Mane AF

“In sickness and in health” gets complicated when nobody in the house qualifies as the healthy one. Just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Tyler has just finished 20 rounds of radiation for male breast cancer. Renae has facial shingles, relentless itching, and very little sleep. Both need support. Both have opinions about how the other should be handling things. This week on MANE AF, we’re talking about what happens when the caregiver needs care, your partner handles fear completely differently than you do, and “call the doctor” is much easier advice to give than receive. Tyler shares what radiation was like for him and the uncertainty of what comes next. Renae opens up about shingles, losing her dad, and the fear of losing someone else she loves. And together, we try to get past “I’m fine” long enough to have the harder conversation. If health problems have left you and your partner tired, scared, or occasionally arguing about who’s taking care of whom, you’ll recognize a few things here. We’re still figuring it out, too—with love, some bickering, and an ice pack. Subscribe and send this to the person getting through the hard stuff with you. It takes a village to make a bigger village.

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/