Modern Man Podcast

About Modern Man Podcast

Men aren't what they should be – and everyone agrees. But what should they be? Welcome to the home of that conversation. Modern Man seeks to rediscover and redeem the heart of man in the modern world. To rediscover the aspects of masculinity that have been lost. To redeem the aspects of masculinity that have lasted. And to respond accordingly. Each episode, Brad, Noah, and Sam grapple with real-life experiences and real-time events to see how we can better develop the heart of man in the modern world.

Publisher

Modern Man Podcast

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Oct 2024

Latest episode

19 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

43 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 Oct 2026

   I'm Against Everything. I'm For Nothing.

   Most men know exactly what they're against. Ask them what they're for and the room goes quiet. Brad Pierson, Sam Halligan and Noah Gilchrist sit down for a Modern Man current takes episode, and every take ends up circling the same question: when the world gives you a thousand things to hate, what are you actually building? Brad opens with a story he can't shake, a death sentence and the idea of putting an execution on a screen for anyone to watch. He starts where most men start. There is a right and just anger in a man's heart at betrayal and at the taking of innocent life. Then he says the harder thing out loud: it is equally wrong to dress vengeance up in Christian clothes, and when someone he loves is hurt, his own appetite for revenge runs high. The three work it through honestly, not neatly. The difference between the execution itself and the spectacle of it. Whether a public display deters anyone who has already decided to die for a cause. How St. Thomas Aquinas reasoned about the common good, how the Catechism was revised in 2018, and why faithful Catholics still argue about the weight of that change. And Brad's own fork in the road: if the worst people are mostly hurt people hurting people, mercy has a long runway. If some of them simply hate you, the question changes. Noah's take comes out of election season. A political ad built around a public official's lowest moment in the middle of a pandemic nobody alive had ever seen. Put yourself in that chair for one minute, he says, and ask whether you would have done better. A culture that makes a weapon out of a person's worst moment teaches every man watching to be afraid to fail and to never show weakness. Sam goes further still: if anyone is judged by his worst moment, then all of us are finished, and nobody should ever be promoted again. Real strength is knowing you are not an island, that asking for help is not white-knuckling it alone, and that the answer is usually just to be humble. Then the turn. Noah calls this one of the easiest times in modern history to feel completely helpless, a world with unfettered access to everything and no idea how to suffer well, where it can seem like nothing is good. His answer is not a policy. It is a true north, and as a Catholic man his has to be Christ. Brad names the pattern behind every attack ad: a world full of men who know what they're against and have no idea what they're for. Defense all the time and no offense. He wants to build something better in its essence, true, good and beautiful, magnetic enough to draw people near, starting with his own family, his own street and the parish he calls home. Noah has the image for what comes next. His phone sits on the lowest brightness setting and it still lights up the whole bedroom, because the room is dark. As the culture gets darker, a man who actually lives the life of Christ is going to look like he has superpowers. Not because he is better, but because he is lit. Sam closes on a racing documentary he watched on a flight, the story of a legendary driver raised by a father who could not say he loved him, and of a son who spent his life trying to earn it. Watching four hours of a man's whole life unroll, the good and the broken, Sam saw what every one of us will see at the end: how our father's love or the lack of it shaped us, and how that played out in our marriages and in the way we raised our kids. The difference is that we are still living the tape. The film has not stopped rolling. Noah adds a question worth sitting with: if your life were a movie, what would everyone in the theater be screaming at you to do that you are not doing right now? For him it was simple. He said he would come home and help. He lay on the couch instead. Brad finishes on a musical about a man obsessed with who would tell his story, and on the truth underneath it: we do not hold the pen. God is authoring the story, and the only question is how much we yield to Him.

2. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Everyone's Proud of Me. I'm at 70%.

   Two campus missionaries, two conversions, and one question under the whole hour: what is this actually costing you. Noah Gilchrist and BradPierson sit down for Modern Man — College Edition, recorded in the St. Thomas More Student Center at Ohio State with Blake Madsen ofFOCUS and Gavin Gunkel of St. Paul's Outreach.Life is not about the return. It is about the cost. That is the sentence the hour turns on, and it is said plainly: we keep asking what a decisiongives back, and the only ones ever worth anything are the ones that took something. You can feel it when you are giving seventy percent.Everyone around you says you are doing a good job. You know you are half in. That is the worst feeling a man can carry, and most men live insideit without saying so.Before that, two conversion stories told without any polish. One of them was a high school quarterback whose father left in a scandal when hewas seventeen, who decided in that moment to be the villain because owning the identity hurt less than carrying the hurt. His principal told himthat if he stopped choosing to be a bad person he could do great things, and he wore it as a badge instead. A Protestant missionary invited him toa Bible study. He came alive, spent a year in evangelical churches learning to read scripture and pray, went on a Catholic mission trip intendingto show those Catholics what real faith looked like, and watched a girl named Teresa worship in a way that made him think she loved her versionof Jesus more than he loved his. He went home and attended daily Mass for six months in a tiny rural parish, standing when they stood, kneelingwhen they knelt, until one morning at the elevation he knew. He is now a husband and a father, seven years on staff, fundraising his entire salary.The other grew up a lukewarm Catholic in Dallas, led a youth group while privately unsure whether being Catholic counted as being Christian,decided it was not working out for him, and spent two years as a self-described atheist. He went to a school nobody from his city goes to, joined afraternity, led a pledge class of thirty, and set out to be the alpha of the alphas. Then he bought a twenty dollar puppy to impress a girl, the dognearly died of parvo, and in the middle of a four day treatment at nineteen he prayed the first real prayer of his life. The dog lived. The girl didnot work out. He kept the promise anyway, met missionaries, and heard a talk that reframed his life in one line: a boy asks what he can get; aman asks what he can give.Then the part of the conversation that applies to every man listening, whatever he believes. Real discernment is between two goods, which meansevery choice costs you a good thing. Fall in love with all the options, so that choosing breaks your heart, because you deserve to feel that. God putus in time and space, and time and space means tradeoffs. You do not get to avoid the bill. You only choose which one you pay. Take the moneyand you pay in time, because when your earning capacity goes up your hours stop being yours. Take the mission and you pay in stability. There isno version where nothing is spent.

3. 

   6 Oct 2026

   Is There A Right Way To Pray?

   Three Catholic men on prayer: what it actually is, why most men quit, and the one question that decides whether any of it is working. Sam Halligan, Brad Piersonand Noah Gilchrist sit down for Modern Man. No guest. Personal prayer, mental prayer, family prayer, and an hour of disagreement about the Mass.Prayer is the exchange of hearts. That is Brad's definition, borrowed from the patristic sources, and it is the sentence the whole episode turns on: here is my heart,Lord, in exchange for yours. The anxious one. The wandering one. The one that feels over-busy. Give me yours in return. Everything else in these sixty-fourminutes is an argument about the means by which that exchange happens, and whether the means have quietly replaced the end.Because the honest version is that most men are told to have a prayer life and never told what one is. Thinking about God is not prayer. Receiving doctrine is notprayer. Stacking devotions is not prayer. One of them spent his whole childhood praying rote prayers and measuring his worth against the count, and then met aGod who had already declared him good before he started. One of them says out loud that he struggles with the Mass, that his mind trails, that he gets more fromtwenty silent minutes with a Bible at five in the morning than from a liturgy, and that he does not go to daily Mass. One of them answers that grace is not afeeling: that a distracted man in a pew still receives what is given there, that efficacy is not emotion, and that a warm body present at the Eucharist is still a bodythat grace reaches.Then the disagreement that runs underneath the whole hour. If a man goes to Mass every day and is still a bad husband, still sarcastic, still unkind in the way hespeaks to the people in his house, what exactly is the prayer doing? One of them argues that we judge our prayer by whether it is transforming us, and that themost discouraging thing in Catholic life is a man who tells you he prays daily and does not look like Jesus. The other two push back: comparison is its own trap,grace works in dry seasons, and the fruit is often invisible to the man bearing it. They land in the same place from three directions. Prayer that produces nocharity is prayer that has gone somewhere else. Name one act of charity at the end of it, and do that thing today.Also in this conversation: the missionary who told a nineteen-year-old to skip daily Mass and pray on his own instead, and why that was bad advice; the marriageanalogy that makes the whole thing concrete, two people who get everything done and never once sit down together; a man who came back from his conversionretreat, was told to babysit his siblings, and punched a hole in the wall on the way up the stairs; what his family actually noticed a year later, which was that hedid the dishes every night; five minutes turned into right now instead of a full hour promised tomorrow; whether praise and worship with a guitar and drums isoptional, and what Romans 12:1 means by calling your body a living sacrifice and your spiritual worship; the man who is guided by himself and is guided by afool; and a practice of thanking God for the flat tire, the expensive gas, and the milk a child spilled on the couch last night. The last third turns communal. The Church obliges the laity to exactly one form of prayer, Mass on Sunday, and every other thing — the Rosary, the chaplet, theHours, a worship set with a guitar and drums — is offered rather than required, because she knows she is dealing with men who were each made differently.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

254,719

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

8 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

14 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

11

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

32

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.