The Art of Manliness

Kelly Starrett, a doctor of physical therapy, has trained professional athletes, Olympians, and military special operators, helping them unlock peak performance. But as he approached his fifties, he started to see cracks appearing in the health of the folks around him. What had worked for his peers in their 20s and 30s, wasn’t working anymore; they were gaining weight, having surgeries, and just d...

The journey of personal development, of becoming a more excellent and extraordinary individual, can sometimes seem a little abstract. That’s why it’s helpful to imagine it as Mark Divine does, as a set of five metaphorical mountains to scale. Mark is a retired Navy SEAL Commander, a professor of leadership, a yogi, the creator of fitness and mindset programs like SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, and a...

Filling out paperwork. Making travel reservations. Paying bills. Shopping for groceries. Returning packages. These are all examples of life admin — the little tasks we have to do to keep our lives moving along. Life admin is typically pretty tedious and annoying. But staying on top of it is essential to reducing the stress and chaos that would otherwise burden our relationships, muck up the gears...

There has been a lot of media coverage and dialogue about the struggles men are facing in the modern day. There's been some solutions forwarded to these struggles as well. Among these, Dr. Anthony Bradley has a more surprising idea that you don't hear every day: revitalizing college fraternities. Anthony is a research fellow and professor and the author of Heroic Fraternities: How College Men Can...

You probably think of the health effects of sunlight as a mixed bag. On the one hand, sun exposure helps your body make vitamin D. But on the other, it can cause skin cancer. To get around this conundrum, dermatologists frequently recommend avoiding sun exposure when you can, slathering on sunscreen when you can't, and taking a vitamin D supplement to make up for the lack of sunlight in your life....

When men think about optimizing their hormones, they tend only to think about raising their testosterone. But while increasing T can be important, an ideal health profile also means having testosterone that's in balance with your other hormones as well. Today on the show, Dr. Kyle Gillett joins me to discuss both of those prongs of all-around hormone optimization. We start with a quick overview of...

A lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty. And there's a reason for that. It often offers routines and habits to practice, but doesn't offer a strong, overarching reason to practice them. That's why the self-improvement advice of the Founding Fathers is particularly compelling. Though they were imperfect men, they had a clear why for trying to become better than they were. For the F...

Friendships are a central part of the lives of both men and women. But from personal observation, you've probably noticed that the dynamics of male and female friendships aren't always the same. You may not, however, have been able to articulate what those differences are or have known what's behind them. While there's still a lot of facets of friendship that haven't yet been researched, Dr. Jaimi...

Businesses and individuals often feel overwhelmed and stretched — that they can't get done all the work they need to. The solution they frequently turn to is finding a new app to use or hiring more employees to spread the load. But my guest would say that you can steal back hours of productive time simply by using the tools and teams you have now, if you learn to use them in a more efficient way....

Fifteen years and more than 200 million downloads later, this episode marks the 1,000th installment of the Art of Manliness podcast! It begins with a bit of a retrospective on the podcast and then segues into an interview with one of the show's earliest guests: Walker Lamond, author of Rules for My Unborn Son . Walker and I revisit the origins of the book and the early days of the internet and hav...

Plenty of famous explorers and frontiersmen emerged from America's periods of expansion and exploration, and today the likes of Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett remain household names. You're probably not familiar, but should be, with the name of another prominent pioneer: Jedediah Smith. Smith was a hunter, trapper, writer, cartographer, mountain man, and explorer who notched a lot of...

As compared to mothers, fathers are sometimes thought of as a secondary, almost superfluous, parent. But my guest says that fathers actually saved the human race, and continue to do so today. Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist, a pioneer of fatherhood science, and the author of Life Of Dad . Today on the show, we talk about the role of fathers in human history and how their main role co...

Everyone has heard about the incredible benefits that come to mind, body, and spirit from having strong relationships. The quality of our social ties has a huge impact on our physical and mental health and our overall feeling of flourishing. Yet many people still struggle to create these strong relationships in their lives, and often figure that things like weakening communities and digital techno...

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 160,000 troops participated in the invasion of Normandy. Today just a few thousand of these veterans are still alive, with the youngest in their late nineties. As their voices, and those of the million combatants and leaders who swept into motion across Europe 80 years ago, fall silent and pass from living history, Garrett Graff has captured and compiled them in a new book:...

Over a decade ago, I remember reading a story that stuck with me. I think it was connected to the famous Harvard Study on Adult Development that studied a group of men across their lifetimes, but I can no longer find the reference. A much-beloved doctor, upon his retirement, was given a notebook filled with letters of praise and appreciation from his patients. After he received it, he put it up in...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It's a peculiar book, especially for a bestseller. Not a lot of it is actually about zen or motorcycle maintenance, it combines a travelogue, a father/son story, and philosophical musings, and the structure of its narration makes it hard to follow. Thus, it's the kind of...

Note: This is a rebroadcast. Matthew Dicks wears a lot of hats. Among other things, he’s a storyteller, communications consultant, writer, and schoolteacher. In order to excel in his professional life, as well as do what he loves in his personal life, he’s developed a set of strategies that help him be more creative and productive, and can be used by anyone who wants to start making the most of li...

There are a lot of unspoken challenges and hidden battles that men face in modern society. They often manifest themselves in a uniquely male malaise where a man feels apathetic, frustrated, cynical, and lost. Jon Tyson has thought a lot about the problems men face and has been on the ground trying to help them as a pastor in New York City. In today's episode, I talk to Jon about the sources of thi...

General George S. Patton is known for his aggressive, action-oriented tactical brilliance. His character was also marked by a lesser-known but equally fundamental mystic piety. Those two qualities would come together in the lead up to and execution of Patton's greatest achievement during WWII: the relief of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Alex Kershaw tells this story in his new book Patt...

We often think happiness will be found in the completion of a goal. We often think happiness will be found in ease and comfort. My guest says real joy is found in the journey rather than the destination, and that if difficulty and discomfort are part of that journey, that's all the better. Dr. Adam Fraser is a peak performance researcher and the author of Strive: Embracing the Gift of Struggle . T...

If you didn’t grow up doing your own laundry, once you headed out on your own, you probably just figured things out on the fly, hoped for the best, and have been doing things the same way ever since. But, while you may be getting the job done okay, you also might be making some mistakes that are costing you time, money, and cleaner clothes. In this episode from the Art of Manliness department of e...

Life revolves around learning—in school, at our jobs, even in the things we do for fun. But we often don’t progress in any of these areas at the rate we’d like. Consequently, and unfortunately, we often give up our pursuits prematurely or resign ourselves to always being mediocre in our classes, career, and hobbies. Scott Young has some tips on how you can avoid this fate, level up in whatever you...

When you’re lifting weights, you might be thinking about setting a new PR or doing your curls for the girls. But throughout history, philosophers have thought about physical fitness on a deeper level and considered how exercise shapes not only the body, but also the mind and the soul. My guest today, Joe Lombardo, is a strength enthusiast who follows in this tradition and has explored the philosop...

Jim VandeHei didn’t have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told him he wasn’t cut out for college, and he went on to confirm her assessment, getting a 1.4 GPA at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and spending more time drinking beer than planning his career. Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found two of the biggest modern medi...

There are different philosophies one can have when it comes to money. Jared Dillian’s is built around eliminating as much anxiety around it as possible, so you hardly think about money at all. Jared is a former trader for Lehman Brothers, the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, a market newsletter for investment professionals, and the author of No Worries: How to Live a Stress-Free Financial Life . Today...