Tell Me About Your Father

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...

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 for...

* 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...

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) t...

**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 ma...

** 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 relations...

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 fami...

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, h...

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...

Patty Schemel, whose drumming was the driving force of Hole’s seminal 1994 album Live Through This–and whose influence on women and queer rock musicians is immeasurable–joins us this week for a special Pride edition of Daddy Issues! Patty, who is the subject of the powerful 2011 documentary Hit So Hard about her friendship with Kurt Cobain, her struggle with substance abuse and the breakup with Ho...

On this episode, Elizabeth talks to Yufna Soldier Wolf, the youngest child of Mark Soldier Wolf, an Arapaho tribal elder, former Marine, and veteran of the Korean War, who died in 2018 at the age of 87. Like hundreds of thousands of Native American children, Yufna’s father Mark, his father, and his uncle, were sent to an Indian Boarding School as kids. Children were beaten, sexually abused, used f...

--Programming note: We had some audio and editing issues with this episode, which is why it occasionally sounds like we're talking inside a Carousel Microwave. Thanks for understanding :( -- Author Emily Gould joins Erin and Elizabeth to talk about her latest novel Perfect Tunes, parenting in the time of Covid with a husband she both appreciates and hates, and Ghostbusters. We also discuss what’s...

Richard Goldstein is one of America’s first rock music journalists. A former editor of the Village Voice, Richard mentored our co-host Matthew and in this episode, they talk about his late father, Jacob, and growing up in the Bronx in the 50s and 60s. They discuss their own mentor/mentee relationship, how he approaches being a stepfather, grandfather, and great-grandfather and what he really think...

This week’s special guest is Maya Kosoff, a Vanity Fair alumn, co-host of the podcast Most Embarrassing Things on the Internet, and a general blessing to Twitter. She joins us to talk recent news and pop culture, and to traverse the sweeping plains of dad-dom and back again. We talk about Bill Gates accidentally flying on the plane of big Jeff Epstein three times, the big-boss energy of Jean Smart...

In her new memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, author and cultural critic Rebecca Carroll describes with heroic honesty and compassion, an upbringing seated in an adoptive family whose whiteness prevents them from facing their failings, in a country unwilling to do the same. Listen as Rebecca talks to Elizabeth about navigating overt and covert racism, her difficulty connecting with both her birth a...

Cultural critic, NYC institution and father of gossip and celebrity journalism, Michael Musto, joins us this week for our pop culture news show “Daddy Issues!” This episode has it all, from Hollywood predators, monstrous police, and a New York Times reporter who shan’t be named (but we named), to Cardi B, Fran Drescher ,and the anti-fascism, hotness, and ghost dads of Field of Dreams. Michael also...

Paul Florez knows how to use his voice. At 37, he's a professional auctioneer and emcee, and the host of the Marvel comics-centered podcast "Power of X-Men." For years he's been working on a memoir about his relationship with his beloved father to explore the intergenerational trauma that may have inspired their shared eating disorder and body dysmorphia. Listen as Paul tells Erin the story of his...

With the 93rd annual Academy Awards happening on April 25th, it’s a great time to talk about how the themes of dads and patriarchy play out in so many of this year’s Oscar-nominated films. There’s The Father, Minari, Time, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Judas and the Black Messiah, Another Round, Hillbilly Elegy, and Onward— all of which refer explicitly to the impact of fathers. This week, we’re ded...

When she was 25, writer Laura Carney lost her beloved father, Mick, when he was killed instantly in a car accident caused by a distracted teenage driver .Thirteen years later, Laura's brother found a handwritten 60-item list among some old papers of Mick's entitled "Things I Would Like to Do in My Lifetime!" that Mick had written at age 29. Before his death, Mick had checked off 5 of them, and tri...

This week’s episode of Daddy Issues! features special guest star, comedy writer Carey O’Donnell. His TV credits include Billy Eichner’s Billy on the Street and Heathers, he's a former editor at Paper magazine, a contributor to New York Magazine and the co-host of Real Housewives podcast "Sexy Unique Podcast." He's also here to dissect the current events with us from a dad lens. Smash play to hear...

A.J. Daulerio is a writer and creator of the weekly recovery newsletter, The Small Bow. He is the former editor in chief of Gawker.com and its sister sports site Deadspin during the mid-2000s, At Gawker, he famously published an excerpt of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, which led to his losing a 9-figure lawsuit backed by maniacal billionaire Peter Theil, and the bankruptcy and sale of Gawker Media. A mas...

It’s been a week since Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry— whose dads each deserve their own wings in the Disappointing Fathers Hall of Fame—and there’s still much to discuss. This week’s episode of Daddy Issues is dedicated to examining the interview and its noble aftershocks and wider cultural implications. We discuss the rib-crushing patriarchal corset still tightly laced aro...

Entrepreneur Eric Solomon talks to Matt about the loving relationship he had with his father Bob, who was mysteriously murdered in 2016. A man of many wives, children, and business ventures, Bob was a great father to Eric, who discusses how his father’s shocking death caused him to upend his entire life and accept that he’ll probably never find out who did it. Get full access to Tell Me About Your...

It’s the latest installment of our current events show Tell Me About Your Father: Daddy Issues! Oh lord, this episode has much to digest: God, Texas, a very old woman eating gin-soaked raisins, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the horror of spring, chandeliers, FKA Twigs, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Note, this episode was recorded on 2/26, before a second former aide of Cuomo's came forward to say...

Erin and Elizabeth talk to Natalie Cash Petersson, a New York City-based film producer, about the incredible success stories of her maternal grandfather, Dr. David Griffin, and his brother, her great uncle, Dr. Joseph Howard Griffin. Joseph Howard, who went by JH, and David were sons of an enslaved father who became trailblazing physicians in South Georgia, both prosperous and celebrated members o...