The Church calls Saint Joseph the Terror of Demons. A carpenter. A foster father. A man who speaks not a single word in Scripture. And hell is terrified of him. In this episode, John Heinen sits down with Devin Schadt, executive director of the Fathers of Saint Joseph, to unpack the four reasons Satan hates Saint Joseph. These are the virtues that send demons running. The same virtues every Catholic man is called to build.

Most men feel it before they can name it. That slow, quiet sense that life is just happening to you. Work has become a treadmill, marriage a parallel operation, faith something rote and obligatory. John Heinen and Devin Schadt go deep on what's actually behind male drift and why the standard diagnosis misses the real problem entirely. They trace how the invention of adolescence quietly dismantled the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood, why 59% of men between 24 and 29 don't actually feel like adults, and how men have been inheriting that deficit ever since. Today we unpack the distinction between vocation and occupation and why a man who has traded the first for the second will always feel like something is missing, no matter how much he achieves. We discuss Aquinas on the order of charity, what it means to have solid convictions versus just ambition, why hope requires something genuinely difficult to be real, and what St. Ambrose meant when he said the man rightly called a king is the one who makes his own body an obedient subject.

We know the temptations that hunt us, the ones we can't seem to outrun no matter how serious we get about our interior life. In this episode, John Heinen and Devin Schadt walk through a practical four-temptation framework with the corresponding virtues that combat each one. From lust as a disordered desire rather than a foreign attack, to the "respectable sin" of greed we praise as ambition, to the pride we cannot see in ourselves, to the sloth hiding inside our busiest days.

John Sablan spent the better part of his adult life being what he now calls the X factor in his family: the one holding everything back. Raised in abuse, living a wayward life, he and his wife stumbled into the Catholic Church, and he settled comfortably into being lukewarm. His marriage came to the edge. Then at a men's conference, with a general confession, and a priest praying deliverance over him in Latin changed the trajectory. In this conversation, John Heinen and Devin Schadt sit down with John Sablan to get at the real roots of what's keeping men soft and what it actually takes to do something about it. Rooted in Thomistic psychology (which he studied under Fr. Chad Ripperger), John defines effeminacy the way Aquinas did: not a personality flaw, but a moral vice. The inability to deny pleasure in order to pursue the arduous good. He unpacks the trap men fall into when they finally decide to get serious: trading softness for stoicism, white-knuckling virtue as a self-improvement project, making the whole thing about proving themselves rather than serving God. They also tackle why "do you want to save your marriage?" is the wrong question.

This stat should shake every Catholic father awake: 85 to 90 percent of kids raised in Catholic homes will leave the faith by adulthood. We've somehow accepted that as normal. It's not. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Greg Popcak, a Catholic counselor with over 30 years in the trenches and author of more than 20 books, to talk about what the families who beat those odds are actually doing differently. Greg walks me through the 12 research-validated habits that families who successfully pass on the faith all share in common, what he calls the Liturgy of Domestic Church Life. We get into why just dragging your kids to Mass and white-knuckling the family Rosary isn't enough if there's no joy behind it, why your kids need to experience the Faith as the source of the meaning in your home and not just the source of the rules. He breaks down what headship actually looks like when it's modeled after the ministerial priesthood rather than a dictator, and he tells a story from his time in Hong Kong about a father who tried to hug his daughter for the first time and she didn't even know what he was doing.

Every man knows the difference between a morning that owns him and a morning he owns. In this episode, Devin Schadt and I walk through a practical seven-point framework for building a morning routine that actually holds. From the heroic minute and the science behind a fixed wake time, to what you put in your body before prayer, to why your evening examen the night before may be the most overlooked factor in how your next day unfolds. We get honest about what didn't work, like falling asleep face-down at 4:45 a.m., white-knuckling 18 months without caffeine, and trying to out-pray their wives out of competition rather than conviction. This isn't a productivity hack. It's a rule of life built on obedience, worship, and the promise that God doesn't bless leftovers. He blesses first fruits.

Men today are doing everything they’ve been told, working hard, providing, staying faithful, yet they still feel disconnected or confused from their wives and children. In this episode, John Heinen and Devin Schadt sit down with Adam Lane Smith to uncover why. Drawing from the science of attachment theory, Adam exposes how a man can be highly capable on the outside while remaining emotionally isolated on the inside, and how that disconnect quietly shapes every relationship he has. They explore the hidden dynamics behind fading desire, emotional shutdown, and why so many men default to solving problems alone. Adam also lays out a clear framework for rebuilding connection in marriage, including the overlooked steps that either strengthen or slowly erode a wife’s trust and intimacy.

We carry pain we can't name. It shows up as anxiety, anger, overwork, or the sense that no matter what we do, it's never enough. In this episode, John Heinen and Devin Schadt sit down with Dr. Bob Schuchts of the St. John Paul II Healing Center to explore what's really driving the unrest men feel and why pushing through it, numbing it, or ignoring it only makes it worse. From the gap between who we are on the inside and who we show the world, to the deep wounds of abandonment, powerlessness, and the need for validation, Dr. Bob opens up about his own panic attack, the moment one tear changed everything, and why healing isn't weakness. It's the doorway to becoming the man, husband, and father God created you to be.