Danny Jacobs always knew his dad, Richard, was … different.
For instance, Richard’s house had no street number. Instead, he lived in Creve Coeur, Missouri, at the Royal Manor on Royal Manor Drive because he’d pushed the county into letting him name his house like it was an estate. (This made getting food delivered almost impossible.)
And the house “was like the Boo Radley House,” childhood friend Darren Grodsky, 44, remembers. “It was the house in the neighborhood all the kids were scared of.”
Grodsky remembers a dark interior packed with boxes and piles of papers as unwelcoming as the exterior when he slept over as a kid.
Adults were wary of the house, too, but for different reasons. If he felt wronged or slighted, Richard, a lawyer, would use the legal system to seek retribution, his son recalls. When that didn’t work, Richard engaged in endless letter-writing campaigns and all-hours phone calls to get what he wanted, according to Jacobs.
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On a podcast, Danny Jacobs, 44, says his mom was invited to join a support group after his parents divorced. But it wasn’t for divorcees. It was for victims of Richard.
“There were dozens of them. ... And after my dad lost his law license, which is a whole other story, they set out to make sure he was permanently disbarred,” he says in the podcast’s first episode.
Richard lost his license in the early 1980s. At the time, in a related legal case, he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as having narcissistic personality disorder, which causes people to have a high regard for themselves but not to understand or care about the feelings of others.
He was diagnosed again with the disorder as part of a custody battle after the divorce. Danny was 6 when his parents divorced.
The disorder explained a lot of Richard’s destructive behavior, which often corroded his closest relationships. For instance, he wanted to help his son break into the film industry, so he sent letters in Danny’s name to Hollywood bigwigs asking for an meetings. Danny was unaware of it until a friend told him about the letters.
Richard struggled to hold down regular jobs after being fired from the Securities and Exchange Commission for accessing a classified database, his son says.
Danny eventually had to cut his father off, and Richard died four years later, in 2015. By then, Danny had moved to Los Angeles and become a filmmaker. His childhood friend, Grodsky, became his writing and directing partner.
Together, they made the films “Humboldt County” and “Growing Up and Other Lies.” Danny also acts, has a regular improv show at the Groundlings, a wife and kids, and a life far from St. Louis.
But he had never really dealt with any of it: the sadness of his childhood, the loss of a father, the impact his upbringing had on his life and, perhaps most importantly, the worries about raising his own kids.
“A lot of times for people, parenthood is about re-creating, in a nostalgic way, experiences from their childhood with their own children, and I have none of that,” Danny Jacobs says during an interview.
So he partnered again with Grodsky and started a podcast about his dad called “How to Destroy Everything.”
Podcast goes viral
Jacobs and Grodsky decided to release the first episode of “How to Destroy Everything” as soon as it was finished, with no other shows in the offing. This was intentional.
Jacobs isn’t fully aware of everything his dad was up to when he was growing up. His father was secretive, building hidden compartments into his home, controlling 60 phone numbers under various pseudonyms and hoarding documents.
So Jacobs set up an email: iknowrichardjacobs@gmail.com to allow listeners who may have known Richard to share stories as part of the show.
To get listeners, Jacobs and Grodsky applied to be highlighted on Apple’s homepage banner, which Apple regularly changes. After they released their second episode in October 2023, they were featured.
The podcast got a quarter-million listeners in just a few days and peaked at No. 3 on the charts.
“It was insane,” Grodsky recalls.
The podcast now has more than a million streams.
Suddenly, everyone had the same question, “Where is the next episode?”
“We were working on it, but it was not all done,” Grodsky says. “So we were in a state of panic — euphoria and panic at the same time.”
iHeartRadio even recognized the show in its iHeart Podcast Awards, nominating it for best emerging podcast for 2024. “How to Destroy Everything” lost out to “The Really Good Podcast” with Bobbi Althoff, but it’s still impressive for a show with only two episodes and a few interstitial placeholders that the team calls “Interregnums.”
There have been lots of changes behind the scenes. Grodsky and Jacobs partnered with a new producer, Michael Grant Terry, who also works on “SmartLess,” a popular podcast hosted by Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett.
With reenactments, trips back to St. Louis and more, creating the podcast costs money. Jacobs and Grodsky have only had a Patreon to generate support. They are now in talks with various podcast networks and plan to relaunch the show, hopefully this summer.
In the meantime, they’re still working on episodes and will release them on a regular cadence when the show starts back up.
“We apologize to everyone for the delay,” Jacobs says. “If I were out there, I would be furious as well. All we can say is that it will be worth it in the end.”
‘How many narcissists are out there?’
In the meantime, Jacobs and Grodsky have been inundated with emails from people who have narcissists in their lives.
Jacobs shared one letter during “Interregnum 2”, which read in part: “Holy (expletive) I am not alone. Someone else had a narcissistic sociopath with pathological tendencies as a father.”
Grodsky then made a joke, wondering how many narcissists there are in the world.
“Apparently a lot,” Jacobs replies.
The podcast’s popularity has been a double-edged sword for Jacobs.
“Friends (and) people I don’t know will come up to me like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about the most significant trauma in your life,’” Jacobs said in an interview. “Suddenly, I’m out in the world, and that’s being asked of me. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just pointing it out as an additional challenge that I wasn’t expecting.”
Family dynamics have also shifted for Jacobs. One of his family members is adamantly opposed to the podcast because “in my family, there is a lot of residual shame with being associated with my dad,” Jacobs says. “So anything that brings attention to the fact that they are related to him triggers their own intense shame and brings it to the surface.
“One of the things I’ve come to realize about doing the show and seeing the effect it has on my family is that basically there’s like generational trauma,” Jacobs adds.
Before, it largely went unacknowledged, but he says the show has created a new dynamic.
“There is a lot of chaos as we’re seeing where the chips land. And it’s painful and it’s hard and complicated,” Jacobs says.
The podcast isn’t shying away from the dynamics. Instead, in the “Thanksgiving Announcement” episode, you can hear Jacobs reacting in real time to a family group text where he was being attacked by one relative and the rest of the family was asking him to be more careful of the other person’s feelings.
“I’m pissed off,” Jacobs explodes on the podcast. “I’m the one that got attacked here. And everyone’s like, ‘Oh, can you just be careful. It’s upsetting this other person.’ What about me? ... Maybe try having some empathy for me. This is exactly what my childhood was, dude. Everybody (expletive) concerned about everybody (else).”
The long shadow of Richard Jacobs
Despite upset family members, Grodsky and Jacobs try to present a picture of Richard as more than a destructive presence.
For instance, Richard’s dislike of authority saw him fight the American Bar Association all the way to the Supreme Court over regulations about how lawyers could advertise. While it was a rare instance when Richard didn’t represent himself, he did win his case.
Plus, there were daily absurdities that Grodsky and Jacobs laugh at.
When Grodsky’s dad died, for instance, Richard sat shiva every day. (Jews sit shiva for seven days when someone dies.) Richard had gone to high school with Grodsky’s parents, but Grodsky didn’t realize they were that close. Soon, Grodsky and his mother realized Richard was just there for the free food, and he wasn’t actually talking to anyone.
Another listener wrote in to say they thought they’d once seen Richard at a grocery store ... eating directly from the salad bar.
Still, even these anecdotes are embarrassing for Jacobs, and he continues to uncover negative stories about his dad when talking to neighbors and other people who reached out.
But the podcast is leading to something good. Jacobs’ mom, Sandy, has become a beloved part of the podcast as she describes what it was like being married to Richard.
“My mom’s involvement in the podcast has been amazing,” he says.
At first, his older brother objected to the podcast, but Jacobs says a lengthy conversation they had would make it into an upcoming episode. Plus, his friendship with Grodsky has deepened.
“We are and have been talking about things in this podcast that we have never actually talked about before,” Grodsky said in an interview. “And as a result, there’s a greater vulnerability. I think I understand Danny more as a result of this, and we have greater intimacy as a result.”
There was a pause.
“It makes me uncomfortable, but it’s fine,” Jacobs said, jokingly.
It’s a peek at how Jacobs handled years of an unstable childhood, by making a joke when he was uncomfortable. But Jacobs is changing.
“I have faith that this process is a positive thing,” he says, “and that it will lead me to a more enlightened and hopefully more emotionally connected place. I have hope.”
You can listen to “How to Destroy Everything” wherever you stream your podcasts.