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

The last few episodes of the Dadical Podcast have been heavy. Stillborn children. Military deployments. Infertility. The loss of a spouse. The loss of a father at twenty years old.

This one is different.

Scott Schlofman is a financial adviser and father of four in Phoenix, Arizona. He has senior twins, a freshman, and a seventh grader. By his own admission he is just a regular dad. He is wrong about that.

In this conversation Scott shares some of the most practical and immediately applicable fatherhood wisdom we have had on the show. He talks about the barber chair and why he has cut his kids' hair their entire lives and what that captive audience has given him in terms of real conversation with his teenagers. He shares his framework for teaching his kids about dating, a cereal analogy that will make you laugh and then make you think. He talks about how he pulled his son out of school for half a day to run the actual numbers on what it costs to live independently and why that conversation matters more than any lecture ever could.

He also gets into the tension between high expectations and realistic parenting, why words matter more than most parents realize, and why loving their mom is still the single most important thing a dad can do for his kids.

Scott co-hosts a sales podcast with previous Dadical guest Mike Williams and has been doing it weekly for six years without missing an episode. He showed up to this conversation having listened carefully to previous episodes and built on them throughout. That preparation shows.

This is a conversation about the tactical side of intentional fatherhood. The systems, the habits, the specific things you can do differently starting tomorrow.

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

Every day you pull into the garage after a long day at work. You're worn out. You have emails to return and tasks that slipped through the cracks. And you have a decision to make before you walk through that door.

Burke Williamson knows that decision better than most.

Burke grew up in a small town in southern Utah as the youngest of four boys. His dad was a state champion wrestler, an all-state football player, and the kind of man who showed up to every game, every match, and every moment his kids needed him. He coached their teams not because he had to but because being there was what mattered most to him.

Burke was twenty years old and serving a church mission in the West Indies when his dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Six months later he was gone. Burke was on the other side of the world and couldn't get home to say goodbye.

In this episode Burke shares what it taught him to lose his father before he ever became one himself. He talks about the eighteen summers we get with our kids and what it means to make them count. He shares why he refuses to give his family the scraps that are left after a long day at work. And he talks about the choice he makes every single day to live a life of hope rather than anger, even after losing both of his parents to cancer.

Burke's dad may not have been perfect. But he was the perfect dad for Burke. And that is who each of us can be for our kids. Warts and all.

Every December the community where Burke grew up hosts the Paul Williamson Invitational Wrestling Tournament. That is the legacy of a man who showed up.

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

What does a father give his son that he doesn't even realize he's giving?

Mike Williams has a family motto. Three words his grandfather used to yell from the baseball dugout. Three words etched on his grandfather's tombstone. Three words that became the way Mike raised his four kids and the way his oldest son Skyler now lives his life.

Run it out.

Skyler Williams lost his wife Kimber to cancer two years ago. Three months from diagnosis to gone. He is raising two kids alone. His trailer burned down last month. And when his friends at lunch asked him how he could be so calm about it, his answer was simple.

It's just a thing.

In this episode Seth Stoker sits down with Mike and Skyler Williams for the first father and son conversation in Dadical Podcast history. Mike shares how he deliberately built a family culture through man trips into the desert, commission only bets on himself, and a Mickey Mouse tuxedo at a Valentine's dance. Skyler shares what it looks like to draw on everything his dad gave him while navigating the hardest season of his life.

This episode is about the lessons a father passes down without knowing if they will ever be needed. And what happens when they are.

If you have a father in your life who gave you something you didn't fully appreciate until it was tested, this one is for you.

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

Jordan Phillips didn't have a traditional path to fatherhood. Married at nineteen, he joined the military four months later and spent three of his first five years of marriage overseas on two deployments. When he and his wife Amy finally started trying to have kids, the doors kept closing. Years of infertility. Consultations, surgeries, and procedures. A failed round of in vitro. And a growing question neither of them wanted to ask out loud: is this ever going to happen for us?

It wasn't until they stopped forcing it and opened themselves to adoption that everything changed. Doors that had been slamming shut for nearly a decade flew open almost overnight. They adopted their daughter Ella in the fall of 2012. And then, at Ella's first birthday party, Amy started acting completely unlike herself. The doctor's explanation stunned them both.

In this episode Jordan talks about what two military deployments taught him about marriage, what nearly ten years of infertility taught him about releasing control, and what his dad's habit of taking the road less traveled on family vacations taught him about the kind of father he wanted to become.

He also shares the mindset shift that changed everything: from asking why is this happening to me, to asking why is this happening for me.

None of it was the plan. All of it was the path.

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

Most men, when they go through something devastating, put on a mask. They push it down, tell themselves they dealt with it, and keep moving forward.

Taz Harding did exactly that. And for six years it cost him more than he realized.

In this episode Taz shares one of the most honest accounts of grief, marriage, and fatherhood we have had on the Dadical Podcast. Ten months into his marriage, he and his wife Kirsten found out they were pregnant. What followed was six weeks of bed rest, multiple blood transfusions, and ultimately a stillbirth at twenty weeks. And instead of dealing with it, Taz did what most men do. He put on the mask.

What he did not expect was how far that mask would reach. Into his marriage. Into his relationship with himself. Into six years of compounding resentment and emotional distance from the woman he loved most.

This episode is also about what happens when you finally take it off. Taz shares how a men's retreat a few months ago became the catalyst for the most honest season of his marriage and his life. He talks about what it means to feel seen, what vulnerability actually looks like for a man, and how the lessons his own father taught him are shaping the kind of dad he is determined to become for his three boys.

If you are carrying something you have not dealt with, you know what it is. We hope this conversation gives you a reason to start.

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