Sword&Spade

Culture isn’t something a family buys. James Gillick, a painter and father of nine, grew up under a media pile-on after his mother took the British government to court, and his family answered by making things with their own hands. He joins Jason Craig to talk about why a family’s culture is built together and passed on, and why children are the greatest wealth a man can gather.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why culture is something a family makes, not something it buys or watches
• How Gillick’s mother took the British government to court, and what the years of press hounding that followed taught her children about power
• How usury lets money grow by itself, and why debt moves in wherever culture is crushed
• Why a young man starts becoming a husband and father the day he takes pride in finishing his own work
• Why children are the greatest wealth a man can gather

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• James Gillick – Artist
• James Gillick on Instagram
• The Grand Gesture: James Gillick with Sebastian Morello

Find Your Brothers:

You Need Brothers, And They Need You.

DON’T GO ALONE

Fraternus gets men out from behind their screens and shoulder to shoulder, building a Catholic culture their sons can inherit.

Find your brothers at https://fraternus.org/memberships/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Meet James Gillick, painter and father of nine
• 04:31: A mother who took on the government
• 09:46: One day my descendants will own your house
• 18:43: Gorgill and the Gillick way of making things
• 19:50: Culture is something a family makes
• 25:32: A life with meaning is relentless
• 36:03: Culture as the opposite of slavery
• 45:31: You never regret a closed gate
• 53:23: Keep the Catholic Church out of the bedroom
• 01:03:21: Why children are the best investment a man can make

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Most people drive through a forgotten small town without a second look. Javier Velazquez, writer of the Substack Exiled Heart and founder of the consulting practice Townward, sees a deep America underneath it. He joins Jason Craig to talk about the local history developers and franchises keep plastering over, and why a man with real affection for a place may be what that place needs most.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why small towns keep handing their story to developers and national franchises
• How an outside YMCA push edged a thriving, dad-run youth sports league out of the local gyms
• Why raising kids to think success means leaving kills Catholic culture
• Seeing a row of pine trees as lumber versus seeing the meaning a man planted there a generation ago
• Why local wealth belongs in the local town

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Exiled Heart by Javier Velazquez
• Townward

Find Your Brothers:

You Need Brothers, And They Need You.
DON’T GO ALONE

Fraternus gets men out from behind their screens and shoulder to shoulder, building a Catholic culture their sons can inherit.

Find your brothers at https://fraternus.org/memberships/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Homeless in the house you own
• 05:44: The country beneath the country
• 08:41: The forgotten spring behind the Verizon store
• 15:04: A YMCA push and the dad-run rec league
• 20:28: Vision 2020 and what “development” really means
• 29:10: Raising children to leave everything that matters
• 35:18: Seeing a place with affection instead of use
• 39:38: Permission to recover what was lost
• 47:41: The good King Wenceslas option
• 54:31: Fatherhood and the fight for one small town

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Alvaro de Vicente has led the Heights School, a Catholic school for boys in Maryland, since 2002. He joins Jason Craig to explain why a boy hitting puberty starts asking whether following his father will make him part of the community or get him rejected by it, and why the other men in his life matter so much at that moment.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why education is the transfer of a culture, not just facts and skills
• How hiring teachers who believe in the mission does most of a headmaster’s work
• Why a boy needs to hear other men say what his father says
• Why families should host one another before the house is clean and the dinner is perfect, and how those friendships let fathers correct one another
• Why a son who knows he can come to you without being punished has less reason to lie

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Men in the Making, Alvaro de Vicente
• The Heights Forum
• HeightsCast
• The Heights School

Find Your Brothers:

You Need Brothers, And They Need You.
DON’T GO ALONE

Fraternus gets men out from behind their screens and shoulder to shoulder, building a Catholic culture their sons can inherit.

Find your brothers at https://fraternus.org/memberships/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Talking with men in the arena, not influencers
• 01:58: Educating a boy vs. making a man
• 07:01: How a school builds a real community
• 15:17: Why boys have lost the vision of manhood
• 20:15: When a boy asks if his dad is a typical man
• 27:35: False rites of passage and buying a peer group
• 33:34: The ministry of the imperfect dinner
• 41:13: Preparing sons for sin without exposing them to it
• 45:58: Letting your son come to you without punishment
• 52:14: Cinderella Man and fatherly authority

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Dominic Andres had a job and a visa lined up to sell cars at military bases in Japan. He stayed home to start Roughhouse, a print adventure magazine for boys, instead. Today, he joins Jason Craig to explain why boys are hungry for something real and why it should arrive in the mailbox.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why a magazine in the mailbox breaks the spell of the internet in a way no app for your kids ever will
• What made a young writer turn down a job selling cars in Japan to publish for boys
• Why boys today are deficient in reality, and why they crave it
• Why the magazine is written only for boys, and how a co-ed version would get in the way
• How short, digestible pieces can hook a boy who doesn’t like to read

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Roughhouse Magazine
• The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
• Outlaws of Ravenhurst by Sr. M. Imelda Wallace, SL
• Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

Find Your Brothers:

You Need Brothers, And They Need You.
DON’T GO ALONE

Fraternus gets men out from behind their screens and shoulder to shoulder, building a Catholic culture their sons can inherit.

Find your brothers at https://fraternus.org/memberships/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 02:56: Growing up homeschooled without the internet
• 06:39: A boys’ magazine or a car-sales job in Japan
• 09:51: Why a print magazine for boys in 2026
• 17:51: Reality is good: the vision behind Roughhouse
• 22:43: Why boys on a hay wagon say “this is good”
• 27:47: Why Roughhouse is only for boys
• 34:16: Male influencers and expertise without experience
• 36:47: What readers and parents are saying
• 43:10: A first book for a ten-year-old boy

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Jerry LoCoco grew up in a trailer in rural Yuma, Arizona, the son of a violent father and a mother who became a meth addict when he was thirteen, and he spent years hiding that background behind a law degree and one accomplishment after another. None of it healed him. He joins Jason Craig to talk about the masks men build as boys, his novel, Gringo Salado, and the habits of silence, prayer, reading, and writing that finally began to heal his wounds.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why Jerry sees poverty, not race, as the true enemy of kids raised in chaos
• How the coping habits that keep a child safe, like sorting every person into good or bad, start damaging a grown man’s relationships
• Why a law degree couldn’t heal his wounds
• What mimetic desire is, and how chasing what other men have leaves you empty
• Why feeling lost around forty can be a tug toward God rather than an excuse for a midlife crisis

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Gringo Salado, A Story of Faith, Hope, and Love
• Disordered Self Love, How It Saves and Then Destroys
• David Torkington

Find Your Brothers:

You Need Brothers, And They Need You.
DON’T GO ALONE

Fraternus gets men out from behind their screens and shoulder to shoulder, building a Catholic culture their sons can inherit.

Find your brothers at https://fraternus.org/memberships/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Judging people raised in chaos
• 02:39: Where the name Gringo Salado came from
• 07:37: Poverty runs deeper than race
• 17:22: A book that opened in his hometown
• 23:53: Why a man has to understand his wounds
• 36:11: The Thanksgiving play and the mask
• 50:13: Mimetic desire and the treadmill of wanting
• 59:50: Finding silence at Mass
• 01:09:20: When nothing works at forty
• 01:14:55: Looking beyond your own home

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Marcellino D'Ambrosio spent years in youth ministry trying to win kids back from the school day and the sports schedule. It didn't work. He joins Jason Craig again to explain why Catholic men have mistaken their calling for a religious one, and why the real work in front of fathers is building a culture their children can actually live inside.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why the Great Commission was addressed to the clergy, and why hospitality is the layman's evangelical virtue
• How small acts among men—a feast-day barbecue, a bottle of whiskey for every new father—build the culture that keeps kids Catholic
• Why retention, not evangelization, is the church's real problem
• Why a parish or apostolate job can stall a young man's vocation
• The difference between chasing status and earning honor among men who know you

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Marcellino's First Appearance on Sword&Spade (Spotify)
• Marcellino's First Appearance on Sword&Spade (Apple Podcasts)
• Sherwood Fellows
• Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Leo XIII's overlooked call to rebuild the guilds
• 05:51: The evangelization mindset Catholic men inherited
• 11:17: The Great Commission and the layman's real job
• 16:51: Men as the builders of Catholic culture
• 20:55: Start with a feast-day barbecue
• 27:54: The church's real problem is retention
• 33:02: When a new pastor shuts down a men's chapter
• 37:45: Why young men shouldn't take parish jobs
• 42:07: Chasing status vs. earning honor
• 53:09: Building for a hundred years from now

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Adam Taylor, a former Marine and the son of Poetic Knowledge author James Taylor, has spent the last six years teaching his father's vision of education at St. Martin's Academy and is now co-founding St. Joseph's Academy in Mississippi. He tells Jason Craig how the goodness of his childhood carried him through a family tragedy and years apart from his father. He also makes the case that education has to reach the heart before the mind can build on it, a truth he says even classical schools can forget.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• What poetic knowledge is—the sensory, emotional way we come to know and love reality—and what Dickens's Hard Times shows about an education that deals only in facts
• How Adam came to terms with his father's failings in the years after the accident that took his mother and three siblings
• Why a father who admits fault and lets his son into his suffering keeps a bridge open to that son
• How real encounters form the imagination, and why Adam calls formation "a way to achieve prudence before your time"
• Why boys need to make and break things, even as high school seniors

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James S. Taylor
• St. Joseph's Academy
• Cornbread Catholic
• Catholics' Lost Cause by Adam L. Tate

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Chapters:

• 00:00: Adam Taylor, James Taylor, and John Senior's legacy
• 02:46: What poetic knowledge is, and the horse in Hard Times
• 10:17: A childhood immersed in the real
• 17:58: Seeing a father's failings, and the accident at fourteen
• 23:35: Letting your son into your suffering
• 26:11: How the Marines began the healing
• 31:10: What poetic knowledge looked like at home
• 38:59: Imagination and prudence before your time
• 46:02: Where classical education falls short
• 53:25: St. Joseph's Academy, Cornbread Catholic, and the Catholic South

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Jason Craig asks Dr. Dan Schneider, author of The Liber Christo Method, whether the Catholic fascination with exorcism is actually helping men fight. Schneider argues the real battle runs through a man's own senses and the wounds he hasn't dealt with, and Craig adds that a man who won't face those wounds leaves his family to carry them. 

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why an unholy curiosity about the devil backfires, and why Schneider ranks the demon third in any battle plan, behind Christ and the obstacles blocking grace
• How the demon of impurity doubles as the demon of fear, and why confessing the same sin over and over can miss the unhealed wound underneath it
• Small mortifications to start with, like giving up meat on Fridays
• What the imprecatory psalm about dashing babies on the rock teaches about crushing vices early
• Why a husband's authority comes down to two duties: provide and protect

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• The Liber Christo Method by Dr. Dan Schneider
• Holy League Institute
• The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
• Unseen Warfare, edited by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and St. Theophan the Recluse

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 03:09: Why Exorcism Content Has Exploded
• 07:46: The Enemy in the Mirror and the Five Senses
• 17:06: Why Impurity and Fear Share a Demon
• 24:00: How the Demon Plays Off Your Algorithm
• 28:07: Training One Virtue at a Time
• 31:38: Small Mortifications and Mental Prayer
• 35:13: Crushing Vices While They Are Small
• 46:02: Where a Father Should Start at Home
• 54:54: God Will Ask About Your Family

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Jason Craig sits down with philosopher, homesteader, and Christendom College professor John Cuddeback, author of The Intentional Household, to ask why a home no longer becomes a household on its own. They work through the ordinary parts of family life—meals, manners, diapers, shared work, the care of the elderly—and why these are exactly where a household is either built or lost. Dr. Cuddeback makes the case that the father who wants a real home has to know what he is building before he can decide what to keep out of it.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why an unintentional household doesn't stop people from mattering—it just stops the home from being run as though they do
• Why it is not an accident that babies need changing several times a day, and what that daily closeness was designed to communicate to a child who cannot yet understand a word
• The one place to start when the whole project feels out of reach: the family meal, eaten together with bodily presence, manners, and unhurried conversation, no matter where the food came from
• Why manners are the beginning of morals, why the father has to model them before he enforces them, and why formality deepens relationships instead of stiffening them
• Why restriction alone never wins the argument with technology—the question is what the screen is replacing, and whether there is a life worth protecting behind it

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• The Intentional Household by John Cuddeback
• LifeCraft
• Supra Dinner Society

Chapters:

• 00:00: Intro
• 03:09: Why a household now has to be built on purpose
• 09:58: Life gets harder as it gets better
• 15:40: The part that falls apart without the father
• 21:01: Start with the meal, whatever is on the plate
• 25:34: What a child learns at a table the father leads
• 36:58: Hospitality is the layman's way of preaching
• 41:53: You cannot say no to a screen without a yes to something
• 50:18: The home that only consumes
• 59:10: Growing old inside the household

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

When a thousand women who had abortions were asked who they consulted about the decision, the father of the baby came out first, and by a wide margin the most influential no matter what he said. 

Alexander Hettinga leads the fatherhood and family team at Care Net, a network of more than 1,300 pregnancy centers, and he tells Jason Craig what happens when those men are finally spoken to as fathers rather than handled as the problem.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The 2015 study that found the father of the baby is both the first person a woman consults about an abortion and the single greatest influence on her decision
• Why roughly a third of these fathers say nothing at all, and what "I'll support whatever you choose" actually sounds like to her
• Alexander's invitation to the father who has raised his own family well and now feels useless against everything else he sees
• Why Alexander pushes back on the room full of donated diapers, and what he wants pregnancy centers to do instead
• What a settled, married father can learn from men starting with nothing, including why the earlier a dad gets involved the better

Resources Mentioned:

• The Musical Father
• Care Net Fatherhood & Family
• Doctor Dad
• Fraternus

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 02:51: A violinist who fell in love with fatherhood
• 06:00: The research that put the father at the center of her decision
• 09:49: The forty percent who recommend abortion, and one client who had nothing
• 17:18: Why serving the father is central, not mission drift
• 25:35: Bravado or gentleness, and what actually reaches these men
• 31:56: "You might think you're the Uber driver today, but you're not"
• 34:10: The smoothies that saved lives
• 44:37: Fatherhood starts at conception
• 57:06: Bach, twenty children, and work-family polyphony

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.