Key ideas I'll be sharing:

• returning after a break and how routine keeps a large family steady 
• the idea of extractive economies versus rooted economies 
• why sheep are low-capital working-family livestock with multiple outputs 
• how grazing rentals can turn nearby pasture into income 
• the “sheep to sweater” pipeline and the trades it creates 
• why an authentic local wool sweater could anchor small town industry 
• apprenticeships, youth work, and the case for homeschooling support 
• the spiritual dimension of land, tradition, and faith 
• using technology and social platforms to scale rooted family enterprise 
• a practical challenge to start with a small flock and rebuild locally

But today, I decided it importantly to get into why I call the show, "The Dissident Dad Show" and why it has nothing to do with doomerish, actually. Instead it's about why disciplined dissidence beats doom, how to question institutions without losing hope, and what it looks like to guard a home in a noisy age. The goal as a dad is simple and hard; raise free minds, keep a clean house, and stay accountable to truth.

• quick family and homestead updates in deep snow
• defining dissident as disciplined, not doomer
• naming modern “untouchables” across school, media, politics, money
• separating signal from noise in news and culture
• rejecting nihilism in favor of responsibility
• auditing personal beliefs with the same rigor as institutions
• building family standards, skills, and boundaries
• hope rooted in agency, faith, and daily action

I argue that modern comfort masks a dangerous illusion of control, and that homesteading—at any scale—reconnects us to seasons, duty and reverence. Winter’s demands humble us, sharpen our senses, and open a path to grateful, grounded living.

• winter as the great humbler
• the illusion of control in modern systems
• mangoes in January and the cost of convenience
• heat on demand versus earned warmth
• using technology without losing roots
• reverence, fear and the question of a creator
• homesteading as an end to complacency
• practical accountability to seasons and place

We hit Chapel Hill’s school board bragging about dodging North Carolina’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, New York’s AG threatening school boards if they let parents speak honestly about boys in girls’ locker rooms, and San Jose’s mayor floating a plan to let kids waive their right to a lawyer while cops question them. Then we zoom out to CBP’s plan to hoover up five years of social media from foreign visitors, a Texas daycare where toddlers test positive for THC, and Congress casually rubber-stamping another 900 billion for the empire while families scrape by.

The through line is simple: the machine wants your kids’ bodies, data, time, and loyalties, and it wants you tired enough to step aside. This episode is about how fathers push back, reclaim custody in every sense, and become the wall no institution can route around.

This is not a scattered grab bag of stories. It is one machine asking for custody of your children. I talk about why every one of these fights is really about formation, why nothing in your kid’s life is actually neutral, and why the real “dissident” act is not posting harder but taking back the center of your kids’ formation. Prayer in the home. Scripture. Real history. Pulling them from bad schools if you can. Building parallel options with other families.

If you’re a dad who feels like you’re raising kids in enemy territory and you’re trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like right now, this one is for you.

Then we pivot to the fight over the Hep B shot for newborns, why that “standard” hospital jab within 24 hours of birth deserves way more questions than it gets, and why parents have every right to say “nope” without apologizing to anyone in a lab coat. I wrap with the story behind my essay “My People Are My Temple” and how I escaped the cult of health optimization that had quietly turned my life inward and away from my wife, kids, and community. If you’re craving faith, roots, babies, small-town sanity, and the courage to push back on expert mandates, this one’s for you.

Different stories, same pattern. The machine shields its priests abortion providers, gender ideologues, DEI bureaucrats, and big health care while normal moms and dads eat the cost. We talk about what that means for fathers who actually want to protect their kids, where to push back, and how to build parallel loyalties that do not depend on a court opinion to tell us what is true.

• TSA quietly rolls out a $45 “no ID” fee that nudges you into biometric screening.
• Texas swings a sledgehammer at mail order abortion pills. 
• Maryland brags about a 15% jump in telehealth abortions, turning bedrooms into clinics with a few clicks. 
• A Kentucky IVF case treats nine frozen children as negotiable “material.” 
• A new Senate bill tries to protect med residents who refuse abortion training.
• And the Kansas attorney general has to formally remind a school district that parents have a right to know what’s being done to their kids.

All of it hangs together. Less real human contact, more apps and policies. Less moral clarity, more euphemisms and “access.” In other words, a culture that wants highly managed bodies and very quiet consciences.

I break down what this means for moms and dads raising kids right now, why we should support every crack in that system that protects life and conscience, and how to build homes where our children learn to call things by their right names and refuse to cooperate with a bloodless, faceless idea of “care.”

We hit:

• Trump’s State Department suddenly deciding abortion, DEI quotas, and child “gender care” belong in the human rights abuse bucket
• The Afghan migrant who allegedly ambushed two National Guard soldiers near the White House, killing Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and leaving Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe fighting for his life
• Trump slamming the brakes on asylum and Afghan visas afterward and why, as a dad, that is the bare minimum sane response
• Illinois racing toward “medical aid in dying” while coroners and Catholics yell stop
• The Vatican praising one man one woman for life, and Pope Leo calling parenthood a “wonderful adventure”
• South Africa quietly backing away from a retail CBDC and what that tells us about control money

Under all of it is the same point. The regime can tweak policies, issue memos, even occasionally do the right thing. But it will never sit by your kid’s bed at 3 a.m. It will never teach them courage, chastity, or how to face suffering without giving up. That is on fathers and mothers, in homes and parishes, not in Washington.

If you’re trying to lead a family through this mess with clear eyes and a Christian spine, this one is for you.

I walk through seven stories that make the pattern pretty hard to ignore. The regime is very good at flipping big switches. Not so good at guarding actual children, mothers, and families.

We hit:

• Trump’s order to re-vet 200,000 Biden-era refugees and freeze their green cards
• Record-high ICE detention numbers, mostly people with no criminal record
• Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law and the fight over whether kids have a “right” to a religion-free classroom
• Monaco’s Catholic prince vetoing an abortion bill and choosing faith over elite applause
• A Colorado school trying to put an 11-year-old girl in bed with a trans-identifying boy on a class trip
• Ohio’s “protected” abortion regime while 24 counties don’t have a single OB-GYN
• Nearly 1 in 10 American adults now having a cancer diagnosis on their record

Then we zoom out and talk about what real America First has to look like at the dad level: guarding your own household, your parish, your town, instead of waiting for DC to grow a conscience.

In this show, we hit:

• Pro-life center vs blue-state lawfare
  A small Christian pregnancy center in New Jersey takes a 1.2 million dollar punch from the state for helping women choose life and refusing to snitch on them, and now they’re taking it to the Supreme Court.
• Mail-order abortion pills and the family home
  Senators push to shut down the USPS abortion pipeline while states like North Dakota refuse to treat baby-killing-by-mail as “healthcare.” What this means for fathers trying to protect their homes.
• Tariffs, global cartels, and real work
  Trump’s new tariff hit on Canada, Mexico, and China, how it lands on Main Street vs Wall Street, and why a sane country protects tradesmen and farmers over financial games.
• Borders, TPS, and ordered love
  DHS ends “temporary” protections for migrants from Myanmar, and we talk about what real national sovereignty looks like when you still have a duty to your own kids first.
• Parents ditching screens for soil
  The tech and school backlash that is quietly fueling a homeschool and homestead boom, especially among parents sick of iPad “learning” and gender propaganda.
• Black Friday blackout
  Dads and families boycotting the consumerist trap, turning their backs on megacorp “deals” in favor of parish potlucks, neighbor trades, and time with actual human beings.
• Assisted suicide and the war on the old
  New pushes for euthanasia laws in blue states, and why the same culture that aborts the disabled in the womb is now aiming at your grandparents.

All of it rolls up into one theme: America First only means anything if it protects the homes, parishes, and bloodlines we’re trying to pass down. God, wife, kids, land first. The machine can wait.

We hit:

• North Dakota’s abortion ban snapping back into place and what it means to have two completely different moral universes inside one country.
• The new push to permanently defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level, not just give them a slap on the wrist.
• Pregnancy resource centers quietly serving over a million women a year while blue-state AGs try to bury them in subpoenas.
• A Kansas conservative arguing that a real pro-life ethic has to touch the death penalty too.
• Apple turning your passport into a digital ID inside Apple Wallet, and why that matters way more than “faster TSA lines.”
• Michigan’s legislature declaring “Christ the King Sunday” and why a tiny resolution like that still punches above its weight spiritually.

Then I zoom out in the commentary and talk about the clash between two religions: one that treats every soul as sacred, womb to tomb, and one that sees people as conditional QR codes whose value depends on their usefulness and compliance.

If you’re trying to raise kids in the first religion while the second one runs the institutions, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I walk through how Oregon rushed $7.5 million in “emergency” money to Planned Parenthood while big families get told to be more “responsible,” how a Planned Parenthood worker in Alabama was busted dealing drugs in the clinic parking lot, and why a giant coalition of child advocates is warning parents to keep AI toys far away from their kids this Christmas.

We hit New Jersey’s push for a bell to bell school phone ban, Illinois sliding driver’s licenses into Apple Wallet, and a Jersey bill that would turn homeschooling into a state supervised side branch of the same system many parents are trying to escape.

Theme of the day: “Professionals only, Dad.” The regime trusts the clinic, the engineer, the bureaucrat, the algorithm. You are the one who has to prove yourself.

So we talk about the only sane response. Say no. Reclaim jurisdiction. Treat the big shiny systems as background noise and step fully into the job God already gave you.

Guard your kids. Guard your faith. Guard your future.

We hit: 

• A Massachusetts case headed toward the Supreme Court over a school secretly “transitioning” a child behind her parents’ backs
• A Maine judge who literally banned a Christian mom from taking her daughter to church or reading the Bible with her
• Colorado telling Catholic preschools to drop Catholic teaching if they want access to “universal” preschool funds
• The ongoing affordability squeeze that makes normal family life harder every year
• And the growing push for smartphone bans in schools as adults finally admit phones are wrecking kids’ brains.

Then I zoom out on the real issue underneath all of it: jurisdiction. Who actually has rightful authority over your children’s souls, minds, and daily life… the courts and counselors, or mom and dad under God. If you’re a Catholic or Christian parent trying to raise kids in the faith without handing them over to the machine, this one’s for you.

We hit:

• Kansas AG going after Wichita schools for secret gender-transition policies behind parents’ backs.
• Florida becoming the first state to adopt an education freedom declaration that actually says “parents first” out loud.
• A new study showing early social media use wrecking Gen Z girls’ sleep, body image, trust in other people, and mental health.
• South Carolina’s extreme abortion bill stalling in committee and why bad pro-life law can still be dangerous.
• China trying to bribe people into marriage and babies after decades of waging war on fertility.

Then I zoom in on that UCL social media study and talk directly to dads about phones, daughters, and jurisdiction. The core point: the regime, the schools, and Big Tech all act like your kids are inventory to be managed. A dissident dad doesn’t accept that. He takes back ownership of his home, his screens, and his daughters’ hearts.

Listen in, then go lead your family.