Dear Old Dads

The last Best of Tom for October is a March 2024 episode that's explicit, even for us. This is the full patron cut, so it ends with the after-show stories patrons got. It's a repeat for patrons, and every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

A Maurice Sendak quote about the scary things kids keep from grown-ups starts a talk about what we hid from our parents and what our kids might be hiding from us. Tom never told his dad he snuck out, or about the babysitters: one who read him and his brother Penthouse Letters, one who broke into Dad's safe and found something she shouldn't have, and one who taught them to shoplift. Plus how much truth to tell kids, and why some kids just open up more than others. In the patron-only ending, Thomas has a Zelda problem and Tom takes Finn to MagicCon.

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Best of Tom continues with Tom, the squarest man in podcasting, on kids and drugs. This is the full patron cut, so it ends with the Breckenridge edibles story we still bring up, never before on the public feed.

Original description -

A listener asks how to talk to kids about drugs and alcohol, and the dads have to admit how little they know. Eli eats leftover shroom chocolate before bedtime, Tom clears his whole calendar for a shroom trip that never kicks in and finds out his friends have been getting high around him for years without telling him, and a boss gets twenty-something Tom drunk on Rumple Minze. Then, for the first time outside Patreon, the Breckenridge edibles disaster: three gummies, a hot tub at twenty below, a phone lost in a fifteen-foot snowbank, and a pizza order that ends in tears.

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Best of Tom continues with the episode the snapping turtle comes from. We've called that story back nearly thirty times since, and public listeners have never heard it: it was told after the show, for patrons only. This is the full patron cut, so here it is. It's a repeat for patrons, and every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

Family vacations, then and now. Tom's dad takes the boys canoeing in the Boundary Waters, Thomas's family only ever drives to a Dodgers game, and Eli's family spends Disney stock money on Ripley's Believe It or Not. Tom on the blended-family "Thunderdome" trip to St. Louis (he came home and bought a ring), and why none of us can switch off on vacation. Then 19 minutes the public feed never got: Tom's trip to Florida to visit his mom, with house rules about wild dogs and alligators, the snapping turtle, and the neighbor with the spear gun.

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Best of Tom continues with the patron cut of a May 2023 episode, so if you're not a patron, there's a story at the end you've never heard. Every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

Did our families run on "my family, right or wrong"? Tom's single dad had binary rules (double trouble, no short-order cooking), his brother Bob never confessed to anything, and Tom ended up firing Bob twice. Plus borrowing money from Dad on a real promissory note, when kids should be allowed to swear, and Eli's magic gig at a cocaine party.

Once for patrons only: Tom visits his mom in Tampa as a kid and walks into something no kid should.

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Best of Tom continues, and this one has never been on the public feed. It's a patron bonus from December 2022, and it holds the story we've called back more than any other: Tom's first job, at the car wash fight club. It's a repeat for patrons, and every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

We work through a backlog of listener questions: what activities we'd want for our kids, how hard to push them into sports, finding a kid's "thing", and who their role models should be. Thomas tells the story of Arlo and Phoebe's Christmas recital, Tom refuses to be the turkey, and then Tom finally tells the whole car wash story: ex-cons, drugs sold through car windows, new hires fighting for money in the detail bay, and the day management robbed the place and vanished.

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Best of Tom continues. While Tom recovers, we're replaying his classic stories in order so the running jokes make sense, which means we're still in the early episodes, and they're packed with lore. This one is an all-time favorite, full of jokes we still reference to this day. It's a repeat, and every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

Are we spoiling our kids? Three dads raised on strict, bare-bones childhoods look at how much we give our own kids, from clothes and toys to screens, phones and car keys. Tom's dangerous childhood comes with famous punishments: his dad invents the most creative one ever devised for one bad word, a C in algebra gets Tom grounded for a year, and seventeen-year-old Tom hangs off the spare tire on the back of a Chevy Blazer at 50 miles an hour. Plus Tom on finding his way back to his teenage son through Magic: The Gathering.

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Best of Tom, part 2! While Tom recovers, we're replaying his classic stories in order. They're repeats, but each one is the extended patron cut, so if you're not a patron, there's a story at the end you've never heard. These early episodes were all about our backstories, so this one is loaded with deep Tom lore, plus maybe the best Eli lore ever recorded. Every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

Bullies: the one topic that might turn these progressive dads into cave men. But should it? Is the problem solved now? Should we hit our bully's dad with our car? And what if our kids are the bullies? Tom confronts a neighbor in a way nobody recommends, Eli explains how he bullied an entire school, and Tom joins the wrestling team behind his dad's back.

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While Tom recovers, Dear Old Dads is on a break, so this month we're replaying the Best of Tom: a curated run of his classic stories, in order. These are repeats, and each one is the extended patron cut, so if you're not a patron, there's a story at the end you've never heard. Every download helps keep Tom's share of the show coming while he's out.

We're starting at the very beginning, with the inaugural dadisode from June 2022. Why and how are we dads? How were we dadded as kids? Our upbringings span a very interesting range of great to shitty, and a lot of the show's lore was born right here, from Gilligan the monkey to the eternal question: is Tom's dad Hitler?

Once for patrons only: Tom tries to teach his 16-year-old to drive in a church parking lot.

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Yeah so you kinda have to hand it to Tom's luck demon. It's undefeated. It has Tom fighting his own bones.

Tom is out (spine goblin is at work today), so the dads are joined by YouTuber and dad-of-five Viced Rhino, who has a really good Tom impression. His family also stole the entire alphabet apparently. For patrons only: Thomas makes it to Chuck E. Cheese for the very first time. Arlo has thoughts.

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Tom is still in the hospital, so the dads are keeping it (relatively) mild this week. Joining Thomas and Eli is the one, the only Lydia Smith, honorary dad and apparent inverse of Tom's luck, who is very much thriving right now. Lydia is getting her groove back, and strangers keep noticing. Also, a listener asks: is it okay to sit on your phone while your kid plays at the playground? (Eli has feelings)

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Note: This episode was part of the double record while Tom was home from the hospital. As mentioned previously, he is currently back in the hospital and we wish him speedy healing and a swift return home! He probably has more HVAC issues to deal with!!!

Tom apparently hasn't earned his rest; poor dude had HVAC issues the second he returned home from the hospital. Luck Demon strikes again. Then the dads dig into a listener email about a marriage where the sex was great for 15 years until one question changed everything. Finally, Eli's got us covered with a parenting story for patrons only, and it is so incredibly sweet.

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Note: Since this episode recording, Tom has been readmitted to the hospital. He's been keeping folks updated in the Facebook group so join up there if you haven't yet! Looking forward to his good healing and getting him back again soon.

Well folks, Tom is back (mostly) and he's got stories about his time in the hospital. Plus, for only patrons, hear how Donovan and Finnegan have stepped up in handling things in Tom's absence, and what in particular from this host of duties got captured on the Ring Cam footage.

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Note: this one was recorded the same day as the previous release, so mentions of Tom in the hospital are related to that time period!

Heath and Anne join Thomas and Eli for a very special Ask the Enwrights Anything! It all starts with a lovely rendition of "Rip Into It" and it only goes up from there honestly. Then, just for our incredible patrons, Kai joins stepdad Heath, Thomas, and Eli to...mainly torture Heath. Fun was had!

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Tom is in the hospital, and it's not just his usual laziness. We don't think, anyway. Thomas and Eli play three voice memos Tom recorded from his hospital bed, including one that may just be drugs.

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Eli reports back on Max's first night on Baby Adderall, and it went exactly as well as you'd expect. The dads then tackle a listener who is losing an argument with his partner about Michael Jackson, which turns into a conversation about Leaving Neverland and why the special pleading never quite makes sense. Then: a Nobel laureate's research on falling birth rates, the manosphere, and whether masculinity actually needs saving.

Stick around for the patron-exclusive story from Max's annual checkup, which opens with a sentence no pediatrician has ever heard before.

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Eli comes back from a dad-friends vacation with a story about roughhousing, including a rare joyful moment for Max. Later, a Reddit dad gets benched from family time because his relationship with the kids is TOO good.

Stick around for a patron-exclusive story about Eli's beach vacation and a basket of bread that wasn't meant for him.

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The dads dive into a discussion about boredom, and what kind of responsibility you have as a parent to prevent or resolve it for your kids. And at the end, Tom gives a sneak peek for this episode's patron-exclusive story.

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After talking about AI and Tom's cat adoption journey, the dads turn to a concerning listener email that is asking the wrong question.

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Thomas turned 40 and is crumbling to dust before our very eyes. He chose poorly. The dads start planning his funeral and talking about what it means to be old.

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