It's Gay Pride (in America)! To commemorate iconic homosexual musician George Michael in the week of what would have been his 62nd birthday, and for our fifth annual Pride episode in the last week of Pride MONTH, Matt takes a look at the enduring cultural impact of George Michael's song Father Figure , and the idea that, as eminent American producer, Dick Clark once put it “Music is the soundtrack of your life.” And from there, Matt talks about how George Michael’s music helped him as a small bo...
Jun 28, 2025•27 min
On today’s bonus episode of TMAYF, we look back at 6 episodes over the last 5 years that we just can’t stop thinking about. Featuring political podcaster Ravi Gupta, psychic medium Victoria Laurie, fine artist Chris Santa Maria's on his Uncle Bunky , Superstar Molly Shannon, author Gretchen Cherington, and the incomparable Christian Nightmares. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tellmeaboutyourfather.substack....
Jun 15, 2025•1 hr 31 min
In Part 3, we take a closer look at Elon's descent into Dark MAGA, his unshakeable bond with his father Errol (who now hosts a YouTube channel called Dad of a Genius ), and the hopeful rebellion of Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. Sometimes, being your own dad is the only way out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com...
Jun 13, 2025•58 min
In Part 2, we strap ourselves into the roller coaster of Musk’s chaotic romantic relationships, his obsession with fathering a “legion” of children, and the dumb pro-natalist ideology behind it. From pay-for-silence pacts with exes to a compound in Austin for all the sister wives, this episode is about how Musk parents his kids, and by extension, the world he thinks he’s going to save.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus epis...
Jun 13, 2025•1 hr 37 min
In part one of our two-part series on Elon Musk, based mostly on Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, we look past the desperate memes and fuckwit chainsaws to see the bruised man underneath the $400 billion net worth. From apartheid South Africa and a violent father to ketamine-fueled Oval Office farewells, here's what happens when a person turns his daddy issues into the world's problem. Part 2: How He Parents (His kids and America) drops next! This is a public episode. If you would like to discu...
Jun 05, 2025•1 hr 34 min
Erin & Elizabeth talk with Gen-X icon Ione Skye (Say Anything, River's Edge, Zodiac), the actress and author of the NYT-bestselling memoir SAY EVERYTHING. Ione's father is the 60s folk wizard and Sunshine Superman, Donovan. But while Donovan did claim Ione's brother Dono as his own, he referred to Ione since birth only as " the girl, " only meeting her for the first time when she was by that point a famous teenager. Ione tells us about how his abandonment affected her early romantic relation...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 21 min
Erin talks with Laurie Woolever, the author of the new memoir Care & Feeding, out this week from Ecco/HarperCollins. Laurie was Anthony Bourdain's assistant from 2009 until his death by suicide in 2018. She coauthored the cookbook Appetites and World Travel with him, and is the New York Times bestselling author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography. Care & Feeding is an extremely honest portrayal of Laurie's personal and professional coming of age as a high-functioning addict (to al...
Mar 13, 2025•52 min
It’s our annual TMAYF Academy Awards special, in which we examine the ten Best Picture nominees through the lens of literal and symbolic fatherhood. Joining us, as always, is the founding cousin of the TV recap, Vanity Fair’s chief critic, and co-host of the Little Gold Men podcast, Richard Lawson. Together, Matt, Erin, Elizabeth, and Richard chat about dadly silver screen topics, including tyrannical father figures who loom large even in their absence, the seemingly shifting depiction of male m...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 21 min
On this episode, Erin & Elizabeth talk to animal intuitive Phoebe Hoffman, one of the stars of the new documentary about NYC psychics, Look Into My Eyes (currently on Max). The film hints at Phoebe's colorful life growing up with her divorced father Stanley, who Phoebe lived with in a studio apartment in Manhattan throughout her teenage years, when she dropped out of LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in 9th grade. Stanley, an English teacher who nonetheless played fast and loose with th...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 12 min
It's the end of 2024 and the time has come for TMAYF's 788th Daddy Awards, which recap the year in masculinity and spotlight the actions of notable fathers and daddies who made our listeners ask themselves, how did we get here, and when will it end. Our shortest ep of the year features all new categories like the Holding Space Award, that recognizes people who have inspired us to wait longingly, sometimes desperately for them, not unlike a father who works late because he hates coming home. And ...
Dec 29, 2024•33 min
This Thanksgiving holiday, Erin pays tribute in the form of a eulogy for her late friend, mentor and stepfather, Terry Orvis, who died in August after a long illness. It's a collaborative approach, as Erin includes conversations she and Terry recorded in 2020 after he was diagnosed with dementia, and tells the story of a complicated, brilliant artist, architect, misanthrope, sports fan, Dylan-head, sailor, poet, cook, friend, husband and father of children lost and found. Erin and Terry met when...
Nov 27, 2024•40 min
Peyton Dix, writer, social media strategist, and hilarious co-host of the eminently watchable new pop-culture podcast Lemme Say This , has been on Elizabeth's Tell Me About Your Father guest shortlist for a while, and the day has finally come! Peyton joins her to discuss her comedian dad, their occasionally complicated relationship, and the ways in which their dynamic, as she puts it, has helped her learn to speak two languages: "problematic Black father and English." We also discuss some of her...
Nov 21, 2024•48 min
Welcome to our first ever presidential election ep not about Biden, wherein we break down the (daddy) issues of the core 4 candidates in the way only TMAYF can or will. Some fun facts about our candidates' formative lives: Kamala's father - named Donald - did not congratulate her on being named VP in 2020, and did not attend the inauguration. According to Donald Trump's psychologist niece Mary, his father Fred was a sociopath, who, "short-circuited Donald's ability to develop and experience the ...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 49 min
In this episode, Erin talks to Cleveland writer Indira Samuels about her Jamaican immigrant dad, Lionel, and their unique bond, cemented by watching television together up until the day Lionel died in 2014. Like so many dads we talk about on this show, Lionel was a man of few words himself, especially when it came to the big stuff like his daughter's teenage pregnancy, her acceptance to a prestigious university, her robbery and assault, or his illness. But what he could share with his youngest d...
Oct 25, 2024•56 min
Emmy nominated writer, comedian, producer and podcaster, Erin Gibson talks with Matt about growing up in Texas with a father who was, deep down, an actor and writer, but who was put through a military academy, fought in Vietnam, and who became an engineer and never saw his natural talents come to fruition. She recalls, three years after his death, what it was like to be by his side for his final month as he fought a losing battle with cancer, and how his death taught her not to be afraid of deat...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Matt Phillp talks with Komail Aijazuddin , author of new memoir Manboobs about what it was like to grow up Muslim, fat, and queer in Pakistan - with no ability to hide any of those characteristics. He talks about the process of extricating himself from the oppressive silence of his family and from Lahore and what it was like to discover that the America he’d seen through pop culture was nothing like the real thing. Click here to follow this podcast on Instagram. Click here to support this podcas...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Elizabeth talks with journalist Tricia Romano, author of the new oral history The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of The Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture . Tricia, who was a contributing writer at the Village Voice for nearly a decade covering New York City’s nightlife and club scenes in the early 2000s, spent six years and hundreds of hours interviewing the newspaper's former staff, dating back decades to its founding in 1955 by Norman Mailer, a ps...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 19 min
In this episode, Erin and Elizabeth talk with Margaret Wappler, author of A Good Bad Boy: Luke Perry And How a Generation Grew Up , which was excerpted in Vanity Fair . The "Bad Boy" refers to Luke Perry's character on Beverly Hills 90210 , Dylan McKay, a Gen-X James Dean with a tender heart. A Good Bad Boy is a dual biography of Luke Perry and Margaret as a teenager mourning her father's death. Margaret regales us with tales of Luke's heroism, like defending Tori Spelling from her abusive boyfr...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 14 min
It’s our PRIDE episode! Recorded a few days before her new song, SPRKL, dropped - Christian country music star and drag queen Flamy Grant talks candidly about her journey out of the evangelical southern church in which she grew up and became a worship leader, through her parent-sanctioned ex-gay therapy, and eventually out the other side as a gay man and drag queen who sings about the experience. She talks about the estranged relationship she has with her father and how she places him in perspec...
Jun 03, 2024•54 min
Tim Alberta joins Ravi Gupta to discuss his new book, “ The Power, the Glory, and the Kingdom ." The book takes an in-depth, personal look at the birth and rise of America’s evangelical movement and explores how deceit, scandal, and fear have contributed to the wreckage it stands on today. Subscribe to Lost Debate on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-debate/id1591300785 Follow The Branch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebranchmedia The Branch website: http://thebranchm...
Jun 02, 2024•44 min
On this Memorial Day weekend episode of Tell Me About Your Father , Matt talks with former Obama staffer and school principal and current co-host of both the Majority 54 podcast and the Lost Debate podcast, Ravi Gupta , about growing up with a democrat mother and an increasingly right wing father and how the conflict between them often took form in political debate. He talks about what it was like to travel with his father to the village in India in which his father grew up for the first time si...
May 25, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Matt talks with Alex Steed , producer and co-host of the podcast You Are Good - a feelings podcast about movies - about choosing to live with his father in rural Maine at 12 years old - a dynamic he describes as “a 12-17 year old living with an old man as a roommate,” how his childhood led him to become a “chaos goblin” and how he worked through that, and how nursing his father through cancer helped him to let go of his fear of death. He talks about what was behind changing the name and focus of...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Elizabeth and Erin chat with indie rock icon Miki Berenyi of the '90s band Lush about her critically acclaimed memoir, "Fingers Crossed," hailed by Rolling Stone and Rough Trade as one of the best autobiographies ever. Miki opens up about her unique upbringing by her eccentric Hungarian sports journalist father and her Nazi-sympathizer grandmother, the turbulent London post-punk scene, and the highs and lows of being in a band that influenced so many musicians, including Kurt Cobain. In this int...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 16 min
It's our annual Oscars episode with Tell Me About Your Father pal Richard Lawson, chief critic of Vanity Fair, discussing all the dad themes in this year's Academy Award-nominated films. We've got J. Robert Oppenheimer as the father of the atomic bomb in "Oppenheimer", a perma-wounded mad professor dad named "God" in "Poor Things," a philandering dead father whose shadow is cast across "American Fiction," and another dead dad who provides solid proof that writers should almost never be married t...
Mar 04, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Who was this year’s Best-Worst-Late Father-of-the-Year? Who was the best animal dad? Which saviors of culture are in line to clinch the Patrick Swayze Memorial Award for Excellence in the lifelong practice of Holistic Hotness? From Elon and King Charles to the best of this year’s celebrity memoir tell-alls, the celebrity dads of Tik Tok, and the finest incomprehensibly verbose headlines of the Daily Mail - we sum up the dad-moments that made this year special with the 787th Daddy Awards. It's th...
Dec 28, 2023•35 min
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...
Dec 04, 2023•1 hr 6 min
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 Spea...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 41 min
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 sid...
Nov 01, 2023•54 min
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 hou...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min
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 supp...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 4 min
