How do you connect with a father who is so emotionally stoic that the only thing you can really talk to him about is the weather? On this episode, Matt talks with George Azar, author of the forthcoming My Gay Church Days: Memoir of a Closeted Evangelical Pastor Who Eventually Had Enough, about how diving head first into political and religious conservatism was one way to connect with his dad. He even became a pastor in the process.  And it worked, too.  But then, when he came to terms with his own sexuality, everything had to change.

Matt talks fathers with two queer Asian food professionals: cookbook author and graphic designer Frankie Gaw (author of "First Generation") and Yuhe Su, the talented chef behind the professional home kitchen Daddy's Got Chopsticks, about the ways in which they maintain a connection with their fathers through recipes from their respective childhoods. They talk about the importance of scallion pancakes, Olive Garden,  pig’s blood, masculinity, coming out, and the symbolic power of Antoni from Queer Eye.

We’re using this sleepy week between Christmas and New Year’s to honor and shun a cavalcade of celebrity fathers and men,  from dicks to dictators and zeroes to heroes. Listen as the glamor unfolds with appearances by Meghan Markle, King Charles III, and Don Draper, as we recognize and alienate Daddy Awards veteran offenders including Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, Ted Cruz, and the Supreme Court, as well as new low achievers, including Elon Musk, Johnny Depp,  horses, and lions. We also honor Beto O’Rourke’s righteous anger, the best plastic surgery of the year, fish dads who do the work, and give out our annual award for holistic hotness to the dads and men who put their asses into it in 2022. Thanks for spending this year with Tell Me About Your Father. We love you and will return in January with new episodes.

AJ Daulerio, writer, and creator of the excellent recovery newsletter The Small Bow, returns to Tell Me About Your Father for a second time to discuss our recent episode on Shia LaBeouf. That episode, which also focused on Shia's fellow recently canceled peer Armie Hammer, examined Hollywood's need to quickly forgive famous men who have done bad things. (Shia was sued by ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs in 2020 for sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress. Their trial is slated for April 2023.) AJ was especially interested in coming on to discuss our take on a two-hour interview Shia gave to fellow actor John Bernthal for his "Real Ones" podcast, wherein he manically talks about being a recovering addict, liar and abuser, all while balancing new roles as a husband and father. AJ, who also became a husband and father very soon into his sobriety nearly 7 years ago, could relate to some of the cringier aspects of Shia's obsession with what Shia calls "e-masculine" behavior, a hyper-awareness of the “defects of character” (to use recovery speak) that have always been synonymous with men behaving badly. But AJ also thinks it's rare and significant that Shia is making an effort to get to know himself and the roots of his anger and self-loathing. AJ tells us how he's continuing to change as a person since his own public trial (the most important First Amendment case of the internet age in 2016) and why it's his tendency to want to help other men who are undergoing a similar public shame.

Effervescent, thoughtful king and GayVN award-nominated porn star Cody Seiya joins us on the latest edition of our current events talk show, DADDY ISSUES. In the first half of the episode, Cody describes how art and anime offered solace from his difficult relationship with his late father and his upbringing as a Chinese American Jew in the Reagan-esque hell of Orange Country, California. He also discusses his plans to become a father, and how father themes show up in his own art. Then it’s on to the news in the second half, where we cover the Club Q tragedy in Colorado Springs and Iran at the World Cup, as well as the brutal paternal legacy of Britney Spears, Tiffany Trump’s farty wedding, Elon Musk’s pitiful relationship with his daughter, and Yuletide empress Mariah Carey’s tribute to her late dad.

In this episode, Erin and Elizabeth talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Kathryn Schulz, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the new bestselling memoir Lost & Found - in paperback 11/22 - which has been longlisted for The National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and has been called a best book of the year by NPR and the New York Times. Lost & Found grew out of “Losing Streak,” a New Yorker piece that was anthologized in The Best American Essays about the paradox of loss—from keys, to memories, to dads; and the joy of finding something—from language, to love. Between love and loss, we find that the "and" of life matters too. Kathryn tells us about her larger-than-life father Isaac, an attorney and Renaissance man who came to the US as a child and Jewish refugee, spoke at least 5 languages fluently, taught, philosophized, mentored, and generally spread the love to his family and all who knew him, and died in 2016. In a wide-ranging conversation, Kathryn talks about the boredom of grief and the beauty of sorrow, her future wife's first meeting with her dad so soon after their own accidental love story, and what surprises her about the intersection of the scientific and the spiritual.

On today’s special Halloween episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt sits down for a real psychic reading with medium Victoria Laurie who reaches into the primordial ether to get in touch with his deceased father, Ross. Featuring unedited excerpts from the session, the episode is a moving, funny, and unexpectedly pragmatic conversation between Victoria, Matt, and what purport to be the spirits of his father and late maternal grandmother. Matt and Victoria touch on the survival of consciousness after death, what the other side might be like, and, in particular, what insights his father - who died suddenly in 1982, at 35, while running in a marathon - has to impart to his eldest son.  Then, in the second half of the episode, following the session, Erin and Matt talk with Victoria, who is also the co-host of the Psychic Eye Mysteries True Crime Podcast and New York Times Bestselling author of the Psychic Eye Mysteries novel series, about what it’s like to be a psychic who can commune with the dead, how anyone can learn to connect with deceased relatives, and how being a medium impacts her understanding of life and death.

On this special double episode of Tell Me About Your Father, hosts Erin and Elizabeth take a graphic look at familial curses, generational trauma and the rules of inheritance as they relate to addiction, abuse, and American men in power. We're looking at two actors in the news right now—satiric “actual cannibal,” Shia LaBeouf, and actual alleged cannibal, Armie Hammer—both facing multiple credible accusations of sexual assault and battery, abuse, and violent behavior. Neither has been charged with crimes (this year), though a civil suit bought by Shia's ex-girlfriend, musician FKA Twigs, is upcoming. LaBeouf recently discussed the allegations at length, and much more, on an episode of actor Jon Bernthal's Real Ones podcast. Meanwhile, a new documentary series on Discovery+ called House of Hammer exposes the dark and disturbing side of Armie's family going back four generations. Both Shia and Armie are currently attempting to rehabilitate their lives and careers, which include well-placed comeback ascension narratives since their alleged crimes were revealed just 1.5 years ago. Both men are fathers themselves at age 36. Shia grew up on food stamps; Armie comes from incredible wealth. Erin and Elizabeth look at how the nature vs, nurture debate plays out when it comes to grown men who abused their power and followed similar paths of chaos as the fathers they hold in conflicting esteem. Why is it different for Hollywood men behaving badly in public than it is for women, whose careers tend to fall apart over their addictions, even as they fall victim to the crimes perpetrated by men who so often get pass after pass?  Why do we as a society have a tendency to race to forgive men/fathers their trespasses, even as they continue to trespass against us?

Note: This episode is long. And upsetting. Trigger warnings for discussion and descriptions of sexual assault are included throughout to allow listeners to skip ahead. Additional time codes are below:

PART 1 / Shia LaBeouf 

0:00-3:00 Intro

3:00-25:19 Shia LaBeouf's childhood and history of arrests, plagiarization, and abuse allegations from FKA Twigs 

25:19-31:51 Don't Worry, Darlin' 

31:51-57:59 Revelations from Shia's Real Ones interview 

57:59-1:05  Shia's newfound devotion to Catholicism, new movie, and whether true rehabilitation is possible in Hollywood 

PART 2 / Armie Hammmer 

1:05-1:11:22  Intro 

1:11:22-1:27:00 Armie's career, January 2021 "downfall," and abuse allegations 

1:27:00-1:52:45 The Hammer family tree and revelations from House of Hammer 

1:52:45-2:10:38 Jeffrey Dahmer vs. Armie Hammer, Robert Downey Jr.'s outreach, and Hammer's ex-wife Elizabeth Chambers is the opposite of Camille Cosby

2:10:38-2:12:35 What our own dads have in common with serial killers besides their astrological signs

2:12:35-2:20:35 In summation!   

In a gold-plated return to the airwaves, our current events show “Daddy Issues” is back from its summer hiatus with a special super-sized catch-up edition of all the celebrity dadly dysfunction we must discuss as we enter into pumpkin season. Matt explains the British monarchy in the wake of mummy HM Queen Elizabeth’s death, and the saga of Britain’s new divorced dad, now known to his sons, William and Harry, as King Charles III. Erin unpacks the British cultural obsession with the body language cues of the senior royals as they try to keep their emotions inside like so many tampons, and Elizabeth presents new and myriad ways in which the Musk Men still stink. She also takes a sobering look at Jonathan’s Depp-ression, Alec Baldwin’s Instagram Live with Woody Allen that failed worse than Hilaria’s birth control, and the whole gang discusses Armie Hammer’s sojourn into the Caymen Islands hospitality industry and Robert Downey Jr.-guided recovery, as well as new dad Shia LaBoeuf’s too-soon appearance on Jon Bernthal’s podcast “Real Ones.” 

On this episode of Tell Me About Your Father, writer Brandi Larsen tells Erin about her late father Eric Kleinert, an appliance repairman and volunteer firefighter whose unsolicited life lessons transcended the textbook they published together in the early 90s when she was just 15 (turning them both into authors, and not for the last time). Eric was a walking, talking #1 Girl Dad and Wife Guy t-shirt who saved lives like it was no big deal and preferred to give his daughter the spotlight (unless he was pushing his toy poodle, Rudy, in a stroller at the mall with the love of his life, Eileen, Brandi’s late mom). Brandi opens up about the day her parents told her she was adopted, what she found out about her biological father when she went looking, and reflects on the quiet heroism of everyday superdads.