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 more about the marriage his parents modeled for him as a child, as well as what he learned about love and relationships from his father, a hard-nosed Baptist minister who rarely showed affection. Alexander’s new book, Why Fathers Cry at Night, is available wherever you buy books on May 23. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

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 and women differently, what role work plays in defining a man’s sense of masculinity, and the effects of burnout on men when it comes to fatherhood. Malesic’s 2022 book The End of Burnout is available wherever you buy books, and he is also the author of the 2022 essay “How Men Burn Out,” from The New York Times. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

When 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 discusses how he came to carry his grandfather’s gun, what he’s learned about the violent nature of life on a cattle ranch, and, in the wake of becoming a father himself, what one man can do with a treasured inheritance so closely tied to a history of violence. Andrews is the author of the 2023 memoir Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West, available wherever you buy books. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.    

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 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 anger, and what men can do when anger becomes a problem affecting their quality of life. Dr. Addis is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He also provides personal coaching and consultation for men at www.incontextcoaching.com. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

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 yourself that you’re most proud of, and most ashamed of.” On this episode of Paternal, Smith discusses his early days as a father, why even our best moments as parents exist alongside instances of shame, humility, and fear, and how we can hold gratitude and despair in the same hands. Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Above Ground, a new collection of poems focused on fatherhood, available March 28. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Matthew 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 episode of Paternal, Salesses recounts his memories of “Linsanity” and the fallout in the sports media, as well as his own upbringing as a Korean boy adopted by an all-white family in a small town in Connecticut. He also discusses how he held onto hope and wonder as his wife battled cancer, and how he’s parented two young children after her death. Salesses’s fourth novel, The Sense of Wonder, was released in January 2023. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

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 sometimes go to in order to confront our past.”  On this 2020 episode of Paternal, Coffin discusses life in the small Alaskan coastal town of Sitka, the phenomenon of roughhouse boxing, and how a complicated relationship with his father helped steer Jaed into the ring, where he came up close and personal with a unique cast of characters looking to prove their manhood in the ring. Coffin also discusses his 2019 New York Times essay about his father’s need to go “Out to Sea,” an idea that offers forgiveness for men who sometimes or even permanently abandon their families when the burdens of real life become too overwhelming. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

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 of his rage, and why he must change his relationship with anger after becoming a father to a young son of his own.  Houser is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

What 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 of a pair of acclaimed novels, now facing a new set of fears as a father. As the son of an African American father and a white mother, he’s spent years mastering how to code switch and successfully fit in among different groups of people, but how much will his own mixed-race sons honor their Black roots? And how does he teach them to face a frightening world with their own sense of courage? Vercher’s second book, After The Lights Go Out, was released in 2022.  Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Paternal 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 the deeds of bad men, but also how the empathy of stronger men changed the course of his life. Leon is the author of the 2022 memoir I’m Not Broken, which was praised by NPR as “sad, brutally honest, and emotionally gritty,” and is available now wherever you buy books. Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at nick@paternalpodcast.com with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.