The Act Like Men Podcast

Party life to a self-proclaimed lone wolf, then a train hit him on a Boston sidewalk and fractured his skull, and everything he had been chasing stopped mattering. Dr. Tyler Rauwolf traces the whole arc: getting clocked by a train and living to tell it, the 2 a.m. panic attack where 'I Surrender' came on Shuffle and peace washed over him, walking away from a chemistry PhD career when God said no, a booming online fitness business God let wind all the way down, and a year in the desert living on daily manna, one hundred dollars in the account month after month, until he stopped grumbling for the meat. It ends with the book God pulled out of that wilderness: Hidden Manna. Questions, or need prayer? Reach out to us anytime: [email protected]. Come honest. Leave lighter.

Got a question you would never put your name on in a comment section? Now there is a way to ask it. Email [email protected]; if it is delicate, it stays confidential, and we will speak to it on the podcast. This is a quick check-in from the new Act Like Men studio: around 350 of you strong, and proof of the thing we keep coming back to: if you want to do something significant, you just have to start. Here is what is ahead: more guests, sacrifice, spiritual warfare, leading in your career and your marriage, how to actually process pain and anger instead of intellectualizing them, and the PAL every man carries: pride, anger, and lust. This podcast runs on your questions. Bring them.

He was bullied so badly as a kid that he stopped expecting anyone to want him around. Then the money came. Twenty-five thousand a month before he was twenty, a Tesla in the driveway, a podcast about to cross a hundred million views. And none of it touched the thing that was actually broken. If you have ever believed the next number would finally make you feel like enough, this one is going to land close to home. Our first-ever guest traces the whole arc: the grandfather whose approval he could never earn, the success that turned him into the same kind of person who once tormented him, the secret he carried while leading worship on Sunday, and the slow, stitch-by-stitch way God rebuilt his identity from the inside out. This is about what money actually magnifies, why believing you 'made it' will quietly wreck you, and how to stop performing for a love you already have. Come honest. Leave lighter.

Nobody taught you how sex actually works in marriage. Not your parents. Not the church. And definitely not the culture that handed you porn and called it education. So you walked in unprepared, and it is quietly costing the most important relationship you have outside of Christ. Here is the truth most men miss: sexual intimacy is not the goal, it is the byproduct of a healthy marriage. When the connection breaks down, when resentment and broken communication pile up, the bedroom goes cold, and most guys have no idea how to lead their way back. This is the education you never got: why your wife needs to feel pursued before she feels anything else, why no two people ever match in desire, how to stop weaponizing intimacy when you are the one who got hurt, and the hard truth about the sexual trauma almost every man drags into marriage. And if you are single, this is your head start. The habits you build, the purity you fight for, and the prayers you pray now become the marriage you walk into later. Pursue her. Lead yourself first. Do the work most men avoid.

Most men handle confrontation two broken ways: they blow up, or they bury it. Both cost the relationship. There's a third way, and it's the one Scripture actually commands. You've got a conversation you've been avoiding: a friend who hurt you, a brother sliding into something that will wreck him, a word from a wife or coworker still sitting in your chest weeks later. And you've told yourself that staying quiet is the humble, loving move. It isn't. Silence isn't love; it's weakness dressed up as patience. Iron sharpens iron, and you can't sharpen anyone from a safe distance. Jack, Dillon, and Steve lay out the playbook for confronting like a man who actually loves people: how to pin down the real issue instead of trading accusations, when to let something go and when it has to be addressed, and how to open a hard conversation so the other man hears 'I'm on your team' instead of 'I'm attacking you.' You'll hear what it costs to go back and apologize to someone you wronged years ago, and how Jesus, the most loving man who ever lived, confronted people constantly and always aimed at restoration. If you've confused silence with peace, this is how you say the hard thing in love.

The lie that's killing Christian men isn't about what you do, it's about what you think you are. You wake up calling yourself a sinner. You apologize for who you are before you've even sinned. You read your Bible bracing for the next failure. And every Sunday a pastor reinforces it: "we're all just sinners saved by grace." But Paul didn't write to the sinners of Galatia. He wrote to the saints. This conversation is for the men who've been told to be stoic, who've carried questions alone because they thought it meant their faith was weak, and who've been performing identity instead of receiving it. Jack, Dillon, and Steve dig into what real repentance actually is (the Greek word your pastor mistranslates every Sunday), why "I'm just a worm" theology has crippled an entire generation of Christian men, and why the church that should be the safest place for sinners has too often become the most hostile. If you've been white-knuckling through your faith, performing through your fear, or hiding behind a fortress of your own making, this one is for you. The starting point isn't sinner. It's saint.

You feel the pull. Open one tab, then another, and another, and suddenly you've been in the dark corners of the internet for two hours. AI fakes you can't unsee. Trafficking sitting in your browser. Conspiracies that aren't conspiracies anymore. Most men either bury their head or fall down the rabbit hole until they can't find the surface. This conversation is for the third group: Christian men who want to know how deep is too deep. There's a way to wrestle with what's actually happening in the world without losing your peace, your prayer life, or your judgment. There's also a way to do all the "research" you want and end up paranoid, exhausted, and useless to your wife and kids. The difference between the two isn't intelligence. It's whether Christ is your anchor before you go digging. Jack and Dillon wrestle with the questions you keep asking and not getting straight answers to: are the conspiracies real, why are 78% of NFL players broke within a few years of retirement, could you actually watch your family die for what you say you believe, why would Sharia execute you for the faith your neighbor calls "the same God," why is the porn in your browser participation in something far darker than a habit, and what it actually means to be saved when most American Christians are lukewarm and don't even know it.

Jack names the number. 50K in the account and he'd finally feel like he'd done his job as a man. He says it out loud and then has to sit there while Steve calls it exactly what it is. This is the episode where the financial idol most Christian men are too scared to name gets put on the table. Steve tells the story of being homeless and hungry for three days and the prophetic warning a friend gave him about his savings. Jack confesses that Jehovah Jireh is the one name of God he says but does not believe. They talk about why your flesh will find another outlet when you stop looking at porn, why men who can rest are men who actually trust the Lord, and what it means to repent of the money you white-knuckled instead of stewarded. If you cannot sleep because you are running the numbers, this episode is for you.

Most men quit before they start. They wake up at 4:30 once, post it on Instagram, and then sleep in for three weeks. They confuse laziness with humility and call it being graceful with themselves. Jack, Steve, and Dillon take a sledgehammer to the soft Christianity that treats fitness as optional and pride as inherently sinful. Paul said he disciplines his body lest he himself be disqualified. The hosts ask what that actually means for a generation of pastors with potbellies, men who spend 40 percent of their income on takeout, and a faith culture that has confused humility with mediocrity. Dillon confesses his imposter syndrome around discipline. Steve tells a scary story about a friend the doctor told would be dead in six months. Jack names the toxic humble Christianity that hates pride and explains why godly pride is actually a virtue. If you have ever wondered why you cannot seem to follow through, this is the episode that names the lie underneath.

Nobody sat you down and taught you what to do when the worst thing you can imagine actually happens. Not your dad. Not your pastor. Not the men's group. You got "God has a plan" and "pray about it." And when the call comes, when the diagnosis lands, when you're standing in a hospital room watching your child fight for her life, none of that is enough. Jack, Steve, and Dillon go where most men's ministry won't. The theology of suffering as it applies to the men in the room, the fathers, the husbands, the leaders who are expected to hold it together when everything falls apart. Dillon shares what it was like to pray God would raise his daughter from the dead. Steve challenges the theology of glory that left an entire generation of men unprepared for pain. And Jack asks the question every man has thought but never said out loud: what happens when God says no?