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 quarterback, but each star's story often traces back to the influence of his father. He also discusses the challenges the sons of these star quarterbacks face in living up to the legacy of their dads, the perils of father/son relationships built on football, and why even Tom Brady struggled to be a quarterback and a father at the same time.

Wickersham's latest book, American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, is available now wherever you buy books.

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 changed.

Now an acclaimed author and the first Indigenous North American filmmaker ever nominated for an Academy Award, Noisecat opens a new year on Paternal with the story of discovering the truth about his father, and why the story was largely shrouded in silence for decades. He also discusses how adults sent to residential schools as kids sometimes struggle as parents themselves, and what he's learned about forgiveness and acceptance for his own father after learning more about his life.

Noisecat's memoir We Survived the Night is available now wherever you buy books, and Sugarcane, his Academy-Award nominated documentary film, is available on Disney Plus and other streaming services.

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, and when his career finally ended, he struggled to handle bouts of rage that left him shaking in a chair after his young child spilled a glass of milk.

On this episode of Paternal, Gallery reflects on the difficult transition from high-performance athlete to stay-at-home dad, the moment he learned about the extensive damage done to his brain, and how a vivid two-day psychoactive drug treatment in Mexico changed the course of his life. Gallery is the co-founder and CEO of Athletes for Care, a non-profit organization supporting athletes through mental health and alternative therapy advocacy. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2023.