Eyes Wide Open: The Consequences of Finding Out, with Tom Junod

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out — "Eyes Wide Open: The Consequences of Finding Out" with Tom Junod
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Guest: Tom Junod
Date: March 19, 2026

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Overview

This episode takes listeners deep into the intersections of journalism, family secrets, and personal reckoning. Pablo Torre sits down with renowned magazine writer Tom Junod to discuss Junod’s new memoir, "In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man." The conversation ranges from Junod's iconic profile of Mr. Rogers (and its film adaptation), to his complicated relationship with his father, to the intimate and often messy consequences of discovering—and sharing—family truths. Torre and Junod openly debate the responsibilities and risks of “finding out,” both as writers and as sons.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mr. Rogers Profile and Hollywood Adaptation

• Cardigans, First Impressions, and the Cultural Impact of Mr. Rogers
  • Pablo jokes about wearing a cardigan, prompting Junod to reminisce about Fred Rogers and the particular nerdy style he championed. [03:19–04:07]
  • Junod discusses his famed 1998 Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, which inspired the 2019 film "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" starring Tom Hanks.
  • On watching a Hollywood portrayal of himself:

    “Seeing yourself like that way sort of transmuted into cinematic art. You can’t be prepared for it… I’m just sobbing.” — Tom Junod [07:59]

  • The film fictionalizes much of Junod’s personal life, leading him to ask for the main character’s name to be changed.

2. The Investigative Drive—Journalism as a Path to Self-understanding

• Parallels Between Investigating Others and One’s Own Family
  • Torre highlights Junod’s skill in getting to unexpected truths, in both public figures and his private life.
  • Junod describes how the rigor of his journalistic practice was mirrored in his examination of his family, especially his enigmatic father. [09:18–10:38]

3. The Shadow of the Father: Lou Junod

• Lou’s Charisma, Secrets, and Commandments of Masculinity
  • Lou Junod is presented as a charismatic, seductive, and performative man, whose influence shaped Tom’s worldview and career.
  • Pablo presses Tom on his father’s rules, performances for men and women, and the complex legacy of “being a man.” [22:23–23:59]

4. Tension of Public and Private — The Kevin Spacey Story

• “To What Extent Can This Conversation Be Had in Public?”
  • Junod revisits his controversial Esquire piece that alluded to Kevin Spacey’s sexuality—a journalistic provocation that he now regrets:

    “I got my ass kicked on that story… being self-consciously provocative did not work for me.” — Tom Junod [14:53–17:39]

  • Reflection on the ethics of making private rumors public.

5. Profiles as Self-Therapy

• Studying Others to Understand the Self
  • Tom admits to choosing subjects (like Frank Sinatra Jr. and Tony Curtis) as a way to process his own relationship with performance and paternal ambition. [19:47–20:57]
  • He describes recognizing himself and his own circumstances in the people he profiles.

6. Lou Junod’s Hidden Life—Infidelity and the Briefcase of Secrets

• Discovery, Investigation, and the Weight of Truth
  • Tom details how, as a boy and later as an adult, he increasingly discovered the extent of his father’s double life—most symbolically by cracking open Lou’s briefcase at age 16:

    “Everything in the briefcase scares me… When I came across the vibrators… I thought, ‘Is this just in his head, or is this all bullshit?’ The details I got… seemed, in the investigative trade, confirmation.” — Tom Junod [37:10–40:54]

  • He describes the emotional complexity and terror of this discovery, the challenge of what to do with this knowledge, and the lasting psychological toll. [32:25–34:22], [43:11–45:12]

7. Writing Honestly About One’s Family—And Oneself

• Including His Own Infidelity
  • Tom recounts how writing the memoir forced him not only to excavate and report his father’s secrets, but also to confess his own, including a difficult admission to his wife about a past affair.

    “How could I do that and not expect the same thing of myself?... The reason that I do it is—I find the woman who had the affair with my dad when I was three… I’d be dishonest if I pretended I was above my father’s influence.” — Tom Junod [50:15–52:21]

8. Emotional Fallout and Forgiveness

• Notable Reflections on Anger and Legacy
  • Torre asks if Junod was angry at his father. Junod reveals he was more terrified than angry, always suspicious but proven right, and reflects on the complex gratitude he feels:

    “He gave me who I am. He gave me my life. How can I be angry at him?” — Tom Junod [43:11–45:12]

  • The episode closes with Tom wondering aloud what his father and Fred Rogers would have thought of the book, highlighting Fred’s ongoing support and wisdom.

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On Hollywood portraying his life:
  • “I asked them [the screenwriters] to change the name, because there were so many things…that just didn’t happen in life.” — Tom Junod [06:11]
• On Mr. Rogers’ interview tactics:
  • “He just, you know, eventually, just sort of by sheer force of, like, his attention that he paid, his kindness. He just sort of won me over.” — Tom Junod [13:22]
• On discovering his father’s sexual exploits:
  • “Within 15 minutes, he [Lou] was giving me the greatest I ever had. So that’s a lot, hearing that about your dad.” — Tom Junod [36:03]
• On the ethics of finding out secrets:
  • “Do I tell my mom? Do I tell anybody? And that’s a huge decision because you’ve been given the nuclear codes to your parents’ marriage.” — Tom Junod [41:50]
• On confessional honesty:
  • “The telling only starts here, with the book… How could I pretend that didn’t affect me?” — Tom Junod [52:21]
• On the influence of Lou:
  • “He wasn’t a distant dad…My dad was always sort of, you know, love you, love you, love you. I mean, it was not something that we were shortchanged on.” — Tom Junod [49:21]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:19] — Cardigans and the Mr. Rogers aura
• [07:59] — The emotional impact of seeing himself portrayed in film
• [13:22] — Interviewing Rogers and being “won over”
• [16:02–17:39] — The Spacey story and the consequences of provocation
• [23:02–23:59] — Lou Junod’s maxims of manhood
• [32:25] — Discovering Lou’s infidelity and the trauma of finding out
• [37:09–40:54] — Reading from the memoir: the infamous briefcase scene
• [50:15–52:21] — On including his own secrets in the memoir
• [54:26] — Letters from Fred Rogers; seeking forgiveness, finding gratitude

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Tone & Style

Warm, self-effacing, vulnerable, yet deeply reportorial. Both Torre and Junod blend humor with sharp, literary self-inspection. Torre frames the discussion to reveal the art and cost of truth-telling, while Junod unflinchingly confronts pain, secrecy, and the search for meaning—both in the lives he covers, and in his own.

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Summary Takeaways

• The act of “finding out” can be liberating, destructive, or transformative—often all at once.
• Journalism and memoir share the same risks and rewards: empathy, self-exposure, and the power to change narratives (our own and others’).
• Confronting family secrets can bring about unexpected forgiveness and understanding.
• Telling the full truth often requires confessing one’s own faults—on and off the page.

For anyone interested in the ethics of storytelling, the blurry line between investigation and exploitation, or the tangled human dynamics beneath seemingly simple family myths, this is an unmissable conversation.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. Presented by Ebay Live, I am Pablo Torre. And today you're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Tom Junod]

The phone rang and I went and pick up and there's this voice. Hey, this is Tom Cruise. Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's. She's right here in my bed.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad,

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Tom Junod]

I was wondering Cardigan. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And therefore to you.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But it hasn't pointed out cardigan on

[Tom Junod]

the Lou thing or cardigan on the Fred thing.

[Pablo Torre]

I dare say there is resonance in both of those characters. I feel like you got to explain, Tom. You know who Fred is because you're on a first name basis.

[Tom Junod]

Okay. So Fred is Fred Rogers. Fred is also known as Mr. Rogers. He was the children's television host from early 70s onto just before he died in 2003. Yeah. And he was the emblem not only of. Of sort of incredibly nerdy children's television, he even sort of like pioneered a certain kind of nerdy style consisting of cardigans.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I walk into this office here in our Meadowlark Media Studios and I go into the closet and I take out this cardigan and I.

[Tom Junod]

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood A beautiful day for a neighbor Would you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood A neighborly day for a beauty Would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you so let's make the most of this beautiful day since we're together we might as well say Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please, Won't you please, please Won't you be my neighbor?

[Pablo Torre]

For those who are not familiar, you not only wrote this iconic profile of Mr. Rogers for Esquire.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

It also, years later, became a film. And I watched that in theaters, not even knowing you, only to realize that when I met you, I had watched the cinematic adaptation of you.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And what level of cringe does one feel when they're watching a Hollywood actor depict you across from Tom Hanks, Mr. Rogers?

[Tom Junod]

So when I first read that script, the guys who wrote it called me and said, we really love the script. And we really would like for you to give it a chance, which is sort of a warning right away. And I asked him, I said, well, so why do I have to give it a chance? And they said, because pretty much everything that involves you and Mr. Rogers is accurate. And the family stuff, we all made up. So I read it, and I asked him afterwards to change the name because there were so many things that it. That happened in the script and in the movie that just didn't happen in life.

[Pablo Torre]

It was you, Tom Junot. That was the name of the.

[Tom Junod]

Tom Junot was the name of the character.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, that's great.

[Tom Junod]

And so they.

[Pablo Torre]

Or not.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah. So there's a scene in there where, like, me and my father get into a fist fight at my sister's wedding. Don't talk about her.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

[Tom Junod]

You don't know the whole story. Your mom really was not the same.

[Pablo Torre]

Get off me.

[Tom Junod]

My sister eloped, so there was. There was no wedding. So there was no fight at a wedding. And so, yeah, so I asked them to change the name, and they did. So. And I sort of, you know, sort of disconnected from the movie a little bit from there. I just like, basically, you know, it's Lloyd Vogel now. And so you can do whatever you want with this.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I just gotta jump in here to say that what I wanted to do with the real life Lloyd Vogel. Tom Juno comes from a place of believing that truth is often stranger and more narratively satisfying than fiction. It's an enormous reason why I have envied the writing, really, the life of Tom for a really long time in his career as a writer, which followed his career as a handbag salesman, which is a whole other story. Tom has reported some of my favorite magazine pieces ever, including about sports, about everything from Muhammad Ali's funeral service to a hidden Penn State football scandal, to all sorts of features about Hollywood. But ever since I saw that Mr. Rogers movie from 2019, which got Tom Hanks nominated for an Academy Award, I've been wondering how Tom Junod felt about how he, this rigorous journalist was portrayed.

[Tom Junod]

Matthew Rhys was playing me. I mean, he had spent time with me. He had my gestures down. He had a lot of it down. And so seeing yourself like that way sort of transmuted into cinematic art. You can't be prepared for it. And then they. That summer, the summer before the movie came out, they invited me in for a screening and I was like, ah, this is just a. This is just a thing. And I'm sitting alone in this Sony screening room over on like 25th Street. And I'm just sobbing.

[Pablo Torre]

But the reason Tom was sobbing, it turns out, wasn't because his life story had been butchered. He was sobbing because there was something in that dramatization, in the conviction of his character, that connected to a part of his life that he had never rigorously investigated. His father, Lou, a guy whose fictions have now inspired a work of stunning non fiction titled in the Days of My Youth, I was told what it means to be a Man, which speaks to how Tom reported some of his best magazine stories, as you'll see, and also what it means for a journalist to really want to find out the truth. There's some stuff where I'm like, I'm shocked you put this into print.

[Tom Junod]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

And one of them, speaking of a conceit again that we enjoy on this show, which is sometimes we'll put a briefcase on a desk and we'll, oh, really treat it like Chekhov's gun and we'll figure out when to fire it.

[Tom Junod]

Do you realize? Okay, so that now we're getting real meta.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, I dare say that what was in your dad's briefcase was not in Mr. Rogers.

[Tom Junod]

It was definitely. Well, you can't say definitely, but it was. It was probably not in Mr. Rogers.

[Pablo Torre]

If it was. You did a horrific job burying that lead for Esquire.

[Tom Junod]

So last night we did a thing in Atlanta, which is my hometown, and the, the host, who, whose name is Melissa Faye Green, surprised me by asking me to read this passage out of the Mr. Rogers story. And I read that and realized as I was reading it as never before. I hadn't looked at it in a really long time, but as never before, I realized that it was just sort of like a portrait of my dad, like an anti matter version of lujanad.

[Pablo Torre]

You're one of the best magazine writers of all time and you've. It's not even up for debate. You can be self effacing if you'd like, but you know, the profiles speak for themselves, the awards, all that stuff. Yes, from, you know, the Falling man, the iconic story of the 911 jumper that you wrote and beautifully again investigated. There's reporting there controversially, the Kevin Spacey story, Nicole Kidman, Obama and drone strikes, Mr. Rogers on and on and on. Right, there's that. But the way that I cannot help but see you across this desk is through the lens of Mr. Rogers and also your dad. But the notion that Mr. Rogers played along in a way that you want and need A subject to.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

What did you feel from him that gave him the stature in American life?

[Tom Junod]

So I grew up with a dad who was like a full time seducer. There was nothing that my dad did that wasn't for effect. And Fred had that, but to a different end. You know, my dad was always just coming at you in some sort of way. The way he spoke, the way he just conducted himself, just even just walking across the kitchen to get something out of the refrigerator. And Fred was like, sort of like the same way, you know, I mean I, I happened to first meet him when he was at his apartment in New York. I called him, said, you know, hey Fred, I've been assigned this. Can I talk to you? Yes, Tom, I'm right around the corner from you, do you want to stop by? And so, you know, so I stopped by and he's wearing a bathrobe. It's in the afternoon, he's wearing. Come on in, Tom. I'm sure, you know, you weren't expecting this, were you? And you know, and I walk in there and I'm starting to talk to him and he comes by and he, you know, with his camera and he, you know, shoots. I'm just talking and he shoots a camera with a flashbulb in his dark apartment. And he gets on the phone, he with his wife Joanne. Hi Joanne, I'm with my new friend Tom. I just sent, you know, took a picture that I'm going to send to you and, and so it was sort of, it was sort of invasive. But you had said that he plays along. The thing that he made me do was play along with him. I had to either like say this guy is completely insane or bull, or just look at the sort of, the higher truth that he represented.

[Pablo Torre]

But you walk in and I'm imagining being you or Matthew Reese trying to imagine being you. And already I'm writing in my head, I'm like, oh my God, is this the lead? Yeah, you know, I'm like, I can't, I wouldn't be able to help myself. But then the follow up thought I'm imagining is I'm getting everything that I want.

[Tom Junod]

Here I was and I wasn't. You know, the thing about him is I'd ask him a question and he would give a completely non committal answer. He wouldn't even, or he wouldn't even answer at all. He would just pivot like. Tell me about your childhood, Fred. Well, Tom, you know, how about your childhood? Did you have anything that was very special to you in your childhood? Yes, Fred. I had something called Old Rabbit. Oh. Oh. I'll imagine that once he was a very young rabbit. Right, Tom. You know, and so it's just that. And he just, you know, eventually, just sort of by sheer force of, like, his attention that he paid his kindness. He just sort of won me over.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Which is to say that on some level, maybe the guy coming in to write an aspirationally interesting profile of a man who has a very carefully manicured image.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Maybe you're finding that there is some frustration in how he is in control. But it also sounds like the guy whose dad was Mr. Rogers, but inside out, the opposite.

[Tom Junod]

I mean, absolutely.

[Pablo Torre]

It sounds like you also enjoyed being fathered by Mr. Rogers.

[Tom Junod]

I kind of did. And I guess I was. I guess I was looking for that. I guess I was. This was 1998. I was a little bit adrift since going from GQ to Esquire. The Kevin Spacy thing had happened. I had gone through this whole thing. Might as well explain it now.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, please.

[Tom Junod]

I'd gone through this whole thing where I sort of outed Kevin Spacy. I really got my. I got my ass kicked on that story.

[Pablo Torre]

So just because we're in 2026, it's worth saying Kevin Spacy is gay.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

At the time, you framing it as a conceit in this magazine piece and using, I think, your mom.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah, I use my mom as.

[Pablo Torre]

By the way, this was a rumor. And the question that I am grappling with all of the time on this show and to varying success, I suppose, that you were grappling with, as a magazine writer was there's this conversation that's happening in private, and to what extent can that be had in public?

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And in this case, of course, there are good societal guardrails, ideally for how we respect privacy. But the inherent tension of anybody who wants to write and report confrontationally.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And has a discerning taste for what qualifies as public interest, which can be both serious, drone strike, political level.

[Tom Junod]

But this was a celebrity profile, so that's a little bit different from the start.

[Pablo Torre]

Exactly.

[Tom Junod]

The journalist, especially at that time, was supposed to play ball.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, for sure.

[Tom Junod]

And, you know, on that particular story, I didn't play ball. I think that the. You used a word just a few minutes ago. Conceit. It was the conceit of how I talked to my mom. She was like, isn't. Isn't Kevin Spacey gay? And it was the conceit that everybody knew. And so I. I think that's the thing that got me in trouble, that I didn't sort of like, take on this question genuinely. I did it as a conceit. I did it like a little sort of dance around just to be. It was my first. It was the first story I wrote for Esquire after leaving gq.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, I didn't realize that it was

[Tom Junod]

basically of like, oh, my, look, look at, look at how provocative I can be. And I think that that is the thing that. That really sort of turn people against that particular story.

[Pablo Torre]

I get why people had such a negative reaction to it. I get why you have since effectively owned up to saying, I wish I didn't do it in that way.

[Tom Junod]

In that way. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But all of which is the setup for the fact that Esquire magazine assigns hotshot magazine reporter who loves provocation, Mr. Rogers.

[Tom Junod]

And that was definitely sort of part of the whole thing. I think people thought it would be sort of interesting for that to happen. But I was, like I said I was. I was a little bit adrift at the time and had taken a beating and didn't know exactly what to do next because being self consciously provocative did not work for me. And then I went, I see Fred. And he definitely gave me another direction

[Pablo Torre]

to go in the notion, though, of being a confrontational writer and just what that means and how you decided I need to turn that approach, which is fundamentally investigation.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah. It's about finding out.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

It's about finding out.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. This book was in the works for how long?

[Tom Junod]

I began it in 2015 and finished in 2024. So I guess that's nine years. I mean, I'd been writing about my dad a number of times. I had written about my dad by writing about other people. I mean, one of the first things I did when I got GQ was write a story about Frank Sinatra Jr. I wrote a story after that about Tony Curtis, and then I wrote a story about my dad himself.

[Pablo Torre]

I do like the idea of us sort of traveling through your career with this as the inevitable endpoint, but Frank

[Tom Junod]

Sinatra Jr love is lovelier the second time around.

[Pablo Torre]

Was that a sad character to you?

[Tom Junod]

He was the leader of his dad's orchestra, but the guy that he, like, idolized wasn't Frank. It was Nelson Riddle, the guy who did the great swinging arrangements for that orchestra. And I saw in him a guy who had dealt with just the. The huge shadow of his dad by just being like, sort of off putting. He didn't really do anything to make people like him or even notice him. And I Think that that was the thing about him that really struck me was that he didn't want to be noticed because, you know, he had gotten kidnapped. And he sort of survived that whole thing by, by memorizing, like everything the kidnappers did. He's. He was that guy. He lived inside himself, never went outside of himself. And that's how he survived being Frank Sinatra Jr. I guess I saw that in him because I had a little bit of it in myself.

[Pablo Torre]

When you are doing that profile, how much are you already self aware of? Like, ah, I'm doing. I'm kind of doing therapy.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah, I don't think I was that self aware at the time. So when I was a kid, you know, I grew up in Long island and Sunrise highway was one of the big thoroughfares by Wanta on the South Shore there. And we used to go to this steakhouse in Belmore called McCluskey's. It was a great steakhouse, but on the way back, we'd passed this old dance hall called the Sunrise Bohemian Village. It was. It was huge. It's been long knocked down, but I used to occasionally see the sign there Tonight, Frank Sinatra Jr. I was like 5 or 6 years old, and there was a part of me that said, oh, that poor bastard. You know, So I was always fascinated with Frank Jr. And when I went to GQ and my editor, David Granger said, you can basically write whatever you want to write. What do you want to write about? I was like, Frank Sinatra Jr. And he was like, okay.

[Pablo Torre]

But Frank Sr. As a matter of how your dad carried himself, sure. That's pretty on the nose.

[Tom Junod]

Oh, it's very on the nose. So he was a Sinatra kind of character to the extent that during World War II. So he got. He got. He was an infantryman, got wounded in Normandy, and he was about to be sent back to the front when a lieutenant heard him crooning, heard him singing. And, you know, the troop truck came in. My father got on and then a lieutenant took him off and he became. He became a, you know, a roving crooner around, around Western Europe.

[Pablo Torre]

We need more of those singing, singing

[Tom Junod]

to the troops in a traveling show called For Men Only. Oh, my God. And so the For Men Only sort of became the theme of my dad's life in a certain.

[Pablo Torre]

I like that. Now it's like USO tourism. It's very fancy, people. Yeah, back then it was Lou.

[Tom Junod]

It was Lou. It was some comedians, a guy from New Orleans who could play hot jazz trumpet. It was that kind of thing. I mean, my father sang Silent Night to the troops on Christmas Eve during the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, they would go as close to the front as they could, and they did it for the men and they did it for the troops.

[Pablo Torre]

So for men only. And this is a key part of this because there are lots of women in this book, lots of women. And we will get to that. But just the notion of who you're performing for, right. When your dad has these commandments, I

[Tom Junod]

can name, you know, some of them right off the bat, you know, from Always look a man in the eye, always have a firm handshake, always wear white to the face. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. Don't bullshit a bullshitter. So my dad had this way of speaking that I try to sort of reproduce in the actual sort of prose of the book.

[Pablo Torre]

With ellipses.

[Tom Junod]

With the ellipses. My dad had this way of pausing in mid sentence and then landing on a word of emphasis. And he did that in. In virtually anything. He'd say, so if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly. But.

[Pablo Torre]

But how much of that do you think was him performing for women versus performing for men?

[Tom Junod]

So that's a great question. I would say that the. The employment of the maxims. He would say it for men, but he would do it for women. So he would, like, wear white to the face or wear a turtleneck, you know, for women. And, you know, my father's day wasn't complete unless he could turn some woman's head. That was his. That was the mark of a good day. And so he. That was my childhood was watching my father enter rooms and people turning around to take a look at him.

[Pablo Torre]

And so did he find it thrilling when you became men's magazine celebrity profile writer?

[Tom Junod]

My father really enjoyed and took great pride in my magazine career. Half of it. He loved the celebrity profiles. He really loved that. Like, after I wrote about Tony Curtis, he thought that for some reason that Tony and I, you know, were best friends. Anytime I went, like into the city, he would say, did you see Tony? You know, and. But he didn't. He didn't read the other stuff, like the Falling man, all of this, like, why. He couldn't understand why I would even do that. That story, it's a downer. And with Mr. Rogers, he didn't get that. He didn't get that at all. Because he thought that Mr. Rogers was effeminate. Why would you write about somebody who is effeminate?

[Pablo Torre]

Who's not wearing white nearly as often to the face as he should, even

[Tom Junod]

though it was really interesting with my dad. So he had a uniform that he would wear in Christmas season and it was gray slacks, a white shirt, a narrow black tie and a red cardigan. So he wore. It was the. It was like the one sort of Venn diagram overlap spot between my dad and Fred Rogers was the red cardigan.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm not saying that your dad was evil Mr. Rogers. I'm just saying in the yin and yang.

[Tom Junod]

No, that's my, that's my first. No comment.

[Pablo Torre]

But your dad, to put a finer point on where a lot of the danger and the tension is in this book and in his story, I'm wondering what he thought of your profile of Nicole Kidman.

[Tom Junod]

Oh, he loved that. The obvious sort of flirtation. Flirtation that, that, that occurred there.

[Pablo Torre]

It's such a memorable story because, number one, you're like, who the. Is this writer who. Who's putting himself literally in bed with Nicole Kidman?

[Tom Junod]

This was 1999 and summer of 1999, and Nicole and Tom Cruise were coming out with and promoting Eyes Wide Shut, which was, if you remember that time, it was supposed to be a little bit of a view into, you know, beyond the veil of. Of their marriage.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

That was like the sort of the subtext of a lot of the promotion.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. To what extent are there masks, orgies?

[Tom Junod]

Right, exactly. All that. All that stuff. Yeah. And, you know, they were sort of. They were showing a little leg, as the old statement used to go. And so I went down to Australia to meet with Nicole and, you know, had had a really wonderful time with her. She was a wonderful person to hang around with. We went to some cops bar in Australia and all these, you know, sitting at a table with her, it was just me and her. And, you know, people waited a really long time to approach her, but once they did, the whole place was just all over her and she was just fantastic. So she was really cool. And. But then, you know, came the day that I was supposed to leave and I called and told her I was going to leave. And she said, well, Tom, you know, I'm going to come down and see you.

[Pablo Torre]

And.

[Tom Junod]

And I was in my hotel room, which I had been in for like eight days by that time, because you can't go to Sydney without spending, you know, time there because the, you know, the flight there is so punishing. So, you know, my room is, is horrible. But I'm thinking I'm just going to go down into the Lobby, you know, to meet her, that I'll get a call. They say, Ms. Kidman's here and I'll go down there. Instead, I get a call that says, you know, Ms. Kidman's on her way up. And so I, so I'm running around the room, like, sticking my socks in my underwear, like under the bed. And, you know, she walks in in jeans and a black turtleneck and just walks right to my bed and, and lies down and I'm like, so what do I do? So I, what could I do?

[Pablo Torre]

What would Lou do?

[Tom Junod]

And there is some of that. There's no doubt, some of it. But I did go in, you know, laid next to her and then the phone rang and I went and pick up and there's this voice, hey, this is Tom Cruise. Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's, she's right here in my bed.

[Pablo Torre]

Ellipsis.

[Tom Junod]

Ellipsis in my bed. And he goes, yeah, right. In your dreams, man. And, and that's how that scene ended. And it's been, you know, I've thought of it a lot since basically, like, what was really going on there? And I've always wondered whether it was a little bit of a setup.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Tom Junod]

Right?

[Pablo Torre]

A life of, I don't know, infidelity and more.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

When does the tonnage of this begin to sink in? When do you first realize that, oh my God, like I've seen maybe hints of an iceberg, but there's so much underneath.

[Tom Junod]

The answer to that question is that is both really early and then much later. When I was three years old, my father had an affair with the mother of one of like my first friend, the guy who I shared a crib with. And so he had an affair with her. You know, long standing affair with her that was definitely going on when I was three. So I was quite aware that something was happening there because I was so tuned into my mom and I could see how unhappy the whole situation was making her. I was definitely aware of it. And so I went through a whole life with my dad, knowing that there was a secret life that he was leading whose resonances could be felt without ever being spoken of, without ever being articulated. When I was 16, I cracked the combination of his briefcase and took a look inside to see what was there, because I knew something was there. I knew something was going on, and so I had to find out. All that said, I started writing this book in 2015, and right away, I started calling people who knew my dad and was confronted with stuff I didn't know yet. And I thought I knew everything by this time. I thought it was almost gonna be a matter of just sort of writing from memory without really even requiring an investigation. But I started making those calls and realized that I was in the freaking deep end of the pool.

[Pablo Torre]

I laugh because I can imagine, again, that this starts off being like, this is going to be a real quest of interiority. I'm going to have to negotiate within myself what I'll be putting on the page and what I get in reading. This is you traveling around the country interviewing the women your father cheated on your mother with.

[Tom Junod]

Right. And getting details, even somewhat graphic details.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, what's the most graphic detail that still feels like, oh, wow, that's a lot.

[Tom Junod]

How graphic do you want me to get?

[Pablo Torre]

I would like you to be so graphic that I'm wondering if it's time for me to pull out the part of the book that I've been gesturing. Okay, well, what's the most. What's the most graphic part to you?

[Tom Junod]

One of my father's lovers described how my father seduced her and how that went. And she had borrowed money from him, and she offered to pay him back. And he said, why don't we take it out in trade? And so he invited her to his room at the Essex House. Of course.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

An iconic, iconic New York hotel. And she got up there, and there was a bottle of champagne waiting and two steaks under glass. And as she said, you know, within, you know, in 15 minutes, he was giving me the greatest I ever had. So that's a lot. Hearing that about your dad.

[Pablo Torre]

Put that on your book cover, Tom, is a lot.

[Tom Junod]

It's a blurb of sorts, but it's a lot. I believe my editor, Bill Thomas, was just like, we don't need that. And I was like, I think you do. Because I wanted to account for my father's hold on women. And I also also wanted to say to the reader that that hold was not something he was making up. My father, you know, also talks about having affairs with. With various movie stars and so on. And so the question is, is whether is this just in his head, right? Or is just all bullshit. The details that I got from that woman that day seemed, in the investigative trade, confirmation.

[Pablo Torre]

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Ava Gabor.

[Tom Junod]

And don't forget that some of this

[Pablo Torre]

is just like a mad lib.

[Tom Junod]

Admittedly, it's a Mad men live.

[Pablo Torre]

It brings me to this briefcase.

[Tom Junod]

The briefcase.

[Pablo Torre]

And I'm gonna have you read this part because I really.

[Tom Junod]

Okay.

[Pablo Torre]

Page 72 of the galley, at least if you can just read for a while and then.

[Tom Junod]

Sure, okay. Like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. Unlike a lot of other men, I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father. There is an automatic light overhead, the light in his closet. Although mom and dad have gone out and I am alone in the house, I don't want the doors to be wide open because I don't want to be well exposed if they come home and somehow sneak up on me in the middle of my investigation. Unfortunately, a floor to ceiling mirror covers the back of each door and I can see myself cross legged in front of the briefcase, revealed as I seek revelation. I do not walk away. I open the lid and I look. For a second. I think that my father has stowed in his briefcase something that was once alive that I am gazing at. A package of chicken parts he bought at the supermarket and then forgot about. I told myself that I was opening the briefcase to find the joy of sex and two vibrators of generic providence.

[Commercial Announcer]

Note.

[Tom Junod]

Two days before, two weeks before, two months before, I had gone into my father's bag and found two vibrators and the joy of sex, which feels like

[Pablo Torre]

a lot on its own.

[Tom Junod]

A lot on its own.

[Pablo Torre]

Side note.

[Tom Junod]

But of course I needed to go like to the next.

[Pablo Torre]

You couldn't help but find out.

[Tom Junod]

I couldn't help but find out. But while the joy of sex has not returned, the vibrators have mutated, metastasized into two dildos so large they seem prosthetic. They are sheathed in sleeves of venous rubber, each remarkably realistic in detail but outlandish in scale. The size of fungo bats. They share space in the briefcase with a stack of invoices and order Forms from various handbag lines, as well as several boxes of pornography, all of it on film in Super 8 format. Dad occasionally brings Playboys and Penthouses at home, and I do not read them for the articles, but I have never seen real pornography before. Is this real pornography? It is in that the photos on the boxes depict human beings engaged in identifiable acts of copulation. It's not in that the acts and the photos are as different from what I imagine to be normal pornography as dad is from normal people. They are extreme, even by porno standards. There are about five films, and the only one I can bring myself to look at is the one called Her Master's Piss. The rest are captioned in German and scare me. Everything in the briefcase scares me. When I came across the vibrators stashed away in the Corette leather bag with the Joy of Sex, I hopefully remembered that they were called marital aids. But these look like martial aids, like truncheons, the kinds you used in riot control. I have no idea what dad does with them, nor with whom. You made quite a move there by, you know, getting the sports angle in

[Pablo Torre]

with the fungo bats.

[Tom Junod]

The fungo bats metaphor.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, never mistake this show for anything, anything but a sports show. But the idea that you are 16

[Tom Junod]

at the time, and I had never been kissed, so. And so that was my sort of. That was the door opening into some sort of strange world.

[Pablo Torre]

Eyes wide shut or eyes wide open.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

The notion that you saw all of this and at some point committed to secrecy.

[Tom Junod]

Yeah, right, sure.

[Pablo Torre]

To not.

[Tom Junod]

I mean, that's. That. I mean, that is the. That is the. The consequence of finding out.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tom Junod]

So I go there. I am. Obviously, I've been determined to find out since I'm a really little kid. I mean, I used to. I used to tape my family's dinners and, you know, listen to it later to find out what was really said.

[Pablo Torre]

Were they aware that they were being.

[Tom Junod]

They were and they weren't. Just like the way interview subjects are, you know.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, they forget.

[Tom Junod]

Exactly. They forget it. But the consequences of finding out in this case was this decision I had to make to, you know, do I tell my mom? Do I tell anybody? And that's a huge decision because you've been given the nuclear codes to your parents, marriage. I mean, all you have to do is just say, hey, mom, it's done. But of course, I didn't. I didn't want that, so I didn't do it. And I've wondered, you know, many a time whether whether I should have gone and done it. And there's so. There's so much that happens like that. You know, I am. There's my. My. My aunt who falls into a coma and then comes out of her coma. And when she comes out of her coma, I'm like, well, what did you think of my dad?

[Pablo Torre]

You know, he's 91 years.

[Tom Junod]

91 years old. And she, you know, she's. She's dying.

[Pablo Torre]

And the tape recorder right in front

[Tom Junod]

of her, I'm right there, you know, Reporter on the spot.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Before you go,

[Tom Junod]

you know, I'm so. I'm pretty. I'm pretty obsessed. And the, you know, the. The searching, you know, never. Never stops. But the. The telling only starts here with the book.

[Pablo Torre]

How much of what you were feeling inside as you're gathering all of the evidence and you're finding out, how much of it was anger or other emotions that surprised you?

[Tom Junod]

You know, I was terrified. But as far as. As far as anger, I mean, it's really. It's a really interesting question. There is a part of you that says, at least I'm not crazy. I was right. And, And. And so that is the whole thing with my dad. I'm always suspicious, and I'm always right. There's never. There's never anything that, like, I suspect that of my father that does not pan out. Yeah. And so the question of anger is. Is an interesting one because in. In a lot of ways, I. I never sort of conceded that I was angry. And in fact, I'm on a bus heading for New York City, and I'm sitting next to a woman. It's right after Christmas, and she makes the mistake of asking me, how was your holidays? I'm like, you want to know? And like, she's sitting there, you know, trapped on the bus next to this guy, telling, like, intimate details about his family for the next two hours. Yeah, but she was incredibly smart, and she was incredibly cool. And I'm getting off, and she says, can I ask you one question? Why are you not angry at him? And I have a long response to that in. In the book. But my answer to that at the time was, he gave me who I am. He gave me my life. How can I be angry at him?

[Pablo Torre]

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[Commercial Announcer]

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[Pablo Torre]

It is important to note, and you make this clear, that your dad, as always, we're trying to like, clarify and even subvert the traditional caricatures of what it is to be a guy like this, right? And your dad said that he loved you all the time.

[Tom Junod]

All the time.

[Pablo Torre]

He wasn't like absentee in that traditional way.

[Tom Junod]

He was absentee in that he went away for six weeks and carried on with countless lovers during that time. But when he was home, he was remarkably present. He was not a distant dad. And I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to about him and about this book or who have read the book and said, at least he told you he loved you. My dad never told me that. And he did. My dad was always sort of, you know, love you, love you, love you. I mean, it was not something that we were shortchanged on.

[Pablo Torre]

It also informs why when you are becoming the Again, the title of the book is in the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man when you're becoming not just a man, but eventually a father and a husband. There's a calculation that, okay, I also need to write a part of the book that is not funny, but is like, potentially destructive to my own household. And you write in the book about a weekend in 1996.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Could you explain the decision to confess something in public and what that confession was? And how, again, in the decision do I do this? Do I not do this? What do I hold back? What do I reveal? How you arrived at a part of the book that is striking. Because as much as dildos are one thing, this is like some real.

[Tom Junod]

This is personal. And it's real. And it's real. I'm definitely going to, like, limit how much I, I talk about this because I've, you know, I've caused, I've caused pain and I don't want to, I don't want to go there and cause more pain. But it, it re. It refers to a, a brief affair back in, in, in 1996. And what I put in the book is about my decision, years later, to reveal that secret to my wife, to confess that to to my wife. That's what's in the book. And so then I, in turn, confess that to the reader. And the reason that I do it is I find the woman who had the affair with my dad when I was three years old. I go out and find her, and I don't leave the house until she basically fesses up. And that sort of dynamic is played out again and again and again in the book. I mean, how could I do that and not expect the same thing of myself? I'd be dishonest. This book, which I think is very honest and is truth telling, would be dishonest. And I got the chance to tell the truth in writing this book. And I mean, the whole truth about everybody in my family, about my dad and about myself. So how could I subvert that by pretending that I was somehow above my father's influence? There's several sections in the book where my father is actively trying to coax me into having affairs. I mean, there's a part of the book where I am, during my handbag salesman days, I am held up at gunpoint in a hotel room and nearly executed. And my father's answer to that, his response to that was trying to hook me up with one of his lovers. How could I pretend that that didn't

[Pablo Torre]

affect me as someone who does investigative journalism in ways that continue to terrify my family?

[Tom Junod]

It's a weird way to make a living.

[Pablo Torre]

It is. And yet, one of the scariest things, of course, is to consider investigating yourself.

[Tom Junod]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And those you love, knowing what it's like and the power that you have given an audience insofar as you could embarrass someone in front of the whole world.

[Tom Junod]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the thing that I am left thinking of near the end here is, what do you think his reaction would have been to this book?

[Tom Junod]

I do think that he, you know, would have been mortified. You know, what I expose is a guy who doesn't quite live up to the ideals that he never tired of espousing. So I think that. I think that that would be tough on him. On the other hand, a lot of this book sort of channels his charisma. A month ago, I went to KGB in downtown New York and did a reading. And all I had to do was start doing his voice. And, you know, and the place sort of responded immediately. There was, like, you could feel, like, this flutter of excitement in the room. I felt like my dad was back there, and, by God, he still had it. So the fact that he. The fact that I'm Able to sort of give people. Him. Give people that in 2026, and therefore give him, at last, the celebrity that he always craved. I mean, either it's a payoff or it's a paradox. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I am. I am glad I did it.

[Pablo Torre]

What would Fred have said?

[Tom Junod]

Oh, I think. I think that Fred would. Would say something, you know, saying, gee, Tom, you really like to use those details, don't you? I didn't stay in touch with Fred just for that story. I stayed in touch with Fred for the rest of Fred's life. I wrote the story in 1998. Fred died in early 2003. And for those five years, I was in touch with Fred. And he wrote me emails a lot. And any number of those emails are about my dad. And the thing that Fred was always trying to tell me was your dad would be proud of you and your dad loves you. I know you are a man of conviction, a person who knows the difference between what is wrong and what is right. Try to remember that your relationship with your father also helped to shape those parts. He helped you become what you are. So I think that he'd be. I think that he'd be. I think that he'd be good with the book.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Tom, do you know, as I sit here sweating profusely under this cardigan, maybe

[Tom Junod]

you'd be sweating even without the cardigan. Given the. The content of this interview, I dare

[Pablo Torre]

say that I think we've reached our natural end.

[Tom Junod]

I think. I think we have.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan.

[Tom Junod]

Fellas.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Tom Junod]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goo. But you can call me the smash Daddy.

[Pablo Torre]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Tom Junod]

That's right.

[Pablo Torre]

Hey.

[Tom Junod]

Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Pablo Torre]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Tom Junod]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts. The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about. Get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

[Pablo Torre]

Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful. Can we stop at a bathroom?

[Tom Junod]

Are you alright?

[Pablo Torre]

And keep having stomach issues after eating, like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools.

[Tom Junod]

Sound familiar?

[Pablo Torre]

Those stomach issues may actually be a

[Commercial Announcer]

pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi.

[Pablo Torre]

Creon may help manage EPI Creon is

[Commercial Announcer]

a prescription medicine used to treat people

[Pablo Torre]

who can't digest food normally because their pancre just doesn't make enough enzymes.

[Commercial Announcer]

Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork, or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful, swollen joints.

[Tom Junod]

Call your doctor if you have any

[Commercial Announcer]

unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor

[Tom Junod]

and always with food.

[Commercial Announcer]

Do not chew capsules, as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 863-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's creoninfo. Com.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm asking my doctor about epi and

[Tom Junod]

if Creon could help.