“When your child is having an extreme outburst of emotions, for whatever reason it might be, repeat to yourself, ‘He's not giving me a hard time. He's having a hard time.’"

The dad-themed books of my childhood were always found on the back of the toilet, or nearby. Filled with jokes about golf, alone time, toilet seats, alcoholism and contact sports, these short, often illustrated paper products reflected the expectations we had of fathers as the man in the house who most deserved a nap.

On this Father’s Day episode of TMAYF, Erin and Elizabeth talked with Kevin Maguire of The New Fatherhood.org, and author of the new book of the same name, about the stark history and new realities of being a dad in the 2020s, his own experience with post-natal depression, how men have evolved as a species, breaking the cycles we inherit, and why psychedelics may hold the key to a personal paradigm shift for parents.

Here’s to the guys who are doing the work like their children are watching.

Happy Father’s Day to you and yours,

Erin, Elizabeth & Matt

It’s cool. Just do it.

In our annual Pride episode, Matthew is joined by film and culture critic Richard Lawson for a living room conversation over cocktails. Starting with Richard's fresh-out-of-the-theater reaction to He-Man: Masters of the Universe and Matthew's just-finished viewing of Richard Gadd's HBO series Half Man and what they have in common, they move into queer coding in animation, Pedro Pascal's career calculus, the relentless nihilism of Half Man versus the false resolution of Masters, and what it means when a creator tears themselves open onscreen.

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A couple weeks after The Pitt’s second season ended, we’re still thinking about Kathryn VanArendonk’s essay “Robby Has Never Been Your Daddy.” Kathryn joins Erin and Elizabeth to discuss Noah Wyle’s vision of Robby, the show’s shifting ideas about masculinity and caregiving, and why people seem to have forgotten how to watch TV anymore. Especially this one, omg!

Kathryn was also on set for the filming of the "wild pregnancy" emergency C-section scene in the Season 2 finale. (Three words: whipped cream cheese.) Plus, we get into the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance of it all, Robby/Whittaker/Abbot dystopian pregnancy fan fiction, and the internet’s need for this man to check himself into 90-day inpatient for mean guys at work. Hit play.