The Art of Manliness

Many of us grow up believing that midlife is when things start going downhill. Your body's breaking down, your best work is behind you, and you may fall into a full-blown existential crisis. But a lot of what we think we know about midlife turns out to be based more on pop culture than actual research. My guest says the reality is much more encouraging. Her name is Margie Lachman. She's a professo...

George Washington is perhaps the most familiar figure in American history. But most people really only know the image of him they see in marble statues and patriotic paintings. Behind those symbols was a real man: ambitious, self-taught, intensely concerned with honor, and constantly wrestling with the immense responsibilities history placed on his shoulders. In celebration of America's 250th birt...

The modern idea of retirement was built on a bet that turned out to be wrong. It assumed people would spend most of their lives working and only a relatively short period of time retired. Instead, many Americans now reach 65 healthy, active, and with an entire third of their life ahead of them. Yet we're still using a retirement model designed for a world in which old age was shorter and fewer peo...

We all want two things that can seem at odds with each other: to be our own person and to belong. We want to stand apart from the crowd, but we also want to be connected to it. When that balance gets out of whack, we either lose ourselves in tribalism or drift into isolation. My guest today says many of the problems in modern life stem from our inability to hold these two impulses in tension. His...

Life rarely unfolds according to plan. A relationship implodes. A move or job change doesn't work out. Or you simply fail in a goal you've set for yourself. My guest has spent almost two decades researching and field-testing how to get back on track when smaller slip-ups and larger upheavals knock you off course. His name is Steve Kamb, and he's the founder of Nerd Fitness and the author of How to...

Walking is one of the most powerful health tools we have. It improves cardiovascular fitness, boosts mood, sharpens cognition, and can even be a predictor of how well you'll age. But all those benefits depend on something we rarely think about until it starts hurting: our feet. For many of us, walking is so automatic that we never consider the mechanics that make it possible. Yet the way we move,...

Note: This is a rebroadcast. A lot of young men today struggle in finding their footing in adulthood. They feel lost, directionless, and unsure of who they are and how to confidently and competently navigate the world. Part of the reason for this is that most young men today lack something which was once a part of nearly every culture in the world, but has now almost entirely disappeared: a rite o...

With the Old Breed is widely considered one of the greatest war memoirs ever written. Penned by Eugene Sledge, a Marine who fought with the 1st Division — the old breed — in the Pacific campaigns of Peleliu and Okinawa, the book is unflinching, deeply human, and so vividly written that you can practically feel the heat, mud, exhaustion, and terror coming off the page. But Sledge wasn't a professio...

Back in 2019, David Epstein joined me to talk about his book  Range  and why generalists often thrive in a specialized world. Now he’s back with a new book that explores a seemingly opposite idea: the power of constraints. In  Inside the Box , David argues that limits — deadlines, boundaries, and even setbacks — are often the very things that spark creativity, sharpen focus, and hel...

You hear a lot today about how our ample screentime is affecting our mental health. But how is it affecting our bodies, and how is that impact on our bodies affecting, well, our mental health? My guest today will unpack the ways that digital technology is sapping our vitality, and offer a simple protocol to get it back. Her name is Manoush Zomorodi, and she's the host of the TED Radio Hour and the...

While we often think of life as linear, my guest’s own life, along with a decade of research, has taught him that it’s anything but. In his latest book, What to Make of a Life , Jim Collins unpacks the cyclical pattern life actually unfolds in, and how to navigate it. He explains how we all go through periods of “fog” — times of disorientation and uncertainty — at least three times: in youth, afte...

Building substantial personal wealth can feel difficult and out of reach. But my guest says that even those with modest means can, with a few simple decisions and strategies, become millionaires, and even multi-millionaires. David Bach is the author of the bestselling, newly updated personal finance classic, The Automatic Millionaire . Today on the show, we talk about the money management framewor...

When people visit a therapist's office for help with their depression, they often don't find the relief they're seeking. That's because much of the counsel that is traditionally given doesn't offer the context people need to make sense of and preserve their mental well-being. Here to share these missing pieces of perspective and strategy is Dr. Scott Eilers, a clinical psychologist and the author...

Pooping. Everybody does it, but a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about it. That's a shame, my guest says, not only because your digestive health is incredibly linked to your overall health, but simply for the fact that there is much happiness to be found in an easy, worry-free constitutional. Harvard gastroenterologist Dr. Trisha Pasricha is the author of You've Been Pooping All Wrong: How...

Courage is one of our most prized and celebrated virtues. But once you really start exploring it, the nature of courage is surprisingly hard to pin down. Here to help us explore the fascinating complications of courage is William Ian Miller, a historian, professor of law, and the author of The Mystery of Courage . Today on the show, Bill explains how centuries of philosophers, soldiers, and storyt...

We tend to think of genius as something you’re born with — a rare trait possessed by the Einsteins and Teslas of the world. But what if many of the abilities we associate with genius — a great memory, quick problem-solving, mental math, creative insight — are actually trainable skills? My guest today says that’s exactly the case. His name is Nelson Dellis, and he's a six-time USA Memory Champion a...

Cold exposure has gotten a lot of attention the past few years, with people dunking themselves in ice baths for the sake of their health and well-being. But, good news here, exposing yourself to heat by sitting in the sauna or even a hot tub, might actually be even better for you, not to mention more pleasant. In his new book, Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger , Bill Gifford...

When we fail to make desired progress in life, most of us put the blame on physical and environmental limits. But my guest says that what's really holding people back is what's in their heads. Nir Eyal is the author of Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results . Today on the show, he argues that much of how we think about ourselves, our abilit...

When it comes to building a happy and meaningful life, most of us rely on a grab bag of strategies — habits and goals around work, relationships, and health. But my guest today would argue that in the quest for true flourishing, there’s a deeper element that not only ties together those efforts, but organizes and energizes them: purpose. Vic Strecher is a professor of public health, a behavioral s...

If you're looking for a way to improve your fitness, boost your mental health, and reconnect with a deeply human activity — all without going to the gym or pounding your knees on a daily run — then rucking may be the practice you've been looking for. Rucking is simple: throw some weight on your back and start walking. But a little context and a few key tips can make it a safer, more effective, and...

The awkward silence at work when everyone knows a project is going off the rails. The simmering resentment in a marriage over an issue neither spouse will confront. The dysfunction in a church where certain topics are understood to be off-limits. My guest, Joseph Grenny, says that some of the biggest problems in every organization, from businesses to families, aren't the issues themselves, but peo...

Of all the books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is arguably the most philosophical. Dark, experiential, existential, and unsparingly honest about the human condition, it wrestles with work, money, ambition, pleasure, time, and death — and it does so in a way that feels uncannily modern. Whether you approach it as sacred scripture or simply as ancient wisdom literature, Ecclesiastes has something to sa...

Not long ago, the primary concern people had about boys was that they were wild, impulsive, and out of control — getting into fights, pushing limits, and stirring up trouble. Today, the problem has flipped. The more common challenge isn’t reckless behavior, but inert passivity. More and more young men are anxious, apathetic, socially isolated, and seemingly uninterested in doing much of anything a...

We’ve all had that feeling — you meet someone new, and the conversation just flows. You’re in sync. You click. But what’s really happening when that magic occurs? My guest today is journalist Kate Murphy, author of Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony , and she says this experience isn’t just a vibe, it’s a measurable physiological phenomenon and the most consequential soc...

American football is so big — so braided into our weekends, our language, and our culture — that it can be hard to see it clearly as a whole. In his new book, Football , Chuck Klosterman helps us see the game from unexpected angles, and argues that football isn’t just a sport, it’s a kind of national operating system. Chuck explains how it became the dominant televised spectacle in America, despit...