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5 min readWhat Our Fathers Teach Us, For Better Or Worse | Tom Junod
Marcus Aurelius wrote that he learned compassion, steadiness, humility, and self-command from his adoptive father Antoninus Pius. He did not learn these things from his biological father, who died when Marcus was young, nor from Hadrian, the emperor who adopted Antoninus and who was known for bullying, rage, and stabbing a secretary in the eye. The Meditations are in part a record of what a good father can give a son. But what happens when a father gives his son the opposite—when the lessons are about charisma without honor, storytelling without truth, and a secret life that everyone enables?
Tom Junod's new book, In the Days of My Youth, is a memoir of exactly that. Junod's father was a World War II veteran, a salesman, a singer who never made it, and a man who built a towering mythology around himself. He was also a serial cheater, a liar, and a figure who loomed so large in Junod's childhood that the son spent decades trying to understand what he was actually dealing with.
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Navigation Outline
- 2 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Sponsors** - Host Ryan Holiday opens with Wayfair and NetSuite ads before introducing the episode's theme
- 3 (03:22) **The Antoninus Model: How Marcus Aurelius Was Shaped by His Adoptive Father** - Ryan Holiday frames the episode around the list of lessons Marcus Aurelius recorded learning from Antoninus Pius
- 4 (06:22) **Antoninus as a Philosophical, Pragmatic Leader** - Marcus admired Antoninus for honoring true philosophers without being snooty or easily misled, and for being both reflective and decisive
- 5 (09:21) **Humility and Resistance to Flattery** - Antoninus pushed back against superficial honors and refused to be treated differently because of his power
- 6 (10:44) **Open-Mindedness and Willingness to Be Criticized** - Antoninus listened to anyone who could contribute to the public good, unlike Hadrian who bullied people into agreement
- 7 (11:52) **Work Ethic and Self-Care as Service** - Antoninus managed his diet and exercise to maximize time serving the empire, modeling discipline for Marcus
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
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
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