How far would you be willing to go to somehow preserve the memory of someone you lost? When James Vlahos found out his father was dying of lung cancer, he set out to create a chatbot fueled by a treasure trove of interviews with his dad, and artificial intelligence software. The end result is the Dadbot, an interactive and compelling program that questions if artificial immortality might actually exist.

Listen as Vlahos describes the experience of interviewing his father during the final months of his life, and how an early interest in computers as a kid - and a New York Times Magazine article about a talking Barbie doll - helped bring the Dadbot to life. The bot says the kinds of things James’ father would say, it cracks the same jokes, it even sometimes sings songs, using audio clips from the oral history interviews. 

And while the technology at play might still be in its infancy and certainly has its critics, Vlahos suspects that the idea of artificial immortality - when we use modern technology to better preserve the memory of those we’ve lost and even interact with their avatars after the real people are gone - will be a very real part of our future.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

 

Prior to the birth of his first son, the only things Schwan Park knew about autism were gleaned from watching Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. But after he and his wife realized something was different about the development of their son Max, Park reluctantly pushed himself to learn more about the symptoms of autism, and ultimately to accept a new reality for his family. “It’s sort of like you’re opening a door and trying to find something,” Park says, “but you really hope it’s not in there.”

But at the age of 10 years old, the Park family found their life line. Enter the Rubik’s Cube, the 1980s-era toy that frustrated puzzle solvers threw away years ago. Max’s interest in solving the cube as fast as possible - it’s now a growing and feverish international sport called speedcubing - served as an essential ingredient for Max’s therapy sessions, where he worked on social skills that had largely eluded him for years. 

Now 16 years old, Max is the sport’s reigning world champion, solving cubes in just seconds and earning fame and celebrity status among his peers. After years spent trying to solve the puzzle, it’s clear now that the cube itself is the solution.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Jason Hairston was always up for a challenge. As an undrafted free agent seeking a spot in the National Football League, as an entrepreneur looking to build his business, and as an experienced hunter stretched to his limits somewhere above the tree line. And by the time he was 47 years old he had overcome his fair share to become a family man, successful CEO of outdoor apparel giant KUIU, and a guru to thousands of like-minded men all looking for their own personal, primal experience on the hunt.

But to the shock of many who knew and loved him, there was one challenge Hairston simply couldn’t overcome. Hairston took his own life in September after suffering from symptoms of CTE, the degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. He left behind a wife and two young children, and a worldwide community of hunters and outdoor enthusiasts in mourning. 

In his final in-depth interview before his death and one of Paternal’s most intimate episodes to date, Hairston discusses all the experiences that shaped him as a father and a son. The devastating injury that ended his football career. The unexpected and very public takeover of his first hunting gear company. The moment he learned he would be a father. And his relationship with his own dad, who turned him on to hunting as a little boy, taught him how to play football, and then joined Hairston and his son on a three-generation hunting trip just weeks before Hairston’s passing.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

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 on opposite ends of the globe that still serve as two of the most ambitious destinations for a certain type of person you may have thought died out years ago: The explorers.

Eric Larsen is one of those people, a veteran explorer who has not only reached both the geographic north and south poles, but also summited Mount Everest. And in 2009 and 2010 he became the first person in the world to reach all three in the span of 365 days, an endeavor that cemented him as one of the most successful American explorers in recent years.

His latest mission is to establish a new speed record in reaching the South Pole, skiing and walking across 700 miles of Antarctica alone and unsupported, hauling roughly 160 pounds of gear on a sled behind him. But he’ll also be leaving his wife and two young children behind for weeks, which always raises some questions in his mind when he’s alone on the ice. On this episode of Paternal, Larsen discusses the conflict of being a leading-edge American explorer and an engaged father at the same time, and how he and his wife have worked on the unique elements of their relationship.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Joe Andruzzi has always been surrounded by family. As one of four sons born to a New York City police officer and his wife in Staten Island, New York, Andruzzi learned early on about the value of giving back to his community and how family can help people through the toughest times of their lives.

And he never valued family more than in 2007, when he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer that nearly took his life in a Boston hospital bed. Despite playing 10 seasons in the National Football League and wining three Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots, Andruzzi had never faced a battle like Burkitt's lymphoma, and it changed his life irrevocably. After a year of exhausting recovery, he went on to found the Joe Andruzzi Foundation, which has helped more than 8,000 families and individuals affected by cancer. 

On this episode of Paternal, Andruzzzi discusses his battle with cancer and the psychological toll it took on him, as well as his oldest brother’s narrow escape from tragedy as a New York City fire fighter on 9/11, and how his father’s role as one of New York’s finest shaped the family’s values.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Seattle author Neal Thompson has profiled a range of intriguing characters during his career as an acclaimed author, but for his fifth book he turned his eye to his sons, two boys fixated on the sport and culture of skateboarding. In the debut episode of Season 3 of Paternal, Thompson discusses his kids' all-encompassing passion for the sport and their embrace of a counter-culture lifestyle that led to drugs, alcohol, vandalism and concerns from their father that he had somehow let his boys go too far. Learn more about Thompson’s latest book Kickflip Boys here.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Meet Frank. He’s a 62 year-old father of four grown kids, and grandfather to seven beautiful grandchildren. Back in the summer of 2017, Frank decided to leave his home in San Diego and spend a week in Denver with his son Tommy, but it was no ordinary trip. Tommy is a homeless drug addict who lives in and around Civic Center Park in Denver, and he needs help. But can a committed father really change the course of life for his son, who’s addicted to heroin and caught in the deadliest drug crisis in American history?

On the Season 2 finale of Paternal, Frank discusses the signs that may have foretold a troubled future for his son and uses vivid detail to recount his experience of living homeless, with endless empathy for his son and his battle against addiction.

Special thanks on this episode to Chris Conner and Denver’s Road Home, as well as Denver Human Services. For more information about this episode please visit www.paternalpodcast.com.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

What if every teenage boy could tell you what he’s thinking, and what he fears when he leaves the house to walk to go to school? Oakland educator and youth advocate Ashanti Branch has spent more than a decade trying to provide young men with a place to do just that. In 2004 he founded the Ever Forward Club, gathering a small group of young men together in his classroom to offer them a safe space to share their concerns about life and establish a brotherhood with other teenagers from all over the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Born and raised in Oakland, Branch never knew his father and grew up with only a single mother in charge of their house. At times his family was on welfare and he struggled to learn some of the traditional skills men are supposed to have - how to throw a punch, how to talk to a girl - but he excelled in school and eventually became a civil engineer. But education pulled him back to Oakland and to working with kids who needed his help, mostly boys struggling with their grades, their futures and their identities as men. Branch and his students were featured in the 2015 documentary The Mask You Live In, and he's also been profiled on NPR and given a TEDx talk about his personal life and work.

On this episode of Paternal, Branch discusses his childhood in Oakland, how his father’s death fueled his drive to give back to young men, and how he founded the Ever Forward Club with a group of boys who, as it turned out, just wanted to share what was on their mind.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Alexi Lalas knows all about opportunity. As a professional soccer player and member of the United States national team during the 1990s, Lalas used the global platform of the 1994 FIFA World Cup to introduce the world to his carefully cultivated image of a rebellious red-headed rockstar with a love for the world’s game, and life’s never been the same since.

More than two decades later Lalas is still in the public eye as a television analyst for Fox Sports at this summer’s World Cup in Russia, but fame does come with a price. Lalas constantly battles with soccer fans on social media and has even received death threats from his harshest critics over the years, and some fans have no problem harassing him when they spot him in public.

On this episode of Paternal, Lalas discusses how he tries to shield his two young kids from the vitriol he receives on social media, how the World Cup and the public persona he created back in the 90s changed his fortunes forever, and why he teaches his kids to constantly be aware of their surroundings, always looking for the next great opportunity in life.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.

Paternal celebrates Father’s Day with one of its most personal and uplifting episodes to date, examining what it means to risk loss in the pursuit of love, and how one father helped hold his family together during a life-altering set of circumstances.

Ten years ago, Jason Smith found himself in a hospital waiting room in Boston, waiting to see is his wife would live through the night after a dangerous allergic reaction to chemotherapy. Smith, a psychotherapist and father of two, endured that agonizing night in the emergency room and then an exhausting year of parenting while his wife recovered. The lessons learned from the experience reaffirmed his love for his wife and his responsibilities as a father, but also helped him make sense of his own father’s trouble dealing with tragedy.

“I had to make the conscious choice to let myself love her, because in letting myself love her, I was open to the possibility that I would lose her,” Smith says. “It’s worth knowing that bad things will happen, and finding a way to have the courage to live your life fully anyway.”

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.