An Army of Normal Folks - He Was a Pastor With a Sex Addiction. Now He's Helped 25,000 Men Heal (Pt 1)

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Nate Larkin spent 20 years hiding a sex addiction. For 5 of those years, he was a pastor. When it was exposed and everything collapsed, it could have been the end of his story. It turned out to be the beginning. In this conversation, Nate shares what it took to rebuild and how that journey led him and a dozen guys to start the Samson Society, a community built on radical transparency, vulnerability, and confidentiality. What started as one small group has now grown to more than 600 local chapters, daily virtual meetings in 8 languages, and has helped over 25,000 men heal!  You might benefit from the Samson Society or the newer women's version called the Sarah Society. We all know family members and friends who could. And Nate can teach all of us how to be real and live authentically.  Check out Samson Society here: https://www.samsonsociety.com/about  Join Army of Normal Folks and receive our Soul Service newsletter: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSupport the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Best I can figure, I spent $300,000 on porn and prostitutes and strip clubs and massage parlors and all of that stuff. But that is not my great regret. That's just money. I spent my children's childhood. I spent 20 years of my wife's life and 20 years of mine, trading my birthright day after day for a bowl of beans. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And somehow that last part led to a film about one of my teams that won an Oscar. That movie's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are just not ever going to be solved by a bunch of really fancy people and nice suits. using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,

but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us, just you and me saying, you know what, maybe I can help. That's what Nate Larkin, the voice you just heard, has done. After a two-decade sex addiction, and the last few years of it while serving as a pastor, Nate's double life was exposed, and it utterly collapsed.

But that's not where his story in. Years of recovery later, Nate and a dozen guys started the Samson Society, where they transparently, vulnerable, and confidentially share their lives with one another and help each other heal. Today, this one men's group has grown to over more than 600 local chapters, daily virtual meetings, and eight languages, and they've helped over 25,000 men. And there's now even a organization for women called the Sarah Society. I cannot wait for you to learn from Nate about the power of community for healing

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All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called Hey Jonas. We've here since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall.

It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else really, is. You know, or taste so good can be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football at home.

Why do I watch the walk up? That's like asking me, why do I breathe? read. I inherited that fandom from my mom. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavarri, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull.

It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mainstream media is full of crude depictions of the unhoused, stories that shame and blame, and paint the unhoused as a monothe. We The In House is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator, and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhouse parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQTIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. Weidian Houses a two-time Webby and Signal Award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Gio Wichler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community.

Listen to Weythian House on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is. getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Ely Boulevard.

Get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes. In Rebel Spirit, Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. the fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that?

They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Nate Larkin from Franklin, Tennessee. Welcome to Memphis. Oh, thank you. It's great to be here. Drove down this morning.

Did, yeah, yeah. Drove across. You even brought a driver. And I got here in time to have already been to Smash Burger and had to me. Oh, have you? Good. Your driver is a guy that works with you, too. Who is that?

That's Aaron Porter. Yeah. Great guy. He's been around Samson now for 25 years, I guess. Wow. Well, let's talk about that. Everybody, Nate, is the founder of Samson Society, and he's the author. of Samson and the pirate monks, which I have not read the book, but the title makes me want to read the book because pirate monks is the funniest thing of the world.

Everybody, Nate, has an incredibly unique story, some of which is provocative a little bit. And we're going to dive in pretty cold and get after it. But wow, when you think about stories of people who engage and use their scars to heal others and have the bravado and the courage and the temerity to open their lives up in a very raw way to assist others who are suffering, Nate is an unlikely hero. So I think that's the way I'll frame you. And if anything I said is inaccurate, speak now or forever hold your peace. Well, I don't know how brave I am, but that's very kind of you.

Thank you. Well, I think that. So let's dive in. We'll get to what Samson is soon enough. But you were a pastor for two decades. But while you were a pastor, you're all. also hiding a secret sex addiction. How in the world did you get to that place, mate?

Yeah, well, first of all, let me correct you. I was only a pastor for five years. I bailed after five years because my sex addiction was out of control, and I was terrified of getting caught and just despised my own hypocrisy, and I was in despair. I woke up on my 30th birthday knowing that at that point, I either had to quit the behavior or quit the ministry. I hadn't been caught.

I was never caught. But it was so hellish living in that. Well, it was at a time when the news was dominated by sex scandals of major religious figures. At that point, I wasn't famous, but I was building a good reputation in South Florida. And to me, from the time I was little, reputation was always important. Build a good reputation and protect it. And it was only to protect my reputation that I quit the ministry and went into business. So the sex addiction trumped your call to ministry?

It did, absolutely. So it was the grip. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I grew up in church. My dad was a preacher's and I was destined for the ministry from a very early age. I was not an athletic kid and always small from. my age. There was a lot of things I wasn't good at, but I was good at church. I had all the requisite skills, you know. A professional church guy. Oh, man. So I was, I was marked for ministry.

That was, it was the only thing I ever wanted to be. What does good at church mean? Well, I could sing. I had a fabulous memory when I was young. My dad sometimes, when I was just four years old, he'd sit me up on the pulpit and I could reel off an entire church. chapter of the Bible in King James English, you know, just like my mother had taught it to me. It was very impressive. And the church ladies loved me, you know. Yeah, so I can talk and I can look good. I was very good.

You know, I learned early on how to read the room, how to figure out what I needed to do and what I needed to be to be accepted. Was it performative? Oh, yeah, very much so. Did you feel it or do you are performing it? I felt it. I felt it. I wanted to feel it. There was certainly a genuine part to it. Certainly there was. And the torture came later on when it became very, very clear to me that the person I was was not the person I wanted to be.

And the things I was doing were not the things I particularly wanted to do. But by that point, I couldn't stop doing them. take us through the evolution. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Sex addiction is such a broad term. Yeah. And I want to be respectful, but also inappropriate.

Yeah. But our listeners, thousands of people are hearing your voice right now. Yeah, yeah. And sex addiction is broad. That can go from everything from corn, videos to magazines, to online stuff, to chat groups, to call girls. I mean, but like any addiction, I imagine it evolves. It does. Absolutely.

So can you take us through the evolution for those listening? Because if we're going to really talk about the work of the Samson Society, we need to understand how the people get to the Samson Society in the first place and through your lens. It's the only way I know how to explore that. Okay. Yeah, I can tell you. Because I'm addicted to my wife, but this, and I have lots of I've ever experienced, so I'm learning. Yeah. Well, for me, so I grew up in a home where we never talked about sex at home or at church. That in itself sent a very strong message. This isn't something we can talk about, kind of the implicit message that it's dirty.

It was a taboo. Yeah. Although I'm the oldest to 10 kids. So obviously there was... There was some sex going on. But, and nobody warned me that porn even existed. So I ran into it for the first time around the age of 10. It was shortly after my mother had died.

So I was in a very, very vulnerable emotional state anyway and on the brink of puberty. So all the ingredients were they. for fascination. It was a Playboy magazine. I felt guilty for having seen it, ashamed of having liked it, but there was no denying its hold on me. So I battled this interest in pornography, and it was just, it was softcore magazines, which back then were the only thing available, and I couldn't, obviously couldn't purchase them myself. But I could find them in paper drives that we did for. for the church youth group. Lovely. Yeah. That's funny. And I actually stored them in the basement of the Three Mile Bay Baptist Church

back in a dark corner of the basement where nobody could find them. But at any rate, and several times I went through these binge and purge cycles, you know, where I'd get saved at least once a year, and then I'd make this resolution that it was over. and I'd get rid of the entire thing and then not long after that to rebuild the collection. And that's not an unfamiliar story for Christian kids.

When I got to college, though, I couldn't go to college on an athletic scholarship, but I got a full academic ride to a fancy school. Where? St. Lawrence University in northern New York. How far is that from Manhattan?

Oh, it's about as far as you can get from Manhattan and still be in New York. Okay, up along the Canadian border. Okay, cool. Lawrence River. Got it. So when I got to college, I decided to stop feeling guilty. It was time to join the modern world, and I needed sex education desperately.

And I thought, what better place to get it than porn. I actually got a job in the periodical section of the university library where they had all the issues of Playboy magazine in bound volumes. So I could catch up on a lot of material. Well, you got decades. available to you at that point, which is probably the worst thing on earth. Exactly. Exactly. But I kept it secret because I soon became president of the campus Christian fellowship. Of course. Yeah, right. I was sure when I met the right girl and got married, my interest in porn would disappear, right?

Once I could have the real thing. Now, that's interesting. So you were justifying that this is satisfying an urge that a real lot of human being will replace once I meet the real love, human being of my dream. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I regarded my porn use during my college years as preparation for marriage, unaware that I was already poisoning my marriage. Well, I did meet the right girl. I met this great girl, fell deeply in love. Got married the day I graduated from college. And we were happy. But what I didn't recognize was that already porn and masturbation naturally,

had become my default distress management strategy. So whenever I was in distress, some guys would drink, some guys would drugs, some guys would do other things, I found my relief in porn. I was surprised to find out that marriage is stressful. Yeah, boy. Okay, so not too long.

I mean, I don't think so, but, But Lisa does. If Lisa's listening, it's not at all stressful, honey. And for me, but I know you, honey, are stressed to your gills. So there. Yeah. So not long after the honeymoon, the problem reappeared. Okay.

So that was very discouraging. But what I eventually told myself was, Nate, porn may not be the best thing in the world, but it's better than cheating on your wife. In fact, you're probably being pretty considerate. it not burdening her with all your sexual needs. She just doesn't need to know how to consider it your being, right? What I didn't understand was that porn was now grooming me, programming me, setting me up for the next step. And that process really accelerated during my seminary years.

I went to Princeton Seminary, and it was on a seminary sponsor. You are smart, Princeton. I went to a seminary sponsored. trip into New York City. What year? What year was this? 1979. Boy, that's when Tom Square was porn central.

It was porn central. They had not cleaned it up yet. No, no, no. So this trip was co-sponsored by a group called Women Against Pornography. Are you kidding me? Yeah. You win. Are you serious?

You were in Princeton Seminary struggling with this. Justifying this and married, now sent to the porn hub of the universe of the 70s by a group of people sponsoring against porn. You can't make this up. That's insane. Here's my thinking. My thinking at the time was, this is exactly what I need. You're going to go battle it. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm a good person.

I don't want to see anybody hurt. If porn is as bad as they say it is, I need to see how bad it is. And then I'll stop. I brought my wife along on the trip. I got my first look at hardcore pornography, the kind of stuff any kid can find in minutes today on the internet, in a peep show booth in Times Square with my wife beside me. She put the quarter in. Because y'all were on a fact-finding mission.

Absolutely. This is horrible, but we have to understand it. Right. And she's with you. Right. And little does she know, this is far more than a fact-finding mission for you. Well, it, yeah, it did not have the effect that I was hoping for. I was hooked right away. And I didn't understand why.

I didn't understand how much more powerful those moving images were than the still images I'd been using up until that point. Because film is immersive, actually reaches a part of the brain that can't easily distinguish between real experience and virtual experience. So now, every time I go back into one of those places, and I did go back in, it was like I was sitting in a simulator. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first, Alex, finally, after a year of people begging, has gotten off his rear end, and we now have our merchandise store is alive. All you got to do is you go to normalfolks.com.

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Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called, Hey Jonas. We've here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show. How's it going, boys?

Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football at home.

Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull.

It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Lee Boulevard.

Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching.

You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of The Un-Housed, stories that shame and blame and paint the Un-Housed as a monolith. We The In-House is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQTIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. Weidian Hous is a two-time Webby and Signal Award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wichler. A street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Weythian House on the IHard Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. It took a while. It took a few years. And I battled it.

I mean, I kept it secret. nobody knew. It was during a period a few years later when I had stopped and convinced myself that I'd stopped for good, that I found the courage to plant a church in South Florida. And I was sure that once I was a pastor, there's no way in the world I'm ever going to go back into one of those places. But as it turns out, church is stressful. So not too long after. And planting one is probably really stressful.

Oh, man. Yeah. So not too long after we start the church, it's back. Now, I battle it. I hit it. Nobody knew. Three and a half years in, though, it got worse. It was Christmas Eve. And I was on my way into downtown Fort Lauderdale.

This must have been early 80s, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Well, this would have been 1985. Okay. I'm on my way into downtown Fort Lauderdale to get things set up for a candlelight. service. I have to leave early. By now we've got three kids. Allie will follow with the kids. I get off of I-95 at Broward Boulevard, come back in under the interstate, headed east.

It starts to rain, and ahead of me I see a woman. I pull over to offer her a ride out of the rain. I don't know what she's up to until she's in the car. Was that truly an innocent thing at first? I'm sure that there was a part of me that was hoping for something else, but I had never, ever, ever picked up a prostitute. I was doing the Gallant thing. But once she propositioned me, I went full automatic. That's when the programming kicked in. Because I had seen some version of that scenario, Callenstein.

Now, that was awful coming to when that was over, basically. Because you really have to dissociate. to do that kind of thing. Meaning you have to kind of leave yourself. Right, yeah, yeah. And I had already, I mean, I think I had been dissociating since childhood from time to time. This very much is dissociative behavior. And I'd gotten so good at it that I could toggle, you know.

But later on that night, you know, to have to lead a candlelight service and looking out at my wife and my kids and the people who loved and trusted me. knowing what I'd done. Part of me thought maybe this is good. I've always heard that an addict has to hit bottom before he can stop. Certainly this is bottom. But what I found was that once I'd crossed that line, I couldn't get back. So not too many days after that I was out actually cruising looking for somebody to pick up. And that was, I mean, I'd just, I've been operating under the assumption for a while that if I could only hate my sin or hate myself enough, I could stop. I could not find bottom.

And it was, I got to the point I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. And I was, so that's when, you know, I stumbled along for about another, you know, a few months. I'm good at very few things. I'm bad at a lot. Yeah. One of the things I think I'm good at, and my mom actually really instilled this in me is, try to empathize by walking in somebody's shoes. So as I hear stories, I try to put myself in your shoes.

And I'm thinking about me if I were going to do that, driving around. I mean, you're a pastor. You have a church. You're a known human being. Your face is recognizable by whatever your congregation is. There's that many congregates that could see you. Yeah.

You know, were you scared to death to get in called? And really, were you ever close to getting caught by somebody in your church or a community or family? I mean, I can't imagine if you're engaging in this repeatedly every week that there's not close calls. Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm in a city. I'm in South Florida. And I'm, you know, we live in the suburbs and I'm cruising downtown. Yes, I did have an officer come up to my car once when I had a girl in the car.

What? Yeah. And I asked for my license and everything. A man that scared me. He had to have done those. He had, but he didn't have proof. That didn't scare you. Oh, it did scare me.

Even if the internal struggle wasn't enough, that's almost like a scared straight thing. You would think. I, the more I think about it is I think that there's a part of me that really is an adrenaline junkie. Hmm. The riskiness of it also, I think, had somewhat of an appeal. Really? Yeah, I was doing, I was the good guy. I'd always been the good kid.

And now I was doing some stuff that felt courageous, maybe. I was certainly taking risks. but it was terrible risks. And plus, I had no idea. I was under the impression that as long as nobody knew, this wasn't affecting anybody else. But my wife noticed it, you know, soon after that trip to Times Square,

that I started to drift away emotionally. Really? Yeah. She noticed. Yeah, yeah. Which makes sense because I, was bonding with phantoms through

sexual fantasy. And that's the thing. I think the most dangerous thing about pornography when it comes to trying to have a healthy relationship in a family is that porn offers this

imaginary connection with a virtual person, which if you accept it begins at that moment to compromise your ability to form and sustain a real relationship. with an actual person. Allie didn't know what was going on. We'd always been so close.

And I was still outwardly, I was saying all the right things. I was the model husband as far as anybody saw. But I was drifting away emotionally. She thought it must be her. Wow. And you know. Well, looking back on that, that's got to be a guilty feeling to have put your addiction to a place that made her question herself.

Oh, oh. And it's terrible because, you know, as time passed, you know, I allowed pornographers to define beauty for me. And it blinded me to the beauty of my wife. I'm married to a beautiful woman. But I was comparing her always now, you know, to these countless images of, you know, Allie is actually 10 years older than I am, and now she's the mother of three. she's a beautiful woman.

And the sad thing is that as her husband, I'm the biggest mirror in her life. She would, you know, we'd be going someplace, and she would take so much time getting ready in the bathroom, you know, and then she'd finally come out, and I didn't know what was going on, but she would come out and present herself, basically. And what she needed to hear from me was,

oh, you look gorgeous, baby. But instead what she got was, we're late. It's devastating. It's devastating over time. And so she was kind of losing that real tight, close emotional contact with her best friend. And it was clear that my head was someplace else. Plus, I was always career-driven. So the other woman in our relationship was that church that I was going to build to make myself important.

I am so struck by your candor. I'm moved by it, and I appreciate it. I just want to say that to you. So you're five years into this church thing. Yeah. You've got this stuff going on. It's gone from 10-year-old with Playboys on the corner to now actually, I mean, let's just be candid, picking up hookers. I'm picking up hookers.

And I'm also, yeah, yeah. Do you ever preach? This is not part of the conversation. It just popped in my head. Did you ever do a sermon in those five years on immorality, sexual immorality? No. Are you kidding? No.

You couldn't touch it. So not only is this addiction prohibiting you from being able to be the husband you need to be for your wife. Right. But it's also prohibiting you've been being the full shepherd you needed to be as a pastor. Exactly. Yeah. And you're a smart guy. Yeah.

So you're, when you're not under the grip of the addiction, you're probably rolling these very things around in your mind. Absolutely. Wow. Yeah. You must have been tormented. Yeah. Do you see sex addiction just like you see alcoholism and drug addiction as an actual disease? Oh, yeah, I do now.

Yeah. It's very clear. The more we learn about the brain, the more we understand how this works. But yes, this is a spiritual thing. Yes, but it is also a physiological thing. Porn actually stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain that cocaine does. And over time, actually changes the brain in the same way that cocaine does. We can actually see it now on brain scans.

So recovery, it begins with repentance but doesn't end there. It's also a healing process and a learning process. We'll be right back. take me to chronologically back to okay? Yeah, so I quit the ministry. Allie, actually, my wife, she was all for it. She thought, maybe if he quits the ministry, I can get my husband back. I was scared.

We had three kids. The ministry was the only thing I was equipped for, the only thing I ever trained for, I didn't know what I was going to do. But I was in my car one day, and I had the radio on to a, AM station. It was a motivation station with all self-help all the time, right? And there's this guy on the radio and he goes, are you afraid to go for that job interview? You're afraid to go for that audition? Fred, you won't get the part, won't get the job. He says, well, I have a solution for you. Don't go. Send somebody else. He said, they know what they're looking for. You read the description,

create that person, and send him to the interview. And I thought, thought, I can do that. I've done that my whole life. So right there in the car, I created this person, you know, magnate the business guy. And it worked. Within a year and a half, I'm a partner in an engineering firm. I've never had an engineering course in my life. And now, for the first time in my life, I'm making money. Just what an addict needs. I didn't even think about, but yeah, I get it. And what followed then was a very, very dark dozen years. Dozen?

Dozen years. And you still managed not to get called? Didn't get caught. And I never missed church. I love church. I love the guy I can be a church. I love God. I had this persona, St. Nate.

Everybody loved. He got a lot of applause. a lot of affirmation, which didn't mean anything, because I was convinced if they ever saw me, they'd run. And it killed me that I couldn't be St. Nate for very long outside the building. What were those 12 years? Just more of the same? More of the same. It just, yeah, it just excelled. I spent, I told it up later with the help of a sponsor.

Best I can figure, I spent $300,000 on porn and prostitutes and strip clubs and massage parlors and all of that stuff. But that is not my great regret. That's just money. I spent my children's childhood. I spent 20 years of my wife's life and 20 years of mine, trading my birthright day after day for a bowl of beans. Close your eyes and you can hear the entire world.

Come alive. 2026 FIFA World Cup is on. and you can stream it all live on TSN Radio. From the opening kickoff to the final celebration, every match, every moment. Listen to FIFA World Cup on TSN Radio. It's Canada to the Lift Off! Available on IHeart Radio. All right, listen up.

The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called Hey Jonas. We're here since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend Nile Horn is joining the show. How's it going, boy? Hey, Nile. It was the same thing with Slow Hands.

Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans,

the announcers calling the place soccer, football. It's home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari,

and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game.

The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused,

stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the N-House is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the un-housed and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQTIA plus community,

and the policymakers who make the laws that, impact the unhoused existence. Whedian Houses a two-time Webby and Signal Award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Gio Wichler, a street doctor turned influencer

whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Weythian Housed on the IHard Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as

complicated as it is. Getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes. In Rebel Spirit, Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space.

We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But anyway, we can... I should ask this question later, but I'm going to fast forward and we'll get to it. I see the pain that even today, and we'll get to the redemption part of this and all the work you're doing now that is phenomenal. But I see the pain. Even now, I mean, you almost just teared up talking about this and this has got to be what the 150,000 time you've told the story.

Yeah. Do men and women commit suicide over this? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. So you see the people engaged in this, but the vast majority of them, then, when they look in the mirror, disgusted by themselves. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What a complex issue that is. Yeah. So after 20 years of sex addiction, which after that dozen years, you're now up to about 20 years of it,

even more if you go back to when you were 10. Yeah. What'd you do to restore your marriage and your life? Did you just walk in one day and say, baby, I love you, but I got to catch you up on two decades. I mean, how does that work? I'll tell you what happened. We made a move from South Florida to Middle Tennessee. I took what the alcoholics called the geographic cure.

That's funny. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it worked for a few weeks. You know, we moved to Franklin, Tennessee. And for a while, the compulsion disappeared. Everything lifted.

We were holding hands and walking in church. Do you think that you're excited about the new? Oh, yeah, yeah. They replaced. And it was a, you know, I hadn't dealt with anything, but it was just a restart. I'm sorry. I'm lagging you about three or four minutes in feeling your whole story, really. And things keep just coming up to me.

but you did say that you weren't an athlete, but the adrenaline junkie in you was being satisfied to some degree by this. Yeah. By what you were doing. Right. Did making money also satisfy some of that? Oh, yeah.

Because you went from being a pastor's probably making a living, but pastors most are not overly wealthy. Right. And now you're a partner making money. Yeah. So now you have money to fuel your addiction. Right. I got to believe that the behavior just gets bigger and bigger because you have money to support it,

which even makes the adrenaline junkie part even greater. Absolutely. Yeah. So this thing is rolling downhill fast. Right. And then you go to Franklin and the adrenaline junkin and you is probably satisfied by all the new exciting things. Absolutely. Yeah.

And then that. That wears off. Then we start running out of money. Oh, you didn't have a job in Franklin? No, I quit my, I left the partnership, decided I'm going to reinvent myself again. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had to do something. Why are we doing this? We had a grand, our first grandchild was about to be born in Franklin, Tennessee.

That's what got us there. That makes some sense. Yeah, that's what got us there. And I was cocky and sure. that I could reinvent myself somehow. But we started running out of money. And when that happened, I started to get scared. And when that happened, I reached for the only fear medication I'd ever used, right?

So late at night after Allie had fallen asleep, I went back into my office and fired up the computer and started downloading porn. Because by now I had broadband. You know, this endless supply and endless variety of virtual sex partners. delivered free of charge in the privacy of my own home. And I don't know how long it was there. Time disappeared, as it always does when you are in a dissociated state. But all I know is I looked up one moment, and my wife was standing there. She was there.

I hadn't even heard her come in. You finally got caught. I got caught. What was her reaction? She didn't say anything. She just turned and left. I quickly shut everything down, followed her back into the bedroom, apologizing and explaining and promising, begging. We had a long night.

She forgave me. But a few days later, she found a condom on the floor in the bathroom that I couldn't quite explain. A condom? Yeah. Because I rocketed right back in. At that point, Nashville was the Wild West for prostitution, and I went right back to it. Holy smokes. Yeah.

How the hell do you leave a condom on the bathroom floor? I don't know. I don't know how I did that. I'll tell you how by the grace of God, actually. Oddly. Yeah. Here's what happened, though. She sat me down on the edge of our bed,

and she said the words that saved my life. She said, I'm done. She said, I still love you, but I don't like you. I don't trust you. I don't respect you, and I don't think you can ever change. Do you think she had a sense that this was going on for a long time? Yeah. It started to make sense, I think.

Those were the words that gave me the gift of desperation, the motivation that I needed to finally go for help. What did that process of restoring that relationship look like? It took time. It was good for both of us, but I found help for the first time in a 12-step group for sex addicts. It wasn't a Christian group, but it met in the basement of the church in the middle of the week while all the good people were gone. And a strange thing happened there. You mean all the other good people with their alternate humans?

Let's just be clear. Or who hadn't joined the group yet? I think that's only fair to say. Strange thing about that group, though, even though they never said the name of Jesus. and we didn't read the Bible, and there wasn't a sermon. It was actually there that I met God in a whole new way. He got a whole lot bigger, he got a whole lot closer, and he got a whole lot kinder. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Nate Larkin.

Don't miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country. But it starts with you. I'll see important to you. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called Hey Jonas.

We're here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall. It's the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can be about food.

You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Eye Heart Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It's that time to put on your jersey and wave your flag, whoever you root for. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? And it's beautiful.

The guys are young and cute and fit. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football. a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. Listen to American football on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This Black Music Month, the Questlove show celebrates the visionaries, shaping culture, through sound, from country trailblazer Mickey Gaiden to hip-hop icon Fat 5 Freddy, the sonic genius of Thundercat, and the revolutionary voice of Chuck D. I want it loud. So the timing might be off, the sound might be more. The sound might be muffled, but what's going to come out of there is something that you can feel. Celebrate Black Music Month with special episodes of The Questlove Show. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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Learn why at tear the paper sealing.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. Is everyone lying to me about who they are?

I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I had to do. Listen to deep cover the family man on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.