Marc Kaye’s Kids are 1 in 8 Million

Comedian and debut essayist Marc Kaye joins host Ophira Eisenberg mid-vacation, sweat-soaked from a Yellowstone-to-Badlands road trip, to talk about the strange math of raising kids you can't actually engineer — a fitting theme from a guy with a mechanical engineering-turned-raver son and a musical-theater daughter now working inside the Bureau of Prisons at Fort Dix. Mark, who spent a year teaching biology in Camden through Teach for America, walks through the genetics lesson that quietly reordered his whole parenting philosophy: two parents, 23 chromosome pairs each, roughly eight million possible combinations before you even get to eye color, proof, he argues, that most of what parents take credit for was never in their hands to begin with. That idea threads into two very different formative stories: his post-college stint as a Big Brother paired with a kid with "violent tendencies" (a 138-pound psychology grad's crash course in letting go of outcomes), and the moment his son, mid-meltdown, declared the family dog-attacked stuffed animal "Bob is blind" — a small domestic crisis Mark still can't quite explain his own panic over. He and Ophira also dig into growing up with older, more rigid parents shaped by World War II, DIY households versus outsourced adulthood, and Mark's theory, half joke, half warning, that couples should have to do a Catholic-style pre-Cana before marriage, since nothing prepares you for becoming "a different person" alongside another one under exhaustion and diapers. Mark's new essay collection, "A Is for Awkward and Other Reflections on Belonging," and his comedy album "I'm a Good Dad" both hover in the background of a conversation that keeps circling back to one blunt, useful phrase he uses often with his now-grown kids: you get what you get, and you don't get upset. 📍September Shows are in Toronto, Canada, Cleveland & Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, MO, Saint Paul, MN, NYC Follow Marc Kaye : https://www.instagram.com/awkwardlymarc Buy his book: A Is For Awkward https://www.marckayetoday.com/a-is-for-awkward See Ophira LIVE: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/events/ Check out my NEW Comedy Special “I Used to Be Nicer” is AVAILABLE on Amazon, Google Play and Apple!https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com Listen to it as an Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/1rHqPoBYc78gzMnCrCFoZy SUBSCRIBE so you never miss O thing: https://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/sign-up Follow PIAJ:  https://www.instagram.com/parentingisajoke/ https://parentingisajoke.substack.com/   Follow Ophira: https://www.instagram.com/ophirae/ https://www.facebook.com/OphiraEisenberg/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ophiranyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices