The Art of Manliness

More and more today, we're communicating with the people in our lives through screens. While this has greatly improved efficiency, there are some drawbacks that have come with the decline in face-to-face conversation. My guest today, Sherry Turkle, has written a book (Reclaiming Conversation) about what we're missing when we don't engage with people in face-to-face conversation...

Matt Reynolds, a former power lifter and Strong Man competitor, is the co-owner of a gym in Springfield, MO called Strong Gym. He's been coaching me online, and I've seen significant improvement in my lifting and strength training since I've started with him. I wanted to get him on the podcast to talk about his story, as well as why everyone should be doing strength and barbell training.

In the last few years we've seen an interesting phenomenon, especially on college campuses, where students will take slights or even just awkwardness incredibly sensitively and emotionally. Two sociologists have gotten together -- Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning -- and published a paper and theory about why this "victimhood" culture has arisen on campuses. We talk about this paper, as well as honor, dignity, masculinity, and more.

Lewis Howes had aspirations of being a pro football player, and he was on the path to making it happen for himself. After a career-ending injury, and year spent on his sister's couch, he started an online business which became a big success. Since then, he's started a podcast called The School of Greatness, in which he interviews people about what it means to live a flourishing life. He has a new book by the same name, and on today's show Lewis and I talk about how to live the good life.

We've talked about Stoicism before on the Art of Manliness. From eminent men like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, the Romans heartily embraced the philosophy. My guest today wrote a book about how Stoicism can help our modern soldiers. Nancy Sherman is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown, and on today's show we talk about healing not only physical wounds, but mental ones too with this ancient way of thinking.

One of my favorite writers is Adam Makos. He has a new book out called Devotion. It's about two men -- one black and one white -- who end up in the Korean War together and become fast friends. In this podcast, Adam and I talk about these two men, as well as why he thinks it's important to continue telling the stories of our war veterans.

Kyle Eschenroeder is an entrepreneur who runs Startupbros.com. Beyond that, he's a guy who reads and thinks deeply, and has contributed a few excellent pieces of content for AoM. In this podcast we talk about one of those popular articles, which was about thriving in uncertainty. We tend to think we have more control over our lives than we really do. So today we talk about tools and techniques to truly thrive when life takes us in unexpected directions.

Have you ever noticed that when you try really hard at something, you actually aren't able to achieve what you're trying to do? For example, if you can't sleep at night, you try really hard to fall asleep, which only makes matters worse. Chinese philosophers understood this fact that when you try really hard, it makes things harder to achieve...

Talent is undoubtedly an important part of being successful in life. But there's another piece that's often overlooked: our mindset. My guest today, Carol Dweck, has spent decades researching this very topic. Her conclusion is that there are basically two mindsets in life: growth or fixed. Whichever one you have will go a long ways towards determining your success in life, as well as your children.

Every guy at one point or another in his life dreams about being Jason Bourne or James Bond. Lock picking, escaping restraints, evading bad guys, killing bad dudes with an improvised weapon. That's stuff guys like to know even if they'll never have to use it. Well, now you can learn how to do all that cool spy stuff. Navy SEAL Clint Emerson has just published a book called 100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative's Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation...