Something I love about talking to people on this show is I get to learn about their parents and how they were shaped by them.

Almost all my guests end up talking about their parents or the grown-ups who raise them at some point,

because it's impossible to make sense of who we are without thinking about the adults who influenced us.

My guest this week, TV writer and comedian Tamara Yahia, is very close with her parents,

and she's always known that they are unique.

For instance, Tamara's mom has an only fan's account where she posts sexy photos of

herself. Tamara's dad takes the photos. Tamara's family is from Argentina, where attitudes around sex

are a little more sexy than in the U.S. One set of her grandparents met at a brothel. The other set used to take the family to the Red-Like district in Buenos Aires so they could look at the sex workers.

All of this is chronicled in Tamara's new memoir called Cry for Me, Argentina, My Life as a Failed child star. This book is hilarious and thoughtful about

her family culture's contradictions. Her parents talked about sex all the time, but mention

of bodily functions like farting. That was verboten. They also changed their mind a lot, like deciding to move to the U.S., then back to Argentina, then back to the U.S., all before Tamara was a teenager.

The memoir is also about Tamara's brief stint as a singer in Argentina, starting when she was about nine years old. Her act was at

times pretty adult for a child performer. She sometimes wore skimpy clothing and sang suggestive

songs by Madonna and others. And writing a memoir pushed Tamara to see how some parts of this upbringing were not ideal.

But here's what makes this episode special and complex.

She holds these newer critiques informed by her adult perspective,

alongside affection for these crazy adults who made up her family.

They left her a lot to unpack, which she does in her writing,

with the blunt way of speaking and sense of humor that she got from them,

including her grandfather, Paco, who she describes as, quote,

the most inappropriate member of the family,

and also her everything.

...