BROADCASTS.com

b'Winston Churchill once said of his only son:\\xa0"I love Randolph, but I don\'t like him." It\'s a sentiment many a parent with a tumultuous\\xa0relationship with one of their children can relate\\xa0to, and well describes both how Winston felt about Randolph, and how Randolph felt about his father.\\n\\nMy guest today details Winston and Randolph\'s incredibly close and\\xa0yet terribly complex and combustible relationship\\xa0in his book,\\xa0Churchill & Son. His name is Josh Ireland, and we begin our discussion with how Winston\'s own harsh and neglectful\\xa0father influenced his decision to be a much more involved\\xa0and ultimately indulgent family man, and the way he spoiled a son who was already\\xa0inclined towards appalling\\xa0behavior. Josh describes the manner in which Winston and Randolph both bonded and fought, and the effect the\\xa0trouble Randolph caused had on the relationship between Winston and his wife. We then get into how World War II, and the way Winston may have encouraged\\xa0Randolph\'s wife to cheat on him with an American diplomat, affected Randolph\'s relationship\\xa0with his father for the worse. Josh explains the outsized expectations Winston had for Randolph, the points at which father and son respectively realized they\'d never\\xa0be fulfilled, and\\xa0the lesson to be taken from their story about the cost of parents imposing their own dreams on their children. We end our conversation by discussing why it is that the children of great leaders rarely turn out well themselves, for, as Randolph himself observed, "Nothing grows in the shadow of a great oak tree."\\n\\nGet the show notes at aom.is/churchillandson.'