{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Missing Conversation","title":"Dominick","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3532,"description":"In this episode of The Missing Conversation, host Steve Evans sits down with Dominick — a men's health researcher at Johns Hopkins who grew up on food stamps in central Massachusetts, raised by a single mother in a house full of tension, without a father of his own to model the man he might become.\nDominick reflects on the pivotal moment his sophomore year when he realized his life was on him — riding his bike to sign his own scholarship papers — and on the truth that it took a whole village to make it happen: the uncle who offered consistency, the priest who knew his family, the people who bought his uniforms and drove him to practice. He traces how, without a father to copy, he built himself \"à la carte\" — taking a little from each of the men in his life, idealizing the pieces worth keeping.\nHe speaks candidly about the quiet, lasting weight of poverty — how it narrows a young man's vision to the immediate and follows him into adulthood — and about the curiosity and empathy that pulled him outward, from a dorm-room morning watching Mandela walk free, to the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, to a life of service across the world.\nWith warmth and humility, Dominick explores marriage to a partner he never had to convince of the big things, the immediacy that shaped every decision, and standing now at the edge of the empty nest — concerned, but not worried — landing on what turned out to matter most: that relationships are central to who he is, and that a man is built, and rebuilt, in the company of others.","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/lepJFLzoHXWaoW6C7YENv4GcUJCroZaRgFE4U1F25Ng/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS81NmJh/YzhmZDAzZGE4MTli/M2Y5N2Y0YmE1NTM5/YjBkZi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}