"Bean Dad" Controversy Leads 'My Brother, My Brother and Me' Podcast to Change Theme Song

John Roderick and the Long Winters have been booted from the show after over 500 episodes

Photo: Alex Hudson

BY Alex HudsonPublished Jan 4, 2021

Yesterday (January 3), John Roderick of the 2000s indie rock band the Long Winters became universally known as "Bean Dad," after his tweet thread about some questionable parenting tactics went massively viral on Twitter. The fallout from that controversy is already having a serious impact on the band's career, since popular advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me has stopped using their music as a theme song.

Up until this week, My Brother, My Brother and Me had used the Long Winters' song "(It's A) Departure" for its past 503 episodes, dating back to January 2011. That changed today (January 4), when MBMBaM rolled out its latest episode with a new theme song — a cover of Mark Mothersbaugh's iconic Rugrats theme music with lyrics about the podcast, performed by podcast co-host Griffin McElroy.

MBMBaM announced the change yesterday, while the "Bean Dad" controversy was still in high gear, tweeting, "For reasons we're sure you're all aware of, we're getting started finding new music for MBMBaM. You'll probably hear a filler theme song on this week's episode."

They continued, "We appreciate John letting us use one of his songs as the theme for MBMBaM for nearly a decade, but his response to today's situation is emblematic of a pattern of behavior that is antithetical to the energy we try to bring to the things we do, and so it's time for us to move on."

Based on their comments, it seems that MBMBaM made the switch not entirely because of the "Bean Dad" tweets, but also because of a long history of controversial tweets made by Roderick. After he went viral, numerous Twitter users shared screencaps of numerous tweets depicting Roderick using racist and homophobic slurs and making anti-Semitic jokes. Those tweets have since been deleted.

Read MBMBaM's full response below.

 

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