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