The Heart of Dad Culture

Culture Study Podcast

Society & Culture, Arts

4.5 • 789 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What makes something Dad? Is it pleated Dockers? A worn baseball cap? Asking (again) if you’ve checked your oil? Incompetency in the domestic sphere paired with competency outside of it? I’ve long loved thinking through both the serious and the ridiculous of Dad Culture, and for today’s episode, we have an actual scholar of it (Phil Maciak, currently hard at work on a Dad Culture book) to unpack the history and theory of Dadness, including: do you have to be a dad to be part of Dad Culture (no) is Dad Culture just white middle-class boomer dads (also no) and is Bandit from Bluey too good of a Dad (maybe). Listen on, and let’s Dad It Up.Show Notes:We’re big Phil Maciak fans here at Culture Study — read my interview with him re: screentime here and listen to the (very popular) episode of the pod (one of our earliest!) on Paw Patrol:Follow Phil on BlueskyRead Phil’s television criticism at The New Republic hereDad Magazine !!!Phil mentions Kirsten Swinth’s book Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and FamilyElla Emhoff in her camo Harris/Walz hat:Rob Mitchum’s original review of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky (2007) for PitchforkIn 2019, Mitchum revisited the concept of “dad rock”Is 26-year-old MJ Lenderman making dad rock? The comments on this YouTube video suggest… maybe.We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:HISTORICAL ROMANCE (will neither confirm nor deny that we have a co-host whose confirmation made Melody faint)Fan Fiction — Past, Present, FutureDark AcademiaHow cookbooks get madeSpiritual care for non-religious peopleCleaning Culture especially “cleanliness as moral”Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment — WE REALLY NEED MORE!! You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) hereFor today’s discussion: What’s Peak Dad to you??

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. Once a month or so, we pick an episode to be free for everyone so that if you're not a paid subscriber, you can get a little taste of what life is like on the other side. If you like what you hear, head over to culturesteadpod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber. It's just five bucks a month or $50 a year. And if you already subscribe to the culture study newsletter,
0:21.8	you get a really big discount. Okay, thanks, everyone. On to the show.
0:31.7	This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. I'm Phil Macyac. I am the TV critic at the New Republic. I teach at
0:40.7	Washington University in St. Louis and I'm working on a book about history of dad culture.
0:45.2	And you're a dad. And I'm a dad, yeah. And you're teaching a class about dad culture. And I'm teaching a
0:51.6	class called Dad Culture Studies. I mean, I am so excited for this.
0:56.0	Like, you came up with the idea, but it intersects with so many of my interests.
1:00.0	Like, do you remember Dad Magazine from The Toast?
1:03.0	I do.
1:04.0	I was actually looking through it recently.
1:06.0	Yeah.
1:07.0	Like, I mean, Dad Magazine like this, so Dad Magazine was a feature on the toast that was actually just like a fake magazine cover.
1:14.5	Yeah.
1:14.9	And we'll put a link to it.
1:16.8	And it was fantastic because it featured all different types of dads.
1:21.2	Like, you know, stock images of dads of different sizes, races,
1:28.3	inclinations towards facial hair.
1:31.3	But then all of the sub-headlines,
1:34.3	like the things that would be featured
1:36.3	in the supposed dad magazine were what I think of as very dad things.
1:42.3	So can you tell me like just off the top of your head,
1:45.5	I will supplement some components of this dad culture,
	...

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