The Upgraded Man

How to be more present when your head will not shut up. Brett Ashby paints two meter portraits while rolling a half pipe in front of 500 people, and he tells Chris Anderson the rule that keeps him upright: if you have a thought, you fall off. Brett Ashby is a contemporary artist from Melbourne, Australia. He grew up on vert ramps, spent years behind a camera, then ended up in front of it painting...

Every episode of The Upgraded Man ends the same way. There is a journal. The guest reads what the last guest wrote, answers it honestly, then leaves one line for whoever sits in the chair next. They do not get to know who that is. This week it is Florian Kemmerich, impact investor, author of On Vocation, and co-founder of Human Planet. He is a father of five, a former paratrooper, and a man who ha...

Training after 40 does not take an hour. Dr. Tommy Rhee, a sports chiropractor who has spent nearly twenty years working on pro athletes, lays out the exact fifteen minute workout a man in his 30s and 40s should run. Tommy has worked on Olympic sprinters, NFL players, and UFC fighters. He is the founder and CEO of RheeGen and the author of The Future of Regenerative Medicine. In this stretch he st...

How to prepare your family if you die, before anything happens. Ray Hilbert, founder of Exhale Vault, had the insurance, the plan, and the logins all in his head. Then a life insurance letter came back stamped rejected. Ray Hilbert co-founded Truth At Work in 1998, led it for over twenty years, and now coaches Christian business owners with Kingdom Factor. At 56 he was in perfect health. A routine...

Men need more empathy, and Joel Bein says the discomfort you feel when you hear that is the proof. This is Joel's Upgraded Man Journal entry, the handoff every guest makes at the end of the show. Joel Bein is the founder of Human Liberation and host of The Joel Bein Show. He works with entrepreneurs to clear the subconscious beliefs behind self-doubt and overworking. Every guest reads what the las...

What AI can't replace is your identity and your vocation, and Florian Kemmerich says that is now your biggest economic asset. This is Florian's Upgraded Man Journal entry, the handoff every guest makes at the end of the show. Florian Kemmerich is an impact investor, the author of On Vocation, and the co-founder of Human Planet. He is a father of five and a former paratrooper who has moved close to...

How to stop settling for mediocrity when your life looks fine from the outside. Dr. Matthew Kutz, author of Becoming EPIC, tells Chris Anderson why the man who is not failing is in the most dangerous spot there is, then tells the story that proves it. Dr. Matthew Kutz is a clinical professor at Florida International University, a keynote speaker, and the author of the award-winning Contextual Inte...

What to say no to. That is the question relationship coach Paul Roseberry leaves in The Upgraded Man Journal for the next guest. This is the short Friday Journal episode, the handoff from one guest to the next, with host Chris Anderson. Paul Roseberry has coached nice guys for more than ten years, and he is also a standup comedian. Ralph Brewer, the guest before him, works with couples and left th...

How to stop feeling not good enough, done live instead of talked about. Joel Bein, founder of Human Liberation and host of The Joel Bein Show, walks Chris Anderson through clearing the "I'm not good enough" belief on The Upgraded Man in about 15 minutes. Joel helps entrepreneurs clear the subconscious beliefs behind self-doubt and overworking. He calls "I'm not good enough" the most common belief...

Chris Anderson sits down in the studio with Michael J. López, an organizational change consultant, keynote speaker, LinkedIn Top Voice, and author of Change: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body, and Behavior. Michael spent more than a decade at Big Four firms leading transformation programs, played college football, and started his own company at 50 with his wife five month...

Self care for men gets treated like a waste of time. Ralph B., founder of Help For Men and author of The Dead Bedroom Fix, tells Chris Anderson on The Upgraded Man why that guilt is wrong, and why the men who take a time out get more done. Every Friday, the last guest leaves something in the Upgraded Man Journal and the next guest answers it. Thomas Edwards left this for Ralph: “God put you here t...

How to say no to your wife without blowing up your marriage. Chris Anderson names the man listening who says yes to everything, and relationship coach Paul Roseberry talks straight to him for fifteen minutes. This is the best stretch of the full conversation, cut so a man can hear it on one drive home. Paul Roseberry has coached nice guys for more than ten years, and he is also a standup comedian....

Andrew Menechian is the guy who trains the trainers. He is Head of Fitness at FitCommit AI, a former IFBB Australasian Men's Physique champion, a powerlifter with an unofficial Australian under 90 kilo raw deadlift record, and a coach who has mentored more than 100 personal trainers. He started teaching himself training at thirteen and has not stopped since.  And for five years, he was sure h...

This is The Upgraded Man Journal. It is the ritual that runs through every episode of this show. One book, passed from guest to guest. Each man reads the question the last one left behind, answers it honestly on camera, and then leaves a new question for whoever sits down next. It is short on purpose. It is not short on weight. Tim McDonald, a stage IV colorectal cancer survivor and screening advo...

Sexless marriage is not really about sex. Ralph B., founder of Help For Men and author of The Dead Bedroom Fix, tells Chris Anderson on The Upgraded Man that the bedroom is the last thing to go cold, and by the time it does, something else has been dead for years. Ralph B. is known online as Dad Starting Over. He rebuilt his life after a divorce that blindsided him, then wrote the book that hundre...

Chris Anderson sits down with Steve Barton, a high performance coach, creator of The Game of Ten, and co-author with his son Spencer of The Father, the Son, and the Aha Moment. Steve spent about thirty years running the floral business he took over from his father in Maine. He got certified through the Gestalt International Study Center in 2015 and trained in Miracle Minded Coaching with Marianne...

Work smarter not harder is easy to say and hard to live, and stage 4 colorectal cancer survivor Tim McDonald had to get sick to learn it. In this Journal entry he reads what the last guest left him, agrees with half of it, and tells you plainly why the other half almost broke him. At the end of every episode of The Upgraded Man there is a physical journal. The guest reads what the last guest wrote...

This is a Best Moment episode. One section pulled from a longer conversation because it stands completely on its own. Ask a man how he feels and you will usually get one of two answers. Fine, or nothing. Then something small happens and the anger shows up out of nowhere. Thomas Edwards Jr says that is not a character problem. It is a skill nobody taught him. Thomas is the author of The One Up Effe...

Chris Anderson sits down with Dr. Tommy Rhee, a sports chiropractor who has spent nearly twenty years working on some of the most abused bodies in professional sport. Olympians, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB players, PGA and LPGA golfers, UFC fighters and pro wrestlers. He is the founder and CEO of RheeGen and the author of The Future of Regenerative Medicine. This one is for the man who is doing everythi...

At the end of every episode of The Upgraded Man there is a physical journal. The guest reads what the last guest wrote, sits with it, and then writes something down for the man who comes next. Same book every time, passed hand to hand. No prep. No script. This week it is Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana and host of the Get IN. podcast. He built a media company out of a three thousand dollar tr...

In 2020 a doctor told Tim McDonald he had cancer and that it had already spread to his liver. A few months later an oncologist told him something worse. She said she was going to put him on a chemo that gave him the highest quality of life, because he only had three years left to live. Tim did not say anything out loud. In his head he said four words. That's your story, not mine. Six years later h...

Florian Kemmerich spent 15 years climbing the corporate ladder in the medical device world, running companies across Germany, Mexico, and the United States. From the outside, he had won. Then a coaching session put him in a chair across from his five year old self, and that kid told him he was wasting his life. He calls what he found the absent subject of his own education. School gave him every t...

At the end of every episode of The Upgraded Man there is a physical journal. The guest reads what the last guest wrote, sits with it, and then writes something down for the next guest. Same book every time, passed from man to man. Larry Hagner reads the entry Phillip Lanier left behind: "It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war." Larry takes it into what it means to be a w...

This is the most valuable part of our conversation with Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, pulled out as its own episode. Nate is known across Indiana as a hype man. Big stunts, small towns, a truck, a camera. But none of that is where the story starts. It starts in 2017, when his mom died of cancer while he was in college. He admits he was a self-absorbed 20 year old who talked mostly to hear...

Joel Bein spent two years clearing more than a thousand beliefs on himself before he ever worked on anyone else. In this episode he does it live, on Chris. Joel finds the belief that has been running Chris since he was a kid, walks him through it on camera, and about fifteen minutes later Chris says the words out loud and feels nothing. Joel is the founder of Human Liberation, where he works one o...