Modern Man

Two guests, five men, and an argument nobody wins. Conall Hughes and Gabe Gessler join Noah, Brad and Sam for aconversation that splits the table inside thirty minutes: is ministry that happens on a screen actually ministry, or ispresence the only thing that counts? Gabe makes the case from Hallow — reach the parish every day of the week, notjust Sunday. Sam draws the hard line at the dinner table. Conall, who has no social media at all, argues the church willnever beat TikTok at its own game. Then the same question turns on AI: whether a man owes his work to a machinethat does it better, what happens to a generation that stops using its hands, and whether the sin coming for us isunemployment or sloth. Along the way: why 69% of the people in church on Sunday are women, the average age a boyis first exposed to porn, the surgery question nobody at the table wanted to answer, and what three things every youngman is quietly living for. We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man in the modern world.

Hero Draft, Part 1 — Football. Three men each draft one football hero and defend the pick. Noah takes Tom

Brady and argues for the man who said no to everything else for one thing. Sam takes Pat Tillman, who walked

away from a $3.6 million contract and never came back. Brad takes Peyton Manning and makes the case for

the integrated life — the man who was excellent without letting the rest of it fall away. Along the way: signal

versus noise, whether the cost of greatness is a feature or a bug, why rags to riches is the easier story, the

man who's always second, and the question none of them fully answer — what your heroes say about what

you actually value. We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man in the modern world.

Part 1 of 3 — Ministry in the Modern World. Brad, Sam and Noah have thirty years of Catholic missionary workbetween them, and they still don't agree on who should do it. This one starts with how each of them got called —a retreat at sixteen, a chapel in St. Paul, a college house with an interview before the lease — and endssomewhere sharper: whether ‘professional missionary’ should be a thing at all, why women say yes to the calland men say later, and Noah's admission that he's met harder workers outside the church than in it. Along theway: missionary by heart or by legs, the man guided by himself, what the Mormons get right about two years ofrejection, and the line the three of them split on — die so others don't have to, or die so they know how. We existto rediscover and redeem the heart of man.

Every month Sam, Brad, and Noah tie a bow on the last three episodes with an After Action Report: what was

the plan, what actually happened, and what we’ll do differently. July covered masculine maturity, a long-form

with Fr. Joseph Rowling, and the SSPX schism — but the AAR goes somewhere the episodes didn’t. Peter

Kreeft seeing his dying wife as a bride again. Tyler Lang’s ‘don’t waste a day.’ Why celibacy exposes weak men

instead of drawing them. The discernment reframe every man considering the priesthood should hear. And the

through-line that reframed the whole month: the most tempting thing in the spiritual life is to become an

agenda-driven Catholic instead of an intimacy-driven one — and the agenda-driven man risks hearing ‘I never

knew you.’ We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man.

The SSPX has formally entered schism — four bishops ordained illicitly, excommunications declared, and

Catholics everywhere wrestling with what it means. Brad, Sam, and Noah steel-man the strongest arguments for

the SSPX (China, the state of emergency, Trent vs. Vatican II), then answer them: reform vs. revolt, what

authority actually costs, why ‘I don't understand’ usually means ‘I don't agree,’ and the 1978 Fulton Sheen letter

most people have never heard. Tell us what we missed in the comments — enough substantive pushback and we'll record the rebuttal episode.

His game-winner made ESPN's Top 10. A year into a college basketball scholarship, he was on his knees in a

chapel, calling his coach to say he wasn't coming back — he was going to become a priest. Fr. Joseph Rolwing

(Diocese of Columbus, co-host of the Logos Podcast) joins Brad, Sam, and Noah for the whole arc: the agnostic

girlfriend whose arguments left him lying in the grass staring into a universe without God, the tabernacle across

the street from his high school, the rosary moment that crystallized his life, going to seminary against his parents'

wishes — and the two-year ‘holiness’ spiral of floor-sleeping and skipped meals that ended with a priest telling him

he looked like a cadaver. Along the way: why God is the fulfillment of desire rather than the death of it, the three

minutes of silence that built a prayer life, what your kids learn from catching you in prayer, celibacy and intimacy

with Christ, confession as a tabernacle of mercy, and why 52 people just entered one suburban parish as a

200-year-old worldview runs out of gas. We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man.

Puberty happens to every man. Maturity doesn't. This week Brad, Noah, and Sam wrestle with what

masculine maturity actually is — and why it has nothing to do with certainty, competence, or age,

and everything to do with two trainable traits.

What you'll get:

• The two-trait test one of America's largest missionary organizations uses to screen candidates —

coachability and resilience — and how to audit yourself against it

• Why 'the good father by necessity fails' — and what separates men who stay in the failure from

men who quit

• The 'two births' of fatherhood: why you can't will yourself into being a dad, and what your kids

teach you if you let them

• Zamboni parenting — smoothing every problem off your child's ice — and why it manufactures

immaturity

• The talk Sam had with his young son about body safety, and why uncomfortable conversations

are the job

• Pinocchio as a manual for modern men: power and pleasure without character turn you into a

jackass

• The maturity roadmap in 1 John 2 — children, young men, fathers — and where you are on it

Send it to the one man in your life who's still waiting until he feels ready.

What does it actually mean to provide for your family? In this After Action Report, Sam, Brad, and Noah reopen

a month of episodes — and a debate none of them can let go of. Sam reconsiders his own take on the man on

food stamps. Noah argues that calling someone a ‘failed provider’ smuggles in a charge of wrongdoing. Brad

reframes provision as a Venn diagram of presence, provision, and purpose. Along the way: why ‘a not now is

not a failure,’ what Cinderella Man understood about hitting bottom, and the uncomfortable line between

bleeding for a mission and abandoning your home. We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man.

Brad, Sam, and Noah sit with the question every men’s conference dodges: if everyone’s called to be a leader, what

does the word even mean — and why do the men we follow keep being the ones who do what they said?

What you’ll get:

• If everyone’s a leader, no one is — the Incredibles problem

• Jelly Roll in the rain — leadership starts the day you stop lying to yourself

• “Something came up” is a lie — own the overpromise instead

• The gradient of your word — from group chats to guarantees

• Churchill vs. the patriarch — which ripples actually last

If your yes has gotten cheap, start here — then send it to the brother who needs it.

Dominic Schlueter joins Brad, Sam, and Noah for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with

podcasting and ends with one of the most honest disagreements we've recorded.

What you'll get:

• Why 90% of podcasts (and most things men start) quit at episode three

• The difference between process goals and outcome goals — and why one breaks you

• Magnanimity vs. pride — the Catholic virtue most Christian men have never heard taught right

• The ghost test — Dominic's one-question self-audit

• An unedited debate between Sam and Brad about what it means to provide for your family

If you've felt stuck halfway, exhausted by inspiration without action, or unsure whether your

ambition is pride or magnanimity — start here. Then send it to the brother who needs it.