Alex Scordelis joins Elizabeth and Erin for "Daddy Issues" this week, and this early-fall episode is the equivalent of a therapeutic apple-picking trip. Scordelis, a writer for Billy Eichner’s deeply hilarious Billy on the Street, and Eichner and Julie Klausner’s Hulu triumph Difficult People, is also a rock journalist and regular contributor to the L.A. Review of Books. Listen as Scordelis tells Elizabeth and Erin about his two-year-old son’s enchantment with the Beatles and calling his wife “my boy,” his Neil Young cover band the Cinnamon Boys, and the time he interviewed Courtney Love and she tried to marshmallow-test him by conspicuously placing the manuscript of her still unpublished memoir on a coffee table in front of him and then leaving the room. We also talk about the deadbeat dads of Congress, Mick Jagger at the Thirsty Beaver, the TikTok trend Devious Licks (where kids partake in the time-honored tradition of destroying school bathrooms), Dog the Bounty Hunter, Cazzie David’s rebuke of the internet delighting in her father’s New York Fashion Week pain, and Erin tells us about the time her husband drove over a ziti in her honor.

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Sheila Anderson was just 14 years old when she started helping her CIA operative father on his assignments spying on Russian targets during the height of the Cold War. Today, in her first-ever interview about the memoir she's writing about her extraordinary relationship with her dad, Do You Have a Raincoat, you'll hear what it's like to figure out at age 10 that daddy has a secret life. When most of us were in boring old high school, Sheila's coming of age was filled with international travel, multiple aliases, dangerous missions and a world-class education in the art of manipulation. Sheila speaks astutely about the psychological fallout of trying to unlearn those skills as she parents her three sons, but there's lots of humor too, and you'll want to hear about her dad's second act in retirement and how he influenced his daughter's own career as an interpreter for some of the world's most powerful leaders. She also lets us in on how accurate shows like Homeland and The Americans really are...

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We're kicking off a new season of our news-review show Daddy Issues! with a mega Dads of Summer edition, reviewing all of the patriarchal highs and low-lows that defined our last 3 months. From "bloated-to-loaded" theories around Ben Affleck and J.Lo's reunion, to why Kanye West is lighting himself on fire in front of his small children, to Hunter Biden's fake art career, the fall of disgraced former New York governor and fan of normal hugs and kisses Andrew Cuomo, to the end of the US staying out of our collective uteri - it’s in here. We also celebrate Mike White's dad-centric tour-de-satire White Lotus, and pay tribute to Mandy Patinkin’s hot and wholesome TikTok. Matt also reads aloud of newly freed Bill Cosby's horrible 1987 bestseller "Fatherhood," and we continue to beat the Free Britney drum under the pale moonlight. We live in hell but we love you. We're so happy to be back with you for a new season to process why we’re like this.

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* Updated, from the archives! Tell Me About Your Father is on break through August, so co-hosts Erin and Elizabeth are returning to their 2020 two-part episode on Mad Men, in which they discuss why Don Draper is one of TV's best fathers (really), as well as the sexual harassment allegations against series creator Matthew Weiner made by Emmy-winning show writer Kater Gordon. We'll be back with new episodes in September. * In this two-part episode, Erin and Elizabeth look back on the early seasons of the seminal TV series Mad Men, and explore the motivations of Don Draper, a father driven to escape a secret life, and the parallels we see in our relationships with our own fathers.

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Sohaila Abdulali, the author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, talks to Erin and Matt about growing up in an eccentric, upper-class Muslim family in India and how her father played a central role her in recovery from a sexual assault when she was a teenager. WARNING: This episode contains frank discussion about sexual assault. For confidential support, call RAINN 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.

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**We're dipping into our fan-favorite archives this summer with one of our most-listened-to episodes from season 1: Elizabeth and Erin look back on Loveline, the popular call-in sex advice show of the late 90s that dared a generation to go fuck itself, hosted by the un-cancellable Dr. Drew Pinsky and Adam Carolla. In this updated discussion, we'll offer the latest on the titular hosts and their many personal and professional shortcomings since the ep was originally recorded in 2019, and also revisit what Jessica Bennett in the New York Times calls "'The Man Show' diaspora," which includes analysis of extra-masculine-man-men Joe Rogan and Jimmy Kimmel, and the board certified-failures of TV doctors desperate to stay in the public eye.

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** We're dipping into our fan-favorite archives this summer with one of our most-listened-to episodes from season 1: an interview with Barabara Feldon, star of Get Smart. ** The beloved star of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry's iconic television spy spoof Get Smart talks to Erin and Matt about growing up in the '30s and '40s with a distant but glamorous traveling salesman for a father, how her relationship with him led her to become obsessed with God and, later, marry a French sociopath. She talks honestly and openly about therapy and learning to shed her need for male approval.

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Cocky Boys’ director Jake Jaxson, whom Salon once called “The Walt Whitman of Gay Porn,” returns to Tell Me About Your Father to tell us about turning 50, living less fearfully and rigidly, and how his season 1 episode impacted his complicated relationship with his Trump-supporting father. From there, we talk about the emancipation of Britney Spears and the shocking failures and abuses of her family, the sad story of Andrew Giuliani and the “boring mafia patriarchy” complex, the racism and everything-ism of Grindr, and horrible Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema who just can’t get enough of the filibuster. We also lighten it up by talking about hot makeout sessions, this horny summer, Sharon Stone, and the importance of America’s Prince of Stupid, Conan O’Brien. **Note** We'll be taking this summer off to record more new episodes! See you in early September. We love you.

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Pride month blazes on at Tell Me About Your Father, with this special Daddy Issues episode featuring Paper magazine editorial director, front-row fashion fixture and cultural doyenne, Mickey Boardman. Mickey joins Matt and Elizabeth to talk about jewels, corporate pride floats, whether Queen Big Liz Windsor is going senile, New York City sports medicine physicians with hot names, Sufjan Stevens, humpback whales, and the rich dummies who live on Washington Square Park and love to dial 911 into their phones whenever kids are having parties there. They also talk about Mickey’s relationship with his father, the time his brother made him jump out a window, whether you should speak to Anna Wintour at her own party, and Yoko Ono’s disastrous Paper photoshoot.

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On this Pride-themed episode of Tell Me About Your Father, photographer Luna Luis Ortiz, also known in the New York ballroom scene as the legendary father of the House of Khan, talks with Matthew about the relationship he had with his Dad, an immigrant from Puerto Rico who withdrew and stopped communicating with him upon hearing of his son’s teenage HIV diagnosis. Ortiz describes the way in which he discovered an alternate family and “gay father” within the houses of the ballrooms, the bittersweet reunion he had with his dad just before his death, and the important way in which his father helped him find his voice despite their decades-long estrangement.

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