Four Titles, One Truth

Your children know you as Dad. But how much do they know about the person you were before fatherhood, your dreams, fears, mistakes, and the experiences that shaped you?

In this episode of Four Titles, One Truth, Tommie and Lance explore father-child relationships from both sides: as sons who still have questions about their fathers and as fathers considering what their own children know about them.

Tommie reflects on discovering at his father’s funeral how proudly his dad spoke about him. Lance shares how becoming a father helped him understand why men keep certain experiences private—even from the people they love most.

Together, they discuss the difference between privacy and emotional distance, sharing life lessons without burdening your children, and helping adult children understand the man beyond Dad.

What do we want our children to hear directly from us while we have the opportunity to tell them?

An honest conversation about fatherhood, family stories, communication, and being known by the people we love.

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Same confidence. Different expectations.

What changes when a Black man walks into a room full of Black people versus a room full of white people?

In this episode of Four Titles, One Truth, Tommie and Lance explore Black men’s confidence, identity, belonging, and the expectation of respect. Through their own experiences, they examine how childhood, family, and military service shaped the way they read a room—and decide how to engage.

Tommie enters one room prepared to insist on equal standing and another hoping to connect and build something together. He remains watchful in both.

The conversation explores:

• What changes internally when the people in the room change.

• When they first learned to approach different environments differently.

• How Black adults shaped their understanding of confidence and presence.

• Why respect and brotherhood don’t always come from where they expect.

• Whether these different expectations should exist—and what needs to change.

How do you adjust your approach without diminishing who you are?

Listen, share your perspective, and send this episode to someone you want to have this conversation with.

Four Titles, One Truth: Honest conversations through the lenses of Black men, husbands, fathers, and veterans.

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You can look successful and still feel stuck. What happens when you want more for yourself, but procrastination, fear of failure, or not knowing where to start keeps getting in the way?

Tommie Jones and Lance Taylor look inward at the habits, responsibilities, and learned limits that have shaped their own personal growth, from putting off important tasks to questioning whose definition of success they’ve been chasing.

Through their experiences as husbands, fathers, Army veterans, and Black men, they explore:

• Recognizing when achievement has stopped feeling like growth

• What procrastination may be helping you avoid

• Making room for your goals when others depend on you

• How race, upbringing, and experience shape what feels possible

• Taking responsibility for your next step

An honest conversation about where we’ve held ourselves back, where we’ve needed guidance, and what it takes to move forward.

Where do you feel stuck and what’s one step you’re ready to take?

Follow Four Titles, One Truth on your favorite podcast app, download this episode for your next drive or walk, and share it with someone ready for this conversation.

Watch our conversations on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@FourTitlesOneTruth

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Are men truly resilient, or have we simply become good at surviving whatever life throws at us?

For generations, men have been taught to push through adversity, carry their responsibilities, hide their struggles, and keep moving forward. But does surviving difficult experiences automatically make us resilient? Or have we confused endurance with genuine strength?

In Season 3, Episode 14 of Four Titles, One Truth, Tommie Jones and Lance Taylor welcome entrepreneur, inventor, author, and resilience coach David Ask for an honest conversation about what resilience really means in the lives of men.

David, the creator of StatGuardPlus and lead coach for Dr. Andy Garrett’s True North Resiliency Program, brings his personal experiences with failure, perseverance, entrepreneurship, and fatherhood into a conversation that challenges traditional ideas about strength.

Together, we explore:

• Resilience vs. survival: Are we growing through adversity or simply learning to endure it?
• When resilience fails: What happens when the strength we’ve always depended on is no longer enough?
• Men and emotional strength: Have we mistaken suppressing emotions for being resilient?
• Grit vs. resilience: Is determination enough to carry us through life’s hardest moments?
• Fatherhood and resilience: How do we raise strong sons without teaching them that vulnerability is weakness?

This isn’t a conversation about being tougher. It’s about understanding ourselves, recognizing what difficult experiences have taught us, and questioning whether the ways we’ve survived are actually helping us grow.

Because sometimes the strongest thing a man can do isn’t to keep pushing. It’s to recognize when something needs to change.

Whether you’re a husband, father, veteran, or a man trying to become a better version of yourself, this conversation is an invitation to reconsider what resilience looks like in your own life.

Join the conversation: Have you ever looked back at a difficult period in your life and realized you weren’t necessarily being resilient—you were simply trying to survive?

Share your perspective in the comments. Your experiences may help another man see his own journey differently.

About Our Guest: David Ask:

Entrepreneur, inventor, resilience coach, and author of the upcoming Guardians of Grit, David focuses on identity, self-awareness, perseverance, and helping individuals and families develop resilience from within.

About Four Titles, One Truth

Hosted by two retired U.S. Army senior leaders, Tommie Jones and Lance Taylor, Four Titles, One Truth explores the realities of life through four perspectives: husbands, fathers, veterans, and Black men.

Real experiences. Honest conversations.

Let’s keep the conversation going

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What does emotional safety in marriage feel like, and how do you rebuild it after you’ve caused your spouse pain?

In this episode of Four Titles, One Truth, TJ and Lance talk about the everyday moments that build trust between spouses. TJ shares that he feels safe with Nikki and knows she has his back, yet letting his guard down can still be difficult. He also reflects on his responsibility to make their marriage feel safe for her.

Together, they explore the unspoken tests we give our spouses, what repair takes after an apology, and whether our partners feel safe bringing us their hopes as well as their hurt.

If you’ve wondered how to build trust in a marriage where both people can be honest and fully themselves, join this conversation.

What’s one thing your spouse does that helps you feel safe enough to be honest? Share your thoughts with us?

Let's Keep The Conversation Going

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What happens when your father dies just as he begins to see you as a man?

Tommie lost his father in 2004, only 13 years into his 30-year Army career—and just as their relationship was beginning to change. Lance had his father through almost his entire military career but lost him before retirement.

In this deeply personal conversation, Tommie and Lance examine father loss, grief, father-son relationships, the need for a father’s approval, and what grown men still need from their fathers after building careers and families of their own.

They discuss how a father’s presence—or absence—can shape the way a man approaches leadership, marriage, fatherhood, success, and some of life’s hardest decisions. They also consider how men who lost their fathers early, never knew them, or never felt truly seen can build the guidance and affirmation they didn’t receive.

This is not a conversation about comparing grief. It is about carrying the love, lessons, unanswered questions, and desire for our fathers to witness the men we became.

If your father is still here, what conversation have you been waiting to have with him?

If he’s gone, what part of the person you became do you wish he could have seen?

Hosted by retired Army leaders Tommie Jones and Lance Taylor, Four Titles, One Truth brings honest conversations shaped by four perspectives: husbands, fathers, veterans, and Black men.

Subscribe and join the conversation.

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I loved Nikki when I proposed. But love wasn’t the only thing shaping that decision. What finally makes a man ready to ask someone to marry him?

Why do men finally decide to get married? TJ and Lance look back at the marriages they grew up around, what they witnessed during their military careers, and how those experiences shaped their own expectations. They talk honestly about love, timing, responsibility, fear of loss, and the moment a relationship becomes a decision about marriage.

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You can have a spouse, family, friends, and people willing to support you—and still feel completely alone. But what if part of that loneliness comes from never letting them see what you’re truly carrying?

Why do some men feel alone even when they’re surrounded by people who genuinely love them?

Tommie and Lance examine how fear of betrayal, judgment, and failure can cause men to hide financial pressure, relationship problems, family struggles, and personal setbacks—even from people who have earned their trust.

They also confront a harder truth: sometimes the walls that once protected us become the same walls keeping others from truly knowing and supporting us.

This is an honest conversation about loneliness, vulnerability, trust, masculinity, military service, and the personal cost of always appearing to have everything under control.

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What do you do when you want a stronger relationship with your adult child…but you don’t know what’s keeping them distant?

What do you do when your adult child becomes distant, but you don’t completely understand why?

Tommie and Lance have an honest conversation about repairing strained relationships with adult children, when to keep parenting, when to simply listen, whether giving them space creates even more distance, and what happens when you’ve apologized, changed, and tried everything you know to do.

For parents dealing with distance, adult child estrangement, or simply a relationship that isn’t as close as they hoped, this episode asks a difficult question: Can you repair the relationship or can you only change your side of it and keep the door open?

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Most of the time when a married man says “never mind,” he didn’t forget what he wanted to say. He decided it wasn’t worth saying. But what happens when “never mind” stops being something you say once in a while and becomes how you communicate in your marriage?

In this episode of Four Titles, One Truth, Tommie and Lance examine why men can feel corrected, dismissed, or unheard in marriage, and why silence can start to feel easier than another argument.

But this isn’t about blaming wives. We also turn the mirror around and ask whether men always communicate what we’re actually feeling, whether we confuse being understood with being agreed with, and whether years of marriage can cause both people to assume they already know what the other is going to say.

After decades of marriage, we’re still learning that keeping the peace and communicating well aren’t always the same thing.

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