Matt Phillp talks with culture writer Marcie Bianco, author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom about her childhood growing up working class in South New Jersey with a father who, as she puts it “erased himself” and how that foundation informs her perspective on society and politics today.  They talk about how her family dynamic shifted when she got a sports scholarship to Harvard, a moment that changed her life forever, how she learned to defend herself at an early age against her father’s violent outbursts, and what it means to throw off the shackles of systemic oppression and create a life of your own making.  Given how bleak it is to truly look at systemic, white patriarchal oppression - another manifestation of father-centric culture if ever there was one - and how it continues to play out in myriad ways for anyone who isn’t a straight white man, Marcie’s take on culture and her book are both fundamentally hopeful, even if she initially struggled to find that sense of hope.

This is our third episode, since the launch of TMAYF, dedicated to the life story of Britney Spears. Erin and Elizabeth discuss her long-awaited memoir The Woman in Me, and look back at the cultural mood that led to the pop princess tragically being held prisoner by a legal conservatorship that gave her father Jamie the right to control her person and her fortune for 13 years after she had a nervous breakdown in 2008. We unearth a Daily Mail article from 2008 entitled "The Day I Saw Britney Spears' father pull a knife,' by a journalist named Sharon Churcher that highlights - 15 years ago - just how unfit Jamie Spears was to take care of anyone. We discuss the legacy of alcoholism, mental illness, and misogynistic abuse across the Spears family tree, and the sadly enduring trope of abusive patriarchs-as-managers in Hollywood. Later, we also hear from Matt and writer Marcie Bianco - whose new book Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom is the perfect chaser for this story.

In this episode, we are joined by Leta McCollough Seletzky, author of the recent book, “The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr." Seletzky's father, Marrell "Mac" McCullough, appears in the famous photo of Dr. King seconds after he was shot at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968. In the photo, King lies in a pool of blood, surrounded by aides urgently pointing in the direction of the gunshot, while Leta's father kneels at his side, applying pressure to his wound. Upon discovering in her teens that Mac was undercover for Memphis Police that day, Leta's book unpacks his complex life—from spying on Black activists and the racism he endured from white colleagues to the 1998 polygraph test he was subjected to as part of a DOJ investigation. Her conversation with Elizabeth details her work to help piece together her father's legacy and tell his story, long shrouded in secrecy, seeking a complete understanding of the man whose life was forever marked by that pivotal moment in history.

For the season 4 finale and 2023 Pride episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt spoke with comedian, TV and film actor, and Emmy award-winning writer Bryan Safi. As the co-host of three weekly podcasts, "No Autographs Please," "Ask Ronna," and "Attitudes!" formerly known as "Throwing Shade," Bryan is as much a master of comedic improv as he is a shrewd cultural critic, and political commentator. The child of Syrian immigrants on his father’s side, Bryan grew up gay in a deeply conservative household in El Paso, Texas in which his mother suffered from ongoing mental health challenges and his father - who also had a tough father - was extremely difficult to connect with. Listen as Bryan talks about how he eventually extricated himself from his parents’ home, moving first to New York and then Los Angeles where he’s built a successful career, how he now maintains a relationship with his parents despite their political differences, and how and why he’s grateful for some of the things his father taught him.

Gretchen Cherington, author of the 2020 memoir "Poetic License," discusses her complicated relationship with her late father, Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer-prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate. Growing up surrounded by literary titans, Gretchen idolized her father but experienced a disturbing shift in their dynamic during her teenage years. She eventually revealed the truth about her father's inappropriate behavior at a public event nearly five decades later, receiving unexpected support from her father's friends and hearing from other women who had similar experiences with him.

She also delves into her father's relationship with his own intimidating father, Alpha LaRue Eberhart, a Hormel Foods executive, and the strange embezzlement scandal chronicled in her newest book, "The Butcher, the Embezzler and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry." Throughout the episode, Gretchen explores the effects of abuse and secrecy, the power dynamics that enable abusers, and the lifelong journey of healing.

In part 2, Erin and Elizabeth, look at the Roy family’s connections to the Murdochs and Kennedys, before diving deeper into the show's final season. We look more at Siobhan, and Tom as her masochistic dog to kick, the legacy of NRPIs in a family where love goes to die, and the ceaseless game of “stop hitting yourself” that is getting a narcissist parent to grant you the memory of “the slant of the light.” We also hear from New York magazine contributor Hunter Harris, who profiled the Succession cast for a 2021 cover story and has written extensively about the show for Vulture.com as well as in her incredible Hung Up newsletter. Harris breaks down the connection between Tom Wambsgans and Chris Licht, the recently fired doofy CEO of CNN --whose year-long tenure at the network was a hamster wheel of failure--as well as the weak-willed self-centeredness of number one boy, and number one loser, Kendall.

In part one of our two-part exegesis on Succession, Erin and Elizabeth parse the incredible storytelling at play on this show, including the emotional and psychological underpinnings of the motivations and machinations of each slime puppy in the Roy pack, and the daddy issues at the root of this razor-sharp comedic satire about an American family by a sensitive British creator, Jesse Armstrong.

Actor, director, and bestselling author Andrew McCarthy talks to Erin about Walking with Sam, his new memoir about making the 500-mile-long trek across Spain on the Camino de Santiago with his 19-year-old son. This episode is excerpted from their live conversation at the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Cleveland on May 15th. Andrew opens up about reconnecting with his father after a 30-year-estrangement, the ongoing art of talking about sobriety and divorce with his children, and the surprising, sometimes counterintuitive parenting lessons he’s learned along The Way. 

A day after Britain crowned its third Charles as King in 1200 years, Matt and Erin spoke with author Komail Aijazuddin about what it was like growing up gay in Lahore, Pakistan with a father who was the honorary consul to the UK, what it was like being taught how to be a British gentleman at a British-style school in Pakistan, and how he once curtsied for the Queen. Komail talks about how the brutal fallout of British imperialism still resonates across the globe and what the future may hold for the British monarchy.  We discuss the pettiness and tone-deafness of the coronation itself, and how the themes of class and race in the UK are mirrored in the US.  It’s the perfect conversation to give you a little rational distance from all the fawning coronation coverage. 

Rockstar Melissa Auf der Maur (Hole, The Smashing Pumpkins) joins Erin and Elizabeth to talk about her professionally provocative father, Nick, a legendary journalist, leftist politician and “unofficial mayor” of Montreal for three decades, where he pinched butts and influenced culture until his death at age 54. Twenty-five years later, Melissa regales us with stories about her unconventional coming of age, which saw her joining Hole to tour the world at age 22, Nick's paternal bond with Courtney Love, the education her relationship with her hard-drinking bon vivant dad provided her with navigating "big personalities" later in life, and that time she had it bad for her father's gravedigger and then recorded a smoldering metal song about it with Glenn Danzig.