CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
Hey there, it’s Christine … and Father’s Day is right around the corner on June 21st.
We’ve done a few episodes about Mother’s Day on the show, and this year we wanted to even things out and talk about dads too.
We actually have quite a few dads on the Wirecutter staff, so we wanted to let them take the spotlight for this episode. We asked a bunch of our colleagues with kids what the best gift they’ve received for Father’s Day was. I hope their reflections give you some ideas of great ways to celebrate the father or father figure in your life this year.
We also have tons of great Father’s day ideas on our site. Our gifts team spends a ton of time curating great gifts. And you can find those at wirecutter.com slash gifts.
Okay, let’s let the dads take it away.
GRANT: Hi, I’m Grant Clauser and I’m on the audio, video, and smart home team. And I think the best Father’s Day gift I ever received from my kids, although technically I know it was from my wife, was a backyard fire pit, Landman backyard firepit to be exact. I actually wrote about it in 2020 and even then it was at least seven years old. We spent a lot of wonderful evenings sitting around the fire. Maybe roasting some marshmallows or just telling stories. Unfortunately, last year after sitting out in the backyard through all weather, I even left it out in the winter because I’m irresponsible, the bottom finally rusted out. My kids are a lot older now, so maybe they can afford to get me one of those nice smokeless ones this year.
BEN: Hey there, this is Ben Frumin, Wirecutter’s Editor-in-Chief, and I am here to tell you about one of the all-time greatest Father’s Day gifts that I have received, their socks. Now, they’re not just any socks. I know socks sounds boring, generic, kind of gift you could give any dad, but these socks are special. These socks have my children’s faces on them. These are personalized socks. They are a Wirecutter recommended gift pick in our guide to the best personalized gifts by Samantha Schoech and Mari Uyehara. They are DivvyUp Custom Socks. And these socks are great. I have two pairs with both of my kids’ faces on them. And one of my beloved cat. These socks give me that sense of punk rock geeky cool personality even when I have to wear like work clothes they’re kind of goofy they’re fun and I know this is gonna sound very very sappy but I think what I love most about them is I sort of feel like I got my kids with me throughout the day I’ll be sitting in a meeting obviously not a boring meeting we never have any of those I’ll, be sitting at a super interesting meeting and I’ll look down at my feet and I will see My boy’s smiling face looking up at me, my beautiful daughter smiling up at me, and it makes me happy.
DAVE: Hi, this is Dave from the YouTube team here at Wirecutter. The best Father’s Day gift I ever got is a little bit limited because my son is only five years old. But when he was in preschool, him and his class tie-dyed a bunch of shirts for all the dads. And it happened to be the summer that tie-dye really came back into vogue. So now I get to wear it and look good and he gets really amped whenever I do.
HARRY: Hi, this is Harry Sawyers. I’m a senior editor at Wirecutter. My team covers home improving, emergency prep, pets, and once upon a time I helped launch our kids coverage when my own kids were much younger. So for Father’s Day, I am not a great gift giver myself, which probably explains why I don’t get many gifts for Father Day, although I do complain about it. Instead, I have a tradition. I write them all a letter. One page, every Father’s Day, going back to 2013, I tell them what it’s like to be their dad, how they are as kids, what being their parent has meant to me or what it means at this point at least. And it’s meant to show appreciation and gratitude for the gift of fatherhood they’ve given me, although it probably veers into complaints itself. I started because it occurred to me when I was a new parent that I really would have appreciated something like that from my own dad and he didn’t write that stuff down and he really didn’t remember what it was like to be a parent of a young child either. So I didn’t have that and so I started just writing my own in case they ever felt the same way.
CHRISTINE: We’re gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll hear about a great gift for a music-loving dad… and one for a sporty dad!
Be right back.
We’re back… and we’re getting ready for Father’s Day by hearing from a bunch of dads on staff at Wirecutter about the best gifts they’ve received over the years. We let some of our gifting experts, Samantha Schoech and Hannah Morrill also chime in because, well, they’ve got excellent gift advice!
Let’s hear:
SAMANTHA: Hi, this is Samantha Schoech. I’m a staff writer on the gifts team at Wirecutter. The best gift I ever gave my dad was a really simple Indian cookbook. When I was growing up, he did not cook at all. The only thing I ever remember him cooking were cheesy hot dogs. So he was probably in his 50s when I gave him this cookbook and it totally changed his cooking life and he learned to cook. And he learned to follow recipes. He would cook entire Indian meals, and it gave him a lot of confidence. And he’s still a terrible cook if he just goes at it alone. But if he has a recipe to follow, he can actually make a lot of delicious food. So that was probably the best Father’s Day gift I ever gave him.
LIAM: Hey, this is Liam McCabe. I’m a home improvement writer at Wirecutter. This will be my ninth father’s day as a dad. I really do appreciate the handmade cards and frame photos and those kinds of sentimental gifts. Keep them on my desk. I look at them all the time. Those are great. The ones that surprise and delight me the most, the kinds of don’t really expect to get, but end up really enjoying are usually nicer or just slightly different versions of things that I use all the time anyway. So one year, my wife and daughter got me a variety pack of hot sauces, which was great. I have my one hot sauce that I put on most things and I know where to get it for a good price. And I sort of stick with that. They got me this variety pack with. 10 or 12 different bottles and it was fun to experiment and try different things out and found a few that I’ve sort of worked into my regular rotation, which has been great. Wouldn’t happen without that gift. And the other one that comes to the top of my mind is a pair of baseball pants. I play rec league softball, not a very high level of competition, but still fun and you know, you wanna be comfortable. I usually wear shorts or track pants and that kind of thing, but they surprised me with a pair of actual fitted baseball pants. They were a lot more comfortable than I was expecting them to be. They protect my legs a little better on the rare occasion when I end up on the ground. And a couple of my teammates looked at me when I first wore them and said, did you lose weight? And I’m like, no, definitely not. A couple of people thought I was running faster too, which was definitely not true either. But I guess they made a good impression and I’m really glad that they gave them to me.
JON: Hi, this is Jon Chase, and I am the smart home editor at Wirecutter. I have two kids, and they always give me wonderful Father’s Day gifts, of course, and they’re almost always handmade. And a couple that stand out that I really love, my daughter made a leather belt that is colored like a rainbow trout, I fly fish. And so it’s just this gorgeous, lovely, completely unique item. And my son gave me one of my most treasured gifts. It’s a handmade mug. And on the side it says number four best dad.
THOM: My name is Tom Dunn and I’m a senior staff writer on the Home Improvements Team. The best Father’s Day gift I ever received when I’m not testing the air conditioners, I’m also a musician. So my wife and kids like to get me some fun guitar swag sometimes. And I think my favorite of all was one year they got me a graphic t-shirt with the fingering charts for a D, A, and D chord. Get it? I get a lot of… Lot of mileage out of that graphic to you in a lot of situations, so that’s always fun.
HANNAH: Hello, I’m Hannah Morrill and I’m an editor on the GIFs team. My dad died this past year, but Father’s Day was one of his favorite holidays. He always would send my brother and sister and I long ahead of Father’s day, lists of what he was expecting from each of us this year. And at the time we always sort of like, rolled our eyes about it. We’re like, oh, okay, dad. And now it’s sort of has become like something I really value about him. And of course I see it differently now. This was a man who asked for what he wanted and there was a tongue in cheek aspect to it, but it was, he had had a sort of like a tough upbringing. He was not raised by his parents. He was sort of orphaned and became a college professor. And you don’t have that kind of trajectory by sort of letting life happen to you and by not asking for what you want. Things my dad has asked for over the years are like DVD players and a pontoon boat one year, language courses, a new watch. I mean, whatever was sort of like going on in his life, we would ask us for that. And so, yeah, I think this Father’s Day, I feel really reflective on the gifts my dad had asked for in the past and the enduring lessons in his asks.
CHRISTINE: As always, you can find great ideas for gifts for father’s day on the wirecutter site… and we’ll drop some links in our show notes, too.
Happy Father’s Day! See ya next time.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Episodes are mixed by Catherine Anderson, Efim Shapiro, Rowan Niemisto, Sophia Lanman, and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, Catherine Anderson, Rowan Niemisto and Diane Wong. Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief. Hosted by Rosie Guerin, Caira Blackwell and Christine Cyr Clisset.
