The Art of Manliness

Note: This is a rebroadcast. When most people think about losing weight, they think about the details of a diet plan — what food to eat, how much of it to eat, and when to eat it. What they don't spend enough time working on, are the mental and emotional habits that can sabotage their efforts, regardless of the diet plan they adopt. That's why my guest today, despite being a biochemist, has made ...

Personality tests sometimes come in for criticism these days for not being very accurate or helpful or for putting people into boxes. And it’s true that no test can ever entirely peg the complexities of personality, and they shouldn’t be applied with too much rigidity. But what these tests are useful for is serving as a prompt for reflecting on the particular ways you think, feel, and act, and, pe...

We often suppose that wars are fought over things like resources, border disputes, and ideologies. My guest calls this "the spreadsheet approach to war" and argues that, in reality, such factors only come in as justifications for the much deeper drives at play. Mike Martin is a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King's College London and the author of  Why We Fight .  Today o...

When someone asks us to do something we don’t want to do, we often say yes even though we want to say no, because we think that saying no will feel terrible. But my guest, Dr. Vanessa Patrick, says the opposite is true: we actually feel great when we say no. So why do we have such a hard time doing so? Today on the show, Vanessa, who’s the author of The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How t...

As you move through time, you exist as a present self who makes decisions, an in-between self who should carry out those decisions, and a future self who will benefit from those decisions. Yet as we all know, in-between self often fails to follow through on what present self resolves, leaving future self pretty bummed out. The solution to this dilemma, my guest says, is for your present self to be...

While studying history back in the 1990s, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss noticed something: there seemed to be a pattern to history that repeated itself again and again. Howe and Strauss developed a theory that history moves in 80-100-year cycles divided into four 20-25-year "turnings": the High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis. Neil Howe argues that we are currently living through a Fou...

Lately, I've been talking to my son Gus about considering a career in the trades. A lot of the white collar jobs out there don't seem very fulfilling, and A.I. is going to make more and more of them disappear. But skilled tradesmen are in demand, and that demand is only going to grow. One option I've floated to Gus is to still go to an affordable college, for the mind expansion and social opportun...

If you’re an athlete, you know that it can be helpful to get psyched up before a big game. But getting in the right mindset is important in any kind of high-stakes scenario, whether you want to perform your best in a big meeting, presentation, interview, audition, or conversation. My guest has some tips he gleaned from interviewing athletes, soldiers, entertainers, and executives on how to find th...

The last time we had entrepreneur, professor, and author Luke Burgis on the show, he discussed the concept of mimetic desire, which says that we want the things we want because other people want them. Since that time, Luke has continued to explore the idea of mimesis, and how to resist its negative consequences, in his Substack: Anti-Mimetic . Today on the show, Luke and I dig into these ideas and...

Throughout each day, all of us make little shifts in our roles and responsibilities; we take off one hat and put on another. Sometimes these shifts are physical, as when we commute from home to the office. Other times, the shifts are mental, as when we finish working on an administrative task and start working on a creative one. My guest calls these little shifts “microtransitions” and says that m...

When Americans think back to the War of Independence, most are apt to feel that, had they lived back then, they would have been Patriots for sure. In retrospect, the decision to rebel and get out from under the thumb of British rule seems inevitable. Yet only around a third of colonists ever declared themselves as revolutionaries, and even among the country's Founding Fathers, it wasn't always obv...

When you’re walking in the woods, you’re often surrounded by trees. But you probably don’t notice them much, and when you do spot some irregularity, like a strange bulge in the trunk of a tree, you likely don’t have any idea how it got there. But my guest says that these trees you’re passing by have all kinds of stories to share, and once you learn their language, they can tell you all sorts of se...

My flight was awful. The restaurant's service was terrible. The traffic was horrible. My boss is the worst. Our culture is the stupidest. Whenever we get together with other people, we hear lots of complaints, and plenty come out of our own mouths. All this complaining may be ubiquitous, but it's not entirely innocuous. Complaining puts us in a negative mood, hurts our health, and damages our rela...

Working out at any time of day is great. But my guest says there are distinct benefits to doing it in the a.m., and he's going to walk you through everything you need to know, from mindset to habits, to become a morning workout person. Anthony Arvanitakis is a bodyweight training coach and the author of The 7 A.M. Workout Edge: Wake Up, Work Out, Own the Day . Today on the show, he offers concrete...

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...

When we think about Stoic philosophers, we typically think about the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. But my guest, Mark Matousek, says there was an incredibly insightful Stoic philosopher who lived on the American continent in more modern times: Ralph Waldo Emerson. Matousek is the author of Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life ,...

In 1980s America, gritty streets were filled with crime, the threat of Cold War hovered in the air, and action movies starring tough guy heroes dominated the box office. This was a time in cinema when muscle, martial arts, and the perfect weapon were the keys to saving the day; when the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone ruled the silver screen and their on-screen carnage was on...

When people think about survival and preparedness, they tend to think of dealing with an end-of-the-world kind of scenario. But lots of bad things can happen, and are more likely to happen, that fall short of the apocalypse. My guest can help you prepare for any worst case scenario, whether it’s the worst thing to happen to mankind or just the worst thing to happen to you this year. His name is Mi...

To be successful at their craft, magicians must possess the well-honed technical skills to pull off their mystifying tricks and clever sleights of hand. But as magician Steve Cohen observes, they must also be "masters at attracting interest, holding attention, and leaving audiences with fond memories of their time together" — skills that everyone can use to persuade audiences, charm dates, own a r...

You might think we’re heading into a low time of year for suicides because they peak during the cold, dark months of winter. But, in fact, suicide peaks during the spring and early summer. This is just one example of the popular beliefs around suicide that turn out to be myths. Here to unpack more of these myths, as well as the truths around this poorly understood subject, is Rory O’Connor, the le...

Have you been languishing in the same role at work, frustrated that you haven't been promoted to a higher position with more pay and different responsibilities? My guest can help you level up in your career. His name is Randy Ornstein, and he's the author of Grow: The Essential Guide to Getting Promoted . Today on the show, Randy explains why getting promoted is more beneficial to your paycheck th...

When people think of the paratroopers of World War II, they tend to think of the European theater — the 101st Airborne Division and the Band of Brothers. But paratroopers were also deployed in the Pacific, and here to unpack their lesser-known but equally epic and heroic story is James Fenelon, a former paratrooper himself and the author of Angels Against the Sun: A WWII Saga of Grunts, Grit, and...

The charge to be well-mannered, to treat others with civility, kindness, and respect, is perennial. But the rules for how to carry those manners into action, the rules of good etiquette, change over time. Given all the cultural and technological changes modern society has experienced, it's not always easy to know the best practices for a contemporary gentleman. Here to offer some guidance on that...

Do you feel stuck in life — that you aren’t making progress in a relationship, job, or goal and you don’t know how to fix the problem and move forward? Well, perhaps you can take a little solace in the fact that it’s a universal human experience, even amongst history’s highest achievers. Indeed, when Adam Alter, a social psychologist and professor of marketing, looked at the lives of successful ac...

America’s national parks are one of the country’s greatest treasures, and many people have it on their bucket list to visit one or more of these gems. But figuring out where to go and how to execute a national park experience can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. Here to offer some really helpful advice on both visiting and camping in the national parks is Jeremy Puglisi, co-author, along with...