The Art of Manliness

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When the Game Was War: Lessons From the Greatest NBA Season of All Time Sep 11, 2023

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While there may be some heated rivalries in today's NBA, the ferocity of competition doesn't compare to the hard-hitting contests that took place during the 1987-1988 season, when four rising and falling dynasties — the Celtics, Lakers, Pistons, and Bulls — battled it out for supremacy.

Here to illuminate that epic era in basketball and share what can be learned from it is Rich Cohen, author of When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season. Today on the show, Rich makes a case for why there's never be a season before or since like the one that played out in '87 and '88, and he profiles the players — Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, and Michael Jordan — who dominated that season and changed the game. Along the way, we talk about the life lessons that can be taken from these players and their teams, including the rules legendary coach Phil Jackson gave the Bulls, which were inspired by the jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

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How to Develop Rugged Flexibility Sep 06, 2023

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Change is a constant. Changes big and small are always happening in our lives, while the world also changes around us. We can either resist these changes as unmooring threats to our sense of self, or embrace them as chances to get better and stronger.

The key to taking that second approach, my guest says, is developing rugged flexibility. His name is Brad Stulberg, and he's the author of Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You. Today on the show, Brad unpacks why allostasis is a better model for dealing with disruption than homeostasis, and how healthy change moves in a cycle of order, disorder, and reorder. We then discuss ways to move through this cycle with rugged flexibility — an approach to life that keeps some things solid and stable, while letting others change and flow. We talk about the importance of adopting a being versus having orientation, managing your expectations, diversifying your identity, and more.

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Take Back the Weekend Sep 04, 2023

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Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Do you ever get to feeling kind of down, dejected, and anxious come Sunday evening? People refer to this phenomenon as the “Sunday Night Blues,” and it’s a common experience. You may have chalked it up to rueing the fact that your fun and restful weekend is over, and that you have yet another workweek ahead.

But my guest would say that your Sunday night sadness may also be rooted in the feeling of regret — the regret that you didn’t put your weekend to good use, that it wasn’t restful and fun, and that it was instead busy, draining, and, once again, a big letdown. Her name is Katrina Onstad, and she’s the author of The Weekend Effect. Today Katrina shares how the idea of the weekend, of having two back-to-back days off from work, came about, and how it’s been challenged and subsequently eroded in the modern day. We then talk about how to take back your weekends, so that your invaluable Saturdays and Sundays feel more the way they did when you were a kid — filled with a sense of possibility.

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Leadership Is Overrated Aug 30, 2023

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When an organization wants to get more productive and better reach its goals, it typically looks to retool its leadership, trying to find lone figures who can apply more effective top-down control. But my guest says there’s a much more effective strategy for getting things done: creating and empowering teams of self-starters.

Kyle Buckett is a retired Navy SEAL, an executive consultant, and the co-author of
Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win. Today on the show, Kyle first unpacks the problems with the conventional model of leadership. He then explains what the self-led team-oriented model looks like and some of the ways to create effective self-led teams, including “killing the leader” and establishing a ritual-laden culture. We also talk about the role a leader can still play in an organization. Along the way, Kyle shares stories both from history and his experience as a SEAL that illustrate why self-led teams are so effective at getting things done.

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For Whom The Bell Tolls Aug 28, 2023

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Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is often designated as one of the greatest books about war ever written and has appeared on the Marine Corps recommended reading list. Today on the show, I unpack For Whom the Bell Tolls with Hemingway scholar Mark Cirino. We discuss the background of the novel, its themes, and the literary techniques Hemingway employed in writing it. We end our conversation with our picks for the "one true sentence" in the book.

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How to Use the Principles of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Overcome Obstacles in Business and Life Aug 23, 2023

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In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, there are certain principles like timing, leverage, and positioning that practitioners must master to successfully overcome an opponent. My guest has found that these same principles that allow someone to be successful on the mat, also apply to being successful outside of it.

Rener Gracie is the co-owner and head instructor of Gracie University and the author of The 32 Principles: Harnessing the Power of Jiu-Jitsu to Succeed in Business, Relationships, and Life. Today on the show, Rener shares how he’s used some of the core teachings of jiu-jitsu, like the Pyramid Principle and the River Principle, in his business, and how you can use them to grapple with all kinds of obstacles in life.

Resources Related to the Podcast

Art of Manliness + Gracie Intro to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Videos:
Rener‘s last appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #446: How Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Will Make You a Better Man
Gracie University’s 32 Principles of Jiu-Jitsu Video Course
Sunday Firesides: Secure Your Base
AoM Article: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

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Is Cannabis a Safe Drug? Aug 21, 2023

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Over the last decade, cannabis use has been legalized in more states. At the same time, the idea that marijuana is a safe drug has steadily increased.

But is this an accurate perception?

Recent research by my guest, Dr. Ryan Sultan, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, casts some doubt on a universally affirmative answer to that question, and he says we need to be having a more objective, balanced, and nuanced conversation around cannabis than we currently are. We have exactly that kind of conversation today on the show. We dig into the fact that young adulta are the group most vulnerable to the potentially negative effects of cannabis and how marijuana use in adolescence is linked to both mental illness and cognitive deficits. Dr. Sultan unpacks how cannabis impacts the developing brain and may lead to schizophrenia, especially in males. We also talk about whether if you used marijuana as a young adult and then stopped, your brain can still recover, and a cannabis-related health concern for all ages that doesn’t concern the brain. We end our show with Dr. Sultan’s take on what the safe use of cannabis looks like for adults.

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Advice on Making Love Last . . . From a Divorce Lawyer Aug 16, 2023

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If you want insight on how to make love last, you might ask friends, family, a therapist, or a pastor for advice. You probably wouldn't think to turn to a divorce lawyer. But my guest, James Sexton, who does that very job in New York City, says there may be few people who have a better perspective on how to hold a marriage together, than the guy who's got a front row seat to how they fall apart.

James is the author of If You're in My Office, It's Already Too Late: A Divorce Lawyer's Guide to Staying Together, and today on the show he shares what he's learned from overseeing over a thousand divorces that you can use to reverse engineer a relationship that lasts. We discuss the five types of infidelity James sees in his practice and the approach to marriage that will prevent affairs. We then get into common sources of conflict in a marriage, including sex, finances, and kids, and how to address these issues so you never end up in James', or any other divorce lawyer's, office.

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Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind Aug 14, 2023

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There are tons of podcasts, blog posts, and books about how to get more focused. Focus is seen as the key to greater productivity and success.

While focus is important, my guest says there are also amazing powers to be found in something that gets a lot less attention: the unfocused mind.

Dr. Srini Pillay is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a brain-imaging researcher, and the author of Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind. Today on the show, Srini explains the downsides of excessive focus, the importance of tapping into the unfocused mind, especially in the age of A.I., and the benefits of doing so, including how mind wandering can help you be more productive and creative, allow you to see greater possibilities for your life, and offer important insights that will get you unstuck from problems. He shares strategies to incorporate unfocused time into your lifestyle, including how to make daydreaming more beneficial and why you should let yourself doodle without guilt. Srini also makes a case for multitasking in the sense of switching back and forth between different tasks.

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The Life We're Looking For Aug 09, 2023

Show notes

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

In the quiet moments of our lives, we can all sense that our hearts long for something, though we often don't know what that something is. We seek an answer in our phones, and while they can provide some sense of extension and fulfillment — a feeling of magic — the use of technology also comes with significant costs in individual development and interpersonal connection that we typically don't fully understand and consider.

My guest today will unpack what it is we really yearn for, how technology, when misused, can direct us away from the path to fulfilling those yearnings, and how we can find true human flourishing in a world in which so much works against it. His name is Andy Crouch and he's the author of The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. Today on the show we talk about the tradeoffs you make when you seek magic without mastery, and how we can understand our desires better once we understand ourselves as heart, soul, mind, and strength complexes who want to be loved and known. We discuss the difference between interactions that are personal versus personalized, as well as the difference between devices and instruments, and how to use your phone as the latter instead of the former. We end our conversation with why Andy thinks we need to redesign the architecture of our relational lives and create something he calls "households."

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