Acclaimed 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 critic as “the most sensitive and gripping account of male violence imaginable.”

On this episode of Paternal, Dubus discusses how he learned to perform masculinity with his fists, the influence of his literary father, how prisoners and police officers alike responded to the violence in Townie, and how his three grown children reacted to reading about their father’s past life as a man fighting to get free.

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 in his comedy, and how he’s reckoned with the truth about “America’s Dad,” Bill Cosby.

When 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 the promises he’d made to those he loved.

On this episode of Paternal, Del Toro, Jr. looks back on a life that took him from a working-class neighborhood in East Joliet, Illinois to the mountains of Afghanistan and eventually to a hospital in Texas, where he fought for the chance to reunite with his young son after suffering burns over 80 percent of his body.

Roughly two decades ago filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt started a ritual with his daughter that he never expected would lead anywhere but the family archives. But the project that unfolded - an annual series of questions he asked his daughter 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 as an intimate example of what it looks like when kids grow up in the blink of an eye.

Good 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 own story too.

On this episode of Paternal, Moore discusses how a neighborhood cookbook first turned him onto cooking, why he’s invested in learning more about his local butchers, how much meat he eats and where he gets the best cuts of meat for a summer barbecue, and how he uses cookouts to build his male friendships.

Paternal 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 Medal-winning author and poet Kwame Alexander, and politician and author Jason Kander.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On this 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.

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. 

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. How does he teach his two sons to face a frightening world with their own sense of courage?

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.

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 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.

Author and professor Andrew Reiner returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special Paternal Workshop 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 should show emotion.

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.

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 he 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.”

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.

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 of three acclaimed books aimed at teaching kids how to talk about sex and gender, and how to think of sex as a path to understanding their place in the world.

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 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, fearless, emotionless, and in control - and why it’s so dangerous for them and their kids to fall into that trap.