Mane AF

It's Sober October and, just in time for Halloween, we’re pulling the skeletons out of our closet. Tyler opens up about his drinking for the first time, Renae gets honest about eating-disorder recovery, and Tyler wants help for Renae's perfectionism. Thank goodness “America’s Social Worker,” Kelley Kitley, joins us to help us unpack what happens during and after recovery from addiction when the old patterns stick around. GRAY AREA Film WEBSITE PODCAST SUBSTACK

Scout Taylor-Compton has been part of Tyler and Renae’s lives since she was 17. So this isn’t really an interview. It’s family catching up. And things get personal fast. Scout opens up about growing up in Hollywood, running away at 14, searching for family, disastrous relationships, finding her husband Tom, grief, ADHD, directing, and finally discovering her own voice in her 30s. There’s also Halloween nostalgia, marriage dysfunction, dogs in the bed, unsolicited parenting advice, and just enough emotional damage to make it a proper MANE AF episode. Midlife. Marriage. Mayhem. And Scout Taylor-Compton.

Tyler thought four rounds of chemo meant getting through it, ringing the bell, and moving on. Then cancer moved the goalposts. In this unusually raw episode, Tyler opens up about the exhaustion, hives, fear, frustration and blood clot that followed chemo, and what happens when the guy who usually powers through everything realizes he’s not feeling much like himself. There’s anger. There’s fear. There’s marital bickering. And, thankfully, there are still inappropriate jokes. It isn’t our neatest episode. It may be one of our most honest. Because sometimes finishing treatment doesn’t mean feeling finished.

After Tyler’s breast cancer diagnosis, genetic testing revealed something neither of us expected: a BRCA2 mutation that doesn’t just affect Tyler—it could matter for his kids and the rest of his family too. Genetic counselor Brittany Hird joins us to break down what that result really means, what gets passed from parent to child, why a positive gene doesn’t guarantee disease, and what you should know before deciding to get tested. And then we get to the bigger question: If your DNA could tell you something scary about your future, would you actually want to know? Links discussed in podcast for more information: https://www.facingourrisk.org https://findageneticcounselor.nsgc.org/

A breast cancer diagnosis comes with a lot of information, and not nearly enough plain English. Dr. Nicole Sroka MD breaks down what your scans, biopsy results, staging, and pathology actually mean, which questions are worth asking, and why treatment should be personal, not cookie-cutter. We also get into male breast cancer, why it’s so easy to miss, and what Tyler’s diagnosis taught us about not ignoring the weird stuff your body is trying to tell you.