Father's Day Celebration

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Hey, do you like True Crime? Me too. And I know what you're thinking, there's so many True Crime pods out there, you've already heard all the stories. Well, what if I were to tell you, you're wrong. I'm Leroy Luna, the host of Excuse Me, That's Illegal, the podcast that takes a hardcore look at softcore crime. I've got a back catalog of hundreds of bizarre and hilarious stories just waiting to be heard by you. So come join me. Excuse Me, That's Illegal is available anywhere you get your favorite podcast, with new episodes dropping on the 10th, 20th, and 30th every month, baby.

Chad Shanae (0:39)

From Seven Seven Six and Realm, I'm Chad Shanae, senior producer on Business Dad, the podcast where Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian sets out to ask the most successful men across tech, sports, entertainment, media, entrepreneurship, and more, how do you balance being a dad with a successful career?

Happy Father's Day, business dads. We wanted to do something a little bit different today in order to celebrate. Alexis has a few core business dad questions he likes to ask every guest, and one of those questions is, what routines or traditions did you create for your children? We always get such great and different answers to this question, and so this Father's Day, we put together a supercut of some of our favorite dad's favorite traditions. Hopefully, it inspires you to create some new family traditions of your own. Let's start off with basketball all-star Shane Battier, who talked about traditions passed on from his late father, Big Ed.

Alexis Ohanian (1:44)

Are there traditions or lessons or things that you've brought with you becoming a dad?

Shane Battier (1:51)

Well, my father passed away about four years ago. Everyone called him Big Ed, Big Ed Battier. Big Ed was not a perfect human being. He was not a great role model in terms of life, all right? He probably drank a little too much.

He played the lotto every single day, you know? He taught me how to bend horses when I was seven, eight years old. But I'll tell you what, when he passed, the amount of outpouring of support, they said, you know what? Big Ed never had an enemy. You know, one of my friends said it best. He said, a redwood fell in the forest yesterday. It was felled by all. And so like looking back at my dad, who, you know, by all metrics, shouldn't have had a successful life, was an unbelievable success in the amount of people that he impacted in a positive way. And that is probably the best lesson that he ever taught me, is to be enthusiastic, to create community. He always had a smile on his face. And I don't think, you know, I'm sure he had bad days, but when he presented himself, it was always positive. He's always uplifting other people. He was larger than life. He's the type of guy I try to be now, minus the negative parts, but being a person that creates community, that uplifts people, that makes people better just by being who he is. And that's sort of the hallmark of my entire basketball career and what I hope to be as a philanthropist and a business person now.

Alexis Ohanian (3:13)

And he was your little league coach?

Shane Battier (3:15)

He was my little league coach. He was always my little league coach. And the cool thing about Big Ed Batier, so I grew up, I was the only mixed kid in Birmingham, Michigan. All right, my mom was white, my dad was black. So there was no one like me. You know, I was the only black kid at school. I was the only kid that got a pick on Pitcher Day. Everyone else got combs. On Martin Luther King Day, I was expected to know everything about black culture from the dawn of civilization. All right, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was a foot taller than everybody else, but I was a really good athlete. And the teams that I played on, they usually won. And so we, you know, my dad really, really could have been pompous about my son, Shane. He hit his home runs. He's a great basketball player. But my dad never had that attitude. My dad had the attitude of, hey, how awesome do we get to just play together and be together and compete together? Like that's the most important thing. And so he was never a person that would teach me and teach our teams about life lessons. And hey, you have to do this and this, and this is how you have success. That wasn't his style.