Intelligent Masculinity

Content note: this episode and review discuss sexual assault, rape, and abuse. “I’m living my life less because I could be going out every day to the most amazing activities like concerts... But I can’t because I’m scared for my safety. And that’s just not me. It’s literally every single woman ever.” ~ Zulfina ~ Masculinity In Review Nick Paro set the Intelligent Masculinity banner aside this week...

“So that is the difference between an intelligent man and a knuckle dragging man is go aim it at the people who are trying to keep other people from having the freedom to find that balance for themselves.” ~ Jacob Summers ~ Masculinity In Review The internet ate this episode twice before it finally held. What survived is audio only, and it is worth the trouble. Jacob Summers — Captain Valhalla to...

“So using the words to just tell somebody you can be vulnerable won’t necessarily gain the action that you intended to give. I would say that just like children, modeling that you’re vulnerable is much more of an effective way.” ~ Kyle Pacheco ~ Masculinity In Review Kyle Pacheco ( ClearRoot Intelligence ) spent an hour this week describing a pattern most men will recognize and few will name out l...

“For me, a part of masculinity is if you lose, you lose. Okay. I didn’t have my best day. Things didn’t go well. I could have done things different or people just didn’t want me to win. This is a democracy, right? So take that, learn lessons, move forward.” ~ AngryMaleVet ~ Masculinity In Review The third Intelligent Masculinity conversation with AngryMaleVet starts where the first two left off. N...

“Men need examples. We need to see other men doing the thing so that we can have permission to do the thing.” ~ Sean Talbeaux ~ Masculinity In Review Sean Talbeaux reached out to Nick Paro cold, and said on air that doing so terrified him. That admission sets the terms for the whole hour. Sean writes What Doesn’t Change on Substack, runs wilderness and psychedelic men’s retreats out of Portland, a...

“What if I’m just a fucking grasshopper? What if that’s what I am? Am I not good enough? I mean, grasshoppers exist. Grasshoppers are valid. Grasshoppers bring value to the world.” ~ Lawrence Winnerman ~ Masculinity In Review This discussion never says the word “masculinity” until the last ten minutes, and that turns out to be the point. Nick Paro brought Lawrence Winnerman back to talk about bett...

Masculinity In Review A photographer with a doctorate in biology is not the obvious guest for a show about masculinity, which is exactly why this episode works. Nick Paro brings on Jason P. Odell — self-employed in Colorado Springs, a PhD out of UC Riverside “back in a previous lifetime” — and the conversation turns quickly into something other than a politics segment. It becomes an argument about...

Masculinity In Review Nick Paro opens this one on a Tuesday, off the usual schedule, with a guest whose book title is itself an argument. Jasper Craven — an investigative journalist who has covered veterans and the military since 2014 for Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times — wrote God Forgives, Brothers Don’t about military education and what it manufactures in American men....

Masculinity In Review Comedy is never neutral. That is the quiet argument running under this episode, and Ron Placone — stand-up, filmmaker, and the man behind the anti-capitalist comedy Left at Wall — makes it without ever announcing it. Nick Paro brings him in on a recommendation from mutual friend Tara Devlin, and the two spend an hour tracing a line from Mussolini’s war on pasta to a men’s nat...

Masculinity In Review This episode takes one of the most combustible subjects in American politics — antisemitism and the war in Gaza — and treats it as a test case for whether men can hold hard truths without flattening them. Nick Paro brings Cliff Schecter — longtime Democratic consultant, 2020 Biden ad-writer, and founder of the independent outlet Blue Amp Media — into a conversation that refus...

Masculinity In Review This episode takes a single loaded word and uses it to pry open a much larger question: what does it actually mean to be deliberate about how you move through the world? Nick Paro brings Dean Blundell — the Toronto broadcaster, Save America movement contributor, and self-described emotional support Canadian — into a conversation that starts with the word “p***y” and ends with...

Masculinity In Review This episode takes a man the public knows as a footnote in an impeachment and asks him the question the news never does: not what did you do, but what changed you. Lev Parnas — Soviet-born immigrant, recovering Trump-world insider, the figure at the center of the Ukraine pressure campaign, and now one of the most relentless voices for the Epstein survivors — joins Nick Paro f...

Masculinity In Review This episode reframes a conversation that the loudest voices in American culture keep trying to flatten. Jarrod Zisser — independent journalist behind The Take, Marine Corps infantry with two Iraq tours, and a man who walked away from a paying job a year ago to report from federal-occupation flashpoints — joins Nick Paro to do something the moment makes unfashionable: argue t...

Masculinity In Review * Check out Jonathan’s sci-fi book series, The Night Sky Trilogy Nick Paro sits down with Jonathan Buchwalter — a Holocaust and 20th-century U.S. history teacher, Shelton State adjunct, TikTok historian, and as of a few days ago the newly-elected chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Democratic Party — for a late-night, second-of-the-day Intelligent Masculinity conversation that...

Masculinity In Review Nick Paro sits down with Ann Kramer — a licensed therapist of more than thirty years, creator of the Life Puzzle model, and a clinician who long ago walked out of what she calls the disease model of counseling — for a conversation that begins with a 10-year-old’s temper tantrum and ends, by way of Elon Musk’s bunker, with a vision for a post-AI economy. Ann’s framework is dec...

“We are the freaking problem. We are the agent of chaos.” ~ Tim Whitaker ~ Masculinity In Review Tim Whitaker walked into today’s Intelligent Masculinity discussion with years of experiences - through a faith community that raised him, a church that eventually removed him, and public-facing projects — Tim Whitaker Speaks and The New Evangelicals — built explicitly to help Christians find a path fo...

“When people don’t know you’re coming, they don’t know how to stop you. And so I feel like they don’t know I’m coming. And so I’m just tiptoeing in.” ~ Ellie Leonard ~ Masculinity In Review Nick Paro sits down with Ellie Leonard — Substack writer, mother of four, and one of the independent journalists pulling Epstein survivor stories out of the place legacy media stopped looking — for a conversati...

“That oath never expires. And I still have that raging fire to help the people of this country get a better life.” ~ Angry Male Vet ~ Masculinity In Review Nick Paro sits back down with Angry Male Vet — retired Air Force intelligence officer, 23-year combat veteran, and one of the sharpest voices connecting military reality to civilian political life — for the follow-up conversation they couldn’t...

“Admitting that I did something wrong was the first step, and it was incredibly difficult. It took me years to actually fully believe — not just say so that my probation officer didn’t ride my ass — but actually believe: I, Kenyon Byers, have done something wrong. And I have to change.” ~ K.R. Byers ~ Masculinity In Review Nick Paro sits down with K.R. Byers — writer, creative satirist, and self-d...

“Your responsibility as a human being should be to care for people in your community, care for people and whatever your community is, whether it’s your preschool, whether it’s your family, these are all little community spaces for you.” ~ Rachel Maron ~ Masculinity In Review In this 27th interview of Intelligent Masculinity , Nick Paro brings Rachel Maron on as the series’ first female guest, and...

“The most productive investment anyone can make is to look within and figure out what you haven’t come to grips with. Are there things from your past that you’re still dealing with but don’t want to face? Having the courage to turn inward and face yourself — that allows you to navigate life in a better way.” ~ Angry Male Vet ~ Masculinity In Review For this 26th interview of Intelligent Masculinit...

“It was a very unique spot. You could tell that they’ve been through something, some kind of trauma. There’s almost a look to trauma that I deal with a lot in my day job that you can usually see. But at the same time it was conflict-free. An event with thousands upon thousands of people in a small parking lot, shoved together in front of this space, and I just don’t recall conflict. I don’t recall...

“What's masculine is to be tough enough to sit down and not debate and not fight — but to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation. That's what, in my mind, a real man should learn how to do." ~ Joe Walsh ~ Masculinity In Review In this 24th interview of Intelligent Masculinity, Nick Paro sat down with pro-democracy advocate, former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh , for a conversation that refu...

“If an infantry fucking Marine can understand this shit, anybody can understand this shit. You just gotta be willing to open your fucking mind and accept the goddamn truth.” ~ Matt Gordon ~ Masculinity In Review In this 23rd interview of Intelligent Masculinity, Nick Paro sits down with Matt Gordon — Marine Corps veteran, nine-year infantry guy, and the man behind the USMC Angry Veteran platform —...

“At its core, toxic masculinity — the opposite of intelligent masculinity or positive masculinity — is about cowardice. And you can push insecurity and overcompensating and all of that into it, but I think if you frame it in terms of cowardice, it not only skewers the performative cosplay of the Pete Hegseths and the Markwayne Mullin, it allows viewers and fans and others to begin to see it when i...