Paternal

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…

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 im…

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…

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 …

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 i…

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. le…

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 id…

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 t…

Long before he became one of the nation’s leading voices on the emotional lives of adolescent boys, psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Michael G. Thompson actually focused his stu…

Memories are a tricky subject for David Ambroz. He has no photo albums documenting his childhood, and no adults who he can ask about where he came from. He never marked the passage of time by holiday…

Award-winning research psychologist and professor Dr. Michael Addis returns to Paternal for the latest in a series of special episodes, this time to discuss how male group dynamics work, and what hap…

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 He…

Steve Leder is a husband, father, bestselling author and, as the senior rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one the most influential religious leaders in America. During his 35 years a…

Back in early 2018, Jason Kander was riding high as one of the brightest young stars in American politics. After becoming the youngest statewide elected official in the nation and nearly toppling a R…

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 penn…

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 a…

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 …

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 yo…

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…