Teachable Moments, Trauma, and why "Bean Dad" struck a nerve
You Are Good
Alex Steed
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We meant to take this week off but then a thing happened. Musician, podcaster and public personality John Roderick struck a collective nerve by telling a story about his daughter, beans, and a can opener. In doing so he became known to many as "Bean Dad". We use this surprise phenomenon, and how and why it resonated negatively for many, to talk about "teachable moments", anxiety, trauma and collective PTSD. It's about Bean Dad, sure, but really it's about us all.
We'll be back with our first proper episode of 2021 next week. Magnolia, y'all!
Why Are Dads is a show in which hosts Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed attempt to understand what the hell it means to be the grown children of dads and other dad-like figures. And, as they do with all difficult subject matter, they do so by looking through a pop culture lens.
You can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Patreon.
You can find producer and music director Carolyn Kendrick's music here. She's also on Twitter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody and |
| 0:06.4 | and happy new year. This is Why Are Dad's a show that is typically |
| 0:10.3 | about feelings, relationships, vulnerability, and other squishy stuff discussed in a |
| 0:15.3 | heartful and funny way, mostly through the lens of looking at dads in movies. |
| 0:20.4 | I'm one of your hosts Alex Steed, my wondrous co-host Sarah Marshall, will join in just a minute. |
| 0:26.0 | I want to set this episode up a bit. |
| 0:29.0 | We're going to take this week off and then join you all next week to talk about the movie Magnolia. |
| 0:36.4 | And that's still going to happen. |
| 0:38.2 | But over the weekend a thing happened on Twitter. |
| 0:40.9 | The reason we're going to comment on it is because it has a lot to do with everything we cover broadly in the show. |
| 0:47.0 | It's to do with pop culture and dads, |
| 0:50.0 | performance in main characters, in the impact of parenting styles on children and how we |
| 0:55.8 | communicate and what and who we are as a people both individually and collectively and |
| 1:00.4 | so so much more and it's so funny to think that it is all of these things |
| 1:05.2 | because it's been reduced to the phrase, |
| 1:08.8 | Bean Dad. |
| 1:10.0 | We're talking about how John Roderick, the musician, podcast producer, and performer became said Bean Dad. |
| 1:16.7 | In case you are not on Twitter and this drama has not bled into your universe, |
| 1:22.1 | John Roderick posted a thread. A thread is |
| 1:24.8 | basically just like a lot of tweets back to back that are constructed to tell a |
| 1:28.0 | story and the thread was about his daughter's inability to use a can opener |
| 1:32.2 | and then kind of what followed. The narrative read as slightly elevated |
... |
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