Paternal

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.

Paternal 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. Guests on this episode of Paternal include politician Jason Kander, comedian Michael Ian Black, author Daniel Jose Older, theater actor Mickey Rowe, and Senior Rabbi Steve Leder. Stay tuned for all new episodes of Paternal in 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.

Author 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 a scallop dinner gone wrong - subsequently became a lightning rod for comments about how, when, and why men show emotion. Reiner is a professor in the honors college at Towson University in Maryland, and teaches a course there called “The Changing Face of Masculinity.” He previously came on episode #61 of Paternal in May 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.

Does 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 of Paternal, Braunohler discusses comedians leaning into fatherhood for their material, and the perils of falling into comedy’s parent trap himself. He also reflects on growing up as a child of divorce and the influence of his own dad, a man who fathered eight different kids through various marriages. Braunohler’s new comedy special, “Perfectly Stupid,” is available to stream on Amazon Prime and YouTube. 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 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 criminal career, Pietro La Greca raked in millions of dollars for his family, appeased a powerful Las Vegas casino, dodged Mexican and American authorities, and avoided the wrath of a violent Tijuana cartel. On this episode of Paternal, Pietro La Greca Jr. recounts what life was like growing up in a family that made all the money in the world and then lost it all, and what it was like to receive a death threat from his own father. Pietro La Greca Jr.’s memoir, Pesos: The Rise and Fall of a Border Family, is available everywhere in paperback. 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.