Paternal

The 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 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.

A 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 “The Changing Face of Masculinity,” as well as some of the most compelling findings in his 2020 book Better Boys Better Men, including why boys are struggling with a crisis of masculinity, how their ideas of masculinity hold them back in the classroom, and why their penchant for competition inhibits their ability to build trust among male peers, even in adulthood. Reiner, a father himself, has also written about men’s issues for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes. 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.

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 father, and why he’s concerned for his own son’s future. On this episode of Paternal, Black recounts his adolescent experience of desperately seeking all the secrets of manhood, why he tinged his own successful brand of humor with defensive sarcasm, why even the most influential male comics rarely delve into painful vulnerability, and where he failed and succeeded as a father to his two children. 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.

Of 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 book Family Life, which the New York Times said “reveals how love becomes warped and jagged and even seemingly vanishes in the midst of huge grief.” Sharma also discusses how a life-altering accident helped define his relationship with his parents, and influenced why he never considered having children until he was in his late 40s. Sharma is a professor at Duke University and the author of the essay A Passage to Parenthood, which appeared in the The New Yorker earlier this year. 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.

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 first person in the world to reach all three in the span of 365 days, an endeavor that cemented him as one of the most successful American explorers in recent years. On this replay of his Paternal episode from 2018,  Larsen discusses the conflict of being a leading-edge American explorer and an engaged father at the same time, and how he and his wife have worked on the unique elements of their relationship. 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 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 a constantly evolving ideal of masculinity can be a problem for some men. Dr. Addis is an award-winning research psychologist and 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.

One 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 died in an avalanche high in the Himalayas - it’s a complicated reality he’s dealt with for more than 20 years. On this episode of Paternal, Max discusses his life as the son of one of the world’s greatest climbers, memories of his father Alex, the uncomplicated psychology of the mountaineers who take frightening risks, and what it was like to make the acclaimed 2021 documentary Torn, which forced Max and his family to confront more than two decades of grief and repressed emotions surrounding the sudden loss of a real-life superhero. Torn is currently streaming on Disney Plus, and you can read more about the film and the legacy of Alex Lowe in the Los Angeles Times, Outside, and The New Yorker. 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.

Daniel 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 most prominent male heroes, either have a strained relationship with their father, or simply don’t have a dad at all.  On this episode of Paternal, Older discusses why there never seem to be many parents in the Star Wars galaxy, why he gravitated to the series after never seeing protagonists who looked like him as a kid, his mother’s penchant for magical storytelling after fleeing Cuba, and how he thinks about the Jedi-like skill of compassionate detachment, especially now that he’s recently become a father himself. 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.

Mickey 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 neighbor’s dog. On this episode of Paternal, Rowe reflects on his life on the autistic spectrum and what role autism played in his drive to become an actor, as well as the complicated relationship Hollywood has with portraying characters who are disabled. He also discusses what fatherhood looks like as an autistic father of an autistic son, and how he’s learned to cast aside expectations about parenthood and embrace why his experience as a father is different from so many other men. Rowe is the founding Artistic Director of National Disability Theatre and his memoir, Fearlessly Different, will be released in March. 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 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 the themes covered in his 2021 book The Other Talk, the book’s reception during a time of fraught culture wars, and why the traits of humility and vulnerability are so essential to having better conversations about race, especially among men. Kiely is a New York Times bestselling author of five books and a former English and literature teacher in New York City, and prior to writing The Other Talk he co-wrote the award-winning and critically acclaimed young adult fiction novel All American Boys. To hear additional episodes from Paternal about “The Talk,” check out Episode 5 and Episode 12. 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.