DAD
BRIAN RUBIN-SOWERS
Brian Rubin-Sowers has always considered himself a late bloomer. He met the love of his life at 38, was married at 40, became a father at almost 42, and a dad of two at 45. It wasn’t until his 50th year that he amassed enough self-confidence to pursue his dreams and prioritize his creative passions, which is what brings him here. Now a father of two daughters ages 8 and 5 (plus a canine daughter aged 15), and blissfully married to his husband of 10 years, Brian has achieved a kind of family life nirvana he wants to help others find for themselves through Dads and Daddies and other ideas he’s developing.
For the past 30 years, Brian has pursued a professional career in the field of Public Relations and Publicity, first at two of Southern California’s most respected regional theaters, La Jolla Playhouse and the Mark Taper Forum, before moving to New York to become a Broadway press agent. After six Broadway seasons, Brian found it too difficult to maintain his love for Theater while working in it, so he paused his career to pursue another passion, and spent two years attending The New School’s Creative Writing program. Upon receiving his MFA, Brian was forced to confront the truth that writing fiction wouldn’t pay the bills, so he made a return to the PR universe, this time with a focus on video games, and has remained in that world for the two decades since. Brian is the founder of the GGP (Gay Gaming Professionals), an organization that promotes, cultivates, and unites the professional LGBTQ+ community in the video game industry.
Some may recognize Brian from his early career as a childhood actor, the highlight of which was his two-episode arc as nerd Myron on the final season of “Punky Brewster” (including the series finale), or from his somewhat more recent appearance on the short-lived YouTube series, “Alec Baldwin’s Love Ride.”
Brian and his family live in Brooklyn, New York.
JUDSON MORROW
DADDY
Where Brian was a late bloomer, Judson Morrow lived hard and fast from an early age. Perfecting the veneer of “Nerdy Johnny High School,” a younger Judson was a mischievous little party boy who was lucky to call a small group of rebellious daughters of divorce his high school besties. Out at 15 in 1998, access to a car and the internet blew his gay world wide open. This streak of adventure-seeking self-destruction followed him into his early 30s. Although he had been able to obtain a Master’s Degree in Mexico and hold down a job (for the most part), at 32 he admitted he was an alcoholic and crystal meth addict. He began to pursue the soft side of Recovery.
Now 41 and sober with a polished career in Sales and Training, an amazing husband, and peaceful pastimes, he has hit his stride as a Daddy. From mentoring younger colleagues on how to navigate workplace politics to teaching recent NYU grads the joys of paddling, Judson treats Daddyness as an outlook and an attitude rather than something restricted by age, aesthetic or position. Like Brian, he feels he has wisdom to share from 26 years as an out gay man and hopes Dads and Daddies listeners laugh, gasp and finish each episode enriched.
Judson and his husband live in Brooklyn, New York. If you see him on the Q train, he is most definitely cruising you.
hoW we GOT HEre
BY BRIAN RUBIN-SOWERS
It all began on the Q train. It was two nights before my 50th birthday this past December, and I was heading into Manhattan on a rare Monday evening away from my husband and kids to meet friends to see another friend’s one-man show. One stop into my trip, the subway doors slid open across from me, and who should step on but my fairly new friend Judson. I’d first met Judson and his husband only four years prior at a mutual friend’s Hanukkah party in our shared neighborhood of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. At the time, it felt like a novelty to meet queer neighbors, so we were excited to be introduced. But then a global pandemic happened and, outside of the occasional run-in on the local sidewalks when Judson, his husband, my husband and I would all insist we should make an actual plan to hang out, nothing ever materialized. Then, about eighteen months before our fateful night on the Q train, Judson and his husband invited my family to join them for a 4th of July party being hosted in Ditmas Park at the home of three queer men they felt we should meet. From that point forth, the seven of us – my husband and I, Judson and his, plus the three who hosted that party – became a circle of friends that spent more and more time together and quickly developed a strong bond and real love for one another. Even so, Judson and I never developed a one-on-one relationship outside of the seven. Fast forward to the northbound Q train in December.
“Do you wanna sit and chat or should I give you alone time?” Judson asked me in a tone that gave me an instant peek into what I would come to learn is his trademark mix of sly humor and almost superhuman emotional intelligence.
I invited him to join me, and, for the first time, we entered into conversation just the two of us. I happened to be feeling particularly insecure that day, having ended a hookup earlier that morning with someone I was very into on a somewhat embarrassing note, and sensed immediately that I could open up to Judson about it. In seconds, he made me feel better, and over the next thirty minutes, we spoke about every subject under the sun—from our marriages to the nuclear families we grew up with, to work stress, to my experiences as a dad, his journey through addiction and recovery and so much more. After he left me a couple stops before mine, I felt intense gratitude to the universe for making the moment happen and an immediate idea sparked in my head.
A few weeks later, after the winter holidays, I invited Judson to lunch and proposed my idea: Dads and Daddies, a podcast about the lives and times of adult gay men in the here and now, where I, a Dad of two daughters, ages 8 and 5, and Judson, a self-identified “Daddy,” would get to know each other further, having more conversations like the one we shared on the subway that night, exploring what it means to be gay men of a certain age (Judson is a Millennial at 41, I’m a Gen X-er at 50), each approaching life from our unique vantage points, but with microphones in front of us to share with anyone who might want to pull up a chair and listen in. The idea was for the two of us to have frank, unfiltered and unrehearsed conversations about topics many of the people we meet are uncomfortable to bring up, but for which we know they want an outlet to explore. Judson was in, and so here we are, having those conversations and sharing them with you. Topics we discuss include the histories and navigation of our open relationships, how we came out to our parents and the evolutions of our relationships with our fathers, the highs and lows of hooking up with men who are not our husbands, exploring how we each approach financial responsibilities, the various identities we need to keep up as gay men, the ins-and-outs of sex parties, how we view friendship, the building and maintaining of confidence, the top-bottom-vers-side continuum, and so much more. Welcome! We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoy talking.
