The New Fatherhood

We all carry around an idea of success—the job promotion we crave, the car that’ll make strangers on the street crane their necks in jealousy, the beautiful house that turns visitors quiet as they walk through the front door. Fewer ask where these ideas come from. Mostly, they’re absorbed from our parents, from culture, and from the other dads we compare ourselves to without meaning to.
We spend our lives chasing these ghosts. But nobody warns you what’s on the other side—what might happen if you get everything you wanted and end up feeling hollow. For this month’s podcast, I sat down with my good friend Toph—known to the rest of the world as SOHN, the British artist and producer behind the albums Tremors and Trust. SOHN signed a record deal with 4AD, played Coachella and the late-night US TV circuit, and has spent well over a decade living the “artist dream” while raising three boys. Six years ago, we met in the lift of a Barcelona hotel, and eventually bonded over something neither of us saw coming: an episode of depression after the birth of our second child.
We pulled each other through that dark time, with long walks and honest conversations. Just before the launch of his fourth album Albadas (Dawn Songs), we sat down in his studio to talk about all of it. This is the most honest conversation about success, money and creative identity I’ve ever heard from a dad in the public eye. We talk about his five-year creative block, the album that only arrived when he stopped writing as SOHN and started writing as a dad, what it does to your head when your creative output is tied to the food you put on your kids’ plates—and why, when what he was chasing turned out to be a trap, he sold the dream house, killed the ego he’d spent so long protecting, and started again.
Listen and Subscribe On …
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Pocket Casts
Where to Find SOHN
* SOHN’s website
* His new ambient album Albadas (Dawn Songs)—stream it everywhere or grab the limited vinyl/CD on Bandcamp
* Trust—the album we discuss throughout, drenched in themes of fatherhood
* Follow him on Instagram
Episode References
* Trust (2022)—SOHN’s third album, written after a five-year block
* Tremors (2014) and “The Wheel”—where the world first heard SOHN
* The Streets—the Mike Skinner problem: what do you write about when the drama’s gone?
* Oasis, Be Here Now—the Rolls-Royce in the swimming pool
* Elliott Smith and Nick Drake—and the myth of great art made in depression
* Kevin’s essay: “How to Raise Tiny Humans Without Losing Your Mind”—The Tunnel, and coming out of it at five years
Timestamps
0:00 — a new definition of success
0:46 — a conversation between good friends
2:01 — the fantasy of the artistic dream
4:14 — neck pain and stress
7:09 — what shocked SOHN about fatherhood: patience, autonomy, silence
8:50 — from one kid to two kids
12:58 — paternal postnatal depression
14:51 — great artist vs. stable force: the identity collision
18:44 — the five-year creative block
20:42 — having nothing to say
22:26 — Tundra, the record nobody heard
24:20 — early struggling musician days
25:06 — the buffet of success
27:57 — signing with the guy whose music he hated
31:52 — losing the compass
33:42 — depression as a weather system
35:13 — the myth of making great art while depressed
36:51 — at peace with the kids, at war with yourself
39:28 — the head f**k of creative money: “we’re screwed” to “we’re rich” overnight
44:04 — selling the dream house
47:27 — imposter syndrome
49:25 — Trust: giving up as a creative strategy
53:39 — when the fears came true
55:39 — the ego death journey
58:33 — listen up, parents: it gets easier
1:00:34 — where are all my friends?
1:05:34 — alternative to climbing the social ladder
1:07:03 — three boys watch their dad on stage
Credits
Host: Kevin Maguire
Managing Producer: Elizabeth Van Brocklin
Sound Editor: Sam Williams
Theme Music: SOHN


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For a hundred years, parents attempting to undertake creative endeavours have had a ready-made excuse, courtesy of Cyril Connolly: “The enemy of art is the pram in the hall.”
Kids, the thinking goes, are where creativity goes to die. But Austin Kleon thinks Connolly got it exactly backwards.
This month on the podcast, I sat down with Austin—author of the New York Times bestselling trilogy Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work and Keep Going—to talk about his new book, Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. This book is a love letter to his two sons, and a collection of everything they taught him about creativity.
Austin spent his career helping people tap into their creative potential, Then his kids arrived, and he realised he wasn’t the teacher anymore. He was, in his words, “the apprentice to the beginners,” the studio assistant in his own home, saving the drawings, keeping the paper trail, and watching two small artists figure out how to “let it rip.”
We talk about why children aren’t an obstacle to your creative life but an opportunity for it to grow, the gentle art of benevolent neglect, and how watching your kids create might be the best way to quiet your own inner critic—and re-parent the artist you used to be.
Subscribe to the Podcast
* Spotify
* Apple Podcasts
* YouTube
* Pocket Casts
Where to Find Austin Kleon
* Buy Don’t Call it Art
* Read his blog, especially the parenting tag
* Subscribe to his newsletter
* Follow him on Instagram
Episode References
Books & Essays
* The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson
* The Idle Parent Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson
* Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman
* Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
* 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write by Sarah Ruhl
* The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
* Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
* Playing With My Son by Andy Baio
* Heidi’s Horse by Sylvia Fein
* American Elf by James Kochalka
Featured Artists, Musicians & Innovators
* John Baldessari – The legendary conceptual artist whose revolutionary “Post-Studio Art” teaching style shaped a generation of creators.
* Creative Growth: Childhood to Maturity at MoMA – The historic 1939 solo exhibition tracking artist Dahlov Ipcar’s development from a young child to an adult.
* Lynda Barry – The MacArthur-winning cartoonist, author of What It Is, and professor of interdisciplinary creativity.
* Ruth Asawa – The brilliant San Francisco wire sculptor who believed art education should be accessible to all children.
* Eleanor Coppola – The visionary documentary filmmaker who beautifully balanced her own creative life alongside an iconic filmmaking family.
* Brian Eno – The experimental ambient music pioneer whose philosophy centers on answering the ultimate creative question: “What is it that I actually like?”
* Michel de Montaigne – The Renaissance essayist whose father instituted a spartan pedagogical plan, including raises with peasants and learning Latin as a first language.
Misc
* Cyril Connolly’s “Pram in the Hall”
* Jeff Tweedy on Making Art without Control
Timestamps
0:00 — welcome to this episode
03:59 — advice for a first-time author
06:45 — Austin's houseful of weirdos in Austin, Texas
08:03 — bottling the energy of two little kids
10:36 — growing up in rural Ohio cornfields
17:45 — Owen's magic line
23:50 — being your kids' apprentice
27:17 — young parents, keep a dairy
36:00 — kids know what they like
40:56 — scarcity vs. abundant fatherhood
42:36 — read some mother artist memoirs
47:17 — kids as a source of creative energy
47:52 — go to therapy before you have kids
Credits
Host: Kevin Maguire
Managing Producer: Elizabeth Van Brocklin
Sound Editor: Sam Williams
Theme Music: SOHN


Get full access to The New Fatherhood at www.thenewfatherhood.org/subscribe

We've all been told that anger is a problem—something to control, suppress, or apologise for. But what if the real problem isn't that we have too much anger, but that we have no idea what to do with it?
This month on the podcast, I sat down with Sam Parker—senior editor at British GQ and author of Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives—to dig into why so many fathers have a broken relationship with this most fundamental emotion. Sam argues that anger isn't the enemy. Aggression is. And that learning to feel anger without shame or fear might be one of the most important things we can do—for ourselves, our partners, and our kids.
We talk about the moment each of us realised we'd been burying our anger for decades, what happens in your body when a boundary gets crossed, and why repairing after you've lost your temper matters more than never losing it in the first place.
Subscribe to the Podcast
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Pocket Casts
Where to Find Sam Parker
Sam's website
Find Sam’s book Good Anger on Amazon and Bookshop.org
The Good Father newsletter on Substack
Episode References
The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
The Gottman Institute: The Four Horsemen
Kevin's essay: "Where's My Jenny?"
The New Fatherhood Therapy Fund
Inside Out (Pixar, 2015)
Timestamps
00:00 — welcome to the anger episode
03:39 — meet Sam's family: Jessie, baby Olive, and life in Kent
04:32 — rethinking what anger is for
05:18 — when anger gets swept under the carpet
06:15 — suppression vs. aggression: the anger problem nobody talks about
07:10 — the "I don't really get angry" myth
9:49 — anger does not have to equal violence
12:39 — how anger can manifest in the body
14:06 — what is "good anger"?
14:48 — the discomfort caveat
17:45 — Sam's boxing breakthrough
19:11 — anger can be clarifying
20:44 — how anger hijacks the brain
27:50 — managing anger between siblings
33:05 — getting mad near a newborn
39:00 — dad's role was disciplinarian
42:24 — resentment as anger's cousin



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From Jay Kelly to Sentimental Value to One Battle After Another, Oscar season 2025 is overflowing with dads—absent ones, ambitious ones, ones who chose career over family and are now reckoning with the cost. We dig into how this year's best films moved beyond the “scary dad" trope to give us fathers who are flawed, human, and genuinely complicated, and what that shift says about how the world is thinking about fatherhood right now.
Credits
Host: Kevin Maguire
Managing Producer: Elizabeth Van Brocklin
Sound Editor: Sam Williams
Theme Music: Sohn
More of Bilge’s work:
Bilge’s writing on Vulture
Bilge’s dad’s film notebooks 
Review of Train Dreams 
Review of Jay Kelly 
Review of Hamnet 
Review of One Battle After Another 
Bilge’s Dad Watchlist
The Champ
The Shining
Bigger Than Life
Train Dreams
Jay Kelly
One Battle After Another
Walking with Dinosaurs
Other show references:
Subscribe to TNF newsletter 
Kevin’s essay on Train Dreams
Timestamps
00:00 Hello
00:31 Becoming Nemo’s Dad
03:30 Let’s talk movies!
05:00 Film diaries c. 1940s
06:10 Apocalypse Now
07:20 Present dad award
10:43 Core memory of The Shining
15:00 Masculinity crisis
16:48 [SPOILERS] Train Dreams
19:15 Providing vs. protecting
19:58 [SPOILERS] Hamnet
20:20 [SPOILERS] Sentimental Value
21:04 [SPOILERS] Jay Kelly
23:50 [SPOILERS] More Train Dreams 
27:24 [SPOILERS] Leo is best film dad 
29:10 The Shining easter egg
31:21 Letting go in the teen years
33:00 Watching movies with your kids
36:43 The outcast dinosaur



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Why do so many dads lose touch with their friends — and why does no one talk about it?
Kevin Maguire sits down with writer Sam Graham-Felsen for a candid conversation about male loneliness, modern masculinity, and the friendships fathers quietly need but rarely prioritise. From the myths of toughness to the courage it takes to reach out, this episode challenges the idea that men are supposed to do parenthood alone.
Where to Find Sam Graham-Felsen
Website: https://www.samgf.com
Sam's novel "Green": https://www.amazon.com/Green-Novel-Sam-Graham-Felsen/dp/0399591141
Episode References
Sam’s Badlands essay: “I Tried to Toughen Up My Son. Things Didn’t Go as Planned.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/magazine/national-parks-badlands-roosevelt-south-dakota.html
Sam’s essay on male loneliness: “Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/magazine/male-friendships.html
Kevin’s essay, “Where’s My Jenny?” https://www.thenewfatherhood.org/p/wheres-my-jenny
Brooklyn Stroll Club (example of dads building community): https://brooklynstrollclub.substack.com/p/welcome-to-brooklyn-stroll-club
Man of the Year podcast episode on the “TCS method” (Text/Call/See): https://bleav.com/shows/man-of-the-year/episodes/86-how-often-should-you-see-your-friends-aka-the-tcs-method/
Theodore Roosevelt and the Strenuous Life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strenuous_Life
Dadurdays: IRL meetups in a city near you https://www.thenewfatherhood.org/p/introducing-dadurdays-irl-meetups
Men calling to wish each other goodnight https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRyyCCyx/
Ray Charles — "America the Beautiful" (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FXN1Z6Q004
Bruce Springsteen — "Badlands" (Official Lyric Video, YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ME4n-mKKc
Woody Guthrie — "This Land Is Your Land" (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s
Timestamps
00:00 — Why adult men lose friendships (and why it matters)
02:00 — The loneliness gap in early fatherhood: “Where are the people checking on me?”
04:00 — The first time Sam felt like a dad (Prospect Park leaf walks)
08:00 — The Badlands trip, Theodore Roosevelt, and the myth of “toughening up your son”
12:00 — Bullying, humiliation, and how confidence collapses in unexpected places
15:00 — What’s changing for boys (gender norms) vs what’s worsening (cyberbullying)
18:00 — Helping kids pick friends: “nice” and shared interests over status
21:00 — Writing publicly about loneliness: why it’s hard, and why it lands
22:00 — The cultural script: dads should provide, achieve… and outgrow friendship
23:00 — Friendship as the most underrated mental health strategy
25:00 — “Where’s my Jenny?” + being the dad who reaches out first
26:00 — The “intruder dad” feeling in mum-heavy parenting spaces
29:00 — Dad Days + WhatsApp groups: you get out what you put in
33:00 — TCM/TCS method: text weekly, call monthly, see quarterly
35:00 — Why phone calls are weirdly hard (and how to make them work)
36:00 — Voice notes + “private podcasts” as friendship glue
37:00 — The “asynchronous book club” idea


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