John Roderick (musician)

Roderick was born in Seattle on September 13, 1968, the son of Marcia and David Roderick. His father was a Washington State legislator and World War II veteran.[1] His mother was a computer programmer who eventually rose to an executive position working for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.[2] Roderick has three older half-siblings from his father and a sister, Susan.[1]

In 1971, the family moved to Anchorage, Alaska.[2] In 1973, Roderick's parents divorced and his mother took John and Susan back to Washington state, but returned to Anchorage shortly after.[1] He graduated from East Anchorage High and moved back to Seattle. Roderick enrolled at Gonzaga University in 1987, but left after two years.[2] In 2019, Roderick graduated with a BA from the University of Washington after three decades of undergraduate study.[3]

Merlin Mann and Roderick

In September 2011, Roderick began co-hosting the Roderick on the Line podcast with Merlin Mann.[7] On August 13, 2015, he released the first episode of his second podcast called Road Work, with co-host Dan Benjamin.[8] On September 7, 2017, HowStuffWorks announced a new show entitled Omnibus, co-hosted by Roderick and former Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings. They pick topics they fear might be lost to history and discuss them. The first episode was posted on December 7, 2017.[9] Roderick, along with Adam Pranica and Benjamin Ahr Harrison, presented Friendly Fire, a weekly podcast about war films that ran from January 12, 2018 to January 22, 2021.[10][11]

The song "It's A Departure" from the Long Winters album Putting The Days To Bed acted as the theme song for the podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me until January 2021, when it was announced that the song would be replaced due to the controversy over Roderick's tweets.[12] Roderick has appeared on the program, sometimes performing the theme song live before live shows.

Roderick frequently collaborates with other musicians. Along with collaborator Sean Nelson, he provided vocals on Death Cab for Cutie's album Transatlanticism. He also collaborated with Jonathan Coulton for Coulton's album Artificial Heart, released in September 2011,[13] as well as the duo's Christmas album One Christmas at a Time. Roderick co-wrote some songs on Aimee Mann's 2017 album Mental Illness.[14]

Roderick became a founding member of the Seattle Music Commission in 2010, appointed to the position by former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.[15] In 2015, encouraged by McGinn, Roderick announced his candidacy for Seattle City Council Position 8, one of two city council positions that represent the entire city.[16] He came in 3rd place in the citywide primary, winning 15.90% of the vote.[17]

Roderick currently lives in Seattle with his daughter. In 2017, he was honored with the position of King Neptune for the 2017 Seattle Seafair.[18]

In January 2021, Roderick posted a Twitter thread in which he discussed preventing his nine-year-old daughter from eating until she learned to open a can of baked beans using a manual can opener by herself, which he approximated took six hours.[19][20][21] His comments were met with a large outcry on Twitter, and some users began derisively referring to Roderick as "Bean Dad".[21][22] As a response to the controversial tweets, other Twitter users dug up and re-published old tweets in which Roderick used antisemitic, homophobic, racist, sexist, and other derogatory language.[21][23] Some, including Ken Jennings and Michael Ian Black, defended Roderick; Jennings said that Roderick was "a loving and attentive dad who [...] tells heightened-for-effect stories" and Black said that Roderick's older tweets were "obviously jokes, not proof of any abhorrent beliefs".[21][24] Roderick subsequently deleted his Twitter account.[21][25][26] Following the controversy, the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, which had previously used The Long Winters' song "It's a Departure" as a theme, announced that they would be dropping the music from the show.[21][26] Friendly Fire, which was co-hosted by Roderick, went on a brief hiatus before announcing on January 22 that it wouldn't be returning.[11]

Roderick posted an extensive apology to his website the day after the controversy.[27] He wrote that "My parenting story’s insensitivity and the legacy of hurtful language in my past are both profound failures", and that, although he "framed the story with [himself] as the asshole dad" for comedic purposes and that his early tweets were an attempt at "being an ally" by using slurs in an ironic, mocking way, he had realized that the story and his early tweets were hurtful and insensitive. He concluded by writing, "I apologize to my partners, my friends, and to all the people affected by my words for the hurt I caused."[28]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Roderick.

• Interview with John on Mammothpress.com
• 4-part Interview on The Merlin Show by Merlin Mann
• Feature in The Stranger by Jeff Deroche
• Interview in The Believer by Litsa Dremousis, June/July 2005
• Interview in playinginfog by Kate Izquierdo, October 2005
• Podcast with Merlin Mann: Roderick on the Line