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 father’s troubles can be traced back to the generations of men who came before him? On this episode of Paternal, Thistle wrestles with the myths he’s been told about his father, discusses how his own indigenous heritage contributed to years spent living on the streets of Canada, and breaks down the manifestations of intergenerational trauma, including addiction, abuse, homelessness, and crime. 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 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 flocked to the company’s line of books following the murder of George Floyd, a clear sign that Memory’s philosophy was resonating across the globe. On this episode of Paternal, Memory discusses how he and his wife spoke to their kids about Floyd’s murder, offers some of his strategies for connecting with kids over tough topics, and traces the roots of the company back to his own father, a prominent jazz musician and educator who left the family when Memory was just four years old. 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.

It 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 release Father Figure: How To Be A Feminist Dad. On this episode of Paternal he weighs in on the psychology of fatherhood and why some dads today are struggling to reconcile the kind of father they want to be - open-minded, responsive, inclusive, and (gasp) feminist - with the template of what a dad is supposed to be, often rooted in examples set by their own fathers or by those TV dads we still see on our screens today. 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.

Novelist 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 least he’s honest. On this episode of Paternal, Josh examines how discord in the home as a young child led to years of addiction, as well as the narrative he created to explain the mindset of his father, who left his family when Josh was in grade school. He also discusses how a series of frightening strokes before the age of 40 set him on a path to being more forthcoming about his life in “Model Citizen,” and why it’s crucial to recognize and celebrate human complexities, especially among our parents. 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.

Journalist 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 stance on what it means to be a man today. The anxiety from work, fatherhood, and marriage led him to nearly commit suicide twice more than a decade ago - he wrote about the experiences for Esquire in a candid essay in 2011 - and then his first marriage fell apart years later, leaving him to sort out fatherhood and what the second half of his life looks like now. “If your life becomes a smoking crater,” Jones says, “it’s little fixes everyday. You can’t fix it all at once.” If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts please visit suicidelifeline.org to access a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  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.

The 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 an award-winning research psychologist and a professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He specializes in the links between social learning and social construction of masculinity, as well as the ways men experience, express and respond to the problems in their lives. On this episode of Paternal, Dr. Addis examines why most men are still reluctant to seek help dealing with the problems in their lives, and how men learn as young children to avoid showing vulnerability or pain to their peers. He also discusses the value of lasting male friendships and the challenges men face in making them, the psychological effects of parenting, and much more. Learn more about Dr. Addis’s 2011 release Invisible Men here. 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.

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, Ballew looks back at his early experiences with fame, and examines the instinct that led him to leave modern rock behind to take on a new stage presence: celebrated children’s musician Caspar Babypants. Ballew has released 17 albums and been nominated for a Grammy during his career as Caspar, all driven by a desire to imbue his music with the same lyrical elements he found in the music of the Beatles, and to help weary parents make it through the day. Songs Featured In This Episode: Spider John - Caspar Babypants A Day In The Life - The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - Caspar Babypants Naked and Famous - The Presidents of The United States of America Kick Out The Jams - The Presidents of The United States of America Sun Go - Caspar Babypants (featuring Frances England) Nap In The Afternoon - Caspar Babypants 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 Jayson Greene was in the fourth grade, his teacher gave him an assignment that most kids get at some point in grade school: What do you want to be when you grow up? Jayson mentioned two goals for himself, one of which may come as a surprise for a kid in grade school. He wanted to be a writer, and a father. On this episode of Paternal, Jayson discusses his celebrated 2019 memoir Once More We Saw Stars, which chronicles the life and death of his two-year-old daughter Greta, and how he and his wife Stacy dealt with the grief stemming from their daughter’s death and the challenges of becoming parents again to their son, Harrison. Jayson also discusses the striking parallels of birth and death, and how he and Stacy communicate with their son about his sister, and the family’s recurring commitment to hope in the face of grief. Learn more about Once More We Saw Stars here and read Jayson’s 2016 essay “Children Don’t Always Live” from the New York Times here. 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.

Ted 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 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, fearless, emotionless, and in control - and why it’s so dangerous for them and their kids to fall into that trap. He also discusses how his parents - two college educators and civil rights activists - influenced his path towards social justice, but also the challenges he faced while growing up black in a largely white community in Westchester County, New York. 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 dives back into the archives to share the stories of three previous guests all focused on one topic: What it’s like to raise African American kids in the United States. This special episode begins with Ryan Harris, who spent nine years as an offensive lineman in the National Football League and won a Super Bowl in 2015 with the Denver Broncos. In this excerpt taken from his May 2018 episode, Harris outlines his experience raising his son and daughter in Denver, and discusses the unspoken lessons passed down through generations of African American men and boys about the risks of dealing with police. Artist and journalist Graham Parker also weighs in on his life as father to adopted son Artie, who began asking questions about race and identity not long after he learned to speak. In this conversation from his March 2018 episode, Parker outlines how he and his wife have worked tirelessly over the years to communicate openly about race with their son, especially after the family moved from Brooklyn to a predominantly white community in a swing county in eastern Pennsylvania. And lastly, New Jersey-based DJ Shawn Francis weighs in on the role his stepfather played in giving him “The Talk,” and how he’s processed that lesson over the years. Recorded in December 2017, when Francis was feeling the weight of teaching his kids how to best negotiate the world while being black not long after the election of Donald Trump, his experience as a father resonates louder today than ever. 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.