Paternal is a show about the brotherhood of fatherhood. Created and hosted by Nick Firchau, a longtime journalist and podcast producer, Paternal offers candid and in-depth conversations with great men who are quietly forging new paths in fatherhood. Listen as our diverse and thoughtful guests – a world-renowned soccer star in San Diego, a Oglala Sioux elder in South Dakota, a New York Knicks barber in Queens, a pioneering rock DJ in Seattle and many more - discuss the models of manhood that were…
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When do we get to the point in life when we begin to lose just as often as we win? Career restarts, divorces, the death of a parent, the loss of a friend? For Chris Jones it all began roughly a decade ago, when he discovered his wife's romantic texts with his close male friend , and his marriage ended abruptly with a single sentence: "I saw it all. I'm done." That moment led Jones - an…
By his own admission, Chuck Park lives in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment in Queens with his kids' drawings on the wall, a stroller by the door, and a dog who just won't stop barking. He's a dad concerned about the cost of health care and child care, and he's eager to fight for working families just like his. But can a normal dad with no experience in public office actually win a seat in the U.S.…
Just a few months after the birth of his son in 2019, Kevin Maguire noticed he wasn't feeling quite right. At times he resented his newborn son, other times he would cry for seemingly no reason. He lost interest in his work and some of his hobbies, and he just couldn't quite shake this idea that maybe something was wrong with him. After all, wasn't this supposed to be one the happiest moments of…
When Jordan Ritter Conn was a teenager growing up in an Evangelical Christian family, he met with a half dozen male friends every Saturday night for Bible Study. The sessions were a free-for-all for owning up to masturbation or admitting your insecurities, for speaking frankly about your father or dreaming about your future. Now a veteran journalist covering sports and culture for The Ringer and…
Brooklyn-based psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Smith has a motto: Feel everything, don't look away. But how exactly are men supposed to confront some of the most challenging emotions in their lives, especially when society tells them to suppress or even ignore feelings like shame, envy or regret? On this episode of Paternal, Smith examines our relationship to what he…
Tom Junod spent more than two decades as one the most celebrated writers in the men's magazine game, winning two National Magazine Awards and penning unforgettable articles about everything from 9/11 to Mister Rogers . Dubbed by Esquire as the man who has "helped teach readers what masculinity looks like in the 21st century," Junod has been considered one of great writers in the magazine's nearly…
John Elway. Joe Namath. Johnny Unitas. Peyton Manning. Look into the backstory of just about any star quarterback you've ever heard of, and you'll find either an overbearing father, or an absent one. In honor of the Super Bowl and the men who play the biggest role in this game, author and ESPN senior writer Seth Wickersham joins Paternal to discuss why there's no cooler job title in America than…
As a teenager, Julian Brave Noisecat often heard ghost stories about the history of the Canim Lake Indian Reserve. He considered them simply rez legends, and figured the details of the stories - that indigenous babies had been born and left in the incinerator of the Christian residential school - simply couldn't be true. But then he learned the origin story of his own father, and everything…
When Robert Gallery was a senior at the University of Iowa, he was one of the most respected and feared college football players in the country. At 6-foot-7 and 320 pounds, Gallery leveraged his size, talent and tenacity into a lucrative contract and an eight-year career in the National Football League. But all the while he was quietly suffering one concussion after another on the football field,…
What were the first words you said to your child when you became a parent? Was there something you needed to say to officially welcome him or her into this world, or was it all just a blur? For longtime Slate journalist and author Aymann Ismail the task was clear: He had to recite a Muslim call to prayer into his newborn son's right ear, a ritual that's been performed by countless Muslim fathers…
