Podcast•Mar 11, 2026•42 min
#140 Tom Junod: All My Father's Secrets
In this episode, host Nick Vershaw talks with acclaimed journalist Tom Junod about his memoir In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, which delves into the enigmatic life of Junod’s father, Lou—a World War II veteran, hand‑bag salesman, and self‑styled model of old‑Hollywood masculinity. Junod shares the colorful maxims his father lived by, the secretive stories of celebrity encounters, and how those lessons shaped his own understanding of manhood and his career as a writer who tackles the unsayable. The conversation also explores how Lou’s silence about his own father created a legacy of myth‑making that Junod now seeks to unravel, offering a candid look at the complexities of father‑son relationships.
