This is the longest episode in the series because we talked to so many people. It is a general survey of the state of modern fatherhood. We speak to a family that has three members: a lesbian couple and the gay father. We speak to somebody who lived among the Aka tribe in the Congo who are the world’s greatest fathers, who even occasionally breastfeed their children. We travel to Japan and attend classes in fatherhood for men who have no experience of living with their own children. It is a profoundly moving journey which shows that fatherhood, while being redefined constantly, remains vital.  

Internet pornography is increasingly one of the dominant issues of human sexuality. YouPorn alone is four times as big as the website for CNN. The effects of this vast new force on our sexual lives, and on the lives of our sons, are still totally unknown. I mean, Internet pornography arrived in my life in my mid-thirties and it threw me. Imagine what it must be like for a fifteen-year old boy. We talk to pro-porn people and anti-porn people. We also discuss porn with a porn star - “the smallest cock in the hall of fame” - who happens to be one of the most wonderful, loving fathers we spoke to in the whole show.

I was more scared about giving my kid a phone than about anything else I have exposed him to. Imagine what he can do with it. It’s like giving him a bottle of bourbon and a gun at the same time. Here we look past the fear and the hype: What are the advantages of having your kid on a phone (knowing where they are, increasing their social exposure)? What are the disadvantages? It’s all very well and good to say, "the less technology the better." But the technology is so damn useful.  

Why are we so afraid for our kids when, by any reasonable standard, they are living in the safest period in history? I spoke to a bunch of fascinating people with kids who know about negotiating risk - like Will Gadd the mountaineer. But we also went to the Adventure Playground on Governor's Island in New York and reported on it. We want our kids to be adventurous, but can barely stand to let them actually BE adventurous.

This is THE parenting question of our time. We talk to Silicon Valley parents who send their kids to Walden schools. We talk to educators who ban screens from their classrooms. Then there is the question of how we should deal with the fact that, as parents, we’re all addicted to technology ourselves and trying to teach our children self-restraint while we have none ourselves. 

As pot becomes legal in many jurisdictions, and as more and more parents themselves smoke pot, the question becomes how do you deal with your children smoking pot? It seems ridiculously hypocritical to pretend that marijuana is some great evil. On the other hand, the reality of pot is that it’s hardly the medicinal harmless product that the anti-prohibitionists have sold it as. For this episode (not for myself of course), I buy and smoke pot with friends who have had to deal with pot and their children to learn about the new reality. 

A surprising number of the most cherished books for children are profoundly racist. We tend to forget that fact because we read them when we were children. Asterix. Little Women. Several of Roald Dahl’s classics. Huckleberry Finn. They all have scenes or characters that can make anybody--not just the politically correct--wince. We talk with parents who have confronted this problem themselves as well as with experts on diversity in children’s literature.

Luxx, Gryffynne, the list of horrible additions to the world’s names is getting longer at an incredible clip. Names are one of the most important parenting decisions anyone with kids will ever make. Names matter more than we think they do. As Marshall McLuhan once wrote, "The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers." Recent research has shown that names influence everything from your chances at getting a job to the shape of your face. We look at how.