Nav Prasad's dad left Fiji at twenty years old with no high school diploma, no connections, and no plan. He worked hotel kitchens and theater jobs, battled racism, found his way into car sales, and became one of the top ten car salespeople in the country competing from a small town against people from New York and Florida. He brought his siblings over and helped them build lives. He is now seventy one years old and still works by appointment only.

Nav watched all of that from a distance.

Now he is trying to do for his boys what his dad did for him. Just closer. More side by side. More present.

Nav has two sons. His oldest is nineteen and autistic. His youngest is ten and will walk up to a stranger in a grocery store and start a conversation without hesitating. Nav will tell you that did not happen by accident.

In this conversation Nav talks about what it meant to grow up watching a father build something from nothing and what he is deliberately passing down to his own boys. He talks about parenting a child with autism, what the diagnosis at fifteen clarified, and what he learned from those early years that he applies to his younger son today. He talks about youth sports as a vehicle for building resilience and why so many parents are wasting one of the best opportunities they have to connect with their kids. And he shares the framework that might be the most practically useful idea we have discussed on this show.

Failure is information.

Not an identity. Not a destination. Data. It tells you what to work on. And teaching your kids to see it that way might be one of the most important gifts you can give them.

Nav downloaded TikTok four weeks before we recorded this conversation. One month and a million views later he is clearly onto something.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com

Some stories are hard to hear. This is one of them.

Jason Miller grew up without a father. As the product of a one-night stand, he was raised in an abusive home with no father figure and very few positive influences in his life. His grandfather was murdered when he was ten. He was abused by the son of a pastor who was supposed to protect him. And by the time he reached high school he had run out of reasons to believe his life was worth living.

He found one anyway.

Today Jason is a husband of 25 years, a father of two, and the lead pastor of a church of nearly a thousand people. He coaches leaders for a living. And he builds resilience in others out of the exact places where his own was forged.

In this conversation Jason talks about what it felt like to grow up feeling completely unwanted and unworthy of love. He talks about the men who showed up for him when no one else would and what those moments of unexpected kindness did for a kid who desperately needed them. He talks about the long and non-linear work of healing — not recovering, but being redeemed. And he talks about what he is most deliberate about giving his own children because of everything he had to find on his own.

Jason taught us that a few chapters do not make a novel. You cannot choose your circumstances. But you can choose to take control of your story.

This one is worth your time.

If you or someone you know is struggling help is available. Call or text 988.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com

Most of us picture fatherhood on a fairly predictable timeline. Finish school, start a career, meet someone, start a family. Chris Stream's path looked nothing like that.

Chris spent his twenties and thirties building his career and searching for the right person to build a life with. He did not get married until his late forties. And when he did, it came with more moving pieces than most people navigate in a lifetime.

His wife Brooke was a widow. Her daughter Campbell had never known her biological father. Chris became an instant dad to a five year old while simultaneously marrying for the first time and navigating the legal complexities of adoption. Then came a premature baby who spent three months in the NICU. Then a son born into a family that was still finding its footing.

He will turn sixty this year. His son is eleven.

In this conversation Chris talks about what it means to be an older father, the deliberate advantages it brings, and the challenges nobody tells you about. He and Brooke had the financial stability to invest in experiences over things, but that created its own parenting challenge: how do you build resilience and work ethic in kids when it would be easy to just give them everything?

He also talks about parenting a child with Tourette's without defaulting to medication, why he has always talked to his kids like adults rather than children, the weekly family ranking system he uses to keep his kids competing for his attention, and how his son Calvin at eleven years old articulated something profound about the difference between the family you are born into and the family you build.

Chris is a college professor, a Las Vegas native, and one of the more unconventional dads we have had on the show. His path to fatherhood was anything but typical. What he built when he got there is worth hearing about.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com