Masculinity In Review

This episode reframes a conversation that the loudest voices in American culture keep trying to flatten. Jarrod Zisser — independent journalist behind The Take, Marine Corps infantry with two Iraq tours, and a man who walked away from a paying job a year ago to report from federal-occupation flashpoints — joins Nick Paro to do something the moment makes unfashionable: argue that empathy, self-reflection, and respect for the women who actually run our households are not threats to masculinity but the substance of it. The interview moves quickly from Iran and Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon to white Christian nationalism and the SAVE Act, but the spine of it is the question of what veterans, and men more broadly, owe a country that is gradually being remade in front of them. Nick closes the conversation with a one-line thesis the series has been building toward all season: intelligent masculinity is the refusal to outsource accountability onto others, and the discipline to live with the consequences of our values and actions. Jarrod’s hour is, in effect, a working demonstration of that thesis.

The opening salvo is military, and it sets the analytical register for everything that follows. Jarrod breaks a story on Substack about a sailor’s mother — one of several mothers, it turns out — describing her son losing more than thirty pounds in a month aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, working twelve-hour shifts and passing out in chow lines, while a Gulf posture that should have been hardened against drone and missile strikes months in advance instead absorbs the hits. The point isn’t gossip about Pete Hegseth, whom he names as the obvious symptom; the point is that men with no fallback are being asked to carry consequences that the leadership class refuses to. Jarrod served on FOBs that ran out of chicken-shit clay buildings and held Friday steak nights — the contrast is the argument. When the most powerful military in the world has watched Ukraine wage a drone war for years and still neglects basic force protection, the failure is not technical. It is a failure of seriousness about the people you are spending.

The interview’s most useful move is to refuse the journalist-as-neutral-observer pose without abandoning the discipline of reporting. Jarrod stacks his identities deliberately: human first, American second, journalist third. He is candid that this stance puts him in what the current administration calls the antifa corner, and he is candid about the cost — platforms slow-paying anyone reporting on the administration, his family covering the gap, an out-of-the-blue call informing him he is on a list he is now openly proud of. The civic claim underneath the autobiography is that 2026 is not 2008 or 2016, and that pretending it is — the steady-head, just-the-facts neutrality fetish — has become a way of helping the erasure of civil rights happen quietly. The voice this episode commends is the one that says what it thinks while it shows its work, and shows its face while it does.

That insistence on showing one’s face becomes the bridge to the masculinity question, and it is the most carefully handled moment of the hour. Nick frames face-showing as a duty for men like him and Jarrod — least-targeted, hardest to take — and Jarrod, without breaking the agreement, pushes back to clarify on behalf of protesters who cover their faces because they are in real danger. Then they widen the lens. Veterans show up in old camis with patches on their helmets because the veteran population is the most forcibly diverse community in the country, and because the title still carries trust. Jarrod’s argument, citing the conversation with Kristofer Goldsmith, is that the oath taken at enlistment doesn’t expire at EAS. The uniform was incidental; the obligation — to the Constitution, against enemies foreign and domestic — was the substance. Done well, this is what veteran patriotism sounds like in 2026: not flag-waving, but the willingness to translate prior consent into present, peaceful presence on a street in Portland or Minneapolis or Delaney Hall, while everyone else assumes someone else will go.

The conversation’s most personal turn delivers the masculinity argument the series exists to make. Jarrod was raised by his mother in a household his father abandoned and surrounded by women, in the liberal Bay Area, where being a normal boy did not require being a domineering one. He found his model of the masculine man in a best friend’s father — a third-degree black belt and provider who, in Jarrod’s telling, was also the most respectful husband he ever observed, deferring decisions because his wife was the actual decision-maker. He tells his own kids the same thing about his own marriage when they ask who is in charge: mommy. The political frame is direct — the SAVE Act and the broader white Christian nationalist project want to suppress the woman’s vote on the theory that empathy is a disqualification — and the personal frame is just as direct: a man who needs to be the king of his household is a man whose masculinity is a facade for something else. By the time Nick offers his definition of intelligent masculinity, Jarrod has already filled in the body of it: patience is not weakness, compassion is not weakness, and self-reflection — the five quiet minutes in the shower, the therapy he had to learn it from — is the practice that lets a man hold accountability without breaking under it.

Jarrod Zisser is what happens when somebody decides that the oath is still operative and behaves accordingly. He builds his reporting at a fifth-to-seventh-grade reading level because clarity is a civic act; he stacks “human, American, journalist” in that order because anything else mistakes the tool for the work; and he is willing to be on a list and on camera so that other people don’t have to be. This conversation is, in the best sense, an Intelligent Masculinity interview: a veteran modeling the discipline of holding a position publicly, an independent journalist refusing the false neutrality of his own field, and a husband and father naming where his power actually comes from. If the series is an extended argument that better humaning is the substance of better masculinity, Jarrod’s hour is the kind of evidence that argument needs — concrete, accountable, and finished by a man who, asked how he embodies the great typhoon, answered by slowing down.

~ Nick Paro

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Nick’s Notes

I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community!.

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Thank you Noble Blend, Ms.Yuse, ArleneMach, Jack (he/him), SammyD, and many others for tuning into my live video with Jerrod Zisser! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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