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.

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 through the generations, all over the world. But was he appeasing God, or his own father?

On this episode of Paternal, Ismail discusses a life spent navigating being a Muslim kid who preferred cartoons over daily prayers, and then how his faith influences his role as a father to two young kids now. And all the while he's been trying to somehow live up to the expectations of his father, a devout and educated Muslim man fixated on the kind of man he believes his son should be.

Ismail's new book, Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith and Finding Meaning in America, is available now wherever you buy books.

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 2023 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. Malesic's 2022 book The End of Burnout is available wherever you buy books, and he is also the author of the 2022 essay "How Men Burn Out," from The New York Times.

Proponents of Artificial Intelligence assure us that everything in life is about to change: Work, education, healthcare, art, and even how we remember our loved ones. But what role can AI actually play in alleviating psychological and emotional suffering, especially when a parent loses a child? Welcome to the mind of author Jayson Greene, who penned the celebrated memoir Once More We Saw Stars back in 2019 after the tragic loss of his daughter Greta, and who's very familiar with how opportunistic companies position AI technology as a solution to avoid feeling the pain of grief and loss.

On this episode of Paternal, Greene discusses the AI themes in his debut sci-fi novel UnWorld, how he's faring 10 years after the death of his daughter, what he's learned about how men connect over grief, and what it's like to receive DMs from strangers who have lost their child. He also examines how he and his wife Stacy dealt with grief differently in the wake of Greta's death, and why he often wonders what kind of person he has become after losing her.

Greene previously appeared on Episode No. 38 of Paternal back in 2020.

How did Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on fatherhood influence the American Revolution? What did Charles Darwin learn about evolution from watching his own kids? And why did Bob Dylan tell everyone he couldn't stand his father? After becoming a father himself, historian and author Augustine Sedgewick dove into the past to learn more about these and other hugely influential men, and how being a father and a son shaped their lives and work, for better or worse.

On this episode of Paternal, Sedgewick reflects on why he went looking through the past for paternal role models, and why the lives of Jefferson, Darwin, Dylan, Henry David Thoreau and Norman Rockwell reveal problematic habits dads can avoid today.

Sedgewick is the author of Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power, available now wherever you buy books.

In the final scene of the 1986 coming-of-age film Stand By Me, the film's narrator sums up boyhood friendship with the simple line, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve." And that's largely true for a number of men who had no trouble developing deep, meaningful friendships with other boys. So why has a lack of friendship among dads become a cliche, or even a running joke? Why can't guys hang onto those intimate friendships from their past, and what keeps them from making new friends as adults?

On this episode of Paternal, journalist and novelist Sam Graham-Felsen examines how one of his strongest childhood friendships has eroded over the years in the wake of marriage and fatherhood, and why men are reluctant to reach out to close friends when they're in distress. He also discusses why listening to Joe Rogan offers some men a community in place of real-life friendships, and what men can do to rediscover the old friends they thought they lost.

Graham-Felsen is the author of the article "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?", which appeared in the New York Times Magazine in May.