor Et Emergo Medallion at our Daily Dad store! Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at Ethos.com/DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
What kind of kid are you attempting to move them toward with the choices you make as parents?
In today's solo episode, Ryan shares how he sparks curiosity in his kids—using long car rides, AI-read articles, and spontaneous learning moments. From capybaras to Paul Revere, learn how following their interests turns into real-world adventures. MasterClass | Get 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass.com/RYANHOLIDAY ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
Our job is to help them see what they do not see (which is so often how what they are doing affects people other than them).
They're not so easily impressed. They don't appreciate the trappings of your success. They don't care much for status or seniority.
We're going to wish it away? Because we think something better lies in the future?
Our job as parents isn't to create mini-mes or to force our interests and passions onto our children. Our role is to support their unique interests, and to be fully present as they explore their own path in life.
Here you are, today, acting like it's not happening. Here you are acting like you have forever, like it will always be this way.
One of the biggest predictors of your kids' long-term health is how you take care of yourself. They're watching how you eat, move, rest, and handle life more than you think. Swimmer, surfer, and author Bonnie Tsui joins Ryan to talk about how the way you live sets the tone for how your kids will care for themselves.Bonnie Tsui is a journalist, New York Times contributor, swimmer, surfer, and the author of Why We Swim, and On Muscle. Follow Bonnie on Instagram @BonnieTsui8 and check out more of her work at www.bonnietsui.com
If they'd been more like you, you might have had an easier time fooling yourself—fooling yourself that they were an extension of you, that you had a say in who and what they did with their time and their life.
You must seed this habit. You must make sure you water it too and do your best never to stamp it out just because you're tired or because the question is inappropriate. MasterClass | Get 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass.com/RYANHOLIDAY ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
You have it right now. Your child's childhood is happening right now.
Every parent has a choice: Will we be an ancestor to our children…or a ghost?
The everyday magic. The special little expressions only they make. The priceless moments that make up childhood. Momentous | Head to livemomentous.com and use code DAILYDAD for 35% off your first subscription ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
In today's episode, Ryan shares 10 powerful reminders that every parent needs to hear. Drawing from the lives of Queen Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill, and Archie Manning, he shares what it really looks like to put your kids first, even when the world is pulling you in every other direction. Tinker, create and innovate with KiwiCo! Get $15 off at KiwiCo.com with code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
For all time, parents have had to figure out ways to explain the reality of the world to their children—to make their children strong and resilient in a world which will try to break them down. Tinker, create and innovate with KiwiCo! Get $15 off at KiwiCo.com with code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
They need us. To stand firm. To stand with them. To stand closer.
Let's make a commitment today: to put down our phones, to be fully present, and to give our children what they truly want and need—our undivided attention and love.
They don't need our cynicism. They need our affection, our belief, our interest.
Books are a wonderful way to slip past your children's defenses. A wonderful way to indirectly give them advice. A wonderful way for you both to learn about something. Aura Frames | Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://auraframes.com/ to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame with promo code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
We often think it's the big events that shape our kids, but bestselling author Daniel Pink reminds us it's the ordinary moments that leave the deepest impact. In this episode, he opens up about minimizing time away from home and why being there, even when nothing special is happening, might just be the most important thing of all. Daniel Pink is an award-winning author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Follow Daniel on Instagram and X @DanielPink Sign up for Daniel's newsletter The Pink Report: https://www.danpink.com/
We're gonna mess up as parents. There are going to be things that don't go the way we want them to go. That's not ideal, but if we can focus on doing great repair after that's at least a start.
As Cheryl Strayed writes in Tiny Beautiful Things, “You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt.”
It could be easier. But we do have it good. We really do. Tinker, create and innovate with KiwiCo! Get $15 off at KiwiCo.com with code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
The ancients knew that character was fate and we need to remember that with our own kids.
They need us to be the adult right now. They need us to love and support them. They need us to encourage and inspire them. Aura Frames | Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://auraframes.com/ to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame with promo code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
Make the decision today that you would want another parent to make. To spare you weeks of runny noses and sneezes. Aura Frames | Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://auraframes.com/ to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame with promo code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
It can be so frustrating to be a kid. The corrections. The confusion. Which is why we ought to make a little more effort to balance this asymmetry in wisdom and experience with our children. Aura Frames | Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://auraframes.com/ to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame with promo code DAILYDAD ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
As parents we have a lot of power over the lens that we bring to each parenting situation, each crisis, each potential frustration. But there is one specific thing as parents that we should try to see, something that's beyond just the good in things.
This season of life, as exhausting and relentless as it feels, is also fleeting.
While so much of parenting feels out of our control—schedules, tantrums, illness, life's constant surprises—we can always control one critical thing...
There are some things that do not respond well to pressure. There are some things we do not control as parents. So let's back off a little. MasterClass | Get 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass.com/RYANHOLIDAY ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
"The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children," writes Maggie Smith in her viral poem Good Bones. Today, Maggie joins Ryan to talk about what it means to shield children from the world's harsh realities while still acknowledging its beauty and potential. They discuss how parents can balance hope with realism, the importance of instilling strong values, and the courage it takes to remain earnest and sincere in a cynical world.In 2016, Maggie Smith's poem Good Bones became a viral sensation. It was named the “Official Poem of 2016” by the Public Radio International. Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful; My Thoughts Have Wings, a picture book illustrated by SCBWI Portfolio grand prize winner Leanne Hatch; the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change; as well as Good Bones, named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry. Maggie's latest book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life just released! You can grab signed copies of Dear Writer at The Painted Porch in addition to her books You Could Make This Place Beautiful and Keep MovingFollow Maggie Smith on Instagram @ MaggieSmithPoet
The little things bring us together. The little moments of joy and silliness. PESTIE | Protect your home from bugs with Pestie. Go to pestie.com/dad for an extra 10% off your order! ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
Meditations is a parenting book—one of the greatest ever written. Because at its core, it's about the transmission of wisdom and values from one generation to the next.
The Stoics remind us that everything has its compensation…if we choose to see it, if we choose to welcome it. Tushbaby is here to make parenting a little easier—one day, or carry at a time. Visit Tushbaby.com and start customizing your own carrier. Make sure to use code DAILY DAD for 20% your first order. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com
We have to remember that courage and justice—the two most essential Stoic virtues—demand that we open our hearts and direct our actions at a slightly larger purview.
These are the moments we have to hold onto—the ones we have to carry with us for all the times when it feels like we're falling short, when life feels overwhelming, or when we're caught in the endless grind of trying to do and be more.
Tag along as Ryan takes his oldest son to see Hamilton—his latest obsession. In this episode, Ryan reflects on how the father-son outing went, why it's crucial for parents to show genuine interest in their kids' passions, and even includes a few thoughts in Clark's own words along the way.
We wear any number of masks—one that covers up our pain, our fears, our doubts, perhaps even one that displays the person that we truly are.
Every family has them. The small but special little exchanges.
You have, right now, what your future self desires. Focus on what's right in front of you.
Yeah, these kids are crazy. Yeah, they are a lot…and take a lot out of us. But aren't they also the best?
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