Table of Contents

• The Lede

• What’s Next on the Bad Dad Pod

• What about the ‘50s? Part 1

• What about the ‘50s? Part 2

The Lede

This may seem obvious, but the 1960s followed the 1950s. I know, I know, we promised when you signed up for a newsletter that these newsletters were going to be interesting and this doesn’t seem like a promising start, but hear me out. As we begin down the 1960s rabbit hole on the Are We Bad Dads? podcast Season 3, it’s striking how much of that decade was really a reaction to the 1950s, which were a reaction to the 1940s, and so on, until you go all the way back to two naked people in a garden talking to a snake and eating forbidden fruit.¹ Everything is connected, and everything has a context.

In other words, history is a lot like being part of a family. The way you are as a husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, sibling, or friend owes an awful lot to your own personal history. You make choices, learn, and grow, but you show up everywhere with baggage. Some of it is light, and some of it is that big suitcase full of dirty clothes you’re lugging home at the end of every family vacation.

Thinking specifically as fathers, we don’t interact with our families in a vacuum. How you were raised, where you were raised, whether you got bullied in high school, and whether or not your boss is a jerk are just a few of the almost infinite number of influences that we react to on a daily basis.

It might be helpful to realize the same thing is true of our kids. We may think we know our kids, but each of them is an individual who has their own set of baggage (some of which we are probably contributing to!), their own thoughts, and their own feelings. Sometimes our kids’ actions will really be reactions to what life (or their fathers) throws at them, and how we react to their reactions may make all the difference in the world.

What’s Next on the Bad Dad Pod

The first episode of Season 3, the Dad’s assessment of their knowledge of the 60s, is scheduled to release on Tuesday August 13^th . Next week’s newsletter will have a trailer for the season to whet your whistle for what the dads have in store this season, and in the first episode. The goal for this season is to release new episodes on the 2^nd and 4^th Tuesdays of every month, August through May. Will we actually pull that off? Are we insane for even trying? Will this season have any episodes that focus on Elvis? I hope so, probably, and definitely no.²

What about the ‘50s? Part 1

You have stuck with us through that rather long opening section of this newsletter—Thanks for that by the way! We promise they will get shorter, unless they don’t—and now you’re probably wondering what to read or watch about the 1950s. If you’re not thinking about that, we’re sorry, but we promised you content and we’re going to give it to you whether you want it or not.

If there is one book to read to get a handle on the ‘50s, you can’t go wrong with The Fifties by David Halberstam. This book is a little lengthy, but totally worth it. Seriously, everything Aaron has read by Halberstam has been good. The title gives the premise away, it’s pretty much the entire decade in one book. I don’t know how to stress this enough: if Halberstam writes it, it’s worth your time.

This quote from the book is a great example:

David Halberstam has written on a lot of topics, and we’ll get to another one of his books in Season 3. There’s even another one that we would include if it wasn’t just too dang long.

Two previous episodes of the Are Bad Dads? Podcast have also been on books that took place in the 1950s. Ironically, they were two of the only five books that we’ve ever given a 6-cargo short rating to as well.

What about the ‘50s? Part 2

One last thing before we wrap up this first newsletter. As we go through Season 3 we’ll be talking about more than books. We love big books and we cannot lie, but there is so much more to the story of the ‘60s than can be captured by words on a page. Periodically throughout the season we will include a 1960s-themed Spotify playlist to put you in the mood of the decade. Since this has been an introductory email all about the ‘50s, here’s a playlist from that era curated just for you.

1   Maybe forbidding fruit would get more of it eaten in our house, we might just try it out.

2  In what surely won’t be his last controversial take of the season Aaron finds Elvis to be terribly overrated.