Rob swore at a driver in Newtown. Then he heard a small voice repeat it, word for word, from the back seat. That is roughly where this show begins.

In the first episode of Daddies, Rob Stott and Marcus Hurley take a BBC piece on "dad brain" and test it against their own experience. The research says fatherhood physically rewires you: testosterone drops, and drops further in dads doing more of the caring. Oxytocin rises, especially through play and physical contact.

Rob's daughter Billie was born via surrogacy in Canada during COVID, which meant meeting their surrogate over Zoom and watching every scan from the other side of the world. He then took eighteen months off work as the primary carer. The research says gay dads doing primary care show the same brain activation as mothers, and Rob has thoughts on whether that matches what he actually felt, and when.

Marcus co-parents on a fifty-fifty split and describes the weekly switch between being a dad and being a single man, the morning his ex-wife held an engagement ring up to the camera while he was camping, and the mate who asked him how it made him feel.

Plus the change nobody warns you about, which is not the nappies. It is your friendships.

Chapters

• 00:00 The word Billie wouldn't stop saying
• 00:12 Meet Rob and Marcus
• 01:12 TMI: Rob swears, Billie repeats it
• 04:39 How a 50/50 fortnight actually works
• 05:16 An engagement ring over FaceTime
• 06:45 Meeting your daughter's stepdad
• 08:04 Change: the BBC 'Dad Brain' article
• 09:20 Testosterone drops, oxytocin spikes
• 10:54 Surrogacy in Canada, over Zoom
• 11:48 Gay dads and 18 months of primary care
• 13:13 The change nobody warns you about
• 15:56 What do you miss from before?
• 18:24 What did you just say?
• 20:23 The secret candle

References
Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind, BBC Future, 18 April 2026

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Find us

• Instagram: @daddiespodcastau
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• Listen on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/id6804513711
• Find us on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4JqZSIBvqU33N5LGJ3b46S
• Everything else: manofmany.com/podcasts/daddies

Credits
Hosts: Rob Stott and Marcus Hurley
Producer: Amelia Navascues
Videographer: Jordan Yankov
A Man of Many production. New episodes every Thursday.