The Unhinged Father

One in eight men globally report mental health disorders. Seventy percent will avoid seeking help entirely. Only one in four men who admit to depression will ever go to therapy. Robbie found those numbers deeply concerning — and then realized he'd been one of them for most of his adult life. This isn't a therapy pitch. It's not a dadfluencer telling you that dads have it hard. It&ap...

There are two guys Robbie wants to talk about. One brushes his teeth with brake fluid, hasn't communicated a feeling since 1987, and thinks vulnerability is something that happens to other people. The other one is so emotionally available he makes Miss Rachel look like Brock Lesnar. Both of them are a problem. And somewhere between these two caricatures, real men — real dads — are supposed to...

We are raising the first generation of kids who will never know a world without screens, infinite content, and instant gratification — and most of us are figuring it out as we go. In this episode, Robbie gets real about his own phone habits, why "tough shit, go be bored" is actually good parenting, and how to raise kids who can live in the real world without being left behind in the digi...

If you're a dad in your 30s or 40s who hasn't seen a doctor in years, still thinks you can eat like you're 22, and keeps telling yourself you'll "get healthy later" — this one is for you. Because later has a way of becoming never. Robbie gets brutally honest about skipping physicals for five years, his history with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, the slow re...

"Am I failing as a parent? Am I screwing my kids up?" If those thoughts have crossed your mind lately, this episode is for you. Because when your kid's behavior goes sideways during a big transition — new baby, new school, new house — it's easy to take it personally. And that's exactly when you make it worse. Robbie walks through a year of nonstop change in his own family...

Everyone checks on the pregnant woman. The moment that baby arrives, the world moves on — and mom is left bleeding, sleep-deprived, hormonally wrecked, and expected to figure it out. As a dad of three, Robbie has seen this up close, and he's not going to pretend it isn't happening. This episode is for every dad who has ever said "she's fine" when she's clearly not — a...

A few hours before heading to the hospital for the induction of his third son, Robbie sits down and hits record. No prep, no plan — just everything going through his head in real time. The fears, the work pressure, the sleep deprivation already starting, and what he's learned about himself across three kids that he wishes he'd known going into the first. If you're about to become a...

You know what you want to change. You've known for a while. And every time you get close to starting — something comes up, you talk yourself out of it, or you decide you'll just do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow becomes next week becomes next year. Sound familiar? Robbie gets into the thing that's actually blocking most people from making real changes in their life — and it's n...

Not a resolution episode. Not a "new year new me" pep talk. This is Robbie sitting down with a notebook, going through every area of his life that actually matters, and being honest about where he's at and where he wants to go — health, family, friendship, faith, business, and the legacy he's trying to leave for his kids. If you've been meaning to slow down and think about...

Five months. No episodes, no Instagram, no consistency. A new baby on the way, a house sale, a move, increased work pressure, and a slow slide back into some old habits Robbie thought he'd left behind. This is that episode — the honest return where he doesn't pretend the absence didn't happen or that he has it all figured out now. If you've ever been working on yourself and the...

Younger generations are delaying marriage, skipping kids, and walking away from the white picket fence entirely — and honestly, Robbie gets it. The cost of having a family has never been higher, divorce rates reshaped an entire generation's view of commitment, and social media has made everyone else's life look better than yours. So is it still worth it? Robbie gives his most direct, unf...

Your kid throws their plate across the room and your first thought is "what the hell is wrong with you?" — which is a completely normal thought to have, and also exactly the wrong place to start. Because your kid isn't being a jerk. Their brain just doesn't work like yours yet. And how you respond in that moment says a lot more about your emotional regulation than theirs. Robbi...

Every parent wants to raise good kids. But somewhere along the way, "good" got replaced with "successful" — the right grades, the right sport, the right college. Robbie thinks we've got the priorities backwards, and in this episode he gets into what he's actually trying to build in his kids and why legacy matters more than achievement. This isn't a lecture on par...

Somewhere between "toxic positivity" and "embrace the grind" culture, most people are living in a weird middle ground — pretending they're okay when they're not, doom-scrolling through other people's highlight reels, and wondering why they feel like they're falling behind. Robbie doesn't have a lot of patience for either extreme, and in this episode he...

Mental health awareness has come a long way — and that's genuinely a good thing. But somewhere between "it's okay not to be okay" and where we are now, something got twisted. Diagnoses became identities. Anxiety became a reason not to do hard things. And a lot of people stopped asking whether getting better was actually the goal anymore. Robbie isn't anti-therapy and he is...

We won't let kids walk to the park alone, but we'll hand them an unsupervised portal to the entire internet. We bubble-wrap them from scraped knees and then wonder why they can't handle hard emotions. If that contradiction bothers you too, this episode is going to feel like a long exhale. Inspired by Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation," Robbie breaks down the ov...

Robbie went to UC Santa Barbara, started as a biochemistry pre-med student, burned out completely, switched to sociology, and graduated with a degree he freely admits he uses mostly for bar trivia. He's not bitter about it — but he does have some strong opinions about what nobody tells 18-year-olds before they sign up for six figures of debt. This isn't a college-bashing episode and it&a...

It happened at the park. Robbie's two-year-old is heading up the slide, mom is ready to intervene, Robbie is standing back watching him figure it out. Three seconds later the kid makes it down fine — and then immediately slips trying to climb back up and faceplants. Turns out they were both right. And that's kind of the point. This episode is about why two parents who see things differen...

From ages 24 to 28, Robbie was, in his own words, not the person he wanted to be. Drinking too much, eating like hell, not going to the gym, not pulling his weight at home, checked out emotionally, shoving everything down and calling it strength. His wife had to put up with the brunt of it. He's still a little ashamed of it. This episode isn't a redemption arc wrapped up neatly with a bo...

During a Valentine's Day bedtime routine, Robbie's five-year-old said one of the things he appreciates most is that mom and dad like each other. That they hug and kiss. That they show affection. It was a small moment that turned into a bigger thought — about what kids actually feel when they see their parents genuinely connected, and what they feel when they don't. This isn't a...

Robbie has definitely bragged about his kids hitting milestones early. He's also aware that he was being slightly annoying about it. This episode is his honest examination of the weird competitive culture that forms in parent groups — where normal developmental milestones somehow become a ranking system for whose kid is more special and, by extension, whose parenting is better. It's not...

March 2020. Robbie was six months into being a dad — the exact moment in life when you're supposed to be leaning on people, asking for help, building a village. Instead everyone shut down, locked up, and learned to fear other people. He went along with a lot of it. He's still paying for some of it. This one is less a structured episode and more a genuine processing session — about how a...

Robbie saw a video online — a dad filming his son being pulled away by the mom, kid absolutely bawling, chaos everywhere, and the page presenting it like the dad was doing something heroic. Robbie thought both parents were idiots. And that the kid was the only one paying the real price for it. That video opened up a bigger conversation about the gotcha moment culture we're all living in — whe...

Robbie's five-year-old woke him up in the middle of the night, grabbed him by the neck climbing into bed, and nearly got demolished by a dad who wakes up swinging. He didn't. He got a hug, got walked back to his room, got his head rubbed. And it got Robbie thinking about what it actually means to be the person your kids run to instead of away from. Not the safe space in the college campu...

Robbie had a few too many glasses of wine with his father-in-law, got into a deep conversation about old school versus new school parenting, and decided to bring the whole thing to the podcast. The result is one of the most honest episodes about where he actually lands on discipline, empathy, and what it means to raise good humans without being a pushover or a dictator. He grew up with old school...