Jim VandeHei didn’t have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told him he wasn’t cut out for college, and he went on to confirm her assessment, getting a 1.4 GPA at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and spending more time drinking beer than planning his career.Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found two of the biggest modern media outlets, Politico and Axios.Jim shares how he started moving up the rungs of success and building a better life for himself in his new book Just the Good Stuff: No-BS Secrets to Success (No Matter What Life Throws at You). Today on the show, Jim shares the real-world lessons he’s learned in his career. We discuss the importance of matching passion to opportunity, making your own luck, surrounding yourself with the right people, keeping the buckets of your happiness matrix filled, understanding the difference between wartime and peacetime leadership, harnessing the energy of healthy revenge, and more.Connect With Jim VandeHeiJim at Axios 

There are different philosophies one can have when it comes to money. Jared Dillian’s is built around eliminating as much anxiety around it as possible, so you hardly think about money at all.Jared is a former trader for Lehman Brothers, the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, a market newsletter for investment professionals, and the author of No Worries: How to Live a Stress-Free Financial Life. Today on the show, Jared talks about the two biggest sources of financial stress — debt and risk — and how you can eliminate the stress they can cause. We discuss how three big financial decisions — buying a car, buying a house, and managing student loans — ultimately determine your financial health, and how to approach each of them in a stress-eliminating way. We also talk about how to minimize risk by creating what he calls an “awesome portfolio,” a mix of assets that has nearly the return of the stock market with half its risk. And Jared shares whether cryptocurrency fits into his “no worries” financial philosophy.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM Article: Why and How to Start an Emergency FundAoM Article: Start a Debt Reduction PlanAoM Article: What Every Young Man Should Know About Student LoansAoM Article: How to Buy a Used CarAoM Article: How to Negotiate the Best Deal on a New or Used CarAoM Podcast #536: How to Achieve a “Rich Life” With Your FinancesAoM Podcast #963: Launch a Million-Dollar Business This WeekendConnect With Jared DillianJared’s finance websiteJared’s personal websiteJared on X

Have you ever noticed the guy in a fighting stance on the Art of Manliness logo? That’s not just some random symbol; it’s an actual dude: John L. Sullivan, the greatest bare-knuckle boxer of the 19th century.While most people think bare-knuckle boxing came to an end during Sullivan’s era, in fact, it never entirely went away. In his new book, Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn, 73–0 Undefeated. A Dad. A Dream. A Fight Like You’ve Never Seen, Stayton Bonner charts bare-knuckle boxing’s rise, fall, and resurgence, as well as the improbable story of its modern chapter’s winningest champion. Today on the show, Stayton describes bare-knuckle boxing’s incredible popularity a century ago, and why gloved boxing took its place while bare-knuckle got pushed into a shadowy, illicit underground. Stayton takes us into that secret circuit which still exists today, revealing the dark, sweaty basements and bars where modern bare-knuckle fights take place and the ancient code of honor that structures them. And Stayton introduces us to a dominant figure in that world, Bobby Gunn, an undefeated bare-knuckle fighter who combines a love of faith, family, and fighting and has helped turn bare-knuckle boxing into what is now the world’s fastest-growing combat sport.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM series on honorAoM Podcast #41: Honor in the Civil War — The Gentlemen & The RoughsPodcast #54: The Life of John L. SullivanAoM Podcast #111: Why Men Fight & Why We Like to Watch AoM Article: America’s First Popular Men’s Magazine — The National Police GazetteVideos of Bobby Gunnfighting and talking about bare-knuckle boxingTom MolineauxJohn L. SullivanThe Sullivan-Kilrain fightWilliam “Bill the Butcher” PooleGangs of New York bare-knuckle fight sceneFar and Away bare-knuckle fight sceneConnect With Stayton BonnerStayton on XStayton on LinkedIn

Do you sometimes walk to another room in your house to get something, but then can’t remember what it was you wanted? Do you sometimes forget about an appointment or struggle to remember someone’s name?You may have chalked these lapses in memory up to getting older. And age can indeed play a role in the diminishing power of memory. But as my guest will tell us, there are other factors at play as well.Charan Ranganath is a neuroscientist, a psychologist, and the author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters. Today on the show, Charan explains how factors like how we direct our attention, take photos, and move through something called “event boundaries” all affect our memory, and how our current context in life impacts which memories we’re able to recall from the past. We also talk about how to reverse engineer these factors to improve your memory.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM Article: 10 Ways to Improve Your MemoryAoM Podcast #546: How to Get a Memory Like a Steel TrapAoM Podcast #750: The Surprising Benefits of ForgettingReminiscence bumpConnect With Charan RanganathCharan’s websiteCharan on IGCharan’s faculty page

If you read most first aid guides, the last step in treating someone who’s gotten injured or sick is always: get the victim to professional medical help.But what if you found yourself in a situation where hospitals were overcrowded, inaccessible, or non-functional? What if you found yourself in a grid-down, long-term disaster, and you were the highest medical resource available?Dr. Joe Alton is an expert in what would come after the step where most first aid guides leave off. He’s a retired surgeon and the co-author of The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide for When Help is NOT on the Way. Today on the show, Joe argues that every family should have a medical asset and how to prepare to be a civilian medic. We discuss the different levels of first aid kits to consider creating, from an individual kit all the way up to a community field hospital. And we talk about the health-related skills you might need in a long-term grid-down disaster, from burying a dead body, to closing a wound with super glue, to making an improvised dental filling, to even protecting yourself from the radiation of nuclear fallout.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM Article: How to Use a Tourniquet to Control Major BleedingAoM Article: The Complete Guide to Making a DIY First Aid KitAoM Article: How to Suture a WoundAoM Article: What Every Man Should Keep in His CarAoM Article: Improvised Ways to Close a WoundAoM Podcast #869: The Survival Myths That Can Get You Killed With Alone Winner Jim BairdConnect With Joe AltonDoom and Bloom websiteDoom and Bloom on YouTubeDoom and Bloom on FB 

Over the last decade, there's been an increase in the number of people, particularly young adults, who struggle with low moods, distractibility, and anxiety and consequent difficulties with getting their life on track and making progress in work, friendship, and romance.In addressing these difficulties, people are often given or adopt a mental health diagnosis, and look for a solution in therapy and/or medication.My guest isn't opposed to these remedies. She is herself a clinical psychologist who's maintained a practice for a quarter century that specializes in treating clients in their twenties. But Dr. Meg Jay, who's also the author of The Twentysomething Treatment, believes that a lot of what young adults, and in fact adults of all ages, struggle with, aren't disorders that need to be treated, but problems that can be solved.In the first half of our conversation, Meg explains what's behind the decline in mental health for young adults and how it's bigger than just smartphones. We discuss the dangers of self-diagnosis, the potential downsides of using medications to treat mental health issues, and why she advocates for "skills over pills." In the second half of our conversation, we talk about how mental health gets better when we get better at life, and what skills twentysomethings, and many older adults, need to develop, including the skills of thinking, feeling, working, socializing, and even cooking. We also discuss how porn is affecting the young men in her practice and an alternative to being a self-assurance junkie.Resources Related to the PodcastMeg's last appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #51 — The Defining Decade AoM series on not wasting your twentiesStudy on whether antidepressants work better than placebosAoM series on depressionSunday Firesides: Congratulations, You’re a Human!AoM Podcast #741: The Exercise Prescription for Depression and AnxietyAoM Podcast #772: How Long Does It Take to Make Friends (And How Does That Process Work, Anyway)?Connect With Meg JayMeg's website

When we think of rituals, we tend to think of big, inherited, more occasional religious or cultural ceremonies like church services, holidays, weddings, and funerals. But as my guest observes, we also engage in small, self-made, everyday rituals that help us turn life's more mundane moments into more meaningful ones.In the The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, psychologist and Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton explores the way our DIY rituals shape, and enhance, our lives. We take up that survey on today's show. Michael explains the difference between a habit and a ritual and how individuals and families create unique "ritual signatures" even within more standard rituals like holidays. We discuss the different areas of life in which rituals show up and what they do for us, including how they help us cope with uncertainty, savor life, and connect to the past. We get into the function DIY rituals perform in romantic relationships, from deepening intimacy to facilitating a break-up, the role that "kinkeepers" play in keeping a family together, the tricky business of combining family traditions when people get married, how to know when a family tradition should be retired, and much more.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM series on the power of ritualAoM Article: How to Turn an Ordinary Routine Into a Spirit-Renewing RitualAoM Podcast #505: A Man’s Need for RitualAoM Podcast #835: The Power of Ritual"Deja Vu" by Olivia RodrigoConnect With Michael NortonMichael's website — including the "Habit or Ritual?" quiz

Millions of young adults know what it's like to graduate from college with student debt. For some, it's a frustrating annoyance. For others, it's a worry-inducing burden. For Ken Ilgunas, it was a dragon in need of slaying and a pathway to adventure.Ken is the author of Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom, and today on the show, he shares the story of how his quest to erase his debt led him to the Arctic Circle and through the peaks and valleys of living a totally unshackled life. Ken explains why he went to Alaska to work as a truckstop burger flipper and park ranger to pay off his student debt, what it's like to hitchhike across the country, how reading Thoreau's Walden got him questioning how we live our lives, and how that inspiration led him to living in his van while attending grad school at Duke. Along the way, Ken shares his meditations on nonconformity, engaging in romantic pursuits, and the benefits of both de-institutionalizing and re-institutionalizing your life.Resources Related to the PodcastWalden by Henry David ThoreauAoM Podcast #841: What People Get Wrong About WaldenAoM Podcast #473: The Solitude of a Fire WatcherAoM Article: How to Hitchhike Around the USASunday Firesides: The Cost of a ThingConnect With Ken IlgunasKen's website

Jake Knapp loves tech. He grew up using Apple II and then Mac computers, browsing bulletin boards, and making his own games. As an adult, he worked at Microsoft on the Encarta CD-ROM, before being hired by Google, where he worked on Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and created Google Ventures' Design Sprint process. Today, he's a venture capitalist and consultant for start-ups, as well as a writer.But, if Jake was an early adopter and booster of the upsides of technology, he was also early in sensing its not-so-positive side effects. Twelve years ago, unhappy with the pull his smartphone was exerting on him, he decided to curb its distractions. He continues to use this distraction-free phone today.Today on the show, I talk to Jake about what motivated him to change his relationship with his phone over a decade ago and what steps he took to do so, including how and why he lives life without a web browser or email app on his phone. We get into what realizations about work and life Jake's gotten from having a distraction-free phone, why he doesn't think using tools like Screen Time or a dumbphone are always the best solutions to reducing the phone itch, and how he also cuts down on distractions on his desktop computer.Resources Related to the PodcastMake Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John ZeratskySprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake KnappAoM Podcast #450: How to Make Time for What Really Matters Every Day With John Zeratsky AoM Podcast #972: Down With Pseudo-Productivity: Why We Need to Transform the Way We Work With Cal NewportAoM Article: The Complete Guide to Breaking Your Smartphone HabitAoM Article: 5 Concrete Ways to Develop a Healthier Relationship With Your Phone (No Blocking or Deleting Apps Required!)AoM Podcast #420: What Makes Your Phone So Addictive & How to Take Back Your LifeFreedom appHow We Feel appLight Phone IITime TimerConnect With Jake KnappJake's website

Happiness and depression can feel like slippery and befuddling things. We can do the things we've been told will make us happy, while still not feeling satisfied. Or, on paper, our lives can look great, yet we feel depressed. And the advice that's out there about these states doesn't always seem to correspond to our lived experience.Ryan Bush has created a new map he thinks can help us make better sense of life. Ryan is a systems designer with a long-standing interest in psychology and philosophy, the founder of Designing the Mind, a self-development organization, and an author. His latest book is Become Who You Are: A New Theory of Self-Esteem, Human Greatness, and the Opposite of Depression. Today on the show, Ryan explains the two dimensions along which we usually plot our happiness, and what he thinks is the missing third dimension: virtue or admirability. Ryan then unpacks his "virtue self-signaling theory" which he thinks can heighten happiness and reduce depression, and which is premised on the idea that if you want to live a flourishing life, you have to give yourself reasons to admire yourself. I really think this is a valuable idea that everyone can get something from and recommend listening through.Resources Related to the PodcastFull and Brief Strengths TestsAoM Podcast #249: The Benefits of PrideAoM Article: The 11 Cognitive Distortions That Are Making You a Miserable SOBMind Over Mood by Dennis GreenbergerFeeling Good by David BurnsConnect With Ryan BushDesigning the Mind website