Shows
Knight-Majik PodcastKnight-Majik Podcast 080325Welcome to Knight-Majik, podcast, our first episode for August! This week dedicate it to all the young lives taken too soon this past week in Philadelphia and across the nation. We put together an eclectic mix of songs honoring children and young people! Please like, follow and share!! Peace!Wake Up Suite Laurence Fishburn & The Natural Spiritual Orchestra School Daze 3:21 Giant Steps Jerry Bergonzi Just WIthin 5:02 Save The Children - Single Gil Scott-Heron Save The Children - Single 8:05 Save the Children The Intruders Cowboys to Girls: The Best of the Intruders 7:00 Save the Children B...
2025-08-032h 59
Tell Me About Your FatherAatish Taseer on exile, assassination, and supernatural revelationAuthor Aatish Taseer, whose new book A Return To Self: Excursions in Exile comes out this week, did not meet his father, Salman Taseer, the former Governor of Punjab, Pakistan until he was 21 and their relationship was, to say the least, complicated. In 2009, he wrote a book about the experience, Stranger to History, about his journey to meet his father that was also an exploration of what it means to be a Muslim in the 21st Century. Shortly after Aatish made contact with his father, in early 2011, Governor Taseer was assassinated by his own bodyguard for pardoning a woman...
2025-07-141h 06
Tell Me About Your FatherPride 2025: A George Michael episodeIt's Gay Pride (in America)! To commemorate iconic homosexual musician George Michael in the week of what would have been his 62nd birthday, and for our fifth annual Pride episode in the last week of Pride MONTH, Matt takes a look at the enduring cultural impact of George Michael's song Father Figure, and the idea that, as eminent American producer, Dick Clark once put it “Music is the soundtrack of your life.” And from there, Matt talks about how George Michael’s music helped him as a small boy to re-discover the fun of pop music, and maybe even life...
2025-06-2826 min
Tell Me About Your FatherOur 2025 Oscars Episode With Vanity Fair's Richard LawsonIt’s our annual TMAYF Academy Awards special, in which we examine the ten Best Picture nominees through the lens of literal and symbolic fatherhood. Joining us, as always, is the founding cousin of the TV recap, Vanity Fair’s chief critic, and co-host of the Little Gold Men podcast, Richard Lawson. Together, Matt, Erin, Elizabeth, and Richard chat about dadly silver screen topics, including tyrannical father figures who loom large even in their absence, the seemingly shifting depiction of male mentorship, and, of course, the enduring influence of totalitarian dads, be they popes, oligarchs, or wizards. We also get...
2025-02-261h 21
Growing Up ChristianEp. 210 – Object Lessons, Ostentatious Origins, and the Arrogance of Hatred w/ Matt PhillpThis week we’re pleased to welcome back writer and host of the Tell Me About Your Father podcast, Matt Phillp! In this episode we cover a broad range of topics like cringe youth group object lessons, the absurd difference between America’s self-concept and what it looks like from the outside, the symbolic importance of wheat in film, and the morality and necessity of the Oxford comma. It’s a fun conversation, and we hope you enjoy it. Follow Matt on Instagram, X, and Bluesky (@mattphillp), and check out Tell Me About Your Father wherever you listen to podcas...
2024-12-061h 48
Tell Me About Your FatherErin Gibson on helping her dad through his final act.Emmy nominated writer, comedian, producer and podcaster, Erin Gibson talks with Matt about growing up in Texas with a father who was, deep down, an actor and writer, but who was put through a military academy, fought in Vietnam, and who became an engineer and never saw his natural talents come to fruition. She recalls, three years after his death, what it was like to be by his side for his final month as he fought a losing battle with cancer, and how his death taught her not to be afraid of death and to take more chances.
2024-10-071h 01
Tell Me About Your FatherKomail Aijazuddin on "Manboobs," lineage, and its many forms.Matt Phillp talks with Komail Aijazuddin, author of new memoir Manboobs about what it was like to grow up Muslim, fat, and queer in Pakistan - with no ability to hide any of those characteristics. He talks about the process of extricating himself from the oppressive silence of his family and from Lahore and what it was like to discover that the America he’d seen through pop culture was nothing like the real thing. Click here to follow this podcast on Instagram.Click here to support this podcast on Spotify
2024-08-121h 18
Tell Me About Your FatherChristian drag queen Flamy Grant talks deconstruction, democracy, and dad.It’s our PRIDE episode! Recorded a few days before her new song, SPRKL, dropped - Christian country music star and drag queen Flamy Grant talks candidly about her journey out of the evangelical southern church in which she grew up and became a worship leader, through her parent-sanctioned ex-gay therapy, and eventually out the other side as a gay man and drag queen who sings about the experience. She talks about the estranged relationship she has with her father and how she places him in perspective in her life, about what she does to stay fortified as she tak...
2024-06-0354 min
Lost DebateMy MAGA DadRavi recently joined Tell Me About Your Father to discuss how his relationship with his parents has influenced everything from his career to how he approaches people with different opinions. To hear more, follow Tell Me About Your Father wherever you listen to podcasts.On this episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt Phillp talks with former Obama staffer and school principal and current co-host of both the Majority 54 podcast and the Lost Debate podcast, Ravi Gupta, about growing up with a democrat mother and an increasingly right wing father and how the conflict between them o...
2024-06-021h 06
Tell Me About Your FatherRavi Gupta on connecting with his MAGA dad.On this Memorial Day weekend episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt talks with former Obama staffer and school principal and current co-host of both the Majority 54 podcast and the Lost Debate podcast, Ravi Gupta, about growing up with a democrat mother and an increasingly right wing father and how the conflict between them often took form in political debate. He talks about what it was like to travel with his father to the village in India in which his father grew up for the first time since his father moved to the US decades ago, how he’s m...
2024-05-251h 04
Tell Me About Your FatherAlex Steed on his dad's resting bitch presence.Matt talks with Alex Steed, producer and co-host of the podcast You Are Good - a feelings podcast about movies - about choosing to live with his father in rural Maine at 12 years old - a dynamic he describes as “a 12-17 year old living with an old man as a roommate,” how his childhood led him to become a “chaos goblin” and how he worked through that, and how nursing his father through cancer helped him to let go of his fear of death. He talks about what was behind changing the name and focus of his podcast Why Are D...
2024-04-291h 19
Tell Me About Your FatherMarcie Bianco on Breaking Free of FathersMatt Phillp talks with culture writer Marcie Bianco, author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom about her childhood growing up working class in South New Jersey with a father who, as she puts it “erased himself” and how that foundation informs her perspective on society and politics today. They talk about how her family dynamic shifted when she got a sports scholarship to Harvard, a moment that changed her life forever, how she learned to defend herself at an early age against her father’s violent outbursts, and what it means to throw o...
2023-12-041h 06
Tell Me About Your FatherF-U Daddy, One More Time: A Deep-Dive into Britney Spears' "The Woman In Me"This is our third episode, since the launch of TMAYF, dedicated to the life story of Britney Spears. Erin and Elizabeth discuss her long-awaited memoir The Woman in Me, and look back at the cultural mood that led to the pop princess tragically being held prisoner by a legal conservatorship that gave her father Jamie the right to control her person and her fortune for 13 years after she had a nervous breakdown in 2008. We unearth a Daily Mail article from 2008 entitled "The Day I Saw Britney Spears' father pull a knife,' by a journalist named Sharon Churcher that highli...
2023-11-221h 41
Tell Me About Your FatherBryan Safi on fathers, politics, and Mariah CareyFor the season 4 finale and 2023 Pride episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt spoke with comedian, TV and film actor, and Emmy award-winning writer Bryan Safi. As the co-host of three weekly podcasts, "No Autographs Please," "Ask Ronna," and "Attitudes!" formerly known as "Throwing Shade," Bryan is as much a master of comedic improv as he is a shrewd cultural critic, and political commentator. The child of Syrian immigrants on his father’s side, Bryan grew up gay in a deeply conservative household in El Paso, Texas in which his mother suffered from ongoing mental health challenges and hi...
2023-06-261h 01
Tell Me About Your FatherKomail Aijazuddin on the UK’s New Dad/King and the Fallout of Empire.A day after Britain crowned its third Charles as King in 1200 years, Matt and Erin spoke with author Komail Aijazuddin about what it was like growing up gay in Lahore, Pakistan with a father who was the honorary consul to the UK, what it was like being taught how to be a British gentleman at a British-style school in Pakistan, and how he once curtsied for the Queen. Komail talks about how the brutal fallout of British imperialism still resonates across the globe and what the future may hold for the British monarchy. We discuss the pettiness and tone-deafness o...
2023-05-091h 27
Tell Me About Your FatherBecoming a Closeted Evanglical Pastor to Earn Dad’s LoveHow do you connect with a father who is so emotionally stoic that the only thing you can really talk to him about is the weather? On this episode, Matt talks with George Azar, author of the forthcoming My Gay Church Days: Memoir of a Closeted Evangelical Pastor Who Eventually Had Enough, about how diving head first into political and religious conservatism was one way to connect with his dad. He even became a pastor in the process. And it worked, too. But then, when he came to terms with his own sexuality, everything had to change.
2023-02-071h 08
Tell Me About Your FatherFood, Fathers, and the Memories That Bind ThemMatt talks fathers with two queer Asian food professionals: cookbook author and graphic designer Frankie Gaw (author of "First Generation") and Yuhe Su, the talented chef behind the professional home kitchen Daddy's Got Chopsticks, about the ways in which they maintain a connection with their fathers through recipes from their respective childhoods. They talk about the importance of scallion pancakes, Olive Garden, pig’s blood, masculinity, coming out, and the symbolic power of Antoni from Queer Eye. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2023-01-2345 min
Growing Up ChristianEp. 108 - They're Either Begging for Credibility, or Trying to Ruin the Fun w/ Podcaster Matt PhillpOur guest this week is Matt Phillp, who cohosts a fantastic podcast called “Tell Me About Your Father” (along with Erin Hosier, who we talked to on Ep. 60)! Matt grew up between Australia and the US, and was exposed to Christianity as a boy after his father passed away. He attended a prestigious catholic school, where as a young gay kid interested in the arts, he faced more than a little pushback. Matt joins us to discuss the similarities and differences between Christian culture in the US and Australia, how he made his way through school and out of the...
2022-12-202h 33
Tell Me About Your FatherReaching the Dead on Zoom: A Halloween SpecialOn today’s special Halloween episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Matt sits 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. Featuring unedited excerpts from the session, the episode is a moving, funny, and unexpectedly pragmatic conversation between Victoria, Matt, and what purport to be the spirits of his father and late maternal grandmother. 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 - who di...
2022-10-311h 21
Tell Me About Your FatherMove that inkwell, King: “Daddy Issues” with Erin, Matt and ElizabethIn a gold-plated return to the airwaves, our current events show “Daddy Issues” is back from its summer hiatus with a special super-sized catch-up edition of all the celebrity dadly dysfunction we must discuss as we enter into pumpkin season. Matt explains the British monarchy in the wake of mummy HM Queen Elizabeth’s death, and the saga of Britain’s new divorced dad, now known to his sons, William and Harry, as King Charles III. Erin unpacks the British cultural obsession with the body language cues of the senior royals as they try to keep their emotions inside like so...
2022-09-271h 09
Tell Me About Your FatherMy Christian Con Dad From HellOn this episode of Tell Me About Your Father, Jenna Perry tells Erin and Matt the story of how she spent her entire childhood unwittingly on the run as her con-man father moved his fundamentalist family from state to state (and church to church). But long before her father’s lies had expanded to the point of fracture, even as a small child, Jenna had him pegged as an evil man who only masqueraded as a man of God to get what he wanted. Eventually, her hypervigilance, growing disappointment, and anger toward him led to a memorable escape with a...
2022-08-291h 19
Tell Me About Your FatherJason Kander on PTSD, fatherhood, and the presidencyTo celebrate 4th of July, Matt speaks with Jason Kander, veteran, author, former Secretary of State for Missouri, and the first millennial elected to statewide office, about his new memoir, Invisible Storm: a Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD, co-written with his wife, Diana. Jason discusses how he approaches fatherhood post-therapy, and what he learned from his own father, grandfather, and great uncle, the iconic Broadway composer John Kander. He also talks about who, in politics, is probably most desperate for their father's approval, and how President Obama helped him name his son, True. Get fu...
2022-07-0451 min
Tell Me About Your FatherMr. Darcy on Fire Island: Daddy Issues! With Joel Kim BoosterJoel Kim Booster, comedian, actor and writer of the just-released Pride and Prejudice-inspired gay romantic comedy Fire Island, joins Matt and Elizabeth this week for Daddy Issues! Joel, who also stars in the film alongside Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang, tells us about what Jane Austen and Regency-era England has in common with the impenetrable wealth and whiteness of Fire Island, portraying gay culture and sex for a mass audience via a Fox Searchlight production, and casting Conrad Ricamora as a perfectly dickish yet lovable Darcy. Joel also talks about losing his father to Covid last year and th...
2022-06-0647 min
Tell Me About Your FatherConnecting to a Dead Father Through Hearing His Voice - With Writer Michèle Dawson Haber and Matthew PhillpThis week, Matt is joined by writer Michele Dawson Haber, to discuss their shared experiences of losing their fathers as young children. Both Matt, who was three when his father died, and Michelle, who was three months old, have few or no memories of their dads but were left with audio recordings of their voices. Last year, Michele wrote a Modern Love column in the New York Times about discovering a connection to her late father Eliahu, decades after his death by suicide, through tapes of his voice and, in this episode, Matt and Michele interview each other about t...
2022-05-231h 11
Tell Me About Your Father"Sean Penn Smelt It and Dealt It:" Daddy Issues, ft. Naveen KumarJoining Erin and Matt on today’s episode of Tell Me About Your Father’s pop culture and current affairs show, Daddy Issues, is the charming, and thoughtful cultural critic, Naveen Kumar - who contributes regularly to the New York Times, Them, Variety, and Broadway News. And we do manage to cover it all: President Zelensky’s heroism, Will Smith’s tantrums, Sean Penn’s irrelevance, Broadways (off and on), Meghan Markle ™, jockstraps from Berlin, the untouchable elegance of Jerrod Carmichael, and the voluptuous horror of Noam Chomsky. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tel...
2022-04-111h 15
Tell Me About Your FatherArtist Salman Toor on Painting the Shadow FatherArtist Salman Toor, 38, had his first solo museum show in late 2020 at the Whitney, an acclaimed exhibition of 15 paintings titled How Will I Know, which the New York Times called “a brilliant debut.” Since then, Toor, who has shown work at the Frick Collection, has rocketed to stardom in the art world with a stunning body of work in lush green evocative of 16th and 17th century-style old masters paintings. Many of Toor's pieces depict young, queer South Asian people, which he says are based on himself and his friends, finding connection in a world dominated by white patriarchy. On t...
2022-01-3141 min
Tell Me About Your Father"Like Snow White With a Flip Phone:" Daddy Issues Ft. Maggie SerotaWhen journalist Maggie Serota isn’t asking Glenn Danzig the tough questions and making Hollywood flacks squirm, she’s sharing screenshots of text conversations with her father about his several dogs on her must-follow Twitter account. Maggie’s dad, as she tells Matt and Elizabeth in this episode of “Daddy Issues,” uses his flip phone to send her blurry images of his Rottweilers and to check in on her well-being after seeing news about a violent crime that happened months prior and is nowhere near where she actually lives. You know, dad stuff! Maggie also talks to us about her fascinatio...
2021-11-221h 11
Tell Me About Your Father"Like Snow White with a Flip Phone" Daddy Issues! ft. Maggie SerotaWhen journalist Maggie Serota isn’t asking Glenn Danzig the tough questions and making Hollywood flacks squirm, she’s sharing screenshots of text conversations with her father about his several dogs on her must-follow Twitter account. Maggie’s dad, as she tells Matt and Elizabeth in this episode of “Daddy Issues,” uses his flip phone to send her blurry images of his Rottweilers and to check in on her well-being after seeing news about a violent crime that happened months prior and is nowhere near where she actually lives. You know, dad stuff! Maggie also talks to us about her fascin...
2021-11-221h 37
Tell Me About Your FatherRemembering the Journey With the Sopranos: The End With Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan SepinwallErin & Elizabeth solve the mystery of the final episode of the show, "Made in America," widely considered to be the greatest tv finale of all time. We talk to the critics and authors of The Sopranos Sessions, Matt Zoller Seitz (New York Magazine) and Alan Sepinwall (Rolling Stone), about the meaning of the ending, the evils of parallel parking, the importance of ambiguity in art, what makes David Chase tick, and the living legacy of the late actor James Gandolfini - his son Michael Gandolfini, who plays Tony Soprano as a young man in The Many Saints of Newark, 7 years...
2021-11-0847 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTony’s Fractured Self and Bottoming from the Top on the Sopranos: Part 3 with Matt Zoller Seitz, Alan Sepinwall and Chingy NeaOn this episode, Erin and Elizabeth looking at The Sopranos’ acclaimed season 5, “Two Tonys,” and the show’s handling of race, sex, and the characters’ performance of gender. Once again, we’re joined by The Sopranos Sessions authors and TV critics Matt Zoller Seitz (New York Magazine) and Alan Sepinwall (Rolling Stone), and we’re also hearing from a new voice: Mel Magazine contributor Chingy Nea, whose article “The Sopranos Belongs to the Gays Now” examines the show’s surprisingly queer underpinnings. We also look at how Tony's issues with self-definition reflect our own issues as a society, as two decades worth of new...
2021-11-011h 23
Tell Me About Your FatherAnalyzing the Mofos of the Sopranos: Part 2 with Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan SepinwallTell Me About Your Father’s Sopranos series continues with the second episode of our four-part deep dive into the heart of darkness of our favorite TV dad Tony Soprano, with our guests Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, authors of The Sopranos Sessions. We discuss Season 3 and 4’s’ portrayal of violence against women, the breakdown of Tony and Carmella’s marriage, Tony’s connection to his daughter (and her tip-toeing towards an awakening about who her father is), his disdain for his misunderstood dumb-dumb son and heroin addict nephew, and his love for a horse. All this underlines the generation...
2021-10-251h 30
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Mother, Tony Soprano: Part 1 With Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan SepinwallTell Me About Your Father is relocating to New Jersey for the next few episodes and immersing ourselves in the fathers, mothers, children, generational trauma and crystalline dysfunction of the Soprano family. We’ve also got two very special guests joining us across the entirety of these episodes: The Sopranos Sessions authors and critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, the foremost experts on this show and all things that make David Chase tick. In this episode, we talk with Matt and Alan about their 20+ year relationship with the show, the genius performance of Nancy Marchand as Tony’s albatross of a...
2021-10-181h 12
Tell Me About Your FatherDaddy Issues: Dads of Summer EditionWe'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 former New York governor and fan of normal hugs and kisses Andrew Cuomo, to the end of the US staying out of our collective uteri - it’s in here. We also celebrate Mi...
2021-09-071h 55
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Sohaila Abdulali (From the Archive + Updated Intro)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) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2021-07-2040 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell me About Your Father: Barbara Feldon (From the Archive!)** 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 relationship with him led her to become obsessed with God and, later, marry a French sociopath. She talks honestly and openly about therapy and learning to shed her need for male approval.
2021-07-0656 min
Tell Me About Your FatherDaddy Issues ft. Mickey Boardman: Dr. Fireman Will See You NowPride 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, humpback whales, and the rich dummies who live on Washington Square Park and love to dial 911 into their phones whenever kids are having parties there. They also talk about Mickey’s relationship with his father, the time his brother made hi...
2021-06-2156 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Eric SolomonEntrepreneur 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 Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2021-03-0840 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Jake JaxsonCritically acclaimed gay pornographer and Cocky Boys creator Jake Jaxson aka Jason Buchtel talks with Elizabeth and Matt about growing up the youngest of six in a conservative, religious household in Louisiana, distancing himself from his family as he came to accept his own identity, and how Adrian, his husband of twenty years, brokered a reconciliation between them that forever altered the way he tells stories through porn. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2020-04-0654 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Mickey BoardmanThe Editorial Director of iconic pop-culture magazine, Paper, talks to Erin, Elizabeth and Matt about growing up in Chicago with an addict for a father, having a family therapist who suggested he be taken to a prostitute, his own struggles with addiction, and how he and his father connect today. WARNING: This episode contains frank discussion about suicide. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2020-04-0651 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Sohaila AbdulaliSohaila 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) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2020-04-0639 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Matthew PhillpMatt remembers his father, Ross William Phillp; November 6, 1946 - May 30, 1982. "I'll look at photos and stare and go, Who are you?" Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2020-04-0621 min
Tell Me About Your FatherTell Me About Your Father: Barbara FeldonThe 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 relationship with him led her to become obsessed with God and, later, marry a French sociopath. She talks honestly and openly about therapy and learning to shed her need for male approval. Get full access to Tell Me About Your Father at tellmeaboutyourfather.substack.com/subscribe
2020-04-0656 min