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.
First up, Matt reflects on an intimate chat with Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer and co-host of "The Lost Debate" and "Majority 54" with Jason Kander (who has also appeared on TMAYF). Ravi has made it his job to find ways of facilitating communication between people who are politically opposed, and there’s almost no one more different from him than his own father.
In 2022, Matt sat down for a real psychic reading with medium Victoria Laurie who reaches into the primordial ether to get in touch with his deceased father, Ross, who died suddenly in 1982, at 35, while running in a marathon. Matt was almost four years old. Matt and Victoria touch on the survival of consciousness after death, what the other side might be like, and, in particular, what insights his father has to impart to his eldest son. Erin observes.
In 2020, the artist Chris Santa Maria's uncle, Randall Jacobs, aka Uncle Bunky, finally lay down for what he referred to as the "dirt nap." An obit Chris wrote about his colorful uncle, who he described as a "living, breathing 'hang loose' sign," unexpectedly went viral on Twitter and Reddit, charming readers who had, or wanted, an Uncle Bunky of their own. On this episode, Chris talks to Erin and Elizabeth about Bunky's enduring legacy, the substance abuse that runs in the family, and our cultural tendency to celebrate the qualities of a person that ultimately led to their premature death.
It’s the Molly Shannon interview (!), wherein Erin talks with the fellow OG Clevelander and literal SNL Superstar, live on stage at the Cuyahoga County Public Library in 2022, about her special relationship with her dad, who came out to her six months before he died. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry…
Elizabeth speaks with Gretchen Cherington, author of the 2020 memoir Poetic License, chronicling her difficult relationship with her late father, Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer-prize-winning poet and U.S. poet laureate under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. One night when Gretchen was 17, while her parents threw a party to celebrate Anne Sexton for her Pulitzer win downstairs, her father came into her room, sat at her bedside, and groped her. Gretchen, who stayed silent over what had happened for the next five decades, revealed what her father had done to a stunned audience while speaking at an International Women’s Day event in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 2017.
In 2021, Elizabeth and Erin talked to the anonymous creator of the viral IG account, "Christian Nightmares." Christian is using the archive of American evangelical messaging, videos, photos, and music going back decades, to examine pop culture dedicated to a vengeful Heavenly Father, one which loomed over his upbringing in an evangelical Baptist church and left him terrified and ashamed as early as age 5. Christian talks about his own father, whom he wishes had better protected him from the church.
In case you can't get enough of our dad content, our Elizabeth is the featured guest on Macho Pod!
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Happy Father’s Day!
We love you,
Erin, Elizabeth & Matt
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