The Forming Men Podcast

Jefferson Bethke and Jon Tyson sit on opposite ends of a demographic split most men's shows ignore. Bethke is a younger father in Maui writing books about slow family life. Tyson is a New York City pastor in his fifties who has spent years thinking and teaching about how fathers pass something real on to their sons. Put them on a mic together and you get a conversation that moves between theology, practical fathering, and the cultural mess boys are trying to grow up inside. Episodes tend to run about an hour. Some are just the two of them talking through a theme like ambition, anger, sexual integrity, or how to build a rite-of-passage weekend with your teenager. Others bring in guests, usually pastors, authors, or dads who have built something worth studying. The tone is thoughtful rather than shouty, and neither host is interested in selling a brand of tough-guy masculinity. They care about whether a man can sit with his own emotions, pray honestly, and actually show up for the people under his roof. You will hear references to church fathers, Jordan Peterson, Wendell Berry, and Wes Yang in the same episode. It works better than it should. Listeners who want Christian formation without cheesiness, and who are serious about raising sons on purpose, will find plenty to chew on here.