Podcast: The Art of Manliness

What if there was a supplement that could build muscle, maintain bone health, fortify the brain against cognitive decline due to age and stress, and alleviate depression, has been proven safe, and comes with almost no side effects? Well, there is such a supplement, it's been around a long time, and it isn't even expensive. It's creatine.

Here to unpack the myths, benefits, and recommended ways to use creatine is Darren Candow, a professor of exercise physiology and nutrition who supervises the Aging Muscle and Bone Health Laboratory at the University of Regina. Darren specializes in studying creatine and has published over 70 papers on the subject. Today on the show, Darren explains how a supplement often associated with bodybuilders may actually be beneficial for just about everyone — athletes and non-athletes and the young and old alike. He unpacks what creatine does in the body, and how its benefits extend beyond the body and into the brain. He offers recommendations on the formulation of creatine to use, a suggested dosage and whether it should increase with age, and how to avoid the bloating effect. He also shares what we know about creatine's safety, including its effects on the kidneys, and whether it can cause hair loss.

Self-control, the ability to resolve a conflict between two competing desires, is frequently touted as the golden key to success. But many of the most popular ideas about self-control are actually at odds with how it really operates.

Here to unpack some of the lesser-understood and counterintuitive ideas around discipline and willpower is Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology who has studied the nature of self-regulation in depth. In the first part of our conversation, Michael unpacks the popular ego depletion model of willpower and how it hasn't held up to scientific scrutiny. We then turn to the surprising fact that the people who seem to exhibit a lot of self-control don't actually exercise a lot of discipline and restraint in their lives, that the achievement of goals is more a function of having virtuous desires, and what contributes to having those desires.

For decades, some researchers have argued that the notable human capacity for endurance evolved from the hunting practices of our ancestors, which produced physiological adaptations that make us uniquely well suited for running.

But this theory has always had its detractors.

As my guest explains, a new study addresses these long-standing criticisms and adds evidence that, indeed, we were all born to run.

Alex Hutchinson is a journalist who covers the science of endurance and fitness, and today on the show, he explains what those criticisms were and how this new research counters them. We talk about the role running held amongst peoples of the past, how running is not only primal but cultural and even spiritual, and why we continue to run today, even though we’re not hunting for food. And we discuss how, even if we are born to run, that doesn’t mean everyone will always enjoy running all of the time, and how to get into running if you’re someone who doesn’t feel an innate desire for it.

In a family, a lot of the dynamics around devices and screens are reactive in nature. Kids bug for their own smartphones, parents worry they'll be left out without one, and without weighing the pros and cons, give in to their kids' requests. Parents let children have a ton of screen time because it lets the parents do what they want; then, they reach a moment where they feel disturbed about how much time their kids are on screens, berate their children for this habit, which they've facilitated, and vow that things are going to abruptly turn around.

Rather than basing your policies about kids and screens on mood, fear, and impulse, it would be better to do so based on reason and reflection. Emily Cherkin has some ideas on how to get there. Emily is a former teacher, a screentime consultant who helps parents and educators balance the role of devices in kids' lives, and the author of The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family. Today on the show, Emily unpacks the state of screentime amongst kids today, how the "displacement hypothesis" explains how its impact extends beyond a decline in mental health, and why parents give their kids smartphones even when they're not sure it's good for them. We then turn to how families can become more tech intentional, and how that starts with parents taking a look at their own behavior. We discuss why putting parental controls on devices isn't the ultimate solution, why a better one is based on your relationship with your kids, why you need to live your digital life out loud, and some considerations to think through before getting your kid their first smartphone.

Although they may call it different things and approach its attainment in different ways, many of the world’s religions and philosophies have a similar goal: achieving a life of virtue, peace, and flourishing.

In his new book, Seriously Happy, Ben Aldrige explains how anyone can use the wisdom of ancient traditions to improve themselves and live the Good life. Today on the show, Ben offers a thumbnail sketch of Buddhism, Cynicism, Taoism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism, along with practices and challenges inspired by these philosophies, including walking a banana, listening to a music performance without music, and taking a Wu Wei adventure, that you can use to put ancient wisdom into action and become a better and happier man.

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Over the last year, my 12-year-old son has been doing one challenge every week as a rite of passage and chance to earn a special trip. Some of these challenges have involved reading a book in a week, and the most recent book we gave him to read was How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. His review? He said it was the best book he's read so far.

So a book written almost 90 years ago can still be a favorite of a kid in the 21st century. Talk about some staying power.

The advice in How to Win Friends & Influence People, and Dale Carnegie's other classic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, is timeless. But to help introduce it to a new audience, my guest, Joe Hart, has recently co-authored the book Take Command, which synthesizes, updates, and adds to the principles of Carnegie's two perennial bestsellers. Joe is the President and CEO of Dale Carnegie & Associates, which continues Carnegie's work in the present day, and we begin our conversation with some background on the guy who kicked off this work back in 1936. We then talk about what principles we can take from How to Stop Worrying and Start Living on developing a positive mindset. From there, we talk about the big overarching principle of How to Win Friends & Influence People, and how you can use it to improve your relationships. We end our conversation with advice on how to live life with more intentionality and meaning.

As you get older, you can start to feel like you'll never achieve your dream or receive recognition for your contributions to a field, or that your best work is behind you.

Mo Rocca has compiled stories that demonstrate that you shouldn't give up hope, and that no matter your age, the best may yet be to come.

Mo is a humorist, journalist, and the co-author of Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs. Today on the show, Mo shares the stories and lessons of entrepreneurs, artists, actors, and more who achieved greatness or adulation in their twilight years or had a new spurt of creativity when they thought the well had run dry, including KFC founder Colonel Sanders, the artist Matisse, a couple of guys who didn't receive their first war wounds until they were old enough to qualify for the senior citizen discount at Denny's, and even a virile 90-year-old tortoise.

Your relationship with your mother is likely the first and most foundational connection in your life. At its best, this bond can be a source of comfort, strength, and love that lasts a lifetime and changes in healthy, appropriate, and adaptive ways as you mature into adulthood.

But sometimes, the attachment between a mother and her son can become unhealthy, resulting in a phenomenon called mother-son enmeshment, in which a man can become a kind of surrogate husband to his mom.

Here to unpack this complex issue is Dr. Kenneth Adams. Ken is a clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career working with what he calls "mother-enmeshed men" and is the author of When He's Married to Mom. Today on the show, Ken unpacks the characteristics of mother-enmeshed men and how to know if you are one, and he explains what can happen in childhood that would cause a mother to enmesh with her son. We discuss the problems enmeshment can create in men's relationships and other areas of life and how it can lead to things like compulsive porn use. And we unpack what it means for a man to become independent and emancipate from his mother, how it's different from cutting her off, and what it looks like to have a healthy relationship with your mom.

You probably know your body follows a circadian rhythm, and probably think of it as primarily regulating your sleep/wake cycle, which it certainly does. But your body's internal clock also regulates many other physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur every 24 hours, and working with your circadian rhythm, rather than against it, can boost your health and happiness.

Here to unpack how to do so is Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience and the author of Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep. In the first part of our conversation, we discuss some science and background on circadian rhythm and its connection to light exposure. We then turn to the practical implications of having an internal clock, including whether you need to worry about viewing blue light at night, the significant mental and physical harms that can accrue from working the night shift and what can be done to mitigate them, what influences your chronotype and whether you're a morning lark or a night owl, whether you should be concerned if you're waking up in the middle of the night, why you wake up to pee in the night, the best times of day to exercise, and how the circadian rhythm can influence when you should take medication.

A fair amount of gear is involved in making a camping or backpacking trip a success, and choosing that gear can be a little intimidating as there are lots of options, and it's expensive to boot.

Here to offer some tips on selecting gear and getting the most out of it is Craig Caudill, an avid outdoorsman, the director and lead instructor of the Nature Reliance School, and the author of Ultimate Wilderness Gear: Everything You Need to Know to Choose and Use the Best Outdoor Equipment. Today on the show, Craig and I discuss some things to know when purchasing things like boots, tents, sleeping bags, and more, and we offer some specific recommendations as to the gear that's worked for us respectively. Craig also offers tips on using outdoor equipment, including how to dry wet boots without damaging them, whether you should put a tarp under your tent, what to do if you get hot and sweaty or cold in your sleeping bag, a hack for sleeping more comfortably on the ground, and the best kind of knife for an outdoorsman to carry.

You may know Nate Silver as an election forecaster. But he’s a poker player as well. And his experiences operating in a world of competition and risk led him to explore what his fellow gamblers, as well as hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, and many other kinds of maverick types do differently than other people.

Amongst the findings Nate shares in his new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, are the “13 habits of highly effective risk-takers.” Nate and I discuss some of these habits today on the show, including exercising strategic empathy, avoiding the pitfalls of resulting, taking a raise or fold stance toward life, and more.

To train the body, strengthening its muscles, increasing its cardiovascular health, and improving its agility, you need to do exercises like stretching, running, and lifting weights.

To train the soul, expanding its capacity, you likewise need to perform exercises, in this case, what are called "spiritual disciplines" — practices like fasting, silence, self-examination, study, and simplicity.

As a pastor, John Mark Comer approaches the spiritual disciplines from a Christian perspective, as the habits and practices from "the way of Jesus" that allow individuals to make deeper layers of themselves available to grace and access the transforming power that's necessary to become what John Mark calls "a person of love."

But the practices that are considered spiritual disciplines can be found across different religions, and even philosophies like Stoicism, and can be utilized by people from varied backgrounds to deepen their inner life and strength, center themselves in chaos, find greater purpose, and subdue baser desires to reach for higher ideals.

Today on the show, John Mark offers an introduction to the spiritual disciplines, and the way they can be an act of resistance, a way for us to form our own values and rhythms in life, instead of allowing our lives to be formed by the defaults and external forces of our age.

The source of these challenges is often chalked up to the underdeveloped brains and hormones that tweens through young twenty-somethings possess. But my guest would say that what’s more to blame is the ineffective way mentors often approach young adults.

David Yeager is a developmental psychologist and the author of 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation—And Making Your Own Life Easier. Today on the show, David and I discuss the “mentor’s dilemma” — the idea that you either have to be a tough authoritarian who holds young adults to high standards or a softie push-over who doesn’t crush a kid’s spirit — and how to navigate through this unnecessary dichotomy. David explains the critical importance of understanding what really drives young adults, what approaches cause them to shut down and disengage, and the best practices that parents, teachers, and other mentors can take to leave young adults feeling inspired, enthusiastic, and ready to contribute.

When many people try to lose weight, they choose a specific, cookie-cutter diet that claims to be the one true way to shed pounds. My guest says that approach is bound to backfire, and that there's a better way to lose weight and change your body composition.

Alan Aragon is a researcher and educator, a pioneer of evidence-based nutrition, and the author of Flexible Dieting: A Science-Based, Reality-Tested Method for Achieving and Maintaining Your Optimal Physique, Performance & Health. Today on the show, Alan offers an intro to his method of flexible dieting, in which, as long as you stay in a caloric deficit and hit your daily protein target, you can decide on how much fat and carbs to consume according to personal preference. We discuss what to keep in mind as you create your own individualized nutrition plan, including how much protein you need a day, the minimum amount of fat to get in your diet to avoid a decrease in testosterone, and the minimum of carbs to consume to maximize muscle gain. And, because flexible dieting is also about not rigidly sticking with your diet 100% of the time, Alan shares how often you should take a break from your diet to eat what you want.

When we think about anxiety, we typically think of something that is generated and felt within an individual. But Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist of the mid-20th century, argued that anxiety was also created by the interactions between individuals and could spread like a contagion in a group, an idea known as "Family Systems Theory."

Here to offer an introduction to Family Systems Theory and how its implications extend far beyond the family is Steve Cuss, who is a former hospital chaplain, a pastor, the founder of Capable Life, which offers coaching and consultation, and the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs. Today on the show, Steve and I discuss how individuals in both families and organizations can "infect a situation with [their] own assumptions and expectations" and create a sense of anxiety that permeates a group. Steve unpacks the false needs that create chronic anxiety in an individual, how this anxiety spreads to others, and the unhealthy ways people deal with this tension, including becoming fused together. And we talk about how to put this anxiety back where it belongs, and how a single person can change a group dynamic by differentiating from it and becoming a rooted self.

Do moments where you run up against your dependence on modern technology get you wondering about the ways some of your personal capabilities seem to be atrophying?

Graham Lee has spent years thinking about this idea. While he's a digital skills educator who appreciates the way technology can enhance our abilities, he worries that our ever-increasing reliance on algorithms and artificial intelligence may be robbing us of elements that are vital to the core of who we are.

Lee is the author of Human Being: Reclaim 12 Vital Skills We’re Losing to Technology, and today on the show, we talk about some of those dozen endangered skills, including navigation, reading, writing, craftsmanship, and solitude. Lee offers case studies on how these skills enhance our humanness, why their loss matters, and how we can reclaim these capabilities and a greater sense of satisfaction and self-efficacy.

You have a relationship with family, with friends, with a romantic partner. You may not have thought about it this way, but you also have a relationship with your job — a quite serious one, in fact; after all, you spend a third of your life working.

Just like the relationship you have with your significant other, there are ups and downs with your relationship with your job. It can start out with exciting honeymoon feelings, but along the way, you can end up drifting apart from your job, lose interest in it, or not feel appreciated. And there can come a time when you start wondering if you and your job should part ways.

Here to help you figure out if you should break up with your job is Tessa West, a professor of psychology and the author of Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You. Tessa interviewed thousands of people who have recently switched jobs or undergone career changes and found that there are five forms that job dissatisfaction typically takes. Today on the show, Tessa shares those five job dissatisfaction profiles, and how to know when you need to try to move into a new role within your company, or move on altogether and even change careers.

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 didn’t feel good.

So he and his wife and fellow trainer, Juliet, decided to write a book — Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully — that took all that they’ve learned from training elite performers and distilled it into the foundational practices that everyone, at every age, can use to develop lasting mobility, durability, and all-around health. Today on the show, Kelly unpacks some of those essential physical habits, sharing the “vital signs” — tests that will help you assess how you’re doing in that area — as well as daily practices that will help you strengthen and improve that capacity.

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 an author. He combines his two decades of military service with his study of martial arts and zen meditation to create the holistic warrior monk development philosophy that informs his work, including his latest book, Uncommon: Simple Principles for an Extraordinary Life.

Today on the show, Mark acts as a guide to the topography of the five mountains of personal development and the daily practices that will help you summit them. We talk about why mastering the physical mountain comes first and climbing the intuitional mountain comes fourth, the Navy SEAL breathing practice that will help you develop your metacognition, how the Japanese concept of ikigai can help you find your purpose in life, and much more.

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 of our schedules, and prevent us from participating in all the fun and fulfilling parts of life.

Fortunately, there are ways to better manage your life admin. Here to share some of them is Dinah Rowe-Roberts, the co-host of the Life Admin Life Hacks podcast and the co-author of a book of the same name. Today on the show, Dinah explains what lists you should be keeping, including the 10-minute time killers list, why you should do a regular “hour of power” to stay on top of things, how to schedule your life admin, how to keep track of and divvy up chores between you and your spouse, how to get all your meal planning and grocery shopping done in less than 15 minutes a week, how to streamline your kids’ schedules and your vacation planning, and much more.