The Art of Manliness

There is seemingly more collaboration going on in the workplace than ever before. People are working and talking across teams, and within teams, using a wide array of communication channels. As a result, employees, managers, and CEOs alike can feel pulled in a ton of different directions, by a ton of different asks, and find their actual productivity shot to pieces as a result. My guest figured th...

How long does it take to make friends — for someone you meet who’s a potential friend, to turn into an actual friend? If you’re out of college and not a young adult anymore, you know that it sure feels like it’s a process that takes an awfully long time. Well my guest has actually crunched the numbers on this question and has the numerical figures to answer it. As well as a whole lot of insight in...

In a period of only about 100 years, Athens went from relative obscurity, to becoming an influential empire, to collapsing into ruin. My guest today will guide us through the dramatic arc of this city-state and the larger-than-life characters that contributed to it. His name is David Stuttard, and he’s a classicist and the author of Phoenix: A Father, a Son, and the Rise of Athens, and Nemesis: Al...

Most everyone wants to live a good, meaningful life, though we don’t always know what that means and how to do it. Plenty of modern self-improvement programs claim to point people in the right direction, but many of the best answers were already offered more than two thousand years ago. My guests have gleaned the cream of this orienting, ancient-yet-evergreen advice from history’s philosophers and...

Narcissism is something that looms large in our cultural consciousness. We accuse friends and family of being narcissistic, think we observe the quality in politicians and celebrities, and wonder if society is becoming more self-absorbed over time. But what is narcissism, really, once you get beyond the pop cultural conception and colloquial buzzword? My guest will unpack that for us today. His na...

Writing an email while on a Zoom call. Talking on the phone while walking. Scrolling through social media while watching a movie. In both our work and our play, we’re all doing more and more multitasking. Doing two things at once makes us feel as if we’re more efficient and getting more done. But my guest would say that all this task juggling actually makes us less productive, while diminishing th...

When it comes to losing weight, you can find plenty of complicated programs that involve long, intense workouts and strict calorie-counting diet plans. But my guest today takes an approach to fat loss that’s awesomely simple, and even more effective because of that fact. His name is Dan John and he’s a strength coach, a competitive thrower and weightlifter, and the author of many books about healt...

One of the most famous stories to come out of World War I is that of the “Christmas Truce” of 1914, in which German and British forces engaged in a spontaneous and unofficial ceasefire and spent the holiday fraternizing with each other. In the popular imagination, the Christmas Truce was a time in which enemies put aside their differences to sing carols, exchange gifts, and even play soccer, and r...

Like Plato, C.S. Lewis believed that the human soul was made up of three parts — the head (the rational, reason-driven part of you), the belly (your appetites and base instincts), and the chest (the seat of virtue-seeking sentiments and well-tuned emotions). In order for your head to make your decisions, particularly the decision to live a virtuous life, rather than your decisions being driven by...

I used to wake up early, around 5:15, and do my workout right after getting out of bed. But I noticed I was tired all day, and just felt kind of stiff and not very strong during my workouts. So I decided to try waking up a couple hours later, and doing my workouts in the late afternoon instead. I found that setting up my schedule this way gave me greater energy, both overall, and during my workout...

There have been many books written about courage. About cowardice, however, there has only been one. The author of this lone book on cowardice joins me today to talk about why cowardice, though much ignored, is at least equally important to understand as courage, and how the fear of the former may actually serve as a stronger motivator towards doing daring deeds. His name is Chris Walsh, and his b...

How did your 2021 go? Did you accomplish less than you wanted to? Are you hoping to have a more successful run at your goals in 2022? Well my guest today has got your plan for making the coming twelve months your best year ever. His name is Michael Hyatt, and he’s the CEO of the leadership consulting firm Michael Hyatt and Company and the author/creator of the Your Best Year Ever book and course....

How did your 2021 go? Did you accomplish less than you wanted to? Are you hoping to have a more successful run at your goals in 2022? Well my guest today has got your plan for making the coming twelve months your best year ever. His name is Michael Hyatt, and he’s the CEO of the leadership consulting firm Michael Hyatt and Company and the author/creator of the Your Best Year Ever book and course....

What creates the differences between the sexes? Many would point to culture, and my guest today would agree that culture certainly shapes us. But she’d also argue that at the core of the divergence of the sexes, and in particular, of how men think and behave, is one powerful hormone: testosterone. Her name is Dr. Carole Hooven, and she’s a Harvard biologist and the author of T: The Story of Testos...

Once a year, I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s a cathartic annual ritual for me. What is it about this novel that has such an impact on my soul and those of other readers? Who is the man who wrote it, and what was he trying to do with this story of a father and son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape? For answers to these questions, I decided to talk to a foremost expert o...

As the title of his book — Drink? — suggests, world-renowned professor of neuropsychopharmacology David Nutt thinks the cost/benefit analysis around consuming alcohol is an open question. He’s not anti-alcohol — he regularly drinks himself — but he also thinks most people (more than 2/3 of folks around the world have had a drink in the past year) need to understand a lot more about drinking than t...

When it comes to lists of men’s favorite movies, The Godfather is a perennial inclusion. And as hard as this may be to believe, the critically acclaimed and popularly beloved film is coming up on the 50th anniversary of its release. Journalist Mark Seal wrote an in-depth piece on the making of The Godfather for Vanity Fair magazine back in 2009, and after doing even more interviews with director F...

When it comes to high-stakes endeavors, few are as fraught as brain surgery. One false move and you can forever alter someone’s life. That’s why my guest has spent his life studying how to master fear and enhance performance, and gained insights that can help anyone do likewise in every area of their life. His name is Dr. Mark McLaughlin, and he’s a wrestling coach, a lecturer at West Point, and a...

Being famous. Knowing someone famous. Getting a laugh after telling a joke. Getting a good grade. Getting likes on a social media post. Winning a video game. Cooking a tasty meal. Being good looking. Having inside knowledge. Sharing a good recommendation. We often think of status exclusively in terms of wealth, but it's actually at play everywhere, in every situation where we get the feeling of be...

When you think of the Navy SEALs, you think of elite special operators who have been tasked with commando-type missions in conflict zones from Central Africa to Afghanistan. Which raises a question you may never have thought about, but seems quite obvious and interesting once you do: “Wait, why are members of the Navy, a waterborne military force, operating hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean...

There are two dominant theories as to why Westerners have gotten increasingly obese in the last fifty years. One is that we’re eating too many carbs and carbs make us fat. Another is that our primitive appetite — which is wired to gorge on calorically dense foods as a survival mechanism — is misaligned with a modern landscape in which food is available in an overabundance. My guest today says that...

Do you ever get to feeling kind of down, dejected, and anxious come Sunday evening? People refer to this phenomenon as the “Sunday Night Blues,” and it’s a common experience. You may have chalked it up to rueing the fact that your fun and restful weekend is over, and that you have yet another workweek ahead. But my guest would say that your Sunday night sadness may also be rooted in the feeling of...

Do you ever get to feeling kind of down, dejected, and anxious come Sunday evening? People refer to this phenomenon as the “Sunday Night Blues,” and it’s a common experience. You may have chalked it up to rueing the fact that your fun and restful weekend is over, and that you have yet another workweek ahead. But my guest would say that your Sunday night sadness may also be rooted in the feeling of...

In 1872, a group of men that included future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., father of modern psychology William James, and eccentric polymath Charles Sanders Peirce, formed a philosophical society, called the “Metaphysical Club,” to exchange and discuss ideas. While very little is known about how this conversational club was conducted over its nine months of life, we do know tha...

In 1972, the number of Americans who described themselves as religiously unaffiliated was 5%. In 2018, it was almost 24%. Why has the number of people answering “none of the above” to the question of their religious affiliation jumped so dramatically in recent years, and what effect will the growth of these so-called “nones” have on society in general? My guest explores these questions in his book...