Dads comparing notes on lockdown, grief and keeping the peace.
Hang On To Your Hat gets fathers talking through the harder stretches of the job: tempers fraying in lockdown, creative plans abandoned, and grief. In the 'Dads In Lockdown' episodes, Derek Myers talks with guests such as Paul McIntosh and Adam White, and in a Christmas special he looks back on the year with Dan Lee.
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Hang On To Your Hat is a fatherhood show built on conversations between dads, and its strongest moments come when someone simply says how hard a stretch has been. The intro does a lot of work. A voice announces 'you're a naughty boy', and a spoken opening lists the fear, the anger, the confusion and the love of being a modern dad before promising that nobody is in it alone. Derek Myers and Dan Lee are the two names in that opening. The vocabulary is easygoing, all 'blokes', 'mate' and 'stoked', and the talk drifts and doubles back the way it does between friends. The 'Dads In Lockdown' episodes are recorded remotely, in what one intro calls the space studio, or the ether. Adam White calls in from a quarantine hotel in Sydney, and the talk moves to school at home, including a grade-six child who stepped up when a parent was not there to help. Pete Richards describes the friction of a regional lockdown, the need to own his tension when things got heated, and the value of having someone to call for a different perspective. Brooke Penrose, introduced as a musician, artist and studio operator, mentions a friend's jibe that he goes to the toilet just to check his phone. The conversation then gets more honest about creative plans giving way to getting through each day. It is a small, unguarded moment. Paul McIntosh, a father of two with a PhD, brings something more hands-on. Drawing on ACT psychology, he maps what a family values below a line and visible behaviour above it, with a little camera marking what other people could actually see. Off to one side sit the moments that pull a person away from a goal, the feeling of being 'hooked', illustrated with chocolate cake and applied to something as ordinary as quality screen time. Grief runs through other conversations. With Daniel Donahoo, billed in an episode title as an author, speaker and father of four, the talk turns to friends in their late forties who chose to keep speaking about someone who had died rather than hold a funeral and move on, with a nod to a letter Nick Cave answered about loss. The Christmas special, 'And So This IS Christmas - Derek And Dan Reflect On The Year's Guests', has the pair singing and joking about beer before they look back. They single out Warwick, a guest with adult children, and a guest who talked about a long illness with a candour and acceptance that one of them calls extraordinary. For a technique to try at home, the Paul McIntosh conversation is the natural starting point. For the rhythm of Derek and Dan together, the Christmas look-back shows it best.
Made for: Suits a listener who is raising kids, or about to, and would rather hear other fathers admit to short tempers, stalled plans and grief than get a list of tips, though one guest does bring a technique worth trying.
What sets it apart: Its guests speak from inside specific pressures, such as a quarantine hotel, a regional lockdown or a loss, so the show plays as a record of fathering through hard stretches rather than general advice. It also puts a practical, diagram-based ACT approach right alongside plain confession.
Join Derek Myers, Dan Lee and their many guests as they discuss fatherhood. Our parenting conversations are sometimes funny, sometimes scary and sometimes sad.. just like every day of being a father in the modern world. Dads - you are not alone.
A placenta in a yoghurt container: your cue to expect Derek Myers and Dan Lee's unvarnished dad talk.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid conversation about parenting, pressure, and learning to keep the peace during Victoria's lockdowns.
Lockdown turns into a family pressure test in this conversation with Pete Richards, framed by regional life, a business under strain, parenting an only child, and Victoria's lockdowns.
Brooke Penrose grounds lockdown fatherhood in illness, broken routines, dark humor, and the strain of trying to keep creating.
Lockdown makes fatherhood feel less like a theme than a daily endurance test, and Brooke Penrose gives that pressure a lived-in scale. As a musician, artist, studio operator, and dad, he talks through a brutal run of timing: his son had only just moved from childcare into a new…
A relaxed quarantine conversation about remote schooling, missing hugs, and the domestic details that keep fatherhood close.
Adam White talks from a quarantine hotel in Sydney about fatherhood held at an odd remove. His children are schooling from one of his studios, with a grade six child taking on more responsibility while the family juggles video calls, work, and the missing comfort of everyday…
A loose Christmas finale finds real weight in a year of conversations about fatherhood and regret.
Hang On To Your Hat closes 2019 by circling back through the guests and conversations that shaped its year, from Genesis or Metamorphosis to talk of illness, fatherhood, and the regrets that can trail a demanding career.
Two friends, one microphone, no polite silences.
Messy parenting, made practical and warm.
School runs, stain tips and mom-group drama, compared out loud.
Practical hope for raising sturdy kids.
Faithful help for the hard parts of mothering.
Hang On To Your Hat talks with Paul McIntosh about using the ACT matrix to negotiate children's screen time.
["Pete Richards, a Castlemaine hairdresser on Hang On To Your Hat's \"Dads in Lockdown\" series, talks about running Circus Hair through Victoria's shutdowns while caring for Estella at home.", "He says the first lockdown hit harder than the second because he had to close the shop, rely on JobKeeper, and make a bubble around his daughter while Katie kept working for council.", "The conversation gets practical fast: Pete describes homeschooling, small-house friction, and the moment he realized a few minutes outside can reset Estella after screen time.", "The episode's central takeaway is Pete's counsellor-driven numbering system, where arguments that feel like \"five\" are actually \"eight\" or \"nine\" and need cooling off before anyone talks."]
Hang On To Your Hat's 'Dad's in Lockdown' episode with Brooke Penrose centers on fatherhood, home work, and creativity during COVID restrictions.
["Hang On To Your Hat's Dads In Lockdown special opens with Adam White calling from the Sofitel Wentworth in Sydney while he serves 14-day hotel isolation after returning from the UK.", "He says two Melbourne flights were cancelled, he bought a business-class seat to Sydney, and police, nurses, and army personnel escorted him from the airport into quarantine.", "Adam talks about leaving Australia because his mother was gravely ill, losing her while he was away, and keeping daily FaceTime contact with his children through school closures and homeschooling.", "The conversation turns to Melbourne's outbreak, a throat-and-nostril COVID test, and his view that Boris Johnson, Trump, and other leaders should listen to health professionals."]
["Hang On To Your Hat's 2019 Christmas special has Eric Myers and Dan Lee revisiting a year of fatherhood talk, from the first episode Genesis or Metamorphosis to the later guest run.", "They debate Santa, with one line making the case that children should not give all their gratitude to a mythical gift-giver, and they describe a nine-year-old being grinched at school.", "The recap pulls in Scott Edgar's warning that social media could be the thalidomide of our generation, Sean's donor-conception discussion, and Jeff Richie\u2019s home birth in a blow-up pool.", "Daniel Donahue and Anthony Breslin bring the hardest material, talking about a child's death, long-term illness, mortality, and the regret tradeoffs that shape parenting."]
Dan Donoghue discusses fatherhood after his son Collier died from an aneurysm and brain bleed following two weeks in intensive care.
Hang On To Your Hat interviews cinematographer Warwick Field about raising Chris, 32, and Dylan, 19, after separating from both of their mothers.
Geoff “Ritchie” Baldwin tells Derek Myers and Dan Lee about Asha’s planned home birth, including 18 hours of labour and roughly 10 hours in a birthing pool.
Anthony Breslin discusses his career as a painter, including a Myers project that produced 100 paintings in one week and raised $24,000 for TLC for Kids.
Episode 31 of Hang On To Your Hat reunites Derek Myers and Dan Lee with Terry Lee, whose work in leadership psychology frames a discussion of fatherhood, learning, motivation, and attention.
A podcast about the highs and lows of modern fatherhood, featuring conversations with guests to support dads.