Don't Listen To Us: Toilets, Ice Cream, and Love After 47 Years

Podcast: Don’t Listen To Us with Mandy Patinkin & Kathryn Grody
Host: Lemonada Media
Date: October 15, 2025
Episode Theme:
A heartfelt, hilarious, and candid family advice session: Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody, and their son Gideon field listener dilemmas while reflecting on their 47-year marriage, changing relationships, quirks (toilets!), and the wisdom (and absurdity) that accumulates over the decades.

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores the intersection of long-term relationships, generational wisdom, and everyday challenges. Through listener questions on topics ranging from the perils of overconfident partners to using bidets and coming out to one’s family, Mandy, Kathryn, and Gideon mix banter with genuine advice, drawing on their own marriage, Jewish cultural roots, and candid self-examination. The result is a warmth- and humor-infused conversation about surviving and connecting in a “fakakta world.”

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meet the Patinkin-Grody Family

• Setting & Mood:
  • The family is together in their safe space in upstate New York, feeling both excited and a bit nervous to be hosting a podcast for the first time.
  • Initial casual, playful banter as they try to introduce themselves.
• Self-Identity & Aging:
  • Kathryn pushes back against the label "senior," instead embracing "elder":
    • "I am trying to get rid of the concept of senior... I find it so insulting." (02:05, Kathryn)
  • They joke about aging, roles (father vs. grandfather), family dynamics, and birth order.

2. Advice Opener: Handling Overconfident Partners (Emperor Moth Debate)

Listener’s Dilemma:
Kate is annoyed that her husband Keith confidently asserts incorrect facts (in this case, misidentifying a moth), and wonders how to deal as a couple ages together.
Key Advice:

• Kathryn advises discernment, humor, and letting go:
  • "Pick and choose which is important to be corrective about and which doesn’t really matter… and how intense the correction is." (06:16, Kathryn)
  • Mandy admits he's been "the person who had to be right" but has mellowed with age, especially post-pandemic:
    • "I became nicer in every way imaginable, more agreeable… I listened better... It was like a light switch." (07:02, Mandy)
• Humor and perspective matter; not every wrong fact is worth a fight.

Notable Moment:

• Mandy describes the “assholem” returning post-pandemic:
  • "As pandemic faded, assholem came back on both our parts, I must say." (07:42, Mandy)

3. The Toilet Segment: Bidets, Barbarism, and Toilet Paper Preferences

Listener’s Dilemma:
Carl from Missoula asks: Why don’t more Americans use bidets—are we "barbaric" for skipping them?
Key Advice & Anecdotes:

• Mandy jokes he's used a bidet since birth (Gideon corrects him—it was a Hanukkah gift from Gideon).
• Kathryn contextualizes: having any sanitary option is lucky; not having a bidet isn't "barbaric".
• Mandy fiercely defends toilet paper orientation:
  • "I really get pissed off when people come stay in my home and switch the way the toilet paper’s on the roll. I think that’s a lot of nerve." (09:51, Mandy)
• Anecdote: The most beautiful movie star they knew used newspaper to be ecological!

Memorable Quotes:

• "Forget the bidet shit—I forgive the pun—but I really get pissed off when people… switch the way the toilet paper's on the roll." (09:51, Mandy)

4. Coming Out Later in Life & Family Support

Listener’s Dilemma:
Ellis—an eldest daughter—seeks advice on coming out as trans to their “nice Jewish dad” after hiding it for almost 50 years.
Key Advice & Emotional Support:

• Kathryn offers empathy and invokes family wisdom:
  • "To be yourself in a world which is doing its best… means to fight the hardest battle that any human can fight and never stop fighting." (13:57, Kathryn)
  • Encourages taking the risk: “If you’re 99% sure… I think you should act on that.”
• Mandy tells Ellis to trust and have faith in their father's love:
  • "If you have the courage to ask the hardest question—which is, can you love me the way I am—then he'll find it." (15:17, Mandy)
• Kathryn imagines a metaphorical moment:
  • "I just had this image, Ellis, of you handing your dad the scissors and having him help you be who you are." (15:51, Kathryn)

5. Live Caller: Rediscovering Love After Heartbreak & Loss (Lori from Portland)

Lori’s Story:
61, twice-divorced, deeply affected by grief and loss, Lori worries she’s closed her heart to new love; she asks for help “getting her mojo back.”
Key Insights:

• Mandy shares a story of heartbreak resolved by wise words from a friend:
  • "She did love you. She didn't love you your way, but she loved you her way... It set me free." (22:06, Mandy reminiscences)
• Kathryn celebrates Lori's resilience:
  • "Would you rather have an unused heart or a broken one?… If you can feel despair, you can also feel joy, because you can still feel something." (24:14, Kathryn)
• Recognize that pain and joy often exist together.
• Mandy’s pragmatic advice:
  • "Just have a great day. Go get a double scoop of your favorite ice cream and get a dog… Don’t try to be with a person, for fuck’s sake, get a dog." (27:18, Mandy)
• Kathryn reframes: focus on what you do have and live in openness, not desperate pursuit.

Notable Quotes:

• "We're all fucked up. We all have messed up relationships. Just have a great time." (27:22, Mandy)
• "That's why we've survived: we make each other laugh." (26:33, Mandy)
• "Maybe not focus so much on what isn't there, and give yourself a lot of joy in the day." (27:40, Kathryn)

6. Parent-Child Dynamics: Giving & Receiving Advice in Adulthood

• Gideon asks how parents can impart wisdom without seeming naggy/preachy.
• Kathryn: It’s hard, tables turn as kids become adults—she now receives more advice than she gives.
• Kathryn references Critical Response Theory: Praise first, then offer criticism only if asked (34:33).
• The family discusses sensitivity to criticism ("Mandy Math") and how children can learn from their parents’ struggles:
  • "Some of your biggest struggles in life have been my biggest benefits. Because I've gotten to watch what's helped you and what hasn’t." (38:20, Gideon)
• Mandy highlights a moment when Gideon told him he learned not to self-torture:
  • "All that self-torture I put myself through, it taught you never to do that… it had worth." (36:28, Mandy)

7. Aging, Change, and Risk-Taking

Pat’s Question: What have you changed your mind about as you’ve gotten older?

• Mandy: Once believed "sex is the glue" in relationships. Now:
  • "As you get older, it’s not that sex isn’t nice... but it has nothing to do with being the glue to our relationship. Our relationship is the glue." (39:50, Mandy)
• Kathryn: Letting go of the illusion of control over aging:
  • "I was not going to do it like other people because I was so special." (41:12, Kathryn)
  • Realizes she must adapt, sometimes surrender, without seeing it as defeat.
• The family discusses taking risks as one ages, referencing Kathryn's decision to do a demanding show in Singapore at 78, with Gideon balancing encouragement with concern.
• Mandy and Kathryn compare living boldly to how they let their dog live freely—even acknowledging risk:
  • "She's had a great life… and even if she got taken out, she got taken out doing what she loved." (44:34, Mandy)
• Kathryn wants to "go out mid-conversation, mid-gesticulation":
  • "I want to be as alive as I can." (45:10, Kathryn)
  • But also recognizes new needs, like "plugging in my battery" (aka, napping at age 78).
• Empathy for aging and refusal to see it as diminished living.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Correcting a Partner:
  "Pick and choose which is important to be corrective about and which doesn’t really matter." – Kathryn (06:16)
• On Bidets & Toilet Paper:
  "Forget the bidet shit—I forgive the pun—but I really get pissed off when people… switch the way the toilet paper's on the roll." – Mandy (09:51)
• On Coming Out to Family:
  "Have a little faith in your father… If you have the courage to ask the hardest question—which is, can you love me the way I am—then he'll find it." – Mandy (15:17)
• On Surviving Relationships:
  "Would you rather have an unused heart or a broken one?" – Kathryn (24:14)
  "Just have a great day. Go get a double scoop of your favorite ice cream and get a dog." – Mandy (27:18)
• On Criticism & Parenting:
  "Some of your biggest struggles in life have been my biggest benefits." – Gideon (38:20)
  "All that self-torture… had worth, that it taught you never to do that…" – Mandy (36:28)
• On Love & Longevity:
  "Our relationship is the glue to our relationship. Time is the glue to our relationship. History." – Mandy (40:39)
• On Living Boldly While Aging:
  "I want to go out mid-conversation, mid-gesticulation… to be as alive as I can." – Kathryn (45:10)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:35–03:36 – Introductions, family roles, and musings on aging
• 04:30–08:21 – Emperor moth/silk moth couple’s quarrel and advice on correcting partners
• 08:49–11:42 – Bidets & American toileting (toilet paper, bidet origin story, movie stars with newspaper)
• 12:18–16:04 – Ellis’s email: coming out as trans later in life, family responses
• 20:09–28:15 – Lori from Portland: grief, heartbreak, and reopening her heart to love
• 32:46–38:58 – Family advice: how to give/receive advice as a parent and adult child, “Mandy Math,” lasting lessons
• 39:41–47:14 – What’s changed with age: sex, risk, adapting to aging, learning from the dog (“do the risk”)
• 47:21–48:20 – Kathryn’s wish: respecting parental suggestions—even for medical care

Tone & Style

Conversational, irreverent, and affectionate, with wisdom and humor arising as much from honest self-mockery as from hard-won experience. The Patinkin-Grody family handle even heavy subjects with warmth and wit, repeatedly reminding listeners that no one has it all figured out—but that’s what makes connection, laughter, and compassion so precious.

For Listeners Who Haven't Tuned In

You’ll get a blend of relatable, real-life advice and outrageous, charming stories about marriage, aging, and family, delivered in a style that's equal parts riotous and deeply thoughtful. The episode will leave you feeling as though you’ve eavesdropped on an unusually insightful family dinner—complete with loving teasing, vulnerability, and a good dose of practical wisdom.

Bottom Line:
Don’t Listen To Us is a celebration of relationship messiness, surviving and thriving together, and the kind of unconditional support and laughter that can only come from a forty-seven-year partnership—and their very brave (and witty) son.

Notable Closing Line:
"We're all fucked up. We all have messed up relationships. Just have a great time. Go get a double scoop of your favorite ice cream and get a dog." – Mandy Patinkin (27:22)