Evolutionary Men

In this episode I'm joined by licensed marriage and family therapist Steph Flood to talk about what happens when you're doing the dishes, handling the kids, and still feel like roommates with no touch and no sex. We get into why you and your wife come at connection from opposite directions, how the way you ask for intimacy lands, what she's thinking when sex feels like a box to check,...

Jason Gentile and his best friend from college lived eight blocks apart in LA, and they'd still go six months without seeing each other. Then they started seeing each other every week. What changed between them explains why so many successful men end up lonely. Jason Gentile is a men's work facilitator, transformational leader, and father of three. In this episode, we get into what actuall...

In this episode I'm joined by Jayson Gaddis, author of Getting to Zero, to talk about how to repair after a fight with your wife or partner. We get into how nice guy syndrome trades your truth for keeping the peace, why "that wasn't my intention" goes nowhere, what makes an apology land in your partner's nervous system, and who goes first when you're both shut down. We also...

In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Luke Adler to talk about offensive love, a phrase that came out of our shadow work group a year ago. We get into why going on offense with your heart means being willing to shock the sleepiness out of a relationship, how waiting keeps you defended with your wife, your kids, and other men, what touch and unspoken tension have shown me about my own habits, and w...

Performance anxiety in bed, whether it shows up as erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation, often starts somewhere you've probably never looked. Somatic sex educator Rahi Chun joins me to talk about porn, stress, and the tension your pelvic floor has been holding for years. Rahi explains genital dearmoring and why a tight pelvic floor cuts blood flow and makes you finish faster. He also...

In this episode I talk with Dr. Daniel Ellenberg. He has directed men's groups for more than forty years and earned the Practitioner of the Year award from the American Psychological Association's division for the psychology of men. He names the mistake he sees men keep making generation after generation, and then we explore the idea of precarious manhood and why vulnerability continues to...

In this episode I'm again joined by Dr. Luke Adler, this time to to talk about shadow work as a way to save your relationship. We get into the nice guy pattern of going along to get along, why controlling your partner's reactions is really about avoiding your own feelings, and how a relationship without real presence slides into a predator and prey dynamic. We talk about the implicit agree...

In this episode I break down why so many men feel stuck. It comes down to two energetic holds I watch men make over and over that burn enormous energy and produce no movement so from the inside it feels like nothing is happening. I share where they come from, what they cost you in your body and your relationships, and what I've seen actually get men unstuck. Then I leave you with two quick que...

In this episode I invite Alistair Moes, who has operated his own anger management practice for over 31 years and has worked with more than 15,000 men and women, to discuss what truly occurs in the body when anger takes over, why many of us either explode or shut down and label it handling things, and what it means to meet conflict from the adult inside you rather than the wounded kid. We explore t...

In this episode I invite Dr. Luke Adler to discuss what shadow work is really for. We explore why the deepest pain in a group of men often sits right beside laughter and gratitude, the "kink in the hose" model described in The Heart of Shadow that shows where life force becomes stuck, and why men struggle to celebrate what is going right or to accept a compliment without deflecting it. Fre...

In this episode I invite relationship and dating coach Shana James, author of Honest Sex and The Honest Dating Guide, to discuss why many men see honesty as a loss of power. We explore nice guy conditioning, the scarcity that pushes us to posture rather than speak the truth, the distinction between attachment and desire, and what really occurs in the body when vulnerability feels dangerous instead...

In this episode I break down the moment I lost it with my daughter over a coloring page, the sharp voice, the walk to the car when I realized what I'd just done to her. I get into Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain, why your kid feels your nervous system more than your words, and where you're supposed to put that charge when your family isn't the place to dump it. Join us Monday...

In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Luke Adler to talk about shadow work for regaining your power, especially for nice guys who've gone allergic to their own force and desire. We get into the difference between power over and power under, why so many men carry a clog in their body around their center, and how father wounds shape our relationship to anger and protection. Join us in reclaiming...

In this episode I get into touch, why it lands or falls flat with a woman, and what her body is already reading in you before your hands ever move. I break down the physiology behind it, your breath, your nervous system, and the different kinds of tension that decide whether she melts into you or just tolerates you. I also get into my own history with touch, which wasn't pretty, and the frame...

In this episode I break down what's happening when life looks fine on paper but you feel like you're not the one driving it. Losing direction is nearly inevitable once the track (school, career, mortgage, kids) runs out, and you can't think your way back. I walk through the two compasses I've watched work in hundreds of men's lives, the practice men have used to read them for t...

In this episode I get into the question most men never ask, why would she want to have sex with you? I break down Rosemary Basson's research on responsive desire, why her wanting often arrives through connection instead of before it, and what it actually takes to be a man she can open toward. I talk about tending your own nervous system, learning her warm up sequence, feeding the connection al...

In this episode I bring on touch coach Elizabeth Anneka to break down why so many men have the desire to please a woman but not the skill. We get into her bullseye mismatch concept, the difference between penetrating and receptive states, how to keep touch alive once it's gone stale in a long term relationship, and the power of breath to guide it all for men. Learn from Elizabeth about the pow...

In this episode I'm joined by Gethin Aldous, co-director of The Work , the award-winning documentary shot inside Folsom Prison. We get into what happens when the hardest men in the system sit in circle and let themselves break, why prison cuts straight through the judgment that men's work is soft or goofy, and what it awakens in the men who witness it. If men most people have written off c...

In this episode I talk about the real cost of staying numb and what's actually happening when a man feels flat. I get into the one-pipe reality, why clamping down grief and anger also chokes off joy, desire, and aliveness, the difference between a state and a stage, and why you can't think or read your way back to being fully alive and how important it is to plunge into spaces of depth to...

In this episode I lay out a map I've been building for nearly two decades: nine specific capacities that separate the man who walks into a room and changes it from the man nobody quite remembers was there. I take them one at a time: vitality, devotion, curiosity, rigor, initiative, presence, empathy, depth, and discernment, go through what each one looks like when it's online and what it c...

In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Luke Adler to talk about the shadow of shadow work, what it demands from us beyond catharsis, and why release is only the first step that must extend into accountability. We break down the three-phase arc of release, responsibility, and repair, sit with the cultural pressure on men's groups right now to do more than hold space for pain, and get into what r...

In this episode I sit down with my wife Violet Lange to talk about the gap no amount of solo work can close. You've done your reading, you've done your shadow work, you feel solid, and then a woman walks into the room and you freeze, shrink, or bury your desire. You can practice alone forever, but you only get good at the feminine in front of the feminine. We get into why so many men get s...

In this episode I take Scott Galloway's framework for young men, the provider, protector, procreator model, and make the case that it's necessary but not sufficient. I use Ken Wilber's four-quadrant map to show that the two quadrants Galloway skips, interior life and real male connection, are exactly where the crisis lives. Then I name the two missing pieces that round out his framewor...

In this episode I sit down with Keith Martin-Smith, an award-winning author, Zen priest, martial artist, and one of my oldest, dearest friends. We've been sitting in circle together for almost 20 years. Keith grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family on the East Coast, where his father never shed a tear his entire life and shutting down was just what men did. We get into how he came out...

In this episode I talk about freeze, the response in men that hides in plain sight. Fight gets respect. Flight at least looks like movement. Freeze just looks like you vanished, and most of the time nobody even clocks it, including you. Plus on top of that a lot of men get praised for being steady when what's actually happening inside them is immobilization. I've lived inside this one for...