Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.When Gary Vider was growing up in Long Island, his father Manny came up with a wheeze to get into sports events for free. Over five years in the mid-1990s, Manny got his son to pose as a young journalist from Sports Illustrated Kids magazine and he pretended to be a photographer. It worked a treat. Not only were he and Gary given free tickets to matches at Madison Square Garden, but they visited the players afterwards and had their pictures taken with them. Among the stars they met were basketball player Michael Jordan.In the podcast #1 Dad, Vider seeks to reconnect with his “conman” father, from whom he has been estranged for 24 years. It’s part audio memoir, part extended therapy session, in which he attempts to come to terms with the extreme dysfunction of his childhood. Vider, a late-thirtysomething comedian and former finalist on America’s Got Talent, has a young son, Sully, whose arrival prompted him to reflect on his own experience of being parented.Much of what he reveals is shocking. Vider recalls Manny helping him and his sisters photocopy dollar bills to use as lunch money at school. The children were also sent out to vandalise payphones; along with running a furniture business which regularly left customers without the items they’d paid for, Manny traded in payphones and sought to sabotage his rivals. From time to time, he and his family had to hide in the house as angry clients and business associates hammered on the door demanding money.As a character study, #1 Dad is fascinating. Vider talks to old colleagues, college friends and relatives of Manny’s, who talk of his charisma, his chutzpah and his extraordinary ability to bend others to his will. All, Vider discovers, have washed their hands of his father. Nonetheless, in the opening episodes, I wondered about the fairness of a series chronicling a man’s failures as a dad, husband and businessman without offering an alternative viewpoint or giving him right of reply. But then — and mild spoiler incoming — we get to hear from the man himself as Vider tracks down his father and, over several electrifying episodes, they have an honest conversation, talking about their estrangement, his shady business practices and why he is the way he is. The answer to the last question? “I’m a greedy fuck,” explains Manny, who takes no issue with being called a conman and who blithely consents to the publishing of this podcast, no matter how unflattering the portrait. Perhaps the most startling aspect of this series comes not just in hearing Vider slough off 24 years of sadness and fury and slowly succumbing to his septuagenarian father’s charms, but in how we are won over by him too. You wouldn’t leave Manny Vider alone with your wallet, but a few hours in his company? I wouldn’t say no.Available on popular podcast platforms
