What does it mean to be a man and what does it mean to be one in 2023?  Mike steps through key moments from childhood to fatherhood to find the defining moments that allowed him to determine what it means to be a man.

Mike is in Nashville, doing a remote recording.  Today we cover some interesting questions: When should someone get your respect, how to weigh your feelings and when to share them, and then when you should be responsible for your actions.  Keeping awareness at all time to know others and yourself.

Picking up on a subject that was touched on in the previous episode on sacrifice and suffering, parenting can be difficult but let's dive into some perspectives that can help navigate some tough everday situations with your kids.

Kicking the new year off with a hopefully uplifting podcast about scrifice and suffering.  Posing the question, would I be able to take up the task of some of the biggest sacrifice decisions in history and literature.  Topping it all off with some edits to the Star Wars universe...as one does.

Loneliness is something that has come up a lot in the past year and recently listening to a couple recent podcasts theat delved into the subject made me reflect on a few key points in my own life that I felt changed the trajectory of my life and led me away from loneliness.  It is something we all have to battle with and self reflect on and that is why I wanted to have it as today's topic.

There have been some violent attacks recently in a city including right at his doorstep.  Mike talks about past experiences and explores possible ways to cope with the presense of so much lack of empathy.

Mike takes a shallow dive into addiction and where it appears in his own life.   

Mike talks about his experience of serving on a jury last week and how it relates to a few readings he had recently completed including the Encyclical, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) and the book Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust by Miron Dolot.  It is a heavy but hopeful episode.