The Daily Stoic

Step outside so that when you come back, you are not carrying the same heat you left with.

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There will be times we have to bend. There will be times we have to collaborate. There will be times we have to adjust, times we have to meet someone where they are.

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🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/

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Bruce Springsteen once said we can be an ancestor for our children, or a ghost. Father’s Day is a good time to ask which one we’re becoming. In today’s episode, Ryan talks with Lieutenant General Mark Hertling about the lessons we hope our children inherit from us. Mark’s book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, began as a way to pass down guidance to his sons during a deployment he knew he might not come home from. Ryan and Mark discuss the idea of an ethical will, the responsibility parents have to talk openly about failure, and the importance of teaching children what our own scar tissue has taught us.

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling served 38 years in the U.S. Army, rising from tank platoon leader to commander of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army. His career included combat tours in Desert Storm and Iraq, where he commanded the 1st Armored Division, prepared U.S. and allied forces for deployment, and helped support military transformation across Eastern Europe.

📚 Grab a copy of If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling

👉 Follow Mark Hertling on Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/mark_hertling/

🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/

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Some fathers show us who to become. Others show us who not to become.
In this Father’s Day weekend episode, Ryan looks at two very different examples of fatherhood. First, he reflects on Marcus Aurelius and the extraordinary influence of Antoninus Pius, the adopted father who taught him compassion, humility, discipline, responsibility, and how to hold power without being changed by it.
Then Ryan talks with Tom Junod about the harder side of inheritance: what it means to love a father who caused pain, kept secrets, inspired fear, and still shaped the man his son became. Tom’s new book, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, is about masculinity, moral injury, family secrets, and the lifelong work of deciding which parts of your father you carry forward and which parts you refuse to repeat.
Tom Junod is senior writer for ESPN, where his work has won an Emmy and the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and a winner of the James Beard Award for essay writing. Previously he was a staff writer at GQ and Esquire. The film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was based on his article in Esquire.

Follow Tom on Instagram | @tom_junod

📚 Grab signed copies of In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man by Tom Junod at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/

👉 Join The Daily Dad Society before Father’s Day and get $60 off your yearly membership with code FATHERSDAY: https://dailydad.com/society

🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/

🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/

🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos

✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today in the US, we celebrate Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in America. It’s wonderful to note the moments of historical progress like Juneteenth. But we have to remember that beautiful language pales in comparison to beautiful acts.

In today’s episode, Ryan talks with General Ty Seidule about memory, monuments, and what it means to tell the truth about the past. They discuss the difference between memory and nostalgia, why commemoration should reflect our values, and how American history is full of heroes worth honoring.

Ty Seidule served in the U.S. Army for more than three decades, retiring in 2020 as a brigadier general. He is a professor emeritus of history at West Point and received its distinguished faculty award. In 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appointed Seidule to the Congressional Naming Commission tasked with redesignating Department of Defense assets which honor Confederates, where he was elected vice chair.

Follow Ty on Instagram | @tyseidule

📚 Books Mentioned:
How The Word Is Passed
Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
A Promise Delivered: Ten American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation’s Military Bases

🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/

🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/

🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos

✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.