The Dad Who Wasn't There

How do we know how to be a good dad if none of the old models are working? What if we grew up without a model at all? Can we learn how to be a good dad from watching HBO? Why is trust the most fundamental piece of a parent-child relationship? Why is silence so corrosive? Comedian, actor, and fellow father-of-two Baron Vaughn (Grace & Frankie; The New Negroes; Corporate) joins us on PODRE to break all this down and tell his story in typically hilarious fashion.

Go to baronvaughn.com to stream Baron's comedy specials, check out his podcast Self Quar, and watch him perform on Conan, Comedy Central, and HBO. Baron's documentary film FATHERLESS lives on Amazon Prime here.  

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Transcript

Chris: Dads. They've been around since the beginning, but what do we really know about them? It's time to start asking questions. I'm Chris Brunt. This is Podre. Okay, tell us who you are.

Chris: Just talk to it, baby. Just talk to it. It's okay.

Nico: I am Nico. I can make pod... With you.
 
Julian: Now, for the episode of PODRE... Podre... dhoo dhoo dhoo...

Chris: I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos. This will definitely not be the last time I talk about Tony Soprano as a father on this show. There's this great moment in the first season where Tony, my boss, father of two suburban New Jersey dad, is driving his daughter Meadow on a tour of college's. Typical American father daughter experience. But on this car, right, meadow turns to her dad and says point blank.

Meadow: Are you in the mafia? 

Tony: Am I in the what? Whatever you want to call it, organized crime. I'm in a waste management business. Everybody immediately assumes you're mopped up. There is no mafia. 

Chris: And he catches him off guard. He kind of hems and haws. He tries to wiggle his way out of it and there is no mafia. He was looking back at the road, he's looking at her and he's thinking like, how am I going to wiggle my way out of this? And he kind of realizes she already knows the truth. So this is a test. Is he going to tell the truth or not? And Tony says to her, all right.

Tony: Some of my money comes from a legal gambling and whatnot. How does that make you feel? At least you don't keep denying it. Like mom.

Chris: Even though Tony doesn't tell her the full truth, he doesn't say yes on the street boss of the Demeo crime family. It gives her just enough it preserves that bond that they have, right? It's just enough truth for her to still feel like they trust each other. And then she opens up to him and they go on. They continue to have this great relationship, but her mother and her, it's a very different story. Tony's told the truth, mom hasn't. This is a theme that's going to come up again and again today on this episode of Podre. Why do we lie to our kids? Are we trying to protect them or are we trying to protect ourselves? How does not being able to trust your parents affect you as a child? What about as you grow into an adult? How do you make sure, if and when you have your own kids, that you're being open and honest with them at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons? I'm going to talk about all this and a lot more with my guest today, comedian and actor Baron Vaughn. You might know Baron because he's one of the funniest people in America. His stand up specials, raised by cable and black sustential crisis, are streaming on Amazon Music. As an actor, you can find him on everything from the Netflix hit Grace and Frankie to Mystery Science Theater 3000 to BoJack Horseman. But I know Baron because he's my wife's best friend. Once upon a time in the city of Austin, Texas, he officiated our wedding. And over the last decade or so, I've gotten to hang out with Baron and see him perform all over the country. And he really is one of the most talented people I've ever known. And now we're going through fatherhood at roughly the same pace. I recently visited Baron and his family at their new home in their new home city of Atlanta, and our boys got to meet each other and spend a couple of days running around the house in the backyard together. Baron and I have pretty different styles as fathers, but I like his style. It's uniformly easygoing. It's gentle, of course. It's playful and creative and hilarious. This 190 freestyled verses for every letter of the alphabet over this kid's song in the cadence of an we come to K. He is on another level. He's exactly who you'd want as a dad, which is amazing given that he grew up with that one.

Baron: I'm mixed race, multi ethnic biracial. I know you can't tell because I'm a consistent shade. My mom was black and my father was absent. So I'm like half black, half empty, half full. I'm an optimist.

I'm an optimist on that one. Don't get sad. Some of you just got sad. Like, why? Now I know why you need to tell jokes. And don't get sad. People shuffle up the buffalo to me after a show, just like, oh, my God, did you comedian? Do you miss your father? And I don't miss what I never had. There's no emotional attachment, no significance. It would be the same to walk up to me and say, do you miss your pterodactyl wings? Do you miss the ability to urinate koolaid laced with crack? Do you miss yourself self-integrity? Because. I'd rather have those three things. What's a dad going to do? Play catch. I'd rather fly around making crackheads happy. That sounds like a weekend to me. [Wing sound] Thank you, Crackadactyl! And now you all know what Kwanzaa is about. 

Baron: I'm old. I think we're the same age. Similar ages.

Chris: I think you're a little bit older than me because you're more Chanelle's age. Right?

Speaker B: She's older than me, too.

Chris: Okay.

Speaker B: She's one year older than me.

Chris: Okay, well, then, yeah, I'm still I'm still the I'm still much younger than both of you.

Speaker B: Well, okay.

Chris: I'm still in my 30s. Let's put it that way. I'm still in my 30s.

Speaker B: Hey, it's the same for my wife, Rhiannon. She's four years younger than me, so I wish that there weren't completely different references for that little of an age range, but there really are.

Chris: Oh, my God. Yes. It's a totally different cultural storehouse. She's talking about shows that I'm like. That's from the History Channel the other day. I'm in the kitchen and I'm going, [singing] I'm just a teenage dirt bag, baby. And she's like, what are you singing?

Speaker B: Like, stop.

Chris: And I was like, Hold on a second. Come on. That's the song of high school. And she's like, I've never heard that before in my life.

Speaker B: Song of my high school. I feel like I keep hearing, [singing] and I don't want the world to see you. And I don't think that... What is that, the Googoo Dolls or something?

Chris: Goo Dolls.

Speaker B: I could not escape Googoo Dolls and Matchbox 20 no matter what I did.

Chris: I hated that ****.

Speaker B: So did I. At some point, it gets through and you're like, is it good? Or if I just heard it a billion times, 

Chris: It's kind of a good hook. But that's like, I can hate it. How's Atlanta, man? You moved.

Speaker B: I was just thinking about this, too, because this leads to a weird existential philosophical thought that I've been having about the fact of moving today. It is normal today. You move where the work is. And I think about when I was a child and how abnormal it was to move. I feel like the 80s normalized. Okay, well, I got to move 2000 miles that way. But it used to not be that way. And I feel like there's something that has been lost, I guess. I don't know if the word is oh, the word is community, I think, in a lot of ways. And that's one of the biggest reasons we moved here is to become part of a community, quote unquote, plant roots. It's also about the kids. I like the idea that my kids are going to grow up here and that this is a city that's going to inform who they are in a lot of ways. Where I felt like I always felt like a transplant in some way, even as a kid. I always felt like as a transplant and that I didn't necessarily live. I lived where it ever was. I was sleeping, but I never identified myself as, like, a Las Vegas, for instance, which is where I mostly grew up in New York. I always felt like it was a temporary thing. LA always felt like it was a temporary thing, even though I was there for a decade. Yeah, and this does not feel that way for a number of reasons. But, you know, the biggest one being that the kids can grow up here. Like, this is this is where they're going to grow up.

Chris: You're giving them a hometown.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Chris: How are your kids doing?

Speaker B: They're great. I can hear them upstairs right now, but they're both doing pretty well. And they're really loving this new house that we're in. Running around.

Chris: It save you on man riennan's instagram feed. That's the best dressed kid I've ever seen in my life. I don't know if it's an LA. Thing, but when you step out in La. Even if you're like a two year old, you got to have on some nice sneakers.

Speaker B: But this kid, I am going a little overboard. I'm like, he's my mini hype beast, because kid clothes not as expensive as adult clothes. So it's like, oh, those shoes are actually only $30 for a kid.

Chris: They're the designer. No, every time Chanelle will show me that, she'll hand me the phone and be like, look at Savion. I'm like, oh, my God. We've poor. Julian.

Speaker B: I'll give you some tips. Don't worry about it.

Chris: Yeah, hook it up, man. Send me this.

Speaker B: Get Julian and Nico in there.

Chris: I wonder if you have that moment yet as a father, where whatever's going on, whether it's a happy moment or not so happy moment, whether you're being the kind of disciplinarian or just goofing around with him where you sort of think to yourself, oh, this might be how my kids see me as a dad. Either one day or when they look back, do you know what I mean?

Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, I do know what you mean. I don't know that I have thought about it. I haven't had that much self awareness about it because usually in a moment, I'm like, put that down. Put that down, put that down. But I had a real father moment the other day where I screamed at him, the fact that he was so scared because he made this home. I went to the bathroom, and I locked the door and come back and just all this stuff under the door that he was just sitting there, like, trying to knock the thing down and throwing things at the door. And I'm like, what is this? So I was trying to tell him, like, you need to pick this mess up and put everything back in your room. And he didn't want to, and he basically did. Paul Rudd from Wet Hot American Summer, where he was just a real kid about it. And it was just like I was like, Pick it up. And he was like, okay. And he crawled and limped. I'm like, what are you doing? And then once he had it all put away, he was really upset because I had yelled. And then I sat and we sat together, and we just kind of sat there with each other until we were regulated. My new favorite word. And I was like, I think this actually wasn't that bad. I was upset because I had yelled so hard at him, but my wife was like, what are you talking about? I yell at them. They don't do things so that you have to get their attention. And so it's like I was like, all right. Yeah, okay.

Chris: Yeah. But there's a big difference between at least in our house, there's a big difference between Daddy's yelling and Mommy's yelling. There's just a difference in the energy.

Speaker B: It's based on the voice and it was was I like because I was very frustrated, and he was very not listening. I'm trying to come up with the best, the way to make this look the best. I'm like, don't take away my kids CPS. I'm good. I'm a good dad, I swear. But, yeah, it's funny because there's certain habits that every now and then I'm like, I still deal with my own version of self hatred, self loathing. So when I see them do a behavior or act in a way that I think is like me, it makes me go, I've ruined them. Like I did something wrong. Which is not the fact. It doesn't mean they're bad. I keep thinking of everything that I was told was bad when I was a kid, but it doesn't apply anymore. And I have to keep reminding myself of that. If they look at the phone for an hour, it's not going to melt their brain because they still want to go outside, even if they were on the phone all day, there's a point where they naturally go, hey, you want to throw this boat? It's like oh, cool.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: Even they're like little self starters in some ways.

Chris: You don't have to control so much of their behavior. I mean, my parents were like that, too, right? Every single tiny thing had to be under their control, under their management. And I think our generation of parents is more like, all right, it's not quite so necessary.

Speaker B: Yeah. And learning that balance is the thing that I'm still in the midst of, is like, I can't control everything. There are certain I can create boundaries, parameters for them to be inside of, but it's not going to be perfect. You know what I mean? I have to be patient with myself and them. The level of patience that I have, I'm way more patient with them than I am myself.

Chris: And I feel like the theory driving my parents, like, mania for control was that they were going to somehow turn me into the person they wanted me to be, which was a really bogus theory underneath the practice of parenting. And I think that's what I reject, right? That I have the ability to really turn my kid into who I wanted to be or that I should try to do that no matter what I do. These kids are turning out the way they're going to turn out. So I just have to put up those parameters and those boundaries, and I have to be a certain kind of safe harbor for them.

Speaker B: That's very well said. That's very well said. And I think that was exactly my experience as well. Like, I was under the watchful eye of the dictator, and that's not how I am because I didn't like it, and I am who I am regardless. There was and my mother admitted later about trying to make it so certain things didn't happen, or so I didn't go down certain paths. And it's like but if I was going to go down that path, I was going to go down that path. The thing is about whether or not I trust you to tell you, like, if I'm going to tell you about it or not.

Chris: Because if I'm going to come to.

Speaker B: You, if I'm going to come to you and that's what it is. That as romantic as it sounds, I do want to be somebody that my kids feel okay coming to, as opposed to fearing me and to not sort.

Chris: Of cultivate that silence. Right? That silence around all of the painful, all the scary stuff, all the lifey **** that's going to happen no matter what, to not have that culture of silence. This is a house where we can talk to each other. We can hear each other. Exactly. All right, so let's go back to the beginning. We'll go Marine style here and talk about growing up. So you're from Las Vegas. Just tell me a little bit about where you grew up and who you grew up with.

Speaker B: Okay, well, there was a place before Las Vegas, which was New Mexico. I was born in a small town called Portales. Portales, that's right. The portals. That's a place I don't really remember. And then because you left when you were how old? I want to say like two.

Chris: Okay, yeah, you never remember it.

Speaker B: And then I was in Tukumkari, New Mexico, until I was about eight ish. And then that's when we moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Vegas was a fully different experience, even though the thing that I had the most in common with New Mexico, at least the parts of New Mexico I grew up in, was it being the desert. So, like this dryness, hot, all day, super cold at night sort of thing, was not new. But the culture of Vegas, especially because we moved there before the boom of Vegas, which now I kind of I did a little research, and now I see that, like, oh, okay, we moved to Vegas before there was like an economic explosion, basically in 91, I want to say. So it was like we wanted to get out of New Mexico, which at the time was not doing well. Let's remember it's. Reagan's America. So every child was left behind. I think that was one of his campaign slogans, every child left behind. And then we got to Vegas, which was the land of opportunity as we saw it. You know, it was a big city with a lot of work. The mirage opened when the Mirage opened, it started this period of unending growth for Vegas. It was the fastest growing city in the country until the 2008 recession happened. And then my mother got hired to the Mirage. I think she was in the first fleet, the first fleet of hiring. And there was this crazy influx of kids, and Vegas did not have the infrastructure for the amount of people that were moving there that already had 10, 11 year olds in tow. So it was like, suddenly there was just too many eleven year olds in Las Vegas, and there weren't enough schools to handle it.

Chris: And it's you, your mom, and who else?

Speaker B: My grandmother.

Chris: Your grandmother. So the three of you living together, your mom's working at the Mirage.

Speaker B: So suddenly there was this level of security that we did not have before. And then we moved. We were in a part of Las Vegas called North Las Vegas North Town. It is also known kind of out by the Air Force base. Nellis Air Force Base. And that's the hood of Vegas. And the other thing that started to happen when the kind of the population boom of Vegas happened was, like I said, a lot of kids coming to Vegas all of a sudden. A lot of teenagers coming to Vegas. A lot of kids from La. So there was this gang, almost like a corporate takeover, where the Bloods and the Crips moved into Vegas, and any gang that was already there either fought them to keep their stuff or became part of them. And north town was, like, pretty rough. And my mom wanted to move closer to the Mirage, so that way she didn't have to drive an hour to work every day. But also, I think she wanted to kind of get out of that neighborhood. Not that we moved to a neighborhood that was that much better. It wasn't as violent, but there were still, quote unquote, problems. I say problems and with quotation marks, because I'm like, I look back at it now, it's like everybody was like, there was too many kids. There was too many kids and not enough adults.

Chris: Not enough **** for the kids to do.

Speaker B: Exactly. Vegas didn't have that. And that's actually there was a time that it was before the whole whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas campaign, which kind of, like, defines Vegas now, where they tried to make it a family friendly place. I think that had to do with the Mafia moving out and the corporations moving in.

Chris: Right?

Speaker B: And they're like, let's open up an indoor theme park.

Chris: It's Disney in the desert.

Speaker B: They tried to do that. They tried to make it into, like, a giant theme park.

Chris: They meanwhile in your neighborhood, family meanwhile in your neighborhood.

Speaker B: That thing that weird. I want to say PTSD response of, like, you're just, like, hanging out with some kids, and then out of nowhere, you see a kid running, and you're like, oh, ****. If you just start to run, you don't even know why. But it is that something's coming. I don't want to be here for it. Sort of a thing. And that was definitely, like, what Vegas was like. People were afraid of drive bys. Everybody was like, you can't wear certain colors, and the schools were, like, again, trying to control it, but they didn't understand it. So it was always like, you can't wear red, you can't wear blue, you can't wear Raiders jerseys. You can't wear doo rags. You can't wear this type of shoe. You can't wear it. It was like all these rules that they were trying to control. Gang violence or ganglition or whatever.

Chris: You laugh about that stuff as a kid, or does it make you kind of paranoid?

Speaker B: Very paranoid. Maybe you super paranoid. Yeah, because it was like the news was obsessed with it, right. Because it was sensational.

Chris: You got Tipper Gore on ******* oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Tipper Gore. Tipper Gore. I mean, it was like that era of, like, NWA was big, where it was just like, what was the Ice T song? Cop Killer and all of these things? Who is now, like, one of the most respected cops on TV.

Chris: Officer. Ice T.

Speaker B: Officer Ice T. Two Tiwala. Is that what the T stands for? I have no idea. Rhiannon goes to sleep to SVU. So I feel like I hear it a lot. I'm like the relaxing, sleepy sounds of Rape Investigation. Yes.

Chris: Weren't you on an episode of that one time? Was it?

Speaker B: No, not SVU. It was never on SVU. I was on Criminal Intent, and I was also an original flavor. So those are the two ones that I was on. But thank you for remembering. I wasn't real until I was on those to my grandmother.

Chris: What about your grandmother, though? When you're growing up, is she looking after you while your mom's working at the casino?

Speaker B: Yes, because my father wasn't around. Now, see how I gloss over that? It's something that I look at now, and I go like, back then, it was just a fact. But the fact that I didn't have a father wasn't abnormal to me. It was my experience. And it wasn't until later that I realized, oh, it's just me and my mom and my grandmother. There is no male figure here, or whatever. Yeah, I guess I just didn't have any male role models. I hate to say it as reductive as that, but, like, every man that I looked up to was on TV. You know, it was some kind of comedian. You know, it was Pryor, Eddie Murphy or, you know, Martin, or, you know, one of the Wayans brothers, whoever the heck was on In Living Color. Like, all these things. I watched Saturday Night Live and all that stuff. So it was like that. The idea of being a man, to me, was being funny. And then as it started to get scarier in these streets, and I was like, I can't fight. I don't have a weapon, so let me be funny. If I'm funny, then maybe I can charm everybody out of harm. I can charm away from the harm.

Chris: And you feel like you weren't looking at guys in the neighborhood, like, older guys, and going, I got to get more like that guy. I got to get more like prior to make it through this world, I.

Speaker B: Got to be more like and that was entertaining to me. And I liked being funny and I liked being funny at school, like making other kids laugh and all that stuff. It's interesting you say that thing about the guys in the neighborhood, because that is a big thing that I really did not have. There was no sense of who was in my neighborhood at all. A lot of people grew up in a place where I don't know if it was like the person who ran the business on the corner, like a store or a barber shop or whatever the ****. And then there were like people who hung out on the stoop. I didn't have any of that.

Chris: Why not?

Speaker B: Because Vegas was not only just super duper hot and I think people just didn't want to be outside, but it seemed like everyone was just doing their own thing. That idea, that sense of community, I don't think I ever really experienced it in a neighborhood sense. I didn't know any of my neighbors. They didn't know who I was. And if anything, we were all afraid of each other. There was just, again, the non stop fear. Again, it was on the news all of the time. So it was just like this non stop feeling of you're in danger and it's your neighbor, somebody that looks like you and smells like you, but the.

Chris: Reality is just this is lonely as ****. Where is everybody?

Speaker B: Yes, it was very lonely in Vegas, and it was like I spent a **** ton of time alone as a kid. And outside I would say I was latchkey because I was watching myself younger than I guess it's supposed to be. If my mother was working, my grandmother was working. I came home from school and I was by myself for a couple of hours every day. But there was this I mean, loneliness. That is a good way to put it.

Chris: What about your sister's dad? Was he around at all?

Speaker B: Yes, that was my stepfather. My mother married him and he was the father to my sisters. And he was around. He was somebody else that was in Vegas. And my mother and he recently divorced. Thank the Lord.

Chris: Congrats.

Speaker B: Yes, congrats to my mom. He was around because those were his daughters. But he was also working. Like, I felt like he and my mother were just working and my grandmother too. My grandmother kind of was like it's funny because I look back at now and it's all like I almost want to say that she was a bit of a drifter. Sometimes she was with us and sometimes she wasn't. And when she wasn't, I had no idea where she was. I didn't know who her friends were. I didn't know where she hung out. She had a car, and I wouldn't doubt if she lived in it here and there and stayed with her friends. But I don't know. I look back now and I go, like, wow, was she homeless? Like, my grandfather was homeless and just, like, working this job. And then she would stay with us for a year and then disappear. And then come back for a year and then disappear. That's what I remember.

Chris: But you wouldn't ask her questions. Grandma, where you been? What's going on in your life?

Speaker B: Asking questions, that was not a thing. I don't want to say I wasn't curious. I guess I just accepted that I was never going to get any answers. My grandmother and my mother, there was a palpable tension between the two of them, and my grandmother doted on me. And I don't know if it made my mom jealous or if she felt she was being usurped as the primary parent, but they they had a lot of tension that I think probably dated before I even got there. But asking questions or just, like, talking about what was going on, it wasn't a thing. I just kind of knew that I wasn't going to get an answer and that silence was the way.

Chris: Did you feel closer to one of them?

Speaker B: Oh, I felt closer to my grandmother. Definitely felt closer to my grandmother. My grandmother well, my grandmother would take me places. She would take me places to run errands with her. And that's when I would experience her world a little bit. Like, she was the one who took me to the barber shop when it was time to get a haircut. There was a place in North Las Vegas that we always went. And it's funny because I was talking to some friends about this, like, the classic barbershop experience of the movie, where there's, like, a bunch of people talking and talking about the news and talking about whatever the heck they're talking about. And then this black woman walks in, and everyone went, how are you doing, young blood? And it would literally was, like, best behavior. My grandmother was the only woman that would walk into there to get me a haircut, and everybody shut the hell up. The moment she walked in there, I could see from the window that there was action happening. And then we'd walk in and be like, it's a lady here, sort of a thing. So it was like even my barbershop experience was fully silent.

Chris: Yeah, and you're like, at ease, boys, come on. Resume the experience. I'm here now.

Speaker B: Again, because silence was already my culture at home. Again, I watched a lot of TV. My grandmother and I, when we were in a car, we would talk a lot. We would talk, we'd listen to music, and we drove. I feel like I did a lot of road trips from Vegas to New Mexico to visit my great grandparents, her parents, just you and.

Chris: Her.

Speaker B: Just me and her.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: We would drive back, and it was a long drive. I don't remember exactly how long, but we would live, like, three tapes that we would listen to over and over again and then play the game where we called out every license plate from every state that we could find. But I remember it was like Sam and Dave. Best of Sam and Dave.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: I still love Sam and Dave to this day.

Chris: Hell, yeah.

Speaker B: The Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. And now that I think about it, I think it was The Woman in Red soundtrack. Do you remember that movie at all?

Chris: No.

Speaker B: The Woman in Red was this weird Gene Wilder movie, but the whole soundtrack was Stevie Wonder songs.

Chris: Wow.

Speaker B: I Just Called to Say I Love You was on that. Yeah, he had a song called The Woman in Red that was in there.

Chris: All right, so you're growing up with your grandmother, your mother. Eventually you're stepped up. What's your relationship like with him when you're growing up?

Speaker B: Not good.

Chris: Not good.

Speaker B: It was very I don't know if he thought that he was aware that I had no male presence, and he took it upon himself to be the dad that I never had, I guess. But we never got along. He was a very severe person and a very, I would say egotistical kind of narcissistic person. I tried to stay away from him. I was a troubled kid as far as my mother and my stepfather, or as far as they were concerned, I was a troubled kid. I don't think that they really knew me and if anything, just tried to control me more than they tried to understand me. That was the tension, I feel like, that defined my middle school in high school years, as well as the fact that my mother was a bit of an addict. I'm understating it. I mean, it got more extreme as I got older, which I think was a combination of having more to deal with, like having this job and then having a husband and having a teenager. Having a teenager that started to look like and or act like the guy who was like, I don't want to be involved when she found out she was pregnant. So I'm, like, editorializing a little bit here, but I do believe, in some sense, that tension of I love you and I hate you when you're the person's child wasn't something that was normal to talk about. All that stuff was still very stigmatized.

Chris: Did she ever talk to you about your father? Did you ask questions? Were you curious about him?

Speaker B: It wasn't until, I guess, I kind of had put him out of my mind and put the fact of ever knowing him or meeting him out of my mind. I don't know if it was communicated to me that he wanted nothing to do with me or whatever, but I took that tactic for him as well. Like, well, he doesn't want anything to do with me. I don't want anything to do with him. But again, it wasn't something that I felt was missing, because I didn't know anything else. I remember seeing a picture of him that my mother showed me when I was young, but I was also kind of like it wasn't impressive to me. It didn't mean anything to me. It was a picture of someone I never met. So I was like, okay, can I go? I don't know. I don't really know what you want me to do with this. And then when my stepfather came into my life, I think that they thought it would be good for me to meet my father or something, but it didn't happen. I also don't know if, again, like, I look back, and I'm like, what was real and what was not? Did they actually reach out to him, or did they just say that they did?

Chris: But they did tell you that they reached out to him?

Speaker B: Yeah. And this was, like, in middle school, I want to say that, like, oh, yeah, we reached out to your father, or something like that, but it didn't feel genuine. To this day, I don't even believe that they actually did, because nothing came of it. Nothing came of it. But they also gave me a story as to why nothing came of it.

Chris: Do you remember the story?

Speaker B: They said that he wanted money to meet me, and I'm like, I don't know. Okay. I didn't know if they were saying it again. It felt like it was a card that was being played to keep me in control.

Chris: Yeah, but that's a particularly brutal card. I mean.

Speaker B: Maybe, but I didn't think anything about it because I wasn't interested in meeting him, and they did this without my knowledge, so I didn't ask, like, hey, I want to meet my dad. Is there a way to get in touch with him? It was like they just surprised me with this information while I was, like, in the middle of eating a bowl of fruit Loops or whatever. Whatever the hell.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: And they're like, we reached out to your father. I'm sitting out the flute loops. I'm like, more like unlucky charms, am I right? Which is what a lot of people are saying these days, apparently is a horrible thing that's happening. Lucky Charms making people sick. Did you hear about this?

Chris: No.

Speaker B: Lucky Charms is making people throw up. It doesn't matter. My apologies to General Mills or Kellogg's or whoever the hell Post the three cereal, the Triumvirate. I got to get cereal mega powers.

Chris: I'm not on cereal Twitter, so I don't really know what's happening.

Speaker B: Cereal Twitter! There's got to be a cereal Twitter. Hey, what happened to Waffle Crisps? Hashtag best, goat. Captain Crunch.

Chris: What's going on with Captain Crunch?

Speaker B: He's canceled that French, Admiral. What the heck are we talking about? Oh, my father, right. Yeah. And it's just kind of like I watched a lot. I mean, my grandmother, even though she was in the wind, she loved TV. We all loved TV. So my grandmother's contribution, because I look back down, like, did she pay rent? Because I feel like me, her and my mom thought about whether or not she paid rent a lot, but she did get cable for us, and cable was not yet normal. So I could watch all kinds of stuff. And I did. I watched HBO all of the time because I knew I wasn't supposed to, in a way, because I knew it was like, for grownups and it was an education to me. And by the time I was living in the place, that was were you.

Chris: Watching the comedy specials on HBO?

Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: Who do you remember watching? I was watching all of the HBO one night stands. That was like my jam, you know what I mean? So I also remember the hour specials. Like I remember. I remember George Carlin. I remember Ellen. I remember Margaret Cho. I remember Garoppolo Marin. You talked about Marin. I remember DL Hugley. And I watched Def Comedy Jam at night when it was on because it was like all of these because Martin was the first host of Def Comedy Jam. And Martin was huge. Like, everybody watched Martin. So it was like Martin was on, Living Single was on and Living Color was on. And then outside of those characters that they played on that show, I could see this other version of them where they're just standing up talking. And that was like I was like, how can you just talk to an audience? And it's funny, that blew my mind at the time, and I was, again, very much into sketch comedy and stand up, but I was watching SNL and I was watching Carol Burnett and Hee Haw. I was taking in all versions of it that I could because I was curious about at that age, even what does and doesn't translate, what is and isn't audience specific. What is and isn't generation specific. Like that there were things that I knew would make my mom laugh or my grandmother laugh that wouldn't make me laugh and stuff like that. So it was kind of like in the back of my mind already, processing a lot of these things at that time.

Chris: One time I was driving a van full of college students from Houston to Jackson, Mississippi.

Speaker B: Was that Ole Miss?

Chris: Yeah. No, this is when Chanelle and I both taught at the University of Houston, and we taught a class that was going to take our students to the Mississippi Delta and we had to drive them out there in minivans. So I had a van, Chanelle had a van. There's another teacher who had a van. So we're driving for hours and hours and hours together up the road and I'm with college students, so we're going back and forth like, I plug in my phone and play some music. They plug in their phone and play some music. And after like 7 hours, we're kind of sick of it. We start listening to comedy and we start getting the stand up going. And I mean, it was like the 12th hour we're on the road that day, and I turn on Raised by Cable, your special, and Baron. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. I don't know what it was about that environment because I've heard that album 100 times. I've seen you do it live a bunch, right? But that car ride, those kids were crying. I mean, everybody was like, in pain. We reached a level of delirium together as we were driving down the highway listening to that album all the way through. And I'll never forget it, man. It was one of the most joyful experiences I've ever had with stand up comedy.

Speaker B: That's incredibly kind of you, to.

Chris: Everybody needs to listen to that album. And my favorite bit on it was the Pterodactyl bit, which is about your father.

Speaker B: Yes, it is.

Chris: We're going to have to cut that in here and play it right. But you just cut to it and.

Speaker B: It'S also a perfect way, or at least I was aspiring to encapsulate, just like we've been talking about. I take it for granted that he wasn't around. It was just my normal. So it wasn't until I got older and people wanted to ask me about the significance of not having a father that I realized that I did have some feelings about it and that my feelings were having no feelings about it, which ended up changing. But the idea that I would miss somebody that was never there was funny to me. That was the way that I kind of phrased it in that thing. And again, this has to do with watching all of these different, again, types of stand up and really responding to the people who could take the pain, take the stuff that's deep and turn it into jokes.

Chris: You made a beautiful film that I wonder if you'd be willing to talk about. There came a moment where you decided that you wanted to locate your father and get in touch with them and can you talk about that process and what ended up happening?

Speaker B: Well, you know, something that you said earlier about Las Vegas being lonely. I, at a point, realized how much I had internalized that loneliness and expected it and created circumstances in which I would always be lonely because it was the thing that felt the most normal or comfortable. And seeing how much of a closed off person I guess in a lot of ways I was, because I wanted to be able to control what everybody outside of me thought. That's the performance sort of like that part of performance is that at all times I'm in control. I'm the one talking or I'm playing this part that somebody else wrote. So I didn't in a lot of ways want to be seen, I think. And it started to grade on me and when I was and it's not like I hadn't been in relationships before, but I hadn't been in adult relationships before. So as I got more and it probably comes from, like, again, watching comics that were older than me, also reading all of these plays and books and seeing all of these movies in which people are trying to really examine these things, I started applying this into relationships. I guess it's like I realized that the way that I thought about myself and the world was very old. And taking my father for granted or not understanding that side of my story, accepting silence as the rule in my family history and when we talked about the past no longer was working. And I had kind of reached the end of it for myself. So being in a relationship in which I was trying to actually be vulnerable, in which I was courting the stuff I was uncomfortable with instead of avoiding it or just stuffing it down, figuring out the story of my father and what the heck happened to my mother. And my father was a big part of that because this was a giant part of my mother's life that I had never talked to her about. I didn't understand it at all. And I guess there was a part of me that knew or felt that as long as that is frozen, I'm frozen.

Chris: Wow.

Speaker B: I have to unfreeze this stuff to get past it in order to actually trust this person I'm with. That's the other thing. Like the trust issues and all of these things where it's like I didn't realize how little I let people in. Yeah, go ahead.

Chris: So it sounds like there's a need to go down this path of finding him and sort of facing him. But it was like, fruition.

Speaker B: Right?

Chris: You'd already done all this work on yourself and sort of exploring yourself. It's the end of a coming of age story, really, the way you're describing it, and that now you're grown. And yet this sort of final piece right. Or the need has presented itself for him, but not in the conventional way.

Speaker B: Right.

Chris: You didn't need him to teach you how to throw a ball when you were eight. Right. It's as an adult, as you're doing all this stuff internally, this hard work of becoming the person you want to be.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Because all I had, the information I had about my father, or what happened between my mother and my father, or how my grandmother or how my great grandparents reacted to all of these circumstances, were bits and pieces of shards of images. And it was stuff that I had completed in my own head. I had filled in the blanks, but there was a lot of blanks. And so I guess there was a part of me that felt like I'm saying this after the fact but it's like I wasn't able to let go of or move on from the childhood, the child version of myself in a lot of ways. Unless I really faced this stuff.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because the unknown element of it had stunted my growth in some sort of way emotionally. And I felt like I'm at this place now where I'm not afraid of these things. At least I don't think I am. So it's time to open this box of worms. And my mother had done a lot of work on herself by this time. I had done a lot of work on myself by this time. So it wasn't like by this time. By the time I made that documentary. And I was like, It's time to meet my dad. My mother and I had this fantastic relationship like, completely opposite from what my childhood was. She's a sober person. She's been working on herself.

Chris: When did she get sober?

Speaker B: I was in college when this happened. It was the same summer that I started doing stand up. The summer of 2001.

Chris: Wow.

Speaker B: I remember it because I was in Boston for that summer and her and I talked on the phone. We did a lot of, like, soul searching, had a lot of deep conversations. I bet there's still many conversations to be had, but that was the conversation. At that time, there was actually this exercise. You ever heard of Augusto Bowal?

Chris: No.

Speaker B: Augusto Bowal is this Brazilian theater educator and director and activist and he wrote this book called Theater of the Oppressed.

Chris: Oh, no, I know that.

Speaker B: Right. So he got I don't know if it was exiled from freaking Brazil for empowering people with the truth of their own story.

Chris: Right.

Speaker B: We did this Bowal exercise on one of my theater classes and it was like we were like it was like two lines facing each other. You know, like six kids, six kids, whatever. We're all facing each other. And one line was the passive line and one line was the active line. So I was in the active line, which means when she gave us direction, we were supposed to embody it. So she said, all right, now look at the person across from you and imagine them as your Oppressor. A time that you were Oppressed and imagine this person as that Oppressor. And slowly, I want you to embody your physicality of being Oppressed by that person. And so I kind of, like, turned into this cowering, don't hit me, don't yell at me kind of boy. And then she said, and now I want you to turn to the body of your Oppressor. And so I stood up and came into this body of, like, my mom. And it was like, really? And my mom being this aggressor oppressor, if you will, but I was the one who was embodying it. And for the first time ever, I saw my mom as a human being. Like, it's it's as simple as that.

Chris: Wow.

Speaker B: She wasn't this monster in my story. She was someone who was afraid and didn't know what else to do. And that and that piece of information, like, sent me on a journey. And luckily, at the same time, my mother was working on herself. So when I talked to her, she was ready to talk to me about some of these things that had happened and to figure it out. There's no other way to say I want to say reconcile. But we did we had a really good she made some amendment. Yes, she did. And we talked about stuff that was really hard to talk about because and then when I made this talk about my father, it was like, I got to understand that story from his side. Like, wow. My mother and my father both were playing out a cycle and that I was very much trying to break it.

Chris: It's a beautiful film. Tell people the name of it and where they can find it.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's called Fatherless. I actually have no idea where it is. It was made for a channel called Fusion that doesn't exist anymore. And for a long time, it was on Amazon Prime, but I don't think it is anymore. So it's out there.

Chris: We're going to get it out there again.

Speaker B: We're going to reissue it. Yeah. And the whole premise of it was I had this meeting with this dude, his name was Alex Fumero. And we were talking about they were saying that they wanted to do short documentaries. He basically said 30 for 30s. But, like, comedy, where it's like, comedians doing short documentaries about some subject that they care about or that they're interested in. That's a good idea. Yeah, it was a great idea. And Alex Fumero was like, yeah. So if you ever have an idea for that, let us know. I said, yeah, I got an idea. Where's my dad? What happened to him? What's his story? He's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, I don't know. And I explained the culture of silence that I grew up in and just I learned not to talk about these things because I didn't want to hurt my mom. I didn't want to hurt my grandmother. I didn't want to bring up anything that was hurtful for them. And especially once me and my mother, we repaired our relationship, then I cared even more about digging up these skeletons because these were very informative, hurtful, horrible experiences that led her down a path that she had come back from. And I was afraid to, like, break her, as simple as that sounds. I was afraid to break her or.

Chris: **** with her recovery. Right.

Speaker B: **** with her recovery. **** with her just yes. Her mental health, her mental fortitude, and the peace that she was kind of living with at the time, I didn't want to like, now I got to come dig up all these skeletons. But it was really healing for both of us because in our minds, the things that happened, we remember only the things that were really bad, that were really hard. And so there was something about retracing this story. And yes, it's true that, like, people who should have been there for her I e my great grandparents and my grandmother abandoned her, you know, but at the same time, she had this support group of friends around her in college when this happened. And when we were there in Portales, again, she had fond memories. It wasn't like, oh, the worst thing that ever happened to me here. And that's where the hurricane hit me. It was like, oh, yeah, in that building, and you were the school of business, baby, and everybody knew you. And just all these things that was like, she said, I survived. Like, I made it. And it was like there was something about taking my mother there and seeing her release something that I don't think that either of us thought would happen. That was profound for both of us. And then when I met my father, he fortunately had also done a lot of work on himself. And he was ready for what was to come. And I was nervous as hell. It was crazy because I made this thing, but I also didn't understand what the heck I was in store for. I pitched it as a documentary to people who were going to be like, where is it? We needed by this date to force myself to confront things that I would have just let slide. I was complacent.

Chris: Yeah. I remember watching it for the first time, and I was surprised that to me, the most kind of affecting and beautiful parts of that film are the interactions between you and your mom. Is it as exciting as it is to see the kind of the first meeting with you and your father? The back and forth between you and your mom throughout the whole film is what I really remember. It being really beautiful and you're so endeared to her when you watch that film. I remember texting you like, I would watch a show of just you and your mom talking. I love the conversations that you guys have in that movie, but just walk us through the meeting. Right.

Speaker B: Also have to give a shout out to Dawn Porter, who directed the documentary. Dawn Porter is a brilliant documentary film maker. She directed a documentary called actually Good Trouble, the one about John Lewis. She directed that?

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: By the time we worked together, she had done a documentary, two documentaries. One was called Trapped, which was about the war against reproductive rights, like Southern Planned Parenthoods and how they're all closing down. Well, still relevant, but she wanted to do something that was funny, but she also knew so well how to handle these emotional moments and how to make it so it would be to protect me in a lot of ways. So, yeah, I mean, we're at this park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was the day I was going to meet him, and I was waiting for this guy, and I guess that I didn't realize how big this was for me at the time because I was just trying really hard to be present. But when I looked at the footage later and I'm looking at myself, I looked like a deer in headlights to myself, and I was like, wow. I'm like I'm like I'm, like, imploding. Like, I could see myself being like, okay, it's time for my father to come down here. There's a goose over there. There's a duck over there. I wonder if they ever played duck, duck, goose. All right. High five to no one. But I was nervous. Of course, I also didn't know what it was going to be like. I didn't know what he was going to be like. I didn't even know what he looked like.

Chris: Had you talked to him on the phone at all? Did you talk to him on the phone to set it up?

Speaker B: I never talked to him on the phone. No, don. And Naima and Naima was one of our producers. Shout out to Naima Jordan. I think they were the ones that were in contact with him, and they were the ones who had kind of engineered this moment for us to meet in this park. And the talk and it was surreal. It was so real that it was surreal. And the story continues. The day after that, he took me to one of his favorite restaurants. It's, like this Mexican restaurant in Albuquerque. No cameras. It's just me and him, which is great. Which was great. And I remember it very, very, you know, vividly because I was sitting across this table looking at this man. We're having, like, you know, tortilla chips and all this stuff. And then at the end, you know, we're we're leaving, and I go to the restroom to wash my hands or whatever, and I look in the mirror, and I see his face in my face.

Chris: Wow.

Speaker B: And it was the first time I had ever like I can see my resemblance to my mom, right? But after looking at my father's face and studying it for, like, whatever, 2 hours that we were at this dinner, and then I go in the bathroom, and then I look up, and I'm like, wow, there he is. I just never had that experience. To me, it made me kind of like I literally jumped when I saw my own face. Like, whoa, I do look like him.

Chris: It's a trip, right? It's a trip because to most of humanity, it's the most normal thing in the world, right? It's so normal that you can't even perceive it. You can't even recognize it. But I had the same thing. I mean, I met my birth father at 30 years old, and we hadn't spoken yet. I had no clue who this guy was going to be. I didn't know what he looked like, nothing. And we met in New York, and I get off the subway and I come up the steps and he's right there, and I'm like, well, that's ******* him. He didn't need to do that. I'm like, hello myself. In 30 years, he just looks exactly like me. And it was a trip, man, because I had never I didn't know I didn't know my birth mother either, so I had never seen another human being who had my DNA. And it was that was one of the weirdest, you know, so surreal that it's real. Yeah. And to sit, like this close to somebody on a park bench and have a conversation where you're like it's crazy. Were you able to maintain any kind of relationship after that?

Speaker B: Absolutely. We have a pretty regular conversation, like, every couple of weeks I've gotten to visit him. And I think that there was something that because at the time I made the documentary, I was a couple of years into my relationship with my now wife. And I think that there was something about unearthing this story that I want to say cured, but, like, dissipated a lot of fears that I had about being in a family. As simple as that. My first son was born a year after I met my father, like, to the month, not to the day, but it was like, wow. I felt like I was no longer afraid to be a father.

Chris: And does he know your kids?

Speaker B: He does, yeah. We had the pleasure of going out to New Mexico. We went White Sands National Park around the holiday time and met up with my father and my sister my sister by my father, who was also in my life as well. And we got to hang out. You know, they love the kids. The kids loved them back. I'm the first child of his to have a child, so I am the reason he's a grandfather.

Chris: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, yeah, we've definitely been maintaining this relationship. Every now and then I get nervous when I'm like, I'm going to call him. We're going to end up talking for hours. And then I remember, oh, wait, he's an old, straight black man. Like, he's got 15 minutes of conversation in him at max. At the maximum, he can talk to me on the phone and he's in touch with his feelings, but still, at maximum, he's got 15 minutes of conversation. So it's always like I'm like, oh, okay. That was simple. Not bad at all.

Chris: I'm excited for your next special, man. The parenting comedy gold, I know, is going to give us. A gem of an hour one of these days.

Speaker B: Well, I am working on something that's in that vein, and it'll be a little bit more in the one man show, I think.

Chris: Okay.

Speaker B: Category. Yeah, we'll see. Solo show.

Chris: Yeah. I like that.

Speaker B: John Leguizam show.

Chris: A Tony Award coming your way is what you're saying. All right.

Speaker B: Don't jinx it.

Chris: Baron, thank you so much, man. I could talk to you forever.

Speaker B: From father to father. Oh, boy.

Chris: Hey, you know what? By the powers invested in me by this podcast, you're doing a great job. You're a great dad.

Speaker B: Appreciate you, man.

Chris: All right, we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker C: You guys want to hear some dad jokes? Yeah. All right. I met my dad. It's hilarious to me. I grew up without my father.

Speaker B: And it's fine, guys. I'm fine.

Speaker C: I've made my peace with it, right? And it's a simple story, you know? It's a classic romance. My parents were young. My mom was 19. My dad was 21. She was like, I'm pregnant. He was like, not it. And then a couple of years ago, I'm standing in a playground in Albuquerque, New Mexico, right? And as this man I never met walked towards me, I opened up my arms, and I said, hey, remember when we never came here? Because if you start, there nowhere else to go but up, right? We got along right away. We had so much in common.

Speaker B: It was kind of amazing.

Speaker C: For instance, I'm a comedian, and I'm an actor, and my father acted like I didn't exist for 37 years. And that's a Daniel Day Lewis level of commitment, y'all talk about dedication to a role. That's an acting tip. Make a strong choice. Something like, I don't have a child. And then he nailed that part for 37 years. That's why I wasn't even mad when I met him. I was just impressed.

Speaker B: I clapped.

Speaker C: I was like, bravo. That was the role of my lifetime. I would now like to award you me. And he's in my phone now. I'm getting comfortable with him being in my life, because I changed his number in my phone recently to be saved under his actual name.

Speaker B: I had it saved under the black.

Speaker C: Santa Claus emoji for a really long time because there were some other kids he had to get presents to. What I'm saying is, I now have four brand new adult siblings, okay? My little sister is six months younger than me. Do the math on that. X equals two women pregnant at the same time. Five kids, four women. And when a man does that, he's looking for something. Clearly not condoms, but something. And that's okay if these jokes make you uncomfortable, by the way. It's fine if they make you uncomfortable, because they are mine, and I refuse to abandon them. Thank you very much, everybody.

Chris: I can't tell you exactly what it's like to not trust your parents. If you've never felt that. But trust me when I say it's destabilizing. It degrades the affection you have for each other. It can lead to a lot of vicious fighting. It makes you constantly suspicious and paranoid, not just of them, but of other people. And it models this aversion to feeling sadness or pain at any cost. This devil's wager where preserving the smooth surface matters more than dealing with ****, honestly. Not being afraid of provoking strong feelings in other people, or worse, of elevating your own right to a sort of artificial or contingent happiness or sense of security over others right to be told the ******* truth, to be given the chance to deal with things as they really are, even when that's painful. Another thing I can tell you is that if kids don't trust their parents, they will look elsewhere for someone or something they can trust. Maybe they find that in Richard Pryor. Maybe they find that somewhere else. With Baron's story, and you hear it in a standup too, what a story makes clear to me is that one of the prime roles our parents play, whether negatively or positively, is to help us understand who we are, to help things click into place. That may sound obvious, but in real life, in real families, it's pretty complicated. And when a parent isn't around, we create ourselves under the terms of their absence. And when they're not fully truthful with us, we make ourselves into people who can navigate the world armed with that uncertainty, those suspicions. And we can still overcome all that, still grow into beautiful adults. But if and when we become parents, we have to reckon with the ways we've been imperfectly parented, untended to misnatured. Because now the responsibility is on us. How are these new little people we've made going to understand themselves? Who they are? Where they come from, why their home is the way it is? Helping them grow confident in their identity, leaving things in plain sight? Recording this episode has made me realize that there is one thing that I haven't been fully honest and transparent with my kids about. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've been sober since 2010, long before either of my kids were born. So for their whole lives, a couple of nights a week, I kiss him good night and say, daddy's going to a meeting. I'll come in and check on you when I'm back. Mommy's here. And I go. And ever since Julian, my oldest, could talk. He's wanted to know what these meetings are, who goes to them, what happens in them, and most importantly, why can't he come? Now even little Nico is starting to ask these questions: why do you have meeting Papa? Little by little over the years, I've sketched in pretty vaguely for Julian that these meetings are about grown up problems, that we adults need help too, sometimes. And if we're upfront about that, there are ways we can help each other for a while, that seemed to be enough. But he's almost seven now, and he's asking more and more pointed and articulate questions. What kind of problems are we talking about, dad? What's the nature of these problems to which you so mysteriously refer? So I talked to my wife, and we all agree he's old enough to understand a little more about this, because what I don't want is for him to discover what these meetings are all about one day on his own and feel like he's been lied to. I don't even want him to have a memory of learning about this at all. I want him to grow up with a sense that he's pretty much always understood this. It's just another normal feature of our family life, because understanding something like alcoholism and recovery is going to be a long process. It's not one conversation. It's a bunch of conversations over time. You can't push it, but you can't hide from it either. An example, I was adopted at birth, as was my older brother, most of our cousins, even my godparents children. It was like this whole network of adopted kids we were part of where being adopted was more normal than not. And I have no memory whatsoever of ever learning that I was adopted or what adopted even meant. I sort of just always knew. There was no earth shattering revelation. There was no, come in, sit down. We have something to tell you. Somehow, my parents just made sure I always understood. They micro-dosed me with the knowledge that I came from another's womb, from the seed of a mystery man whose name, likeness, and background were lost to the mists of time. We'll talk more about that mystery man later. The point is, the strategy of theirs, in retrospect, seems like a good thing. That's what I want for my kids when they're older, the sense that they pretty much always knew their dad was in recovery. So I've decided I'm going to help Julian begin to understand what my meetings are about. He's going to have a lot of questions, an aggressive line of questioning. He's going to want to know the chemical compound of alcohol and what it does to the cellular system of various organs. He's going to want to know what anonymous means. He's going to want to know if this is a secret society you're in, right? What kind of costumes are we talking about? Are there wizards? He might ask something like, what happens if you drink again? He might ask, is he going to be an alcoholic too? One day? I'm going to figure out the best way to open up this conversation with him and where the guardrails are, and I'll let you know how it goes. That's on the next episode of Podre. All right, that's our show. Join us next time when I'll be talking to writer and co founder of N Plus One, Keith Gessen. Please leave us a review on Apple podcasts to tell your friends to download and subscribe. Help us grow this into a I'm not going to say movement. I'm going to say scene. A whole scene of dads and the dad adjacent, or even just dad curious people who want to understand themselves and their kids and their parents a little better. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Podre is created and produced by me, Chris Brunt. Additional production on this episode by John Greenhalgh. Original artwork for the show is by David Wojo. Special thanks to Brad Franco and Julian and Nico Benz.

Julian: This episode is now over.