The Art of Manliness

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Money and Meaning: What Faith Traditions Teach Us About Personal Finance Jan 13, 2026

Show notes

We usually think of money as something very practical, concrete, and secular; we earn it, save it, spend it, and crunch the numbers behind it. But money is never just about money: it reflects our values, our priorities — and even our spiritual life.

My guest today, Tom Levinson, knows this well. He’s a financial advisor who studied religion at Harvard Divinity School and thought about becoming a rabbi. Now, he helps people navigate not just their portfolios, but the deeper questions that come with them.

In today’s conversation, Tom shares the greater meaning around money, what the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions say about it, and how financial practices like budgeting can be spiritual disciplines.

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Strong, Conditioned, and Ready for Anything: How to Become a Hybrid Athlete Jan 06, 2026

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For decades, fitness culture has tended to break people into two categories: you’re either a strength guy or an endurance guy. You lift heavy or run far — but not both.

But my guest today says you don't have to choose; you can excel at both modalities and be ready for anything.

Alex Viada is a coach, a physiologist, and the author of The Hybrid Athlete. He’s a powerlifter who's also completed Ironman triathlons, and he's deadlifted 700 pounds and run an ultramarathon in the same week. Even if your goals are much more modest — you'd like to, say, set some weightlifting PRs in the gym and be able to run a decent 5k — Alex's training philosophy can help you combine lifting and endurance in a smart, sustainable way that builds true all-around fitness.

In our conversation, Alex explains how to combine training for strength with distance sports like running or cycling, how to test your progress, how to recognize and avoid the two kinds of fatigue, and why becoming a hybrid athlete will help you live more adventurously — and more capably.

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How to Use Probability Hacking to Achieve Your Goals Dec 30, 2025

Show notes

Most of us chase goals — starting a business, running a marathon, getting a promotion — without ever asking: What are the actual odds this will work?

My guest today says those odds aren’t just graspable — they’re hackable.

Kyle Austin Young is a strategy consultant and the author of Success Is a Numbers Game. He argues that every goal comes with a hidden probability of success or failure, and by thinking strategically — rather than just hoping for the best — you can tilt the odds in your favor.

In the first part of our conversation, Kyle explains the three common ways people pursue goals and their potential downsides. We then unpack how to approach your goals through probability hacking. We discuss how to spot the weak links in your plan, how to map out a “success diagram” that helps you avoid common pitfalls and pursue goals more intelligently, and how to use these same principles to know when you should quit a goal.

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Escape the Happiness Trap Dec 23, 2025

Show notes

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies. Yet all this focus on happiness doesn’t seem to be making people any happier. In fact, the more they try to be happy, especially by fighting to get rid of bad feelings and cling to good ones, the more unhappy people often become.

My guest would say that the first step in escaping this negative cycle is redefining what happiness even means — thinking of it not as a state of feeling good but of doing good.

His name is Russ Harris and he’s a therapist and the author of The Happiness Trap.

Today on the show, Russ explains how struggling against difficult feelings and thoughts just makes them stronger — amplifying instead of diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness — and how simply obeying your emotions doesn’t work out any better. He then unpacks the alternative approach to happiness espoused by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. With ACT, you allow both hard and pleasant feelings to coexist, and unhook from the latter so that they no longer jerk you around. This allows you to focus on taking action on your values to create a meaningful, flourishing life, or in other words, real happiness.

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Russ’ Website

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The Idea Machine: How Books Changed the World (and Still Matter) Dec 16, 2025

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Books are everywhere. They're so common, they're easy to take for granted. But my guest argues that they’re worth fully appreciating — because the book isn’t just a container for content; it’s a revolutionary technology for shaping culture and thought.

Joel Miller is a former publishing executive, an editor, a book reviewer, and the author of The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future. Today on the show, Joel argues that to appreciate the power of the book, you have to look at its design: how it's constructed, how we interact with it, and how its evolution transformed the way we think, learn, and communicate. He walks us through a fascinating history of the book as a physical object, from Augustine reading under a fig tree, to medieval monks introducing word spacing and punctuation, to the printing press’s world-altering explosion of information. We also explore how novels changed our emotional and social intelligence, how silent reading birthed individual interpretation, and why, even in an age of video and AI, books still matter.

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Miller's Book Review

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Why You Don’t Follow Through on Your Health Goals — and How to Fix It Dec 09, 2025

Show notes

Most of us know what we should do to be healthier: eat better, move more, sleep well. The real challenge? Actually following through.

On today’s show, I talk to behavioral psychologist Amantha Imber, author of The Health Habit, who argues that the missing piece in most health advice isn’t more information — it’s learning how to bridge the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

Amantha first outlines four “habit hijackers” that sabotage your best-laid plans and shares practical, research-backed tactics to overcome each one. We then dive into some specific health habits that will give you a lot of transformative bang for your buck. We discuss how restricting your sleep can help you sleep better, the truth about the popular 10,000 steps a day recommendation, the underrated power of an after-dinner walk, and more.

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Masculinity as Confident Competence Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

There’s a lot of debate these days about what it means to be a man. But maybe the answer is simpler than we think, and a lot of masculinity just comes down to confident competence. A broad set of know-how. The ability to get stuff done. The capacity to move through the world with purpose and skill.

As someone who's lived several lives in one, Elliot Ackerman certainly embodies that ethos. He's a decorated Marine, a former CIA paramilitary officer, a National Book Award-nominated novelist, and now the writer of A Man Should Know, a column at The Free Press that explores the small but significant skills that shape a man’s life.

Today on the show, Elliot and I talk about why young men are struggling, how intention, discipline, and competence can change the way a man carries himself, and a few of the specific skills a man should know — from how to wear a watch to how to give a eulogy.

Resources Related to the Podcast

Elliot's novels
Elliot's "A Man Should Know:" columns:
How to Introduce Yourself
How to Be a Friend
How to Own a Watch
Fields of Fire by James Webb
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
AoM Article: 100 Skills Every Man Should Know
AoM Skills Archives
AoM Podcast #307: Make Your Bed, Change the World
AoM Article: 10 Ways to Be a Better Husband Today
AoM Article: How to Choose a Watch
AoM Article: How to Give a Eulogy
AoM Article: A Eulogy for My Grandfather, William D. Hurst
The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village by Michael Herzfeld
AoM Article: MacGyver Manhood and the Art of Masculine Improvisation
Free Press discount code: subscribe at thefp.com/manliness, and save 10% off your first year

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A Butler’s Guide to Managing Your Household Nov 25, 2025

Show notes

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

It’s a tough job to manage a household. Things need to be regularly fixed, maintained, and cleaned. How do you stay on top of these tasks in order to keep your home in tip-top shape?

My guest knows his way all around this issue and has some field-tested, insider advice to offer. Charles MacPherson spent two decades as the major-domo or chief butler of a grand household. He’s also the founder of North America’s only registered school for butlers and household managers and the author of several books drawn from his butlering experience, including The Butler Speaks: A Return to Proper Etiquette, Stylish Entertaining, and the Art of Good Housekeeping.

In the first part of our conversation, Charles charts the history of domestic service and describes why the practice of having servants like a butler and maid ebbed in the mid-20th century but has made a comeback today. We then turn to what average folks who don’t have a household staff can do to better manage their homes. Charles recommends keeping something called a “butler’s book” to stay on top of household schedules and maintenance checklists. We then discuss how to clean your home more logically and efficiently. Charles shares his golden rules of house cleaning, the cleaning task you’ve probably neglected (hint: go take a look at the side of the door on your dishwasher), his surprising choice for the best product to use to clean your shower, how often you should change your bedsheets, and much more.

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Charles’ website

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How the World Wars Shaped J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

When people think of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, they often picture tweedy Oxford professors and beloved fantasy authors. But their writing wasn't drawn only from their bucolic days teaching at Oxford and walking in the English countryside; it had a darker, deeper backdrop: the trenches of World War I and the cataclysm of World War II. Lewis and Tolkien weren't just fantasy writers — they were war veterans, cultural critics, and men with firsthand knowledge of evil, heroism, and sacrifice.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Joseph Loconte, returning to the show to discuss his latest book, The War for Middle Earth. We explore how both world wars shaped the perspectives of Tolkien and Lewis, found their way into works like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, and infused their literary masterpieces with moral weight, spiritual depth, and timeless themes of resistance, friendship, and redemption. We also talk about the legendary friendship between Tolkien and Lewis, the creation of the Inklings, and how the men demonstrated the countercultural power of imaginative storytelling.

Resources Related to the Podcast

Related AoM podcasts:
#178: The Inklings Mastermind Group
#272: Lewis, Tolkien, and the Myth of Progress (Loconte’s first appearance on the AoM podcast)
#430: Why You Need to Join the Great Conversation About the Great Books
#499: A Fascinating Primer on Norse Mythology
#594: How Churchill (and London) Survived the Blitz of 1940
#723: Men Without Chests
#765: C.S. Lewis on Building Men With Chests
#951: The Hobbit Virtues
Related AoM articles
The Power of Conversation: A Lesson from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien
Lessons in Manliness from Viking Mythology
Lessons in Manliness: The Hobbit
Men Without Chests
“Blood, Sweat, and Tears” speech by Winston Churchill
4 Classic Chapter Books to Read Aloud With Your Kids
Related outside articles:
Tolkien’s Deadly Dragons
Munich Agreement
Owen Barfield
Tolkien books mentioned:
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Beowulf translated by Tolkien
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
Beren and Luthien
Letters from Father Christmas
Lewis books mentioned:
The Letters of C.S. Lewis
The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis
The Pilgrim’s Regress
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters
The Space Trilogy
The Four Loves
Mere Christianity
The Reading Life
Related books by other authors:
Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth
The Somme by Martin Gilbert
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud
The Aeneid by Virgil
Phantastes by George MacDonald
The Vinland Sagas
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory

Connect With Joseph Loconte

Joseph's website

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Family Culture and the Sibling Effect: What Really Shapes Who You Become Nov 11, 2025

Show notes

When we think about what shaped our life trajectory, we often focus on the way our parents raised us. But what about our siblings? What role do they play in who we become?

My guest today makes the case that siblings may be just as influential as parents in impacting how we turn out.

Her name is Susan Dominus, and she’s a journalist and the author of The Family Dynamic: A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success. Susan and I start our conversation by unpacking the broader question of what drives human development more — nature or nurture. We then dig into how siblings shape us, from the impact of birth order to how rivalry can raise our ambitions and alter our life paths. Along the way, we also explore the influence parents do have on their kids — and why it may not be as strong as we often think.

Connect With Susan Dominus

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