Eyes Wide Open: The Consequences of Finding Out, with Tom Junod

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're gonna find out what this sound is. The phone rang and I went and pick up and there's this voice. Hey, this is Tom Cruise. Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah Tom, she's right here in my bed. Right after the sad. Idle money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button. Wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money's always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares. It even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. Ah, nature. Always calling it just the right time. When life plays dirty, water wipes. Now two times stronger and even softer. Ready for whatever happens back there. Available online and in store. Water wipes, cleans, cares and protects sensitive skin. Two times stronger material than previous water wipes. This is an ad from BetterHelp. Am I forgetting something? Did I reply to that email? What am I doing? Ever feel like your mind has an inbox that never stops filling? Don't forget to reply. Some days it's not just messages. It's pressure. Did I say the wrong thing? It's doubt. Do you think they like me? It's everything at once. Therapy with BetterHelp can give you space to unpack what's weighing on you. One message at a time. Get matched with a qualified therapist and start clearing your mental inbox today at BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. I am wearing what I now realize is a cardigan that's not intentionally an homage to the cardigan. And therefore to you. But it hasn't pointed out to me. Cardigan on the loo thing or cardigan on the fret thing? I dare say there is resonance in both of those characters. I would say so. I feel like you got to explain Tom, you know, who Fred is because you're on a first name basis. Okay. So Fred is Fred Rogers. Fred is also known as Mr. Rogers. He was the children's television host from early 70s on to just before he died in 2003. Yeah. And he was the emblem not only of sort of incredibly nerdy children's television. He even sort of like pioneered a certain kind of nerdy style consisting of cardigans. Yeah. I walk into this office here in our Metal Arc Media studios and I go into the closet and I take out this cardigan and I. It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a neighborly day in this beautywood. A neighborly day for a beauty. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you. So let's make the most of this beautiful day since we're together. We might as well say would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please? Won't you please? Please won't you be my neighbor? For those who are not familiar, you not only wrote this iconic profile of Mr. Rogers for Esquire. Right. It also years later became a film and I watched that in theaters, not even knowing you. Only to realize that when I met you, I had watched the cinematic adaptation of you. Right. And what level of cringe does one feel when they're watching a Hollywood actor depict you across from Tom Hanks, Mr. Rogers? So when I first read that script, the guys who wrote it called me and said, we really love the script and we really would like for you to give it a chance, which is sort of a warning right away. And I asked them, I said, well, so why do I have to give it a chance? And they said, because pretty much everything that involves you and Mr. Rogers is accurate and the family stuff we all made up. So I read it and I asked them afterwards to change the name because there were so many things that happened in the script and in the movie that just didn't happen in life. It was you, Tom Juno, that was the name of the character. Tom Juno was the name of the character. Oh, that's great. Or not exactly. Yeah. So there's a scene in there where like me and my father get into a fist fight at my sister's wedding. Don't talk about her. Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You don't know the whole story. Your mom really was not the same. Don't talk! I'm not my mom! Come on, come on. Get off me! Hey! Come on! Come on! My sister eloped. So there was no wedding. So there was no fight at a wedding. And so, yeah, so I asked them to change the name and they did so. And I sort of, you know, sort of disconnected from the movie a little bit from there. It's like basically, you know, it's Lloyd Vogel now and so you can do whatever you want with this. And so I just got to jump in here to say that what I wanted to do with the real life Lloyd Vogel, Tom Juno, comes from a place of believing that truth is often stranger and more narratively satisfying than fiction. It's an enormous reason why I've envied the writing, really the life of Tom, for a really long time. In his career as a writer, which followed his career as a handbag salesman, which is a whole other story, Tom has reported some of my favorite magazine pieces ever, including about sports, about everything from Muhammad Ali's funeral service to a hidden Penn State football scandal to all sorts of features about Hollywood. But ever since I saw that Mr. Rogers movie from 2019, which got Tom Hanks nominated for an Academy Award, I've been wondering how Tom Juno felt about how he, this rigorous journalist, was portrayed. Matthew Reese was playing me. I mean, he had spent time with me. He had my gestures down. He had a lot of it down. And so seeing yourself like that way sort of transmuted into cinematic art, you can't be prepared for it. And then that summer, the summer before the movie came out, they invited me in for a screening. And I was like, ah, this is just a thing. And I'm sitting alone in this Sony screening room over on like 25th Street. And I'm just sobbing. But the reason Tom was sobbing, it turns out, wasn't because his life story had been butchered. He was sobbing because there was something in that dramatization, in the conviction of his character that connected to a part of his life that he had never rigorously investigated. His father, Lou, a guy whose fictions have now inspired a work of stunning nonfiction titled, In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. Which speaks to how Tom reported some of his best magazine stories, as you'll see. And also what it means for a journalist to really want to find out the truth. There's some stuff where I'm like, I'm shocked you put this into print. Yes. And one of them, speaking of a conceit, again, that we enjoy on this show, which is sometimes we'll put a briefcase on a desk and we'll treat it like Chekhov's gun and we'll figure out when to fire it. Do you really? Okay, so now we're getting real meta. I dare say that what was in your dad's briefcase was not in Mr. Rogers' this. It was definitely, well, you can't say definitely, but it was probably not in Mr. Rogers. If it was, you did a horrific job burying that lead for Esquire. So last night we did a thing in Atlanta, which is my hometown. And the host, whose name is Melissa Faye Green, surprised me by asking me to read this passage out of the Mr. Rogers story. And I read that and realized as I was reading it, as never before, I hadn't looked at it in a really long time. But as never before, I realized that it was just sort of like a portrait of my dad, like an anti-matter version of Lujanad. Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam Zam iconic story of the 9-11 jumper that you wrote and beautifully, again, investigated, there's reporting there. Controversially to Kevin Spacey's story, Nicole Kidman, Obama and drone strikes, Mr. Rogers, on and on and on, right? There's that. But the way that I cannot help but see you across this desk is the lens of Mr. Rogers and also your dad. But the notion that Mr. Rogers played along in a way that you want and need a subject to. What did you feel from him that gave him this stature in American life? So I grew up with a dad who was like a full-time seducer. There was nothing that my dad did that wasn't for a fact. And Fred had that but to a different end. You know, my dad was always just coming at you in some sort of way, the way he spoke, the way he just conducted himself. Just even just walking across the kitchen to get something out of the refrigerator. And Fred was like sort of like the same way. You know, I mean, I happened to first meet him when he was at his apartment in New York. I called him, said, you know, hey, Fred, I've been assigned the story. Can I talk to you? Yes, Tom, I'm right around the corner for him. Do you want to stop by? And so, you know, so I stopped by and he's wearing a bathrobe. It's in the afternoon. He's wearing, come on in, Tom. I'm sure, you know, you weren't expecting this, were you? And, you know, and I walk in there and I'm starting to talk to him and he comes by and he, you know, with his camera. And he shoots, I'm just talking and he shoots a camera with a flashball in his dark apartment. And he gets on the phone. He was with his wife, Joanne. Hi, Joanne. I'm with my new friend, Tom. I just sent him, you know, took a picture that I'm going to send to you. And so it was sort of, it was sort of invasive, but you had said that he plays along. The thing that he made me do was play along with him. I had to either like say, this guy is completely insane or bullsh**t or just look at the sort of the higher truth that he represented. But you walk in and I'm imagining being you or Matthew Reese trying to imagine being you. And already I'm writing in my head. I'm like, Oh my God, is this the lead? Yeah. You know, I'm like, I can't, I wouldn't be able to help myself. But then the follow up thought I'm imagining is I'm getting everything that I want here. I wasn't, I wasn't. You know, the thing about him is I'd ask him a question and he would give a completely noncommittal answer. He wouldn't even, or he wouldn't even answer at all. He would just pivot. Like, tell me about your, your childhood, Fred. Well, Tom, you know, how about your childhood? Did you have anything that was very special to you in your childhood? Yes, Fred. I had something called old rabbit. Oh, oh, I'll imagine that once he was a very young rabbit, right, Tom? You know, and so it's just that. And he just, you know, eventually just sort of by sheer force of like his attention that he paid, his kindness, he just sort of won me over. Yeah, which is to say that on some level, maybe the guy coming in to write an aspirationally interesting profile of a man who has a very carefully manicured image, right? Maybe you're finding that there is some frustration in how he is in control, but it also sounds like the guy whose dad was Mr. Rogers, but inside out the opposite on some level. I mean, absolutely. It sounds like you also enjoyed being fathered by Mr. Rogers. I kind of did. And I guess I was, I guess I was looking for that. I guess I was, this was 1998. I was a little bit adrift since going from GQ to Esquire, the Kevin Spacey thing that happened. I had gone through this whole thing. It might as well explain it now. I'd gone through this whole thing where I sort of outed Kevin Spacey. I really got my, I got my ass kicked on that story. So just because we're in 2026, it's worth saying Kevin Spacey is gay. Right. At the time, you framing it as a conceit in this magazine piece. Right. And using, I think your mom. Yeah, I used my mom. By the way, this was a rumor in the question that I am grappling with all of the time on this show and to varying success, I suppose, that you were grappling with as a magazine writer was there is this conversation that's happening in private and to what extent can that be had in public. Right. And in this case, of course, there are good societal guardrails, ideally for how we respect privacy, but the inherent tension of anybody who wants to write and report confrontationally and has a discerning taste for what qualifies as public interest, which can be both serious drone strike political level. But this was a celebrity profile. So that's a little bit different from the start. Exactly. The journalist, especially at that time, was supposed to play ball. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, on that particular story, I didn't play ball. I think that the you used a word just a few minutes ago, conceit. It was the conceit of how I talked to my mom. She was like, isn't Kevin Spacey gay? And it was the conceit that everybody knew. And so I think that's the thing that got me in trouble that I didn't sort of like take on this question genuinely. I did it as a conceit. I did it like a little sort of dance around just to be my first. It was the first story I wrote for Esquire after leaving GQ. Oh, I didn't realize that it was basically of like, oh, my, look, look at, look at how provocative I can be. And I think that that is the thing that really sort of turned people against that particular story. I get why people had such a negative reaction to it. I get why you have since effectively owned up to saying, I wish I didn't do it in that way. In that way. Yeah. But all of which is the setup for the fact that Esquire magazine assigns Hot Shot magazine reporter who loves provocation, Mr. Rogers. And that was definitely sort of part of the whole thing. I think people thought it would be sort of interesting for that to happen. But I was, like I said, I was, I was a little bit adrift at the time and had taken a beating and didn't know exactly what to do next because being self-consciously provocative did not work for me. And then I went, I see Fred and he definitely gave me another direction to go in. The notion though of being a confrontational writer and just what that means and how you decided I need to turn that approach, which is fundamentally investigation. Yeah. It's it's it's about finding out. Yes. Yes. Yes. This book was in the works for how long? I began it in 2015 and finished in 2024. So I guess that's nine years. I mean, I've been writing about my dad a number of times. I had written about my dad by writing about other people. I mean, one of the first things I did when I got GQ was write a story about Frank Sinatra Jr. I wrote a story after that about Tony Curtis and then I wrote a story about my dad himself. I do like the idea of us sort of traveling through your career with this as the inevitable end point. But Frank Sinatra Jr. Love is lovelier the second time wrong. Was that a sad character to you? He was the leader of his dad's orchestra, but the guy that he like idolized wasn't Frank. It was Nelson Riddle, the guy who did the great swing and arrangements for that orchestra. And I saw in him a guy who had dealt with just the the huge shadow of his dad by just being like sort of off-putting. He didn't really do anything to make people like him or even notice him. And I think that that was the thing about him that really struck me was that he didn't want to be noticed because, you know, he had gotten kidnapped and he sort of survived that whole thing by memorizing like everything the kidnappers did. He was that guy. He lived inside himself, never went outside himself. And that's how he survived being Frank Sinatra Jr. I guess I saw that in him because I had a little bit of it in myself. When you are doing that profile, how much are you already self-aware of like, ah, I'm doing, I'm kind of doing therapy? Yeah, I don't think I was that self-aware at the time. So when I was a kid, you know, I grew up in Long Island and Sunrise Highway was one of the big thoroughfares by Wanta on the south shore there. And we used to go to this steakhouse in Belmore called McCluskey's. It was a great steakhouse. But on the way back, we passed this old dance hall called the Sunrise Bohemian Village. It was huge. It's been long knocked down. But I used to occasionally see the sign there. Tonight, Frank Sinatra Jr. That was like five or six years old. And there was a part of me that said, oh, that poor bastard, you know. So I was always fascinated with Frank Jr. And when I went to GQ and my editor, David Granger, said, you can basically write whatever you want to write. What do you want to write about? I was like, Frank Sinatra Jr. And he was like, okay. But Frank Sr., as a matter of how your dad carried himself. Sure. That's pretty on the nose. Oh, it's very on the nose. So he was a Sinatra kind of character to the extent that during World War II, so he got, he got, he was an infantryman, got wounded in Normandy. And he was about to be sent back to the front when a lieutenant heard him crooning, heard him singing. And, you know, the troop truck came in, my father got on, and then a lieutenant took him off. And he became, he became a, you know, a roving crooner around, around Western Europe. We need more of those. We need more roving. Singing to the troops in a traveling show called For Men Only. Oh my God. And so the For Men Only sort of became the theme of my dad's life in a certain way. I like that now it's like USO tours and it's very fancy people. Yeah. Back then it was, it was Lou. It was Lou. It was, you know, some comedians, a guy from New Orleans who could play hot jazz trumpet. It was that kind of thing. I mean, my father sang Silent Night to the troops on Christmas Eve during the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, they would, they would go as close to the front as they could. And they did it for the men and they did it for the troops. So For Men Only, and this is a key part of this because there are lots of women in this book. Lots of women. And, and we will get to that. But just the notion of who you're performing for. Right. When your dad has these commandments, I can name, you know, some of them right off the bat, you know, from always look a man in the eye, always have a firm handshake, always wear white to the face. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. Don't bullsh**t a bullsh**ter. So my dad had this way of speaking that I try to sort of reproduce in the actual sort of prose of the book. With ellipses. With the ellipses. My dad had this way of pausing in mid-sentence and then landing on a word of emphasis. And he did that in virtually anything he'd say. So if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly. But, but how much of that do you think was him performing for women versus performing for men? So that's a great question. I would say that the employment of the maxims, he would say it for men, but he would do it for women. So he would like wear white to the face or wear a turtleneck, you know, for women. And, you know, my father's day wasn't complete unless he could turn some woman's head. That was his, that was the mark of a good day. And so he, that was my childhood, was watching my father enter rooms and people turning around to take a look at him. And so did he find it thrilling when you became men's magazine celebrity profile writer? My father really enjoyed and took great pride in my magazine career. Half of it. He loved the celebrity profiles. He really loved that. Like after I wrote about Tony Curtis, he thought that for some reason that Tony and I, you know, were best friends. Anytime, anytime I went like into the city, he would say, did you see Tony? And, but he didn't, he didn't read the other stuff like the falling man, all of us like why he couldn't understand why I would even do that. That's story. It's a downer. And with Mr. Rogers, he didn't get that. He didn't get that at all because he thought that Mr. Rogers was effeminate. Oh, that's fine. Why would you, why would you write about somebody who is effeminate? Who's not wearing white nearly as often to the face as you should. Even though it was really interesting with my dad. So he had a uniform that he would wear in Christmas season. And it was gray slacks, a white shirt, a narrow black tie, and a red cardigan. So he wore, it was the, it was like the one sort of Venn diagram overlap spot between my dad and Fred Rogers was the red cardigan. I'm not saying that your dad was evil, Mr. Rogers. I'm just saying in the yin and yang. No, that's my, that's my first no comment. But your dad, to put a finer point on where a lot of the danger and the tension is in this book and in his story. I'm wondering what he thought of your profile of Nicole Kidman. Oh, he loved that. The obvious sort of flirtation that occurred there. It's such a memorable story because number one, you're like, who the f*** is this writer who's putting himself literally in bed with Nicole Kidman. This was 1999 and summer of 1999 and Nicole and Tom Cruise were coming out with and promoting Eyes Wide Shut, which was, if you remember that time, it was supposed to be a little bit of a view into, you know, beyond the veil of their marriage. That was like the sort of the subtext of a lot of the promotion. Right. To what extent are there masks or G's? Right. Exactly. All that stuff. And, you know, they were sort of, they were showing a little leg as the old statement used to go. And so I went down to Australia to meet with Nicole and, you know, had a really wonderful time with her. She was a wonderful person to hang around with. We went to some cop's bar in Australia and all these, you know, sitting at a table with her. It was just me and her and, you know, people waited a really long time to approach her. But once they did, the whole place was just all over her. And she was just fantastic. So she was really cool. And, but then, you know, came the day that I was supposed to leave and I called and told her I was going to leave. And she said, well, Tom, you know, I'm going to come down and see you. And I was in my hotel room, which I had been in for like eight days by that time, because you can't go to Sydney without spending, you know, time there because the, you know, the flight there is so punishing. So, you know, my room is horrible, but I'm thinking I'm just going to go down into the lobby, you know, to meet her that I'll get a call. I'll miss Kidman's here and I'll go down there. Instead, I get a call that says, you know, Miss Kidman's on her way up. And so I, so I'm running around the room, like sticking my socks in my underwear, like under the bed. And, you know, she walks in in jeans and a black turtleneck and just walks right to my bed and lies down. And I'm like, so what do I do? So I, what could I do? I, I, what would Lou do? And there is some of that. There's no doubt some of it. But I did go in, you know, laid next to her. And then the phone rang and I went and pick up and there's this voice. Hey, this is Tom Cruise. Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's, she's right here in my bed. Ellipsis. Ellipsis. In my bed. In my bed. And he goes, yeah, right, in your dreams, man. And, and that's, that's how, that's how that scene ended. And it's been, you know, I've thought of it a lot since, basically, like what was really going on there. And I've always wondered whether it was a little bit of a setup. 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I've actually got a bit of a bone to pick with you about the new office. I don't know. Well, that's the thing. You haven't done anything. You had all these vision boards and waffle about how you make the office perfect and you've done nothing. Look, you know we've been busy. Well, I've had enough. So I've been in touch with Wayfair and they want to help us out. That sounds quite good from you. How do you organize these things? That, my friend, is a trade secret. Anyway, Wayfair.co.uk is the best destination to shop online for furniture and decor. So you're in safe hands here, mate. Reckon you can do it? I think I was bored to do this. Well, I'm going to trust you with this. Pippa, you need to keep an eye on him. The value is unreal on Wayfair. So hopefully he doesn't go too over budget. This is actually going to be the best office ever. We're going to have a coffee corner, a meditation station, a meditation area. What have I done? Don't make me regret this. And if you're looking to sort your own place out or just show your home a little love, head to Wayfair.co.uk. I don't want to put too fine a point on the tease here, but the point at which you discover that your dad has been living a life that is so destructive to how your mom would feel and how your household had been constructed, a life of, I don't know, infidelity and more. When does the tonnage of this begin to sink in? When do you first realize that, oh my God, I've seen maybe hints of an iceberg, but there's so much underneath? The answer to that question is that it's both really early and then much later. When I was three years old, my father had an affair with a mother of one of, like my first friend, the guy who I shared a crib with. And so he had an affair with her, you know, long standing affair with her that was definitely going on when I was three. So I was quite aware that something was happening there because I was so tuned into my mom and I could see how unhappy the whole situation was making her. I was definitely aware of it. And so I went through a whole life with my dad, knowing that there was a secret life that he was leading whose resonances could be felt without ever being spoken of, without ever being articulated. When I was 16, I cracked the combination of his briefcase and took a look inside to see what was there because I knew something was there. I knew something was going on. And so I had to find out. All that said, I started writing this book in 2015. And right away, I started calling people who knew my dad and was confronted with stuff I didn't know yet. And I thought I knew everything by this time. I thought it was almost going to be a matter of just sort of writing from memory without really even requiring an investigation. But I started making those calls and realized that I was in the freaking deep end of the pool. I laugh because I can imagine again that this starts off being like, this is going to be a real quest of interiority. I'm going to have to negotiate within myself what I'll be putting on the page. And what I get in reading this is you traveling around the country interviewing the women your father cheated on your mother with and getting details. Even somewhat graphic details. What's the most graphic detail that still feels like, oh, wow, that's a lot. How graphic do you want me to get? I would like you to be so graphic that I'm wondering if it's time for me to pull out the part of the book that I've been gesturing. Okay. Well, what's the most what's the most graphic part to you? One of my father's lovers described how my father seduced her and how that went. And she had borrowed money from him. And she had she offered to pay him back. And he said, why don't we take it out in trade? And so he invited her to his room at the Essex house, of course. Yes. An iconic and iconic New York hotel. And she got up there. And there was a bottle of champagne waiting and two steaks under under glass. And as she said, you know, within, you know, in 15 minutes, he was giving me the greatest that I ever had. So that's a lot hearing that about your dad. Put that on your book cover, Tom is a lot. It's a blurb of sorts. But it's a lot. I believe my editor Bill Thomas was like, we don't need that. And I was like, I think you do. Because I wanted to account for my father's hold on women. And I also also wanted to say to the reader that that hold was not something he was making up. My father, you know, also talks about having affairs with with various movie stars and so on. And so the question is, is whether is this just in his head, right? Or is just all bulls***. The details that I got from that woman that day seemed in the investigative trade confirmation. Ja ja gobor. And Ava gobor. And don't forget that. Some of this is just like a mad lib, admittedly. It's a mad men lib. Yeah. It brings me to this briefcase. The briefcase. And I'm going to have you read this part because I really, okay. Page 72 of the galley, at least, if you can just read for a while and then. Sure. Okay. Like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. Unlike a lot of other men, I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father. There is an automatic light overhead, the light in his closet. Although mom and dad have gone out and I am alone in the house, I don't want the doors to be wide open because I don't want to be well exposed if they come home and somehow sneak up on me in the middle of my investigation. Unfortunately, a floor to ceiling mirror covers the back of each door. And I can see myself cross-legged in front of the briefcase revealed as I seek revelation. I do not walk away. I open the lid and I look. For a second, I think that my father has stowed in his briefcase something that was once alive, that I am gazing at a package of chicken parts he bought at the supermarket and then forgot about. I told myself that I was opening the briefcase to find the joy of sex and two vibrators of generic providence note. Two days before, two weeks before, two months before, I had gone into my father's bag and found two vibrators and the joy of sex, which feels like a lot on its own. Side note. But of course, I needed to go to the next place. You couldn't help but find out. I couldn't help but find out. But while the joy of sex has not returned, the vibrators have mutated, metastasized into two dildos so large they seem prosthetic. They are sheathed in sleeves of venous rubber, each remarkably realistic in detail, but outlandish in scale, the size of fungo bats. They share space in the briefcase with a stack of invoices and order forms from various handbag lines, as well as several boxes of pornography, all of it on film in super eight format. Dad occasionally brings playboys and penthouses at home, and I do not read them for the articles. But I have never seen real pornography before. Is this real pornography? It is in that the photos on the boxes depict human beings engaged in identifiable acts of copulation. It's not in that the acts in the photos are as different from what I imagine to be normal pornography as dad is from normal people. They are extreme even by porno standards. There are about five films, and the only one I can bring myself to look at is the one called Her Master's Piss. The rest are captioned in German and scare me. Everything in the briefcase scares me. When I came across the vibrator stashed away in the corrette leather bag with the joy of sex, I hopefully remembered that they were called marital aids. But these look like martial aids, like truncheons, the kinds you used in riot control. I have no idea what dad does with them, nor with whom. You may quite a move there by, you know, getting the sports angle in with the fungo bat metaphor. I mean, never mistake this show for anything but a sports show. But the idea that you are... 16 at the time, and I had never been kissed. So that was my sort of, that was the door opening into some sort of strange world. Eyes wide shut or eyes wide open. The notion that you saw all of this and at some point committed to secrecy. Yeah, right. Sure. I mean, that is the consequence of finding out. Yes. So I go there. I am obviously, I've been determined to find out since I'm a really little kid. I mean, I used to tape my family's dinners and, you know, listen to it later to find out what was really said. Were they aware that they were being kissed? They were and they weren't. Just like the way interview subjects are. Yeah, they forget. Exactly, they forget it. But the consequences of finding out in this case was this decision I had to make. Do, you know, do I tell my mom? Do I tell anybody? And that's a huge decision because you've been given the nuclear codes to your parents' marriage. I mean, all you have to do is just say, hey, mom, it's done. But of course, I didn't want that. So I didn't do it. And I've wondered, you know, many a time whether I should have gone and done it. And there's so much that happens like that. You know, I am, there's my aunt who falls into a coma and then comes out of her coma. And when she comes out of her coma, I'm like, well, what did you think of my dad? You know, she's 91 years old and she's dying. And as a tape recorder right in front of her. I'm right there, you know, reporter on the spot. Yeah, before you go. You know, so I'm pretty, I'm pretty obsessed and the, you know, the searching, you know, never, never stops. But the telling only starts here with the book. How much of what you were feeling inside as you're gathering all of the evidence and you're finding out how much of it was anger or other emotions that surprised you? You know, I was terrified. But as far as as far as anger, I mean, it's really, it's a really interesting question. There is a part of you that says, at least I'm not crazy. I was right. And so that is the whole thing with my dad. I'm always suspicious. And I'm always right. There's never, there's never anything that like I suspect that of my father that does not pan out. Yeah. And so the question of anger is, is an interesting one because in a lot of ways I, I never sort of conceded that I was angry. And in fact, I'm on a bus heading for New York City and I'm sitting next to a woman and it's right after Christmas. And she makes the mistake of asking me, how was your holiday? You want to know? And like, she's sitting there, you know, trapped on the bus next to this guy telling like intimate details about his family for the next two hours. Yeah. But she was incredibly smart and she was incredibly cool. And I'm getting off. And she says, can I ask you one question? Why are you not angry at him? And I have a long response to that in the book. But my answer to that at the time was he gave me who I am. He gave me my life. How can I be angry at him? This is an ad from BetterHelp. Am I forgetting something? Did I reply to that email? What am I doing? Ever feel like your mind has an inbox that never stops filling? Don't forget to reply. Some days it's not just messages. It's pressure. Did I say the wrong thing? It's doubt. Do you think they like me? It's everything at once. Therapy with BetterHelp can give you space to unpack what's weighing on you one message at a time. Get matched with a qualified therapist and start clearing your mental inbox today at BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. The revolution against wrinkles has begun. Introducing La Roche-Posay's new Hyalub B5 serum and cream. A two-step routine that replumps and repairs your skin faster than ever with an innovative four hyaluronic acid system. Clinically proven to show a 95% reduction in the appearance of wrinkles in just seven days. Experience the revolution for yourself. Find La Roche-Posay, Hyalub B5 and Boots or Boots.co.uk. It is important to note and you make this clear that your dad, as always, we're trying to like clarify and even subvert the traditional caricatures of what it is to be a guy like this. Right. And your dad said that he loved you all the time. All the time. He wasn't like absentee in that traditional way. He was absentee in that he went away for six weeks and carried on with countless lovers during that time. But when he was home, he was remarkably present. He was not a distant dad. And I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to about him and about this book or who have read the book and said, at least he told you he loved you. My dad never told me that. And he did. My dad was always sort of, love you, love you, love you. I mean, it was not something that we were short changed on. It also informs why when you are becoming the, again, the title of the book is, in the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. When you're becoming not just a man, but eventually a father and a husband, there's a calculation that, okay, I also need to write a part of the book that is not funny, but is like potentially destructive to my own household. And you write in the book about a weekend in 1996. Could you explain the decision to confess something in public? And what that confession was and how, again, in the decision, do I do this? Do I not do this? What do I hold back? What do I reveal? How you arrived at a part of the book that is striking because as much as dildos are one thing, this is like some real shit. This is personal and it's real and it's real. I'm definitely going to like limit how much I talk about this because I've caused pain and I don't want to go there and cause more pain, but it refers to a brief affair back in 1996. And what I put in the book is about my decision years later to reveal that secret to my wife, to confess that to my wife. That's what's in the book. And so then I in turn confess that to the reader. And the reason that I do it is I find the woman who had the affair with my dad when I was three years old. I go out and find her and I don't leave the house until she basically confesses up. And that sort of dynamic is played out again and again and again in the book. I mean, how could I do that and not expect the same thing of myself? I'd be dishonest. This book, which I think is very honest and is truth telling, it would be dishonest. And I got the chance to tell the truth in writing this book. And I mean the whole truth about everybody in my family, about my dad and about myself. So how could I subvert that by pretending that I was somehow above my father's influence? There's several sections in the book where my father is actively trying to coax me into having affairs. I mean, there's a part of the book where during my handbag salesman days, I am held up at gunpoint in a hotel room and nearly executed. And my father's answer to that, his response to that, was trying to hook me up with one of his lovers. How could I pretend that that didn't affect me? As someone who does investigative journalism in ways that continue to terrify my family. It's a weird way to make a living. It is. And yet one of the scariest things, of course, is to consider investigating yourself. And those you love knowing what it's like and the power that you have given an audience in so far as you could embarrass someone in front of the whole f***ing world. And so the thing that I am left thinking of near the end here is what do you think his reaction would have been to this book? I do think that he would have been mortified. What I expose is a guy who doesn't quite live up to the ideals that he never tired of espousing. So I think that that would be tough on him. On the other hand, a lot of this book sort of channels his charisma. A month ago, I went to KGB in downtown New York and did a reading. And all I had to do was start doing his voice. And the place sort of responded immediately. There was like, you could feel like this flutter of excitement in the room. I felt like my dad was back there and by God, he still had it. So the fact that he, the fact that I'm able to sort of give people him, give people that in 2026 and therefore give him at last the celebrity that he always craved, I mean, either it's a payoff or it's a paradox. I don't know what it is, but I am glad I did it. What would Fred have said upon reading this? Fred would say something, you know, saying, gee, Tom, you really like to use those details, don't you? I didn't stay in touch with Fred just for that story. I stayed in touch with Fred for the rest of Fred's life. I wrote the story in 1998. Fred died in early 2003. And for those five years, I was in touch with Fred and he wrote me emails a lot and any number of those emails are about my dad. And the thing that Fred was always trying to tell me was your dad would be proud of you and your dad loves you. I know you are a man of conviction. A person who knows the difference between what is wrong and what is right. Try to remember that your relationship with your father also helped to shape those parts. He helped you become what you are. So I think that he'd be, I think that he'd be, I think that he'd be good with the book. Yeah. Tom, do you know as I sit here sweating profusely under this cardigan? Maybe you'd be sweating even without the cardigan, given the content of this interview. I daresay that I think we've reached our natural end. I think we have. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Art Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. Starting making tax digital is seamless with Zeros HMRC recognized software. If you're a sole trader or landlord whose income tax is going digital, not only is Zeros MTD ready, it also gives you better control of your finances like capturing your receipts with a snap. So all your records are accurate, sorted and ready for tax time, which changes the way you see MTD. Search MTD ready with zero. The revolution against wrinkles has begun, introducing La Roche Posse's new Hylub 5 serum and cream, a two step routine that re-plumps and repairs your skin faster than ever with an innovative four hyaluronic acid system. Clinically proven to show a 95% reduction in the appearance of wrinkles in just seven days. Experience the revolution for yourself. Find La Roche Posse, Hylub 5 and Boots or boots.co.uk. Hello you, it's glow time on Magic Radio. Join me, Gok Wan at breakfast. With me, Harriet Scott. We're on Magic Radio with Nikki Chapman, Gabby Roslyn and me, Mel Gedroich. And what a team we are. We're all on Magic Radio, playing the best variety from the 80s to now. It's glow time on Magic Radio.