Shows
The Breadwinners PodcastEP. 10 | Nick Firchau on Fatherhood, Friendship & Breaking Generational PatternsWhat does modern fatherhood really look like in 2025 - and why aren't more men talking about it?
In this episode of The Breadwinners Podcast, host Alexis Contos sits down with Nick Firchau, creator and host of The Paternal Podcast, to have an honest conversation about the challenges fathers face today. From the crisis of male loneliness to the invisible labor dads carry, Nick shares insights from over 130 interviews with fathers from all walks of life.
This conversation explores why fatherhood feels so isolating for many men, how generational patterns shape the parents we become, and...
2026-02-0251 min
Paternal#137 Robert Gallery: Football, Rage, and RecoveryWhen Robert Gallery was a senior at the University of Iowa, he was one of the most respected and feared college football players in the country. At 6-foot-7 and 320 pounds, Gallery leveraged his size, talent and tenacity into a lucrative contract and an eight-year career in the National Football League. But all the while he was quietly suffering one concussion after another on the football field, and when his career finally ended, he struggled to handle bouts of rage that left him shaking in a chair after his young child spilled a glass of milk. On this...
2025-09-0441 minPaternal#136 Aymann Ismail: Three Generations of Men in the Mosque What were the first words you said to your child when you became a parent? Was there something you needed to say to officially welcome him or her into this world, or was it all just a blur? For longtime Slate journalist and author Aymann Ismail the task was clear: He had to recite a Muslim call to prayer into his newborn son's right ear, a ritual that's been performed by countless Muslim fathers through the generations, all over the world. But was he appeasing God, or his own father? On this episode of Paternal, Ismail discusses a...
2025-08-2035 minPaternal#135 Jonathan Malesic: Dads, Work, And Burnout (2023)Jonathan Malesic spent more than a decade in what he thought was his dream job as a college professor. But after years on the clock he found himself exhausted, angry, and struggling to feel like he was making an impact with his students. But even when he quit his job in order to solve one problem, he quickly realized he had another on his hands: Without a job, was he suddenly less of a man? On this 2023 episode of Paternal, Malesic recounts the experience that led him to studying the phenomenon of burnout, how it affects men...
2025-07-3039 minPaternal#134 Jayson Greene: Can Artificial Intelligence Help Us Cope With Grief?Proponents of Artificial Intelligence assure us that everything in life is about to change: Work, education, healthcare, art, and even how we remember our loved ones. But what role can AI actually play in alleviating psychological and emotional suffering, especially when a parent loses a child? Welcome to the mind of author Jayson Greene, who penned the celebrated memoir Once More We Saw Stars back in 2019 after the tragic loss of his daughter Greta, and who's very familiar with how opportunistic companies position AI technology as a solution to avoid feeling the pain of grief and loss. ...
2025-07-1638 minPaternal#133 Augustine Sedgewick: A History of Fatherhood, From Thomas Jefferson to Bob DylanHow did Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on fatherhood influence the American Revolution? What did Charles Darwin learn about evolution from watching his own kids? And why did Bob Dylan tell everyone he couldn't stand his father? After becoming a father himself, historian and author Augustine Sedgewick dove into the past to learn more about these and other hugely influential men, and how being a father and a son shaped their lives and work, for better or worse. On this episode of Paternal, Sedgewick reflects on why he went looking through the past for paternal role models, and why t...
2025-06-2541 minPaternal#132 Sam Graham-Felsen: Where Have All My Male Friendships Gone?In the final scene of the 1986 coming-of-age film Stand By Me, the film's narrator sums up boyhood friendship with the simple line, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve." And that's largely true for a number of men who had no trouble developing deep, meaningful friendships with other boys. So why has a lack of friendship among dads become a cliche, or even a running joke? Why can't guys hang onto those intimate friendships from their past, and what keeps them from making new friends as adults? On...
2025-06-1137 minPaternal#131 James Patterson: The King of Paperback Fiction Tackles FatherhoodJames Patterson has sold more than 425 million books over the past 30 years, making him one of the richest and most successful authors in the world. At 78 years old and entering the final stage of his career, Patterson has legions of fans devoted to his brand of psychological thrillers and police procedurals, and he can effectively write about anything he wants, whenever he wants. So what's the king of paperback fiction doing writing a book about fatherhood? On this episode of Paternal, Patterson discusses the motivations for his new how-to manual The #1 Dad Book and what he's learned...
2025-05-2129 minPaternal#130 Paternal Workshop: Your Tween's Mind, ExplainedYou could fill an entire bookshelf with guides on babies and toddlers, or the best strategies for dealing with teenagers. But for Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, one of the most critical stages for child development is the pre-adolescent phase, when kids really begin to push their parents away and first ask the biggest questions of their lives: Who am I? Am I normal? Where do I fit in? On this episode of Paternal, Dr. Ginsburg returns to the show for the first in a series of special episodes devoted to the issues affecting our kids. He dives deep...
2025-05-0828 minPaternal#129 Christopher Blackwell: How A Prison 'Heal Circle' Helps Incarcerated MenChristopher Blackwell has been a lot of things in his life. As a young boy he was a son longing to connect with his father over classic cars and football. As a teenager he was an insecure class clown, and then a dropout. In his 20s he was a drug dealer living in survival mode in a neighborhood riddled with crime and violence. And now he's an inmate in the Washington Corrections Center, serving a 45-year prison sentence for robbery and murder. But Blackwell is also an award-winning journalist, the co-founder of a non-profit organization focused on...
2025-04-2440 minPaternal#128 Austin Davis: A Young Father Forges the Future of Pennsylvania PoliticsAustin Davis was just a teenager when the trajectory of his life changed forever. A fatal shooting rattled his neighborhood in the working class Pennsylvania town of McKeesport, and spurred him to attend a city council meeting of all white officials who were skeptical of the concerned Black teenager raising his voice. " The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power," Davis says. " I had a stake in that community just as much as they did as somebody who lived there and grew up there, and I wanted to make it a better place." Near...
2025-04-0927 minPaternal#127 Jake Tapper: Leadership and Vulnerability (2023)Jake Tapper has been a leading figure in American media for more than a decade, serving as the chief DC anchor at CNN, the host of the network's weekday show "The Lead with Jake Tapper," and the co-host of the Sunday public-affairs show, "State of the Union." During that time he's interviewed some of the most consequential and controversial figures in American politics, and in the process learned a few things about why powerful men are so reluctant to admit when they're wrong, and what it costs them in the end. On this 2023 episode of Paternal, Tapper...
2025-03-2636 minPaternal#126 Paternal Workshop: Why It's Hard For Men To Say "I'm Sorry"Award-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss a subject that a number of past guests have brought up over the years: Grace and self-compassion. He examines why some men hold themselves to impossible standards when it comes to work, relationships and parenting, and why the inability to forgive yourself is connected to the ability to apologize to others, and actually mean it. Dr. Addis is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He also...
2025-03-1333 minPaternal#125 Joseph Earl Thomas: Fatherhood, Regardless of Your ExpectationsAcclaimed author Joseph Earl Thomas spent much of his childhood watching everyone around him, trying to figure out where he belonged. He grew up attending public school in Philadelphia and constantly scanned the classrooms and hallways to avoid being beaten up by bigger, stronger boys. And throughout his adolescence Thomas was always trying to figure out what a man is and what a man isn't. Then he realized that he shouldn't even bother with those expectations. On this episode of Paternal, Thomas recounts what life was like growing in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Frankford, what he learned...
2025-02-2730 minPaternal#124 Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg: What Type Of Parent Are You?Authoritarian parents. Permissive parents. Disengaged parents. Lighthouse parents. How would you describe the parents you had as a kid and, more importantly, what type are you now that you're a parent? The answer could speak volumes about how you interact with your kids when it comes to the rules of the house, how to build resilience, and how much you value expressing emotions. And it will likely determine just how strong the bond is between you and your kids for the rest of their lives. On this episode of Paternal, Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg - a pediatrician specializing i...
2025-02-1338 minPaternal#123 Frank: A Father's Week Of Life On The Street (2018)Meet Frank. He's a 62 year-old father of four grown kids, and grandfather to seven grandchildren. Back in the summer of 2017, Frank decided to leave his home in San Diego and spend a week in Denver with his son Tommy, but it was no ordinary trip. Tommy is a homeless drug addict who lives in and around Civic Center Park in Denver, and he needs help. But can a committed father really change the course of life for his son, who's caught in the deadliest drug crisis in American history? On this 2018 episode that is the most downloaded e...
2025-01-2947 minPaternal#122 Scott Oake: The Perfect Place To HealBruce Oake didn't speak until the age of two, but once he started, he never stopped. A precocious kid with boundless energy growing up in Winnipeg, Oake was an amateur boxer as a teenager and a talented hip hop artist who adored the ragged, tough guy aura of some of his musical heroes. But by his mid-20s Bruce was firmly caught up in the opioid epidemic and struggling to find a way to get clean, leaving his parents to wonder what they could possibly do to help their son. On this episode of Paternal, Scott Oake...
2025-01-1533 minPaternal#121 Best of 2024: Conversations of the YearPaternal closes out the year with a collection of the best conversations from 2024, curating five of the best segments from the past year into one collection. On this episode, Paternal guests discuss a variety of topics, including why Evangelicals and young men flocked to Donald Trump during the presidential election, why black boys need love stories too, the role the gym plays for men as they deal with issues of grief and addiction, and why anxiety and anger are so prevelant for some men heading into the new year. Guests on this episode of Paternal include author...
2025-01-021h 00Paternal#120 David Robertson: Learning To Live With AnxietyWhen David Robertson discovered a mouse living in his minivan years ago, he knew it meant trouble. But what happened next - six weeks of Googling for information about mice, the viruses they carry, and the chances he might die from catching such an illness - was more than something a simple mousetrap could handle. It was indicative of the challenges Robertson faces every day, living with anxiety. On this episode of Paternal, Robertson discusses all the ways that anxiety has affected his life as an award-winning author and a husband and father of five kids. He...
2024-12-1936 minPaternal#119 Charles Bock: A Man In Over His HeadSixteen years ago, novelist Charles Bock was the kind of guy who would never, ever want to appear on a podcast about fatherhood. He was single and living in New York City as an aspiring writer aching to finish his first novel and somehow get it published. He had no real desire to become a father, and he knew he was too immature to become anyone's dad. And then he met Diana. On this episode of Paternal, Bock discusses what happens when a man reluctantly becomes a father, and then faces a life-altering sequence of events that...
2024-12-0527 minPaternal#118 Ian Marcus Corbin: The Science and Philosophy of CommunityFour years after the worst of the COVID pandemic, is it really possible that America is still trapped in an epidemic of loneliness and isolation? Many of the nation's experts believe it's true, so much so that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a report last year asserting the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. And the crisis is disproportionately affecting men and young people, leaving many Americans searching for community and a sense of belonging. On this episode of Paternal, Harvard Medical...
2024-11-2030 minPaternal#117 John Branch: Donald Trump and the Battle For Male VotersIn one of the tightest presidential elections in U.S. history, is it possible that thousands of disaffected young men might be the ones casting the deciding votes? Donald Trump certainly thinks it's a possibility, and the former president has made a concerted effort to court these Gen Z men through interviews with a constellation of podcast and YouTube stars of the Manoverse. But what's really driving these men to turn out for Trump, and will the strategy work? On this episode of Paternal, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Branch discusses what he learned from speaking with a...
2024-10-3039 minPaternal#116 Jason Reynolds: Black Boys Deserve Love Stories TooOver the past 10 years, Jason Reynolds has become one of the most prolific and celebrated writers working today. He writes for a young audience that he believes is ready to think about and discuss the hard things in life, and he recently added a MacArthur Genius Grant to his collection of awards earned for depicting the rich inner lives of kids of color, ensuring that they see themselves and their communities in literature. But in his latest book, Reynolds is writing for the first time about boys' emotions and questions surrounding sex and intimacy. And he's also...
2024-10-1737 minPaternal#115 Gary Vider: The Con Man and The ComedianGary Vider is the son of a con man. His father Manny ran a series of schemes in and around New York City for years while Gary was growing up, including dozens of times when father and son conned their way into Madison Square Garden while posing as media members for Sports Illustrated for Kids. Gary met some of the biggest names in sports - John Elway, Mario Lemieux, and even Michael Jordan - all because Manny had what all good con artists have: The ability to ignore all the possible consequences of his actions. "Most people can't do i...
2024-09-1838 minPaternal#114 Mike Africa, Jr.: Prison, Parenthood, and the Legacy of a RevolutionOnce you hear the story of the Black civil liberties group MOVE, it's almost impossible to believe you had never learned about it before. Dubbed by some as a cult and by others as revolutionaries in the mold of The Black Panther Party, MOVE members railed against racial injustice and inequality in Philadelphia during the 1970s and early 80s, frequently clashing with police. A number of MOVE's members were either jailed or killed as a result, leaving its younger generation to make sense of the legacy of MOVE and how the group's actions shaped their lives. On...
2024-08-2233 minPaternal#113 Michael Ian Black: The Mystery Door To Male Competence (2022)After a particularly feverish Twitter rant in 2018 landed him an invite to write a guest opinion on boys and violence from The New York Times, Michael Ian Black had to ask one simple question: Are you sure you want me? After all, Black is best known as a sketch and standup comic, and a particularly snarky one at that. But he wrote the essay and it subsequently went viral, leading Black to eventually pen the 2020 memoir A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter To My Son, which offers a candid take on his own boyhood, the death of his...
2024-08-0739 minPaternal#112 W. Kamau Bell: Comedy, Cosby, And Raising Mixed Kids (2023)Over the past few years comedian and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell has become one of America's most recognizable purveyors of humor and smart social commentary. And his success is due in large part to his willingness to tackle thorny topics like race, sexual assault, education, and policing, be it as a standup comic, an Emmy-nominated reality show host, or from behind the camera as a documentary filmmaker. On this episode of Paternal, Bell discusses his latest film 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed and his own personal experience of raising his three mixed-race daughters, male vulnerability and dad jokes i...
2024-07-2441 minPaternal#111 Jonathan Rigsby: Behind The Wheel In Uber's AmericaEveryone at some point has ridden in the back of an Uber, but how often do we think about the people behind the wheel, or how they got there? Jonathan Rigsby had a master's degree and a full-time job when he gave his first Uber ride, reeling from a painful divorce and seeking a way to help support his young son. But Uber's promises of big bucks and a flexible schedule were soon replaced by long nights filled with despair as Rigsby realized he, like millions of other Americans, had been trapped in the cycle of the gig economy.
2024-07-1141 minPaternal#110 Peter Doocy: Fatherhood and Fox NewsPeter Doocy isn't the first guest to appear on Paternal as the son of a very famous father, but he's definitely the only one who can claim to have an "adverserial bromance" with President Joe Biden. As the Senior White House Correspondent for Fox News, Doocy's made it his job since 2021 to pepper the president and members of his administration with questions about immigration, inflation or international affairs, and in the process has become one of the network's most recognizable figures - just like his father. On this episode of Paternal, Doocy discusses what it was like...
2024-06-2729 minPaternal#109 The Best of Paternal: Real Advice For New DadsPaternal celebrates Father's Day with a special episode paying tribute to all the new dads out there celebrating the holiday for the first time. Three past guests are back on the show to offer their thoughts on the early days of fatherhood and the challenges of becoming a new father, but also on the value of patience, the power a village has to raise a child, and why it's so important to reconsider what we mean when we think of the word "sacrifice." Guests on this episode of Paternal include: Author and professor Jesse Thistle...
2024-06-1344 minPaternal#108 Michael Andor Brodeur: Men, Muscles, and MasculinityMichael Andor Brodeur is a "big man." That's the term he uses to describe himself after more than 30 years of lifting weights - some of those spent as a powerlifter, and all of those spent not just trying to get fit, but to get big. But for all the time he's spent in the gym over the years, he's probably spent just as much time thinking about the way men think about the connection between men, muscles, and masculinity. On this episode of Paternal, Brodeur discusses the concept of getting big and why some men are so...
2024-05-3033 minPaternal#107 Bakari Sellers: It Might Not Be OkayWhen you're talking to Bakari Sellers about fatherhood, you're talking to a man who truly is a link between generations. As the son of a famous Civil Rights activist who befriended the likes of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, Jr., Sellers feels the weight of expectations from his ancestors and his community. And as the father of two young twins, he feels the pressure of helping ensure the world is better for them than it ever was for him. But what happens when that pressure sometimes feels like too much? And what happens when, despite all t...
2024-05-0931 minPaternal#106 Saul Austerlitz: Homer Simpson and The History of Sitcom DadsIf you were a child of the 1980s and early 1990s, you lived through a golden age for sitcom dads. From The Cosby Show to Growing Pains and Roseanne to The Simpsons, fathers of all kinds ruled the airwaves for roughly a decade, providing an entire generation of wide-eyed kids a glimpse into what a father should look like and, for better or worse, what a family can be. But did these portrayals of paternal figures do more harm than good, and how did Friends and Seinfeld land a fatal blow to the fate of sitcom dads? ...
2024-04-2551 minPaternal#105 Dr. Dennis S. Charney: How To Raise Resilient KidsPaternal listeners email the show regularly with requests to cover various topics on the show. Some are serious and some are silly, but one request just keeps coming: How do we teach our kids resilience? Dr. Dennis S. Charney is a leading expert in the study of resilience and has spent decades examining the causes of anxiety, fear and depression. He's also interviewed prisoners of war, victims of rape and assault, survivors of natural disasters, and frontline healthcare workers about the traits that have helped them overcome trauma, all in an effort to better understand how we can all...
2024-04-1033 minPaternal#104 Rob Flanagan: Straddling Acceptance and HopeRob Flanagan is a husband and father who lives with his family outside of Boulder, Colorado, and roughly one year ago he and his wife Dana began an ordeal that changed their lives. After a few days of fighting a cold and a slight fever while missing out on attending kindergarten, their daughter Saoirse was suddenly hospitalized and then intubated, and it was unclear if she would ever wake up. On this episode of Paternal, Flanagan recounts the experience of spending days in the ICU with his wife while they awaited word on the health of their d...
2024-03-2742 minPaternal#103 Waubgeshig Rice: The Pressure In My Head (2022)Growing up on the Wasauksing First Nation indigenous reserve in Ontario, journalist and bestselling author Waubgeshig Rice learned early in his life about the value of culture and community. But as an Anishinaabe young man schooled in the challenges his ancestors faced as indigenous people in Canada, Rice was also keenly aware of what happens when a community loses its connection to its history, traditions and culture, and how men can easily fall victim to the effects of intergenerational trauma. On this 2022 episode of Paternal, Rice recounts his experience on Wasauksing First Nation and his sometimes conflicted...
2024-02-2838 minPaternal#102 Kwame Alexander: What My Father Taught Me About Love (2023)Most people know Kwame Alexander as the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Crossover, the bestselling children's book about two young brothers hooked on basketball. Long before he was an award-winning author, however, Alexander spent his time writing love poems, in an attempt to impress women and find his voice as a poet and a young man. But three decades and two marriages later, Alexander is a 54-year-old father of two now reconsidering those relationships from his past, and what exactly he knows - and doesn't know - about love. And in order to do that, he's thinking m...
2024-02-1437 minPaternal#101 Tim Alberta: My Father, My Faith, and Donald TrumpLongtime political journalist Tim Alberta spent more than three years speaking with pastors and churchgoers across the country in a search for answers about what's happening in contemporary Evangelicalism. Why were so many congregations becoming more political, and seemingly less invested in traditional Christian values? Why were they so motivated by fear? How could so many Evangelicals support Donald Trump, who doesn't share their beliefs? And what do all these dramatic changes mean for the future of Evangelicals in the United States, including Alberta's three young sons? On this episode of Paternal, Alberta discusses his life as...
2024-01-3145 minPaternal#100 Curtis Chin: Lessons From A Chinese RestaurantCurtis Chin spent most of his childhood looking for a comfortable place to sit. And that was especially difficult for Chin, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s as one of six kids raised by parents who owned Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, one of the most revered Chinese restaurants in Detroit. Despite its location in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city, the restaurant sold more than four thousand egg rolls every week and was frequented by celebrities like Joni Mitchell, Smokey Robinson, and Senator Eugene McCarthy. On this episode of Paternal, Chin reflects on the...
2024-01-1738 minPaternal#99 Best of 2023: Conversations of the YearPaternal closes out the year with a collection of the best conversations from 2023, curating five of the best segments from the past year into one collection. On this episode, Paternal guests discuss a variety of topics including the challenges of raising mixed-race kids, how father-son relationships impacted some of the biggest rock acts of the 1990s, how burnout at work can affect your parenting, dealing with grief after the loss of a partner, and how we can hold all the good and bad of life together in the same hands. Guests on this episode of Paternal include...
2023-12-201h 00Paternal#98 Paternal Workshop: Sex and IntimacyAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss the connection between the social construction of masculinity and men's relationship with sex and intimacy. Men receive convoluted messages about what sex and intimacy are supposed to look like from an early age, but can they really take stock of what they've learned and change their behavior as they get older? Dr. Addis also discusses how boys' early exposure to intimacy and vulnerability can shape their sex lives as men, the metaphor of...
2023-12-0633 minPaternal#97 Brandon Stosuy: The Crying GuyBack in 2016, Brandon Stosuy began to notice something strange about many of the people around him. Seemingly no matter where he went - jogging in Brooklyn, riding the subway into Manhattan, waiting for a plane at JFK - he spotted someone crying. Stosuy has spent the past seven years thinking about those people and what brought them to tears, and now he's become known to a number of his friends, thousands of strangers, and even a few famous rock musicians as The Crying Guy. On this episode of Paternal, Stosuy reflects on those first few people he...
2023-11-2230 minPaternal#96 Isaac Fitzgerald: Hope For A Lost Cause Isaac Fitzgerald has a large tattoo on his right forearm of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible or lost causes. It might seem like a fitting mark for a man who resorted to drugs and alcohol to endure a childhood full of insecurity and violence, but Saint Jude is also the patron saint of hope. And for Fitzgerald - the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts - hope lies in the communities where others might never expect to look. On this episode of Paternal, Fitzgerald recounts why an unstable home life in...
2023-11-0836 minPaternal#95 Bill McKibben: The Decade That Changed AmericaBill McKibben doesn't exactly do memoirs. But the latest work from the bestselling author and influential environmental activist is about as close as he'll get, examining why two crucial moments from his childhood - an anti-war protest followed by the rejection of low and middle-income housing in his otherwise affluent Massachusetts suburb - helped symbolize a dramatic and costly shift to individualism in America during the 1970s. On this episode of Paternal, McKibben reflects on those moments and discusses why the rise of the American suburb did so much damage to the environment and our sense of...
2023-10-2541 minPaternal#94 Andre Dubus III: Fighting To Get FreeAcclaimed author Andre Dubus III once wrote that he's drawn to writing about "working class men who work with their hands … men up against it who only know one or two ways how to get free, both of which can hurt other people or themselves." Dubus knows from experience. He grew up in the 1970s and 80s with a famous but notoriously absent father in the mill towns along the Merrimack River in Massachusetts, always eager to throw a punch if it proved his worth as a man. His experiences led to the celebrated memoir Townie, dubbed by one cr...
2023-10-1137 minPaternal#93 W. Kamau Bell: Comedy, Cosby, And Raising Mixed KidsOver the past few years comedian and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell has become one of America's most recognizable purveyors of humor and smart social commentary. And his success is due in large part to his willingness to tackle thorny topics like race, sexual assault, education, and policing, be it as a standup comic, an Emmy-nominated reality show host, or from behind the camera as a documentary filmmaker. On this episode of Paternal, Bell discusses his latest film 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed and his own personal experience of raising his three mixed-race daughters, male vulnerability and dad jokes i...
2023-09-2741 minPaternal#92 Israel del Toro, Jr.: You're Not Gonna Die HereWhen Israel "DT" Del Toro, Jr. was 12 years old, he made a promise to his ailing father that he would always watch over his younger siblings, and take care of his family. When he was a 30 year-old Staff Sergeant in the Air Force, he made a promise to his wife and young son that he would return safely from Afghanistan. But then everything changed with a flash of light and an explosion that literally shook the ground beneath his feet, leaving Del Toro, Jr. severely wounded and wondering if he would live another day, let alone keep any of...
2023-09-1332 minPaternal#91 Jay Rosenblatt: How Do You Measure A Year?Roughly two decades ago filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt started a ritual with his daughter Ella that he never expected would lead anywhere but the family archives. But the project that unfolded - an annual series of questions he asked Ella on her birthday until she turned 18 - eventually led to an acclaimed portrayal of a father-daughter relationship, and an Academy Award nomination. On this episode of Paternal, Rosenblatt looks back on the origins of his celebrated short film How Do You Measure A Year?, the questions he asked of his daughter each year, and why the film serves a...
2023-08-2329 minPaternal#90 Alexi Lalas: Embracing Kids And Critics (2018)Alexi Lalas knows all about opportunity. As a professional soccer player and member of the United States national team during the 1990s, Lalas used the global platform of the 1994 FIFA World Cup to introduce the world to his carefully cultivated image of a rebellious red-headed rockstar with a love for the world's game, and life's never been the same since. More than two decades later Lalas is still in the public eye as a television analyst for Fox Sports at this summer's Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, but fame does come with a price...
2023-08-0935 minPaternal#89 Rob Harvilla: Dad Rock Comes For Every ManLongtime rock critic Rob Harvilla has made a lengthy career out of his love for the '90s-era songs that shaped his days as a teenager and college student. He's the host of the hit podcast "60 Songs That Explain the '90s" and he's built a devoted fan base of equally obsessed music fans while exploring songs from artists like Nirvana, Madonna, REM, and the Wu-Tang Clan. But despite his success, sometimes he just likes to mow the lawn with an old Soul Asylum album in his headphones before he gets back to his life as a dad.
2023-07-2648 minPaternal#88 Jake Tapper: Leadership and VulnerabilityJake Tapper has been a leading figure in American media for more than a decade, serving as the chief DC anchor at CNN, the host of the network's weekday show "The Lead with Jake Tapper," and the co-host of the Sunday public-affairs show, "State of the Union." During that time he's interviewed some of the most consequential and controversial figures in American politics, and in the process learned a few things about why powerful men are so reluctant to admit when they're wrong, and what it costs them in the end. On this episode of Paternal, Tapper...
2023-07-1236 minPaternal#87 Matt Moore: Meat, Men, And The Fourth of JulyGood food has always been an integral part of Matt Moore's family. As the grandson of a man who helped run a popular food store in southern Georgia and the grand nephew of a soldier who endured World War II in part on his family's famous fried chicken, Moore has always been connected to the role food can play in a family's story. And now, as a Nashville-based cook, father, and the author of five popular cookbooks, Moore spends his days cooking for his family and preaching how other men can make good food a bigger part of their...
2023-06-2826 minPaternal#86 The Best of Paternal: Advice For New Dads, Part 2Paternal celebrates Father's Day by paying tribute to all the new dads out there celebrating the holiday for the first time, this time by bringing back three of the show's most beloved guests to weigh in on how they survived the early days of parenting. The guests weigh in on what surprised them about becoming a father, what they did right as new dads, what they did wrong, and which piece of advice they would give their new-dad selves all these years later. Guests on this special episode of Paternal include Seattle radio DJ John Richards, Newbery M...
2023-06-1435 minPaternal#85 Kwame Alexander: What My Father Taught Me About LoveMost people know Kwame Alexander as the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Crossover, the bestselling children's book about two young brothers hooked on basketball. Long before he was an award-winning author, however, Alexander spent his time writing love poems, in an attempt to impress women and find his voice as a poet and a young man. But three decades and two marriages later, Alexander is a 54-year-old father of two now reconsidering those relationships from his past, and what exactly he knows - and doesn't know - about love. And in order to do that, he's thinking m...
2023-05-1736 minPaternal#84 Jonathan Malesic: Dads, Work, And Burnout Jonathan Malesic spent more than a decade in what he thought was his dream job as a college professor. But after years on the clock he found himself exhausted, angry, and struggling to feel like he was making an impact with his students. But even when he quit his job in order to solve one problem, he quickly realized he had another on his hands: Without a job, was he suddenly less of a man? On this episode of Paternal, Malesic recounts the experience that led him to studying the phenomenon of burnout, how it affects men...
2023-05-0338 minPaternal#83 Bryce Andrews: My Grandfather's GunWhen Bryce Andrews was a kid growing up in Seattle, he always admired Montana-born cowboys, and men who rope and herd cattle. So when he finally drove over the Cascades and settled in Montana as a young, do-it-all cattle rancher working under an endless blue sky, he knew he'd found his place. But then he was gifted his grandfather's Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, a weapon that fascinated him as a little boy and haunted him as a man living alone on a desolate cattle ranch an hour's drive from civilization. On this episode of Paternal, Andrews...
2023-04-1939 minPaternal#82 Paternal Workshop: Everything Turns Into AngerAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss the complicated relationship so many men have with anger. We teach boys that anger is an acceptable emotion even at a very young age, but what's really at the core of the issue when a boy or man loses his temper? Dr. Addis also dives deep into the connection between anger and control, why so many men are ambivalent about each other's angry outbursts in a social setting, what role fatherhood plays in...
2023-04-0532 minPaternal#81 Clint Smith: Holding It All Together Clint Smith is a man deeply interested in the contrasts and complexities of the human experience. Be it in his professional life as the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling narrative nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery, or in his personal life as an often-humbled father to two young children, Smith is constantly considering how experiences shape us as people. "Parenthood is the most remarkable, awe-inspiring experience of your life," Smith says, "and it's also the most fear-inducing, humbling, and exhausting. It's the most revealing about the parts of...
2023-03-2237 minPaternal#80 Matthew Salesses: A Sense Of WonderMatthew Salesses clearly remembers the first time he saw Jeremy Lin on the basketball court. It was three years before Lin became an international celebrity and "Linsanity" took over Madison Square Garden in New York City, but even then Salesses knew there was something special about watching an Asian American basketball player dominate on the court. More than a decade later Lin's rise to fame - and the mix of recognition and racism he endured on the way - is the template for Salesses's new novel and his latest examination of identity, masculinity, and belonging. On this...
2023-03-0838 minPaternal#79 Jaed Coffin: Bloodlines And Boxing (2020)When Jaed Coffin was 23 years old he had recently graduated from college, and like a lot of people in that stage of their lives, he found himself looking ... for something. What he found was an austere and single-minded life in Southeast Alaska, training to become the next big thing in the sport of roughhouse boxing, a boozy, bloody, and rugged class of amateur boxing. Coffin chronicled his rise from wide-eyed novice to eventual middleweight champion in his 2019 memoir Roughhouse Friday, which the LA Review of Books called "a beautifully crafted memoir about fathers and sons, masculinity, and the lengths we...
2023-02-2239 minPaternal#78 Dan Houser: Anger Is Your Armor When Dan Houser was in his 20s, he would walk down the street and smash the windows out of parked cars. In the bars he would have a few drinks, eyeball the worst-looking guy in the place, and start a fight. After years of powerlifting he had built himself into a frightening 250-pound man who never cared about consequences, and knew that no one could stop him. But now, more than 20 years removed from his days as a man motivated by confrontation, Houser reflects on the armor he built around himself for years, what stirred so much...
2023-02-0931 minPaternal#77 John Vercher: Acting In The Face Of FearWhat does it mean to truly face down one of the biggest fears in your life? John Vercher went through much of his life being scared, until he couldn't take it anymore. Following years of training and decades after he was weaned on 1980s-era martial arts theater programs on television, Vercher stepped inside the cage for a mixed martial arts fight during his mid 30s, seeking the answer to one question: Can I do something in the face of my fear? More than a decade later Vercher is a father of two young sons and the author...
2023-01-2527 minPaternal#76 Jesse Leon: The Unbreakable ManPaternal opens 2023 with a conversation with Jesse Leon, a 48 year-old author and social impact consultant who has endured life experiences unlike any other guest in Paternal's past. As the son of immigrants and raised in a working-class neighborhood in San Diego, Leon grew up hiding a painful secret from his community and from his father, a former Mexican boxer who embodied the negative aspects of machismo culture and lived by the motto, "there are no friends in this world, and trust no man." On this episode of Paternal, Leon discusses how he suffered so much pain from t...
2023-01-1133 minPaternal#75 Best of 2022: Conversations of the YearPaternal closes out the year with a collection of the best conversations from 2022, curating five of the best segments from the past year into one collection. On this episode, Paternal guests discuss a variety of topics including the personal, psychological effects of waging war in Afghanistan, why there are no father figures in the world of Star Wars, the legacy of Richard Pryor on comedy and male vulnerability, why your kids are smarter and more capable than you think, and why sons are tasked to acquit the souls of their fathers through their own experience as parents. ...
2022-12-2954 minPaternal#74 Paternal Workshop: The Scallop ProblemAuthor and professor Andrew Reiner returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss how and why men often neglect to examine and express their emotional needs in a relationship, and what happens when they seethe in silence. Reiner is the author of the 2020 book Better Boys, Better Men and earlier this year wrote an article for The Washington Post about why men are often taught very young to diminish, or even ignore, their emotions in relationships. The article - which featured Paternal host Nick Firchau and a story about...
2022-12-1428 minPaternal#73 Kurt Braunohler: You're Such A F*cking BabyDoes the world really need another dad comic? Kurt Braunohler certainly doesn't think so, but as a 40-something father of two and a proven comic who's been on stage since the late 1990s, Braunohler is walking a fine line. Dubbed "a charismatic comedian with a flair for the absurd" by the New York Times and "the closest thing we have to a real-life Willy Wonka" by Vice, Braunohler is discussing more personal and vulnerable topics these days, including fatherhood, and his own relationship with a dad who's never seen one of his comedy specials. On this episode o...
2022-11-1633 minPaternal#72 Pietro La Greca Jr.: The Don Corleone of MexicoWhen Pietro La Greca Jr. was 13 years old, his father bought him a solid gold Piaget Polo watch. Not because it was his birthday or because it was Christmas. Just because he could. When Pietro Jr. learned to drive, his father gave him an all-white Mercedes-Benz 500 S Class with white rims that could do 170 miles per hour on the highway between San Diego and Tijuana. Such was the life for the son of the greatest money man along the U.S.-Mexico border, and someone once dubbed "Mexico's real life Don Corleone." During the prime of his...
2022-11-0236 minPaternal#71 Cory Silverberg: Sex Is A Funny Word When Cory Silverberg was 17 years old growing up in Canada, there simply weren't many resources available for a teenager confused about gender. But Silverberg - who uses they pronouns, and doesn't identify as a man - found surprising solace in the form of a retail job at a local sex shop, and discovered a rare super power that would shape their life. "Other people's sex stuff didn't freak me out," Silverberg says, "and I knew how to show that it didn't freak me out." Decades later Silverberg is a celebrated sex educator, public speaker, and the author...
2022-10-1940 minPaternal#70 Ted Bunch: A Cry For Healthier ManhoodTed Bunch has spent the bulk of his adult life as an educator, activist and lecturer, focused specifically on the intersection of masculinity and violence against women. He's also spent 18 years as the Chief Development Officer of the violence prevention organization A Call To Men, and in that time he's become one of the nation's leading voices on the perils of male socialization and the misperception of toxic masculinity. On this 2020 episode of Paternal, Bunch breaks down the challenges men and boys face due to the rigid expectations of who society expects them to be - strong...
2022-10-0530 minPaternal#69 Dr. Michael Thompson: Emotional Illiteracy Of Fathers And Sons (2018)Long before he became one of the nation's leading voices on the emotional lives of adolescent boys, psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Michael G. Thompson actually focused his studies on the psychological issues of young women. "I got into schools as a consultant," Thompson says, "and all of a sudden, all of my work was little boys." Thompson and co-author Dan Kindlon released their acclaimed book Raising Cain in April 1999, six days after the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. The book - which examines the emotional complexities of young boys and...
2022-09-2145 minPaternal#68 David Ambroz: A Place Called HomeMemories are a tricky subject for David Ambroz. He has no photo albums documenting his childhood, and no adults who he can ask about where he came from. He never marked the passage of time by holidays or school years, and his height was never measured on a wall in the kitchen of a home. Instead Ambroz and his family moved in and out of apartments and homeless shelters and lived a life of poverty, violence, and instability wherever they turned. Now in his early 40s, Ambroz is considered one of the nation's leading experts on poverty a...
2022-09-0740 minPaternal#67 Paternal Workshop: The Problem In Your Group ChatAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss how male group dynamics work, and what happens when one guy crosses the line. He also explains why some men lean on misogyny or homophobia in order to win over a crowd of new male friends, and the stakes for everyone involved. He also introduces the concept of TRAP (trigger, response, avoidance pattern) and why it's crucial for men to identify what kind of events serve as triggers in their life, as well...
2022-08-2431 minPaternal#66 Chris Ballew: Fame, Fatherhood, and Caspar Babypants (2020)Even before his third birthday, Chris Ballew was transfixed by music. He would sit on the floor in his parents' Seattle-area home and listen to The Beatles' seminal 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and not long after he was writing and performing his own songs. By the mid-90s he was fronting the Presidents of the United States of America - one of the hottest bands in rock'n'roll - and appearing regularly on MTV. But he was quietly harboring a secret: "On a gut level, I wanted out immediately." On this episode of Paternal from 2020, B...
2022-08-1029 minPaternal#65 Steve Leder: Twelve Questions to Tell a Life StorySteve Leder is a husband, father, bestselling author and, as the senior rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one the most influential religious leaders in America. During his 35 years at Southern California's oldest synagogue he has proven to be something of an expert in the human experience, and overseen not just regular services at the temple, but also countless weddings - including that of his friend and Academy Award winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin - and his fair share of funerals, of which he has performed more than a thousand in his career. Not bad for the son...
2022-07-2738 minPaternal#64 Jason Kander: Politics, Parenthood, and PTSDBack in early 2018, Jason Kander was riding high as one of the brightest young stars in American politics. After becoming the youngest statewide elected official in the nation and nearly toppling a Republican incumbent for a U.S. Senate seat from his native Missouri, Kander was invited to meet with Barack Obama, where the former president personally encouraged Kander to one day consider his own run for the White House, telling Kander, "You have what I had. You're the natural." But Kander's public presidential aspirations were derailed by a private battle with symptoms of PTSD, a result o...
2022-07-1341 minPaternal#63 Jesse Thistle: Tracing Our Fathers' Footsteps (2021)Jesse Thistle is an assistant professor at York University in Toronto and an award-winning memoirist who wrote the top-selling Canadian book in 2020, but his success didn't come easily. Prior to penning his celebrated emotional memoir From the Ashes, Thistle spent years struggling with issues of addiction and homelessness, a lifestyle he sees to some degree as the result of the absence of a father figure in his life. His own father was an addict and a thief who disappeared nearly 40 years ago, and no one has seen or heard from him since. But how much of his...
2022-06-2236 minPaternal#62 The Best of Paternal: Advice for New DadsThe new dads have spoken, and they want some help. So in honor of those men celebrating Father's Day for the first time this year, Paternal welcomes back four favorite guests from the past to offer advice on how to survive those early days of parenthood, including what they did right, what they did wrong, and what lessons they learned in the process of becoming a father. Guests on this special episode include New York Times chief theater critic Jesse Green, entrepreneur Jelani Memory, author Waubgeshig Rice, and journalist and screenwriter Chris Jones. Learn more...
2022-06-1542 minPaternal#61 Andrew Reiner: Better Boys, Better MenA number of years ago, the dean at the Honors College at Towson University in Maryland went on the prowl for ideas for new seminar courses at the college. Andrew Reiner wasted no time in offering an idea for a seminar on a subject that he says has become a compulsion in his life: Masculinity. What if the school offered a course where he could work with students to deconstruct our ideas around masculinity and what it looks like now for a new generation of college students, men and women? On this episode of Paternal, Reiner discusses the course "T...
2022-06-0138 minPaternal#60 Michael Ian Black: The Mystery Door To Male CompetenceAfter a particularly feverish Twitter rant in 2018 landed him an invite to write a guest opinion on boys and violence from The New York Times, Michael Ian Black had to ask one simple question: Are you sure you want me? After all, Black is best known as a sketch and standup comic, and a particularly snarky one at that. But he wrote the essay and it subsequently went viral, leading Black to eventually pen the 2020 memoir A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter To My Son, which offers a candid take on his own boyhood, the death of his f...
2022-05-1839 minPaternal#59 Akhil Sharma: Fatherhood at FiftyOf all the guests on Paternal over the years, it's safe to say that Akhil Sharma was the last guy who would have expected to appear on a podcast about fatherhood. Over the past three decades he carved out a nice life as an Ivy League educated investment banker, and then a successful writer and college professor. Fatherhood never really entered the equation because, in his mind, he was worthless when it came to what he could possibly teach a child. On this episode of Paternal, Sharma reflects on some of the complicated family backstory illustrated in his acclaimed 2014 b...
2022-05-0435 minPaternal#58 Eric Larsen: On The Ice With A Polar Explorer (2018)For centuries, the ends of the Earth have captivated and courted the world's bravest characters. The highest peaks of the Himalayas, the furthest depths of the oceans, and the poles, frozen pinpoints on opposite ends of the globe that still serve as two of the most ambitious destinations for a certain type of person you may have thought died out years ago: The explorers. Eric Larsen is one of those people, a veteran explorer who has not only reached both the geographic north and south poles, but also summited Mount Everest. And in 2009 and 2010 he became the...
2022-04-0635 minPaternal#57 Paternal Workshop: The Masculinity TrapAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the third in a series of special episodes examining various issues affecting men's mental health. In this episode, Dr. Addis calls on his decades of research to break down the links between social learning and the social construction of masculinity, and why he considers masculinity a form of anxiety disorder for some men. Dr. Addis also explains how and when young boys are first exposed to the ideas of masculinity, how the perception of masculinity has changed over the years, and why living up to...
2022-03-2334 minPaternal#56 Max Lowe: Daddy's On The MountainOne world-renowned climber dies and leaves a widow and three young sons behind, and his climbing partner and best friend helps pick up the pieces by marrying the widow and helping raise a trio of boys who lost their father. Among the world's mountaineers, climbers and explorers, the life and tragic death of Alex Lowe is nothing short of legend. For newcomers hearing the story for the first time, it's a fascinating examination of circumstance and fate, love lost and then rediscovered. But for Max Lowe - who was just 10 years old when his father di...
2022-03-0938 min
The DR & the DJNick Firchau, Host of the Paternal Podcast
This week’s guest is Nick Firchau, producer & host of Paternal, a podcast that explores & shares new paths to fatherhood. Nick, Amy & John consider the consequence of not having a positive paternal figure in man’s life & how those models are passed down to their own parenting. Amy shares her experience growing up with 13 siblings, the differences between her mothers & fathers parenting workload & how her relationship with her father changed after puberty. They discuss the normalization of therapy, the power of putting ego aside & why the goal of Paternal is to make better, less toxic people. We open...
2022-02-251h 27Paternal#55 Daniel José Older: Fatherhood In A Galaxy Far, Far AwayDaniel José Older was three years old when he caught his first glimpse of the characters who occupied the Star Wars galaxy, and he was so frightened he made a run for the exit of the movie theater. But Older - now a New York Times bestselling fantasy and sci-fi author - went back in, and his life has never been the same. Older is a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, a series of young adult and middle grade novels and comic books, and he's keenly aware that most of the Star Wars characters, especially the m...
2022-02-2337 minPaternal#54 Mickey Rowe: The World Needs What Makes You DifferentMickey Rowe has made a career out of one simple motto: The world needs what makes you different. An autistic actor who started out as a street performer in Seattle but was never given speaking roles in the theater during his 20s, Rowe eventually earned the lead role in the theater adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. In the process Rowe became the first autistic actor to play the demanding lead role of Christopher Boone, a teenager on the spectrum who is convinced he can solve the murder of his...
2022-02-0940 minPaternal#53 Brendan Kiely: Reckoning With Our White PrivilegeAuthor and teacher Brendan Kiely has spent years speaking to young adults about the difficult issues they might face in their teen years, and he's in awe of the amount of hope that lies within the next generation. But after seemingly endless recent incidents of police brutality against African American men and the centuries of racism that came before, he's writing for young adults about what it means to live with the benefits of white privilege. And he's figuring out how to start the same conversation with his young son. In this episode of Paternal, Kiely discusses...
2022-01-2637 minPaternal#52 Waubgeshig Rice: The Pressure In My HeadGrowing up on the Wasauksing First Nation indigenous reserve in Ontario, journalist and bestselling author Waubgeshig Rice learned early in his life about the value of culture and community. But as an Anishinaabe young man schooled in the challenges his ancestors faced as indigenous people in Canada, Rice was also keenly aware of what happens when a community loses its connection to its history, traditions and culture, and how men can easily fall victim to the effects of intergenerational trauma. On this episode of Paternal, Rice recounts his experience on Wasauksing First Nation and his sometimes conflicted emotions about...
2022-01-1237 minPaternal#51 Paternal Workshop: Holiday Anxiety and New Year's ResolutionsAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the second in a series of special episodes examining various issues in men's mental health, and the final episode of Paternal for 2021. In this episode, Dr. Addis discusses a variety of issues brought on by the holiday season, including anxiety, stress, loneliness, and why we create a mythology around the holidays that can be tough to live up to year after year. Dr. Addis also discusses the value of New Year's resolutions, and why men typically focus on fixing their bodies and their bank accounts...
2021-12-2221 minPaternal#50 Ivan Maisel: Love And GriefFormer Sports Illustrated and ESPN journalist Ivan Maisel spent the bulk of his life holding big emotions at bay, and turning to run at the first sign of emotional pain. It was behavior learned from years of watching his parents, who valued strength and stoicism in the face of tragedy, which Maisel himself successfully dodged for 55 years. Then his son Max went missing, and everything changed. On this episode of Paternal, Maisel discusses his 2021 memoir I Keep Trying To Catch His Eye and reflects on his role as a father to Max, who struggled with social anxiety and resided "...
2021-12-0838 minPaternal#49 Iain Cunningham: My Mother's GhostDocumentary filmmaker and father Iain Cunningham knows all about the myths we like to tell ourselves about family. But he knows just as much about the details our parents sometimes leave out, and the impact those family secrets can have on children who never learn the truth. Cunningham's mother Irene passed away when he was just three years old, and his family rarely spoke or shared memories of her for decades, leaving Iain to wonder what kind of person his mother was, and what exactly led to her death. On this episode of Paternal, Cunningham discusses why his father...
2021-11-1736 minPaternal#48 Omar Mouallem: Faith and FatherhoodJournalist and filmmaker Omar Mouallem first learned he was Muslim when his mother scolded him for eating Hawaiian pizza during preschool. Over the past three decades he's tried to make sense what exactly his faith means to him and how he identifies as Muslim as grown man and a father, punctuated with the release of his acclaimed 2021 examination of Islam's role in the Americas, Praying to the West. On this episode of Paternal, Mouallem reflects on his Lebanese parents and the moment he realized he and his family were outsiders in a small town in Western Canada, and what...
2021-11-0340 minPaternal#47 Paternal Workshop: Shame And Coming Up ShortAward-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the first in a series of special episodes examining various issues in men's mental health. In this episode, Dr. Addis dives deep into the topic of shame, including the definition of shame, what triggers the emotion in men, and how it manifests itself in men's behavior. Dr. Addis also explains why he chose shame as the first topic in a series of these special episodes of Paternal, why most people avoid social interactions when they're feeling shame, why men who stick to rigid d...
2021-10-2025 minPaternal#46 Dr. Ian Kerner: The Sex EpisodeDr. Ian Kerner is a licensed psychotherapist and nationally recognized sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy, couples therapy and working with individuals on a range of relational issues that often lead to distress. He's the author of a number of books on sexuality including the new York times bestseller She Comes First, and earlier this year released his latest book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex, where he shares the some fundamental exercises he uses to help thousands of couples achieve more intimacy and enjoyment. On this episode of Paternal, Dr. Kerner dives deep i...
2021-10-0640 minPaternal#45 Jesse Thistle: Tracing Our Fathers' FootstepsJesse Thistle is an assistant professor at York University in Toronto and an award-winning memoirist who wrote the top-selling Canadian book in 2020, but his success didn't come easily. Prior to penning his celebrated emotional memoir From the Ashes, Thistle spent years struggling with issues of addiction and homelessness, a lifestyle he sees to some degree as the result of the absence of a father figure in his life. His own father was an addict and a thief who disappeared nearly 40 years ago, and no one has seen or heard from him since. But how much of his father's troubles...
2021-09-2235 minPaternal#44 Jelani Memory: How To Have Tough Conversations With Your KidsWhen it comes to being a father, Jelani Memory lives by a fairly simple motto: Kids are ready to have difficult conversations. He and his wife have put that idea into practice with their six kids and he's also made it the anchor of A Kids Company About, a media company he co-founded in 2019 that focuses on developing books, podcasts and online courses rooted in helping parents better communicate with their kids about tough topics like racism, shame, gender, addiction and more. A Kids Company About drew international attention - and praise from Oprah Winfrey - as concerned parents...
2021-09-0836 minPaternal#43 Jordan Shapiro: The 21st Century Father FigureIt doesn't really matter if you've seen a single episode of the 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best to understand the template for what a TV dad is supposed to be like. He works hard all day and inevitably serves as the family's main source of some combination of three things: tough love, gentle fatherly insight or bumbling but endearing ineptitude. Jordan Shapiro is out to help break the mold. A father of four, senior fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop, and former New York City restaurateur, Shapiro is the author of the 2021...
2021-08-2537 minPaternal#42 Joshua Mohr: Father, Son, Addict, SurvivorNovelist and memoirist Joshua Mohr has managed to be a number of different men in his life. He's been a writer, college professor, husband, father, son, addict and survivor, and he's committed himself over the past few years to ensuring that his daughter understands exactly how all those men can fit into one lifetime. That effort culminated in the 2021 memoir Model Citizen, which looks back on Josh's decades of drug and alcohol abuse in the bars and streets of San Francisco and subsequent health scares, all posited as proof to his young daughter that while he's far from perfect, at...
2021-08-0436 minPaternal#41 Chris Jones: When Life Becomes A Smoking CraterJournalist and screenwriter Chris Jones spent 14 years as a contributing editor and writer-at-large for the men's magazine Esquire, writing everything from celebrity profiles on George Clooney and Penelope Cruz to in-depth features on astronauts, soldiers and wild animal zookeepers. He twice won the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing for his work at the magazine, in large part because of his commitment to looking back on past events and dissecting how they happened. And what went wrong. On this episode of Paternal, Jones looks back on two major events in his life, and how they shaped his...
2021-07-2133 minPaternal#40 Dr. Michael Addis: The Isolation Of Modern MenThe worst of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be over in the United States. More than half the U.S. population has received at one least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and new daily cases of the disease are at their lowest point since the early days of the pandemic in April 2020. But that doesn't mean that the stress and anxiety building over the past 16 months is gone, especially for men still struggling to articulate or even identify how they're feeling when it comes to careers, relationships, or the stress they're feeling after COVID. Dr. Michael Addis is...
2021-07-0736 min