Have you come to a point in your life where the pursuits of your younger years no longer seem meaningful or satisfying? Maybe it's time for you to transition from the first half of your life to the second. My guest today has spent decades helping people, particularly men, make this passage. His name is James Hollis and he's a Jungian analyst and the author of over a dozen books, including Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life . We begin our conversation with a brief overview of what makes J...
Apr 01, 2020•50 min
The coronavirus pandemic has forced tens of millions of people to stay home due to shelter-in-place orders and even lockdowns. While supplies of food, water, and other essentials have largely continued undisrupted, if one or more of these services were cut off, what would be the best way to prepare for that kind of emergency? To answer this question, I talk to friend of AoM and survival expert, Creek Stewart . Creek has dedicated his life to mastering all things survival, spending thousands of h...
Mar 30, 2020•47 min
Have you ever had a period in your athletic or professional career where you kind of felt like you were on fire? Maybe you made a whole streak of consecutive shots in a game, or executed one good idea after another at work. In his book, The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks , my guest today explores why success sometimes seems to arrive in clusters like this. His name is Ben Cohen and he's a sports writer for The Wall Street Journal . Ben and I begin our conversation with an explanati...
Mar 25, 2020•36 min
In a time when the world is dealing with a pandemic, and many commercial gyms have shut down, interest in creating a gym at home has swelled. Whether working out at home is something you've been mulling over for a long time, or that you've just started to think about, this show will help you decide if and how to move forward on the idea. My guest today is Cooper Mitchell, the founder of garagegymreviews.com , a website and social media community dedicated to reviewing personal gym equipment and ...
Mar 23, 2020•51 min
A few months after Winston Churchill took office as prime minister, the German military began an eight month-long bombing campaign on the United Kingdom which became known as the Blitz. The bombing, which lasted for 57 consecutive days and nights, killed 45,000 Britons. What was life like for the people who experienced the Blitz? My guest today zoomed in on this question by looking at the lives of Winston Churchill and his inner circle during this precarious year of the war. His name is Erik Lar...
Mar 18, 2020•47 min
Are you feeling overwhelmed at work? Trying to find a job, but can't seem to get your foot in the door? Have you been knocking your head against a problem over and over again, but haven't made any headway on it? My guest today says you can solve most of these issues by simply asking for help. His name is Wayne Baker , he's a sociologist, consultant, and the author of the book All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success . We begin our conversation discussing what...
Mar 16, 2020•35 min
Emerson famously said "society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." My guest today says things have gotten a lot worse since Emerson uttered those words over a century and a half ago. His name is Robert Twigger . We last had him on the show to discuss his book Micromastery . Today we discuss a book he wrote 20 years ago called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World . We begin our conversation discussing how the modern world infantilizes men so they're easi...
Mar 11, 2020•44 min
So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of reaction. We tackle the most urgent tasks. We deal with emergencies. We put out fires. We intuitively know we'd be better off if we figured out a way to be more proactive rather than reactive, thereby preventing fires from starting in the first place, but we can't seem to switch our approach. My guest today explores why that is and what we can do to start solving the problems of business, life, and society before they become problems. His name is Dan ...
Mar 09, 2020•57 min
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most widely recognized figures of literature and pop culture. But how did the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, come up with a character who has become the universal archetype of the independent detective? In his book, Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes , my guest today explores the biography of the fictional detective by looking at the life of the real-world author. His name is Michael Sims and we begin our conversation wi...
Mar 04, 2020•43 min
You know how good moving your body is for your physical health. You probably have a vague sense that it's good for your mental health too. But you likely don't realize just how powerful movement truly is for your mind, and that it even affects your sense of hope, courage, connection, and identity. My guest today explores these lesser-appreciated impacts of physical activity in her new book, The Joy of Movement . Her name is Kelly McGonigal and she's a research psychologist and lecturer at Stanfo...
Mar 02, 2020•59 min
Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia at age 19. By age 30 he controlled an empire that spanned from Greece to India. In the two thousand years after his early death, his influence has persisted. Military leaders from Caesar to Napoleon studied his campaigns and imitated his strategies and tactics, and without Alexander, the influence of Greek culture on the world wouldn't have been the same. My guest today has written a very readable, yet academically authoritative biography of this lege...
Feb 26, 2020•52 min
Do you have a goal of reading more, but any time you start working on that goal, it feels like a chore? The equivalent of eating your broccoli? My guest today argues that the problem is likely due to the fact that you're trying to read what you think you should be reading, instead of reading what you actually enjoy. His name is Alan Jacobs . He's a professor of literature and the author of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction . At the start of our conversation Alan offers a critique...
Feb 24, 2020•53 min
In the winter of 1940, a group of civilian skiers was sitting by a fire in a ski lodge in Vermont shooting the breeze about how the US Army needed an alpine division like the militaries in Europe had. That conversation transformed into a concerted effort to turn their idea into a reality, and the creation of the Army's 10th Mountain Division -- a unit which would play a vital role fighting in the mountains of Italy during World War II. My guest today has written a book on these skiing, snow-born...
Feb 19, 2020•38 min
I've dealt with depression in my life. My body temperature also seems to run hot; in fact my wife Kate has nicknamed me "the baked potato." My guest today says that there may be a connection between those two things. His name is Charles Raison, he's a psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry, and the co-author of The New Mind-Body Science of Depression . We begin our conversation with why Charles thinks it's important to ask the question, "Does Major Depression even exist?" and what we do and don't...
Feb 17, 2020•1 hr
Why do people sometimes fall in love with someone who is all kinds of wrong for them? Their friends and family see lots of red flags about their partner, but they themselves miss these warnings entirely, sometimes to catastrophic consequences. My guest today argues that these kinds of errors in relational decision-making happen when someone lets his heart rule without also heeding his head. His name is John Van Epp , and he's a therapist and the author of the book How to Avoid Falling in Love wi...
Feb 12, 2020•59 min
Everyone gets old. But not everyone experiences old age the same way. Some folks spend the last few decades of their life sick, sad, and stagnating, while others stay sharp and find great satisfaction in the twilight years of life. My guest today is a neuroscientist who has dug into the research on what individuals can do to increase their chances of achieving the latter outcome instead of the former. His name Daniel Levitin and today we discuss his latest book Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist...
Feb 10, 2020•39 min
War puts leadership to the ultimate test. During a war, a leader must make life or death decisions and be held accountable for those decisions while grappling not only with military strategy, but also political, economic, and domestic dynamics. My guest explores the lives of nine wartime leaders and what we can learn from them in his latest book: Leadership in War: Essential Lessons From Those Who Made History . His name is Andrew Roberts , and we last had him on the show to talk about his biogr...
Feb 05, 2020•41 min
We're a month into the new year now. How are you doing on your resolutions? Have you already fallen off the wagon? Maybe the goal you set for yourself was just too big to successfully tackle. You need to think smaller. Tiny, even. That's the argument my guest makes. His name is Dr. BJ Fogg , and he's the founder and director of Stanford's Behavior Design Lab, as well as the author of the new book Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything . Today on the show, BJ walks us through the t...
Feb 03, 2020•44 min
Some cultural observers have posited that we're moving from an information economy to a reputation economy. There's so much information to sort through, that figuring out which bits to pay attention to has come to increasingly rely on what we think of the person delivering them. We privilege the messenger over the message. But how exactly do we decide which messengers to listen to or not? What draws us to particular messengers and causes us to tune out others? My guest has spent his career resea...
Jan 29, 2020•55 min
The literature of Jack London has long been given the short shrift by scholars. They say he wrote some good dog stories for boys, but beyond that didn't showcase any literary genius or high-level craftsmanship. Well, my guest today begs to differ with this assessment. His name is Earle Labor. He's the preeminent Jack London scholar and 91 years young. I've had Earle on the podcast two previous times: the first to discuss his landmark Jack London biography , and the second to discuss his own memo...
Jan 27, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Have you been feeling doubts about your career recently, or perhaps for quite some time? Maybe you're not sure if you're in the right job, or even in the right field, and you can't figure out if you should try to keep making your current position work, or jump ship to something else. Then you'll likely recognize yourself in the stages of career transition my guest will describe. His name is Joseph Liu . He's a consultant, coach, and speaker who helps people navigate the challenges of switching c...
Jan 22, 2020•47 min
Every day, we have to make choices on whether we can trust someone or not. If we make the wrong choice, it could mean a failed relationship or business partnership and all the emotional and financial costs that follow. My guest today has spent his career sizing people up in high stakes situations. His name is Robin Dreeke , he spent two decades working as a behavioral analyst for the FBI, and in his new book, Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction , he shares...
Jan 20, 2020•35 min
When you think of philosophy, you probably think of ancient Greece or 18th century France. You probably don't think of America. But this country also birthed its own set of philosophical luminaries, and my guest today had a unique encounter with them. When modern day professor of philosophy John Kaag was a graduate student at Harvard, he was dispirited and struggling personally and professionally. But thanks to a chance encounter with an elderly New Englander, he discovered an abandoned library ...
Jan 15, 2020•47 min
It's a new year and like many people, you may have set a goal to exercise more regularly. But like most people, you've set this goal before only to give up on it after only a few weeks. Why is it so hard to make exercise a habit? And what can you do to make it stick? My guest today argues that more willpower and discipline isn't the answer. Instead, you need to completely change the way you think about exercise. Her name is Michelle Segar , and she's a behavioral scientist and the author of No S...
Jan 13, 2020•46 min
Have you ever been heaped with praise, only to ignore it in favor of focusing on the lone piece of criticism you received? That's the power that bad things wield, and it's a power that humans need to learn how to both harness and mitigate. My guest today lays out both sides of that coin in a book he co-authored with psychologist Roy Baumeister. His name is John Tierney and the book is The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It . We begin our conversation discussi...
Jan 08, 2020•48 min
How well did you do in completing projects last year? Not just work projects, but also personal projects surrounding family, fitness, or hobbies. If you didn't accomplish as much as you'd like, then maybe you need to change up your mindset and tactics in the new year. My guest today has written a guide to making those changes. His name is Charlie Gilkey and he's a former Army officer with a PhD in philosophy who's spent over a decade studying productivity, writing about it on his website Product...
Jan 06, 2020•50 min
There's an unspoken timeline that people supposedly need to follow to have a successful life: be a good student in high school, get into a good college, and then get a good job right after you graduate. But you've probably met successful people whose lives didn't follow this kind of linear arc and neat timeline, and maybe yours didn't either. Their young adult years weren't very auspicious, and they didn't come into their own and find their bearings until after college, or even much later. My gu...
Dec 30, 2019•45 min
Good character is hard to define in the abstract, but easy to identify when it's embodied in the lives of great individuals. In order to illuminate what worthy character looks like, my guest today has written a book which consists of profiles of 10 of history's most notable admirals, marking out both their inspiring and flawed qualities, as well as how these qualities intersected with their ability to lead. His name is Admiral James Stavridis , he served as the commander of US Southern Command, ...
Dec 23, 2019•43 min
Do you feel restless? Have you ever lied in bed at night looking up at the ceiling wondering "Is this all there is to life?" Or have you ever achieved a big goal in life only to feel let down? Over 1500 years ago, Catholic bishop, philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo had those same feelings of angst and wrote down some insights on how to deal with them and they're just as relevant today as they were then. My guest today has written a book about Augustine's ancient insights on the anxiet...
Dec 18, 2019•59 min
When Don Greene was a springboard diver in high school and college, his performances were erratic -- sometimes they'd be amazing and sometimes embarrassing. None of his coaches could explain why that happened to him, so Don set out to find the answers himself. After serving as an Army Ranger and Green Beret, and getting his PhD in sports psychology, Don has spent decades coaching Olympic divers, professional athletes, race car drivers, opera singers, classical musicians, and Wall Street traders ...
Dec 16, 2019•46 min
