Brothers and Teachers

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This conversation is part of an ongoing series of conversations with fellow writers, including several on Substack such as and Sex at Dawn author as well as others including addiction expert Dr. Adi Jaffe, master coaches Michael Lipson and Robert Ellis, ultra-runner Charlie Engle and legendary sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Today’s conversation is between the writer behind and who writes at , which includes his serialized memoir of the same name.

Donna and I got together recently a conversation focused on change, including why we are sometimes so resistant to making changes, how we’ve overcome that resistance, some big changes that we’ve made in our own lives, the role of physicality and intuition in change — and, of course, what we’re working on next.

If you value authentic, honest, deep, vulnerable conversations between working writers, we think you’ll get a lot out of this discussion.

Following the interview are links to some of our writing, some other writers of memoir on Substack, and some questions for you. We’d love to hear from you!

Our Conversation

I usually record video as well, but I screwed it up this time, so just use the audio player at the top of the page ⬆️

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR LISTENING⭐️⭐️

We’ve got some questions for you

What’s the biggest change you’ve made in your own life?
Have you experienced resistance to change—and how have you overcome that resistance?
How do you make your best decisions? What’s your relationship with intuition, and how has that evolved over time?
How do you prepare for making changes?

Some of our own writing

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Donna writes — a guide to a life of possibility and well-being by examining what lies below the layers of daily life, and taking steps to shift and grow.

Bowen’s writing at includes memoir and personal essay on men, adventure, addiction, depression, love and money.

Other writers we recommend on Substack

Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble ’s Born Without Borders ’s Altered States of Monetary Consciousness

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This conversation is part of an ongoing series of conversations with fellow writers including several on Substack such as and Sex at Dawn author as well as others including addiction expert Dr. Adi Jaffe, master coaches Michael Lipson and Robert Ellis, ultra-runner Charlie Engle and legendary sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Today’s conversation is between the writer behind and who writes at , which includes his serialized memoir of the same name.

Latham and I got together recently for a deep and wide-ranging conversation covering writing to explore, how “adventure doesn’t happen by accident,” writing as men and the transition into being an older man, using research in storytelling, how “we all need our own philosophy,” the challenge of positive confrontation and “the Goat Work,” how we relate to our immediate geography, long-distance walking, wayfinding, personal spirituality, the gods we’re praying as — and, of course, what we’re working on next.

If you value authentic, honest, deep, vulnerable conversations between working writers, we think you’ll get a lot out of this discussion.

Following the interview are links to some of our writing, some other writers of memoir on Substack, and some questions for you. We’d love to hear from you!

Our Conversation

Use the audio player at the top of the page, or watch the interview here ⬇️

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR LISTENING⭐️⭐️

Some of our own writing

Latham: The Men’s Movement is Dead; Long Live the Men’s Movement
Bowen: The Man Pays—on the bittersweet joy of being child-free
Latham: What Will You Die For—on developing a personal philosophy of life
Bowen: I’m Here to Tell the Truth—the introduction and table of contents to my serialized memoir, An Ordinary Disaster.

Latham and I will both be posting a piece this coming week on the theme of “Recovery” from a group of men including ourselves, Joshua Doležal Michael Mohr Dee Rambeau and . You may recall our previous series on “Fatherhood” from September. Be on the lookout for Latham’s piece on December 11 and Bowen’s on the 13th!

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Latham writes — a newsletter about growing up after you’ve become an adult. It’s part memoir, part essays, but always exploration of an authentic life.

Bowen’s writing at includes memoir and personal essay on men, adventure, addiction, depression, love and money.

Other writers we recommend on Substack

and Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble The Bright Life Make Me Good Soil

Further Reading

📖 The Revolt of the Public, Martin Gurri
👁️ The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine,
🎬 The Conversation
📚 Bowen’s complete “for men” reading list.

Men’s Writing Group on Substack

Bowen hosts a monthly group for men on Substack writing memoir, autofiction, personal essay and other first-person informed work. This group already includes several strong writers Michael Mohr Latham Turner Joshua Doležal Lyle McKeany Dee Rambeau. Participation is by request and invitation. If you’re interested in joining us, please complete this questionnaire.

We’ve got some questions for you

Why do you write? Is there a subject or personal complex that serves as a hinge for your writing?
What are your own compulsions?
Is writing redemptive (or just another compulsion)?
How does Substack change the way we think about writing, art, and sharing ideas?

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is the writer behind and writes which includes his serialized memoir of the same name. In addition to their writing, Bowen offers his intuitive Guide Service, and Michael works with writers as a developmental editor.

Michael and I got together for a deep and wide-ranging conversation that covered a number of topics including how our own writing has changed us, patriarchy and personal responsibility, the psychosexual realm between mothers and sons, love, commitment and addiction, women who inspire and support us, and, of course, what we’re working on next.

If you’re a writer who values authentic, no B.S., honest, vulnerable conversations, we think you’ll get a lot out of this discussion.

Following the interview are links to some of our writing, some other writers of memoir on Substack, further reading on memoir, and some questions for you. We’d love to hear from you!

Use the ♡ and comments below 👇🏻

Our Conversation

Listen in the player at the top of the page, or watch the interview on Youtube

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR LISTENING⭐️⭐️

Please SUBSCRIBE to both of our Substacks

Bowen writes memoir and personal essay on topics including alcohol, addiction and depression… adventure, fitness, sports, and nature… identity, masculinity, fatherhood and being child-free, love, relationships and sex, among other things. If you’re not already a subscriber to Bowen’s substack, please do take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Michael writes about everything from identity politics to AA and sobriety to existentialism and death to meditation and more. At Sincere American Writing you get a mix of fiction, memoir, personal essay, book reviews, cultural commentary and much more. If you’re not already a subscriber to Michael’s ‘Stack, please take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Our Writing

Here are two of the more popular pieces we’ve written on Substack:

Writers Versus The World — How Writers are Different from Everyone Else

Think of any daring, talented and interesting writer—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Didion, Sontag, Kerouac, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Baldwin, Mailer, David Foster Wallace, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ottessa Moshfegh, Zadie Smith, Elif Batuman, etc—and you instantly see that the art stems from an intriguing, even dangerous artist. This is causal: Writers are generally an unusual lot. They are weird, freakish, isolated, individual, “different.” The wild eccentric weirdos who the rest of society seems flummoxed and yet often captivated by… Follow this link to read the rest of Michael’s piece.

Other Writers We Like on Substack

Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble by Lyle McKeany by Joshua Doležal by Latham Turner by Dee Rambeau by That Guy From the Internet by Alex Olshonsky by visakan veerasamy by Sarah Fay

Further Reading

Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1), Henry MillerThe Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller, Mary V. DearbornBlackout, Sarah HepolaThe Routine Things Around The House, by Stephen DunnThe Women’s Movement, by Joan Didion

Mens Writing Group on Substack

We host a monthly group for men on Substack writing memoir, autofiction, personal essay and other first-person informed work—which really could include just about anything, including fiction.

This group already includes several strong writers Michael Mohr Latham Turner Joshua Doležal Lyle McKeany Dee Rambeau

Participation is by request and invitation. If you’re interested in the possibility of joining us, please complete this questionnaire.

We’ve got some questions for you

What is the purpose, in your mind, of writing, of Art, of creative expression? Why do it at all?
What does it mean to be a woman or a man in 2023 America? How has this changed over the past few decades?
Why do you read memoir? Is this a very different reason than why you read fiction? Why?
How do you feel about personal responsibility? Does your race or gender condemn you to a certain kind of existence, or can you transcend that?
How has your mother or father shaped you as an adult? Have you transcended any of that shaping? Why or why not?

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My friend Michael Lipson and I recorded this interview the other day, and I then added an intro a few mornings later sitting in my van Hood River, Oregon, on my way to Seattle and then on to Vancouver Island as part of a summer road trip.

As you know if you’ve been following the progress of my memoir, An Ordinary Disaster is just about finished. I published chapter 26 earlier this week, and there are three or four more short chapters that are just about entirely already written that I’ll be releasing over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, after seven months solid of full-time writing, I feel free enough to jump in the van and visit some friends up and down the coast and also to spend some time in the high Sierra. When I get back from all of that around mid-September, I’ll begin the process of editing and publishing.

Collectors Edition + Golden Ticket

Speaking of publishing, I am planning on producing a special first edition for subscribers and early supporters—a collectors edition, you could say, each copy of which will include a ⭐️⭐️ GOLDEN TICKET ⭐️⭐️

Each golden ticket is unique to the ticket holder, and will be redeemable when the correct moment presents itself for a specific piece of magic applicable to the unique situation, field, or relationship that exists between the two of us.

Especially if you’ve been following my work with interest, now is the time to become a paying subscriber. Paying subscribers will be able to order a FREE* copy of the first edition of the book (you pay only shipping), and, also, just as importantly, your commitment will show your appreciation for the work I’m doing here, and your support as I move into the next chapter of the book’s journey.

An interview with the author

The following conversation is part of the body of work surrounding my book-length memoir An Ordinary Disaster—one man's proof that despite what may seem like our inability to hear it, and all of our attempts to avoid it, we can all learn to listen to ourselves, and to act upon the inner voice of our self, our sanity and our soul.

I'd love to hear from you after listening, so don't be shy about leaving a comment or a question. In particular, as you listen, please take note of the timestamp of any passages that really hit home for you, and share those with me in a comments below. That will help me assemble the transcript, and a short edit to share around later.

Use the Substack audio player at the top of the page ⬆️ to listen to the interview.

Highlights

13:39 …how it's possible to forget something as important as what I was supposed to be, and then, a long ways down the road, come back to fully remembering—not coincidentally, a the point when I was also finally in a position to pursue that.

14:39 What was it like to begin and what were you seeking by doing that?

15:19 …part of the reason that writing began to resurface was my experience changing my relationship with alcohol.

17:19 I was asked to state my purpose and I said, “I'm here to tell the truth.” That felt true, and a very clear, spontaneous expression of the answer to the question of what I'm here to do in this chapter of life.

19:59 I was tired of feeling like I wasn't expressing myself—and also that I didn't know how to.

21:09 I felt like I needed to speak myself into existence.

23:09 …The process of ‘becoming a writer…’ “I had to let the material work with me.”

27:09 “As I confronted myself with the truth…that cemented my sense of self...”

36:09 …having people that I've known for a long time read my work has “made me feel like another person, like another whole part of myself is alive and present and being seen and active in relationship.”

40:39 “I now have the confidence that I am doing what I should be doing and I will get where I'm going by being myself. I don't really have to think about it much at all. I just now am able to be myself, and let that lead.”

43:39 Q: Where is the book in terms of the pathway of Campbell's hero's journey? A: The book is the return, the gold, the treasure.

46:10 “The creative act is a form of dreaming. When I'm writing and imagery or metaphors come in, it's the dream state—it's the colors arising from the unconscious psyche.”

64:09 “…intuition refuses to be named because it's a function of the unconscious and therefore it cannot be named directly. It’s a defining characteristic of working with anything in the unconscious—the shadow, intuition, dreams. You have to move towards them indirectly.”

1:13:00 “the spiritual power of sport is hugely underappreciated. Outdoor sports have been the primary path to reconnection with myself, and to wayfinding in my own life in a way that feels whole and satisfying.”

1:15:00 “you tell the story of how you responded to those things as you’ve aged, and I see this as you’re actively wrestling with de-adulterating yourself and getting to your pure state. ... the gravity field is reducing, and your presence, your aura, your perimeter is expanding at the same time...”

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR LISTENING⭐️⭐️

and thanks 100K to my dear friend Michael Lipson for the interview!

Please SUBSCRIBE for all my writing and the opportunity to order the special first edition of my book

Further Reading

Questions for you

Which parts of the interview hit home for you most?
Have you ever forgotten something for many years, and then remembered it at a later time in life, perhaps when you were more capable of realizing that dream?
How has your relationship with the naked truth of your own life evolved over tim, and how has that affected your sense of self?
Where are you in terms of Campbell's hero's journey, in your own life?
Have you experienced the spiritual power of outdoor sports?
Have you ever experienced a time of a dramatic sense of coming more fully into yourself?

Get full access to An Ordinary Disaster at bowendwelle.substack.com/subscribe

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is the writer behind here on Substack and creator of the Clues.life platform. He brings his personal experience with perfectionism, anxiety, and depression to his work on mental health, personal transformation, and the pursuit of meaning and purpose.

Andy and I got together recently for a deep and wide-ranging conversation on the infinity of consciousness, the connection between identity and purpose, and how to build a sense of identity, finding flow in the outdoors, the shapes and patterns of the natural world, and how physical activity can be a key to identity, the Grail myth and how it reveals that how “the absolute truth can only be nothing,” and how the search for purpose may never end, but we can still find a way to a satisfactory answer.

Especially if you’re someone with questions about purpose, identity, and the meaning of life, or if you’ve dealt with depression, anxiety, or a sense of not knowing yourself or where you’re headed, we think you’ll get a lot out of this conversation.

Following the interview are links to some of our writing, some further reading, and some questions for you — we’d love to hear from you! Use the ♡ and comments below 👇🏻

Andy and Bowen on Meaning and Purpose

Listen to the audio right here on Substack or watch us on YouTube above.

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Please SUBSCRIBE for more of our writing

Bowen writes memoir and personal essay on topics including alcohol, addiction and depression… adventure, fitness, sports, and nature… identity, masculinity, fatherhood and being child-free, advertising, entrepreneurship, and conferences… creativity, intuition, archetypes, consciousness, symbols, and youth… San Francisco, California, travel… love, relationships and sex, among other things. If you’re not already a subscriber to Bowen’s substack, please do take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Andy writes about perfectionism, anxiety, and depression to his work on mental health, personal transformation, and the pursuit of meaning and purpose. If you’re not already a reader and subscriber of Andy’s work, please take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Further Reading

Here are a couple of pieces related to our conversation:

Writing on Purpose, Identity and Meaning

“Defining Purpose” ManTalks podcast

“Fk Finding Your Purpose” Ari In The Air podcast

Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone — John Daniel

He: Understanding Masculine Psychology — Robert A. Johnson

Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home — Toko-pa Turner

We’ve got some questions for you

Have you struggled with finding or feeling purpose? What has helped?
What is your own relationship with intuition?
How do you feel your own identity relates to your ability to find or feel purpose?
What’s a favorite story from your own life—especially one that you’re a little bit afraid to tell?

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Like most people who’ve lived in San Francisco for many years, I’ve been doing yoga on and off since my twenties. I didn’t discover pilates until much later—but I sure wish it had been the other way around! I blew a disc in my back at the age of thirty and had surgery at that time, and now that I know how transformational—and how simple—pilates can be, I’m sure that I never would have injured myself in the first place if I’d been doing it back then.

When I did start doing pilates, I thought it was all about expensive equipment with springs and straps—and mostly taught by and for women. At a certain point I began to seek out more male teachers for all sorts of things, and when I went looking for a man teaching pilates, for men, Sean Vigue came up as the guy who was doing exactly that. I loved his honest, straightforward, kinda goofy vibe from the start, and his approach to pilates—outdoors with just a mat and no equipment—felt much more me.

I got to know Sean to some extent from using his workouts as part of my own fitness routine, and I could tell that he’s a really unique person with his own deep wisdom about the body, a strong positive presence, and a philosophy about living that comes through in his teaching, and so I was curious to meet him face to face, which is what led me to invite him for an interview on BROTHERS AND TEACHERS.

Sean Vigue is leading online fitness instructor and a true pioneer in bringing simple, effective, mat-based pilates to millions of people through his fitness videos. Before he became an athlete and fitness instructor he was an actor, dancer, and singer, and all of that comes through when you see him teach. He puts his experience as a performer to work as an instructor, and he’s also just really good at being himself. Sean’s been an inspiration both in terms of physical fitness, and for his powerful presence.

If you do enjoy this episode, please do take a moment to click the little heart button 🤍 to like this post here on Substack.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this one: What is your relationship with your own body and your physicality—and how does your body, your strength and your physical wellness relate to your identity as a person, and to your mental health?

Interview

You can listen using the built-in audio player above or watch the video below, although the audio is cleaned up a bit, while the video is just the raw footage.

Sean and I cover a lot in the interview, including Sean’s history as a performer — From theater to fitness — dance and Pilates — pilates for back injuries — Good posture — Health and fitness in our fifties — Fitness and mental health — Massage — Discipline and serving others — Being himself — Singing — old habits — Losing his father — Are those ducks real? — Getting outside — Flow — Entrepreneurship — Never call when you can talk in person — Getting out of your own way — Fitness for kids — how Pilates is transformational — The ‘core’ message — Do it now — Get off your phone — and, perhaps most important of all: Joy through movement.

Further Reading

You can find Sean at https://www.seanviguefitness.com/ and on YouTube and Instagram. Below are just two of Sean’s books—you can find them all on his site.

You might be interested in some of my other writing on the body, especially

Some questions for you

What is your relationship with your own body and your physicality—and how does your body, your strength and your physical wellness relate to your identity as a person, and to your mental health?
Have you ever tried Pilates — and did you know that you can do Pilates anywhere, any time, with only a mat (just like yoga)?
What is the relationship for you between fitness and creativity?
Do you have a favorite online fitness instructor or channel?

Please the conversation in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

DECIDE NOTHING is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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is the writer behind as well as a creative coach, and writes , which includes his serialized memoir in progress An Ordinary Disaster, about a man learning to listen to himself.

One of the most powerful things about Substack is community and connection with other writers. Our goal with this new collaborative interview format is to share something deeper about each others’ work with our readers.

We got together on May 11, 2023 for a deep and wide-ranging conversation that covered why we chose to write memoir, the power of story as a way to write oneself into existence, what memoir is (and isn’t), how writing is like music, the power of reading aloud, the value of having a writing group, the biggest pros and cons of Substack, whether we invested in Substack, writing about writing, what we’re afraid to write about, how men can say “sex”, what it’s like to be writing memoir as a man, the value of writing groups, telling the truth, and our biggest challenge as writers.

If you’re a writer who shares pieces of their personal life on the page, if you’re curious about what it’s like to do so, or if you’re a reader of memoir, we think you’ll get a lot out of this conversation.

Following the interview are links to some of our writing, some other writers of memoir on Substack, further reading on memoir, and some questions for you— we’d love to hear from you! Use the ♡ and comments below 👇🏻

Bowen and Lyle on Men Writing Memoir

Listen to the audio right here on Substack or watch us on YouTube above. We haven’t included a transcript because it’s so darn long, but if you’d like to read this instead of listen, just ask in the comments below ⬇️

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR LISTENING⭐️⭐️

Please SUBSCRIBE for more of our writing

Bowen writes memoir and personal essay on topics including alcohol, addiction and depression… adventure, fitness, sports, and nature… identity, masculinity, fatherhood and being child-free, advertising, entrepreneurship, and conferences… creativity, intuition, archetypes, consciousness, symbols, and youth… San Francisco, California, travel… love, relationships and sex, among other things. If you’re not already a subscriber to Bowen’s substack, please do take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Lyle writes about his own life as a father to a daughter with cerebral palsy, questions such as How do I define success? and What is normal, anyway?, breaking up with his therapist, his previous life in music, as well as home projects, divorce, time, dogs, exercise, FOMO, living in the suburbs, context switching, travel, not caring so much, small talk, and even couches, among other things. If you’re not already a reader and subscriber of Lyle’s work, please take this opportunity to subscribe now.

Further Reading

Here are two of the more popular pieces we’ve written on Substack:

Other Writers of Memoir on Substack

by Joshua Doležal by Minda Lane by Alex Olshonsky by Euwyn Goh by Marika Páez Wiesen by visakan veerasamy Cured: The Memoir by Sarah Fay by Andrei Șișman by Rae Katz

Writing on Memoir and… Writing

The Art of Memoir — Karr, MaryMethod Writing: The First Four Concepts — Grapes, JackOn Writing: A Memoir of the Craft — King, StephenBody Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative — Febos, MelissaThe Memoir Project — Smith, Marion RoachThe War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle — Pressfield, StevenSexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1) — Miller, HenryBelonging: Remembering Ourselves Home — Toko-pa Turner

We’ve got some questions for you

If you’re a writer (or reader) of memoir or personal essay, what brought you to that genre of writing?
Who are some of your favorite writers of memoir and other personal writing on Substack?
What are the biggest pros and cons of Substack for you?
Did you invest in Substack? Why or why not?
What’s a favorite story from your own life—especially one that you’re a little bit afraid to tell?

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Today, I'm speaking with

Scott is a fellow writer, who runs two Substacks, and . He’s also a fellow entrepreneur as a co-founder of Troops.ai, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2022. Scott has written extensively about his own spiritual journey, in particular about the impact that ten-plus years of meditation and on “exploring consciousness and the boundless self while enjoying the human experience.”

In addition to all of my writing and podcast episodes, paid subscribers get full access to my entire memoir in progress, access to occasional bonus and AMA posts and chats—and the opportunity to order a copy of my book when it comes out for just the cost of shipping. If you’re enjoying my writing and podcast and would like to see more episodes like this one, please consider becoming a paying subscriber.

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

In the meantime, if you do enjoy this episode, please do take a moment to click the little heart button 🤍 to “Like” this post here on Substack. Think of it this way: your click on that little heart is the answer to the question—if someone asked you about it, would you recommend this piece to a friend?

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this one: what is your own understanding of what meditation is, what it’s for, and what kind of impact it can have on one’s life?

Show Notes

Meditation as a sport. Harder to feel the feedback loop of change or progress. Feeling something different in your body. “people get discouraged”

…the thing about a sport is that you can feel yourself getting better.

…awakening the feedback loop with meditation and tuning into the physical aspects…

…when I think about all the awesome experiences, that I've had doing various sports, I've thought of those as like putting awesome in the bank… being able to see that meditation could perhaps deliver that same sort of awesomeness…

“cascading perceived benefits” “the supreme benefit is a still mind — and, what does a still mind get you?” “the source of creativity or breakthrough ideas or insights…derives from…a still mind.”

“We're taught to fill the mind versus create space in the mind.”

“…now we are effectively unlearning all of the learned behaviors.”

“when you talk to most leaders in society, many will cite that the best decisions they ever made were from their gut, like from their intuition…we don't really intentionally practice a skillset around cultivation of that…there's clear attribution to this thing that is really good for decision making. And then there's low investment or unclear directive onto how to do more of it.”

“I actually do think that one can learn how to create more direct and consistent intuitive guidance. …the way to do that in my own experience has been to learn how to still the mind and present a question and patiently.”

“it actually very much is an active practice… There comes a point in time where you can develop a level of stillness and you can effectively present something and then wait for an answer to emerge.”

“when I'm getting that type of clear guidance in a quiet mind, I'm connecting to source, I'm connecting to the highest divinity that my consciousness is an expression of, and that divinity is all knowing, it's all aware.”

one of my own tools is to recognize the state of trying to decide, and to stop and allow space for something to emerge.

a lot of people have described intuition as pattern recognition — patterns that we recognize, but that we can also get better at recognizing.

“you can start to be intentional about setting up the conditions to have lots of creativity.”

“that which consciousness poses a question to, or is focused on, solutions tend to emerge.”

“I have a notebook on my bedside. Before I go to bed, I just ask a question that I want an answer to.”

We need to move to think completely… the movement of the body is part of how we interact with the shapes and patterns of the world. It's part of how we connect with you called it source, with the patterns that we are and that surround us, which is a way of practicing intuition.

the physical and emotional feeling of having an intuitive insight is that same feeling of having found my way…It feels incredible.

Further Reading

You might also check out some of the following books:

Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, by Robert A. Johnson

Practical Jung: Nuts and Bolts of Jungian Psychology, by Harry A. Wilmer

The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, by

Johann Hari, Lost Connections

…Do stick around, I’ve got some questions for you:

What is what is your own understanding of what meditation is, and what kind of impact it can have on one’s life?
What is your relationship with your own intuition? How does it feel when you know you’re on the right path?
Are there any ways that you have been able to cultivate your own intuition?
What are you own consciousness-raising practices?

Please join the conversation by answering any or all of these in the comments below.

Become a subscriber

In addition to all of my writing and podcast episodes, paid subscribers get super cool DECIDE NOTHING pins, access to occasional bonus and AMA posts and chats—and the opportunity to order a copy of my book when it comes out for just the cost of shipping. If you’re enjoying my writing and podcast, please consider becoming a paying subscriber.

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

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Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Adi Jaffe. Adi is the author of a best-selling book outlining a unique perspective on addiction called The Abstinence Myth and a nationally recognized expert on mental health, addiction, relationships and shame. He lectured in the UCLA Psychology department for most of a decade and was the Executive Director and Co-Founder of one of the most progressive mental health treatment facilities in the country before starting his own company called IGNTD, through which Dr Jaffe is changing the way people think about and deal with mental health issues. He’s now working on his next book, to be called Unhooked.

Adi and I met through a mens group called METAL, which is best explained by their catch-phrase “Together, we’re better,” which itself expresses a spirit of community and cooperation amongst men that also comes up in our interview.

If you’re a man and you’re not yet familiar with the world of mens work, and you’d like more community, connection and emotional depth in your life, I highly recommend finding a men's group to participate in.

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this one: which is what is your own understanding of how abstinence relates to addiction and recovery? And is absolute abstinence, an absolute requirement for recovery from addiction. And if so, why?

Show Notes

WHAT IS ADDICTION?

In an colloquial sense, “Addiction, broadly, is anytime we engage in habits that are bringing us harm of some sort, and we're having a hard time stopping them or slowing them down.”

In more clinical terms, it’s “people being prevented from functioning in their everyday life…”

SAMHSA’s new definition of addiction has about 40 million people, or more than 10% of the U.S. population suffering from one form of addiction or another, “but it's probably seventy to a hundred million people who struggle with the broader version of what we're talking about.”

“You're not really hooked on social media. You're escaping something else.”

“nobody talked to me about addiction until I was using meth all day every day.”

THE MYTH OF NORMAL

“there's a false dichotomy that gets created between ‘normal’ people and ‘addicts’ and ‘alcoholics.’”

There’s a kind of a cognitive misdirection that we have with the concept of normal. It's average—and nobody is the average. It's a statistical myth. Actually the variation within any “normal” is the full infinite range that exists.

“while we all try to be as normal as possible, nobody wants to be normal.”

we want to be different and accepted—different, but part of something…

what we mean by “normal” is included, invited… and understood.

HOOKED

“many people that I work with, part of the reason they developed their addiction is actually because they felt so abnormal, but felt like they had to temper that. They [felt like they] had to squash their individuality…” to be accepted.

…the way that our culture works these days, we're all primed to get hooked on stuff because we're all hungry for something that we're not getting…

“We do get hooked, but it's not the drugs or the porn…it's these feelings and fears and traumatic experiences and pain points from our childhood or earlier on…”

“a lot of people aren't willing to go get help for their addiction issues because they're not ready to quit.” and they’re under the impression that they will need to “quit” to get help. “There's a false notion in the addiction space that people have to be ready to quit from the beginning.” “90, 95% of people with addiction issues don't get help.”

DON’T FOCUS ON STOPPING

“It is actually wrong to try to stop yourself from doing anything. Stop trying to stop drinking—instead, start trying to fill up your life with other things that you love, that are meaningful to you...”

“I'm not against abstinence, I'm against demanding abstinence as the first step in people's recovery process.”

EXPLORE, ACCEPT, TRANSFORM

“The reason you use…is because it actually does resolve some of the problem short term—without actually causing any long term improvement in those problems. The problem [is] that [it] makes you far less aware of what is actually driving your behavior.”

“everybody looks to the alcohol and the weed and whatever the thing is to stop.”

“Drugs will always take back what they gave you. So if the alcohol gave you anxiety relief, it'll make you more anxious on the other side. In order to counter that, you have to drink more alcohol.”

“I always look for the underlying reasons.”

Similarly: depression is a symptom of not living well. “if you don't change it, nothing's gonna get better.”

COMPLEXITY

“our behavior, our environment, and our biology all play a role—You cannot separate one from the other.” “there are a lot of things in life that are just actually complex—So when people ask me like, is it biology or psychology? That's a dumb question. That's like asking me if a cucumber is a vegetable or green.”

our desperate search for attaching a definitive meaning to addiction or depression is a way of avoiding the real complexity of what's going on, which is that the way we live is causing most of these things and we don't really want to admit that because it's overwhelming.

“at the core core level most of us on this planet right now are under chronic stress”

Most people don't know what it feels like to actually be well.

CHANGE IS EASIER THAN IT OFTEN APPEARS

“we always see the world through our own eyes and our perspective.”

“there's a good probability that 10 years from now you will look at the world differently than you do right now… [and] when that shows up, you will have almost forgotten the view you had 10 years earlier.”

“There's not only one way to look at life.”

“one of the other false stories is that this recovery thing has to be really, really hard.”

“we've been told over and over and over that we can't”

for me, that “I can't'“, was like, “I can't by myself.”

“almost everybody I work with is initially so isolated. It's scary. … the drug use is the only time he gets to connect to people.”

“the work on the flip side, is to get connected.”

“you wanna create a life that is so good, so purposeful, so fulfilling you don't want to escape it.”

COLLABORATION

“I used to live in a scarcity mindset—I thought we live in a zero sum world where if I get something, I have to take it away from somebody else…” “I still have to go do the work; I don't just sit back and expect it to happen, but I didn't realize I could shift my mindset from scarcity to abundance in such a complete way.” → great lesson for men in particular, to learn to collaborate instead of compete.

You can find Adi Jaffe, his book, and everything else at https://www.adijaffe.com and his company IGNTD. He’s also on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/dradijaffe/

Wheel of Life assessment — another version

The METAL men’s group—“Together, we’re better.”

SAMHSA—The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The music is “Unhooked” by Drew Barefoot.

Further Reading

You might be also interested in some of my other writing on alcohol and addiction, especially Change of Heart, A Five-Minute Love Affair With Natural Wine, and Five Years Sober*.

I also recommend the following books on alcohol and addiction:

Annie Grace, This Naked Mind — my favorite book on how to change your relationship with alcohol

Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain

Stanton Peele, Love and Addiction

Adi Jaffe, The Abstinence Myth

Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal

David Poses, The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies about Addiction and the Truth about Recovery

Holly Whitaker’s here on Substack

Amy Dresner, My Fair Junkie: A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean

Leslie Jamison, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

Carl Erik Fisher, The Urge: Our History of Addiction

Johann Hari, Lost Connections

Caroline Knapp, Alcohol, A Love Story

Mary Carr, Lit

Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease

…Do stick around, I’ve got some questions for you:

What is your own understanding of how abstinence relates to addiction and recovery? And is absolute abstinence, an absolute requirement for recovery from addiction. And if so, why?
If you’ve ever felt compelled to do something, what was the underlying cause of the compulsion?
What is your own relationship with addiction and addictive patterns? Even if you’ve never been addicted to anything at all, what do you know, or think you know, about the mechanisms of addiction? Is there anything that you feel that you need to do—and is it something that you also really want to do?
What do you think “normal” is? Really?
Have you ever had the experience of making a significant change to how you are living? What was it like before hand? Afterwards?
Who else would you like to hear interviewed on BROTHERS AND TEACHERS?

Please join the conversation by answering any or all of these in the comments below.

Become a subscriber

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

…or just share this post with some folks that you love:

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this episode by clicking that cute little heart 🤍down below ↓

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Today, I'm speaking with Charlie Engle. Charlie is an ultra-endurance athlete, author of an outstanding memoir called Running Man, the subject of a documentary film called Running The Sahara, and the founder of the 5.8 Dead Sea to Everest project, in which he will travel under his own power from the lowest to the highest points on all seven continents. Charlie is also one of the most accomplished ultramarathon runners in the world, having placed in hundreds of races in dozens of countries around the globe.

His motivation to run and tackle extreme adventures stems from his battle with addiction to drugs and alcohol. Charlie has been in recovery since July 23, 1992, and he credits a large part of his recovery to the purposeful devotion and emotional release he experiences while running.

Charlie and I met through my friend Todd Eichler, who I met through my friend and previous guest Adam Gayner, who I met through EVRYMAN, one of the leading organizations for men's work and men's groups. If you’re a man and you’re not yet familiar with the world of mens work, and you’d like more community, connection and emotional depth in your life, I highly recommend finding a men's group to participate in.

I want to say thanks to all of you. There are now 750 of you—subscribers to my Substack, that is, and many have also chosen to become paying supporters. Of all the communities that I’ve been involved in, joined, started, and led over the years, this community of readers, listeners, subscribers and supporters, of fellow writers, and of the broader world of writing is the most gratifying, the most real, and the most of myself of them all. Thank you for being here, and as those of you who have felt to inquire know, my door is open, and so if there’s something you’d like to talk about, just ask.

Particularly huge thanks to folks who have become paying subscribers recently, including Mary, Tommy, Sean, Michael, Thom, John, Zoe, Bill, kingultra01, Julie, Tom, Danielle, Jean, Volker, Taryn, my father Duncan, Anthony, Samir, Peter, and Zach—and to the growing list of other Substackers who recommend my work. Check them out when you get a chance: and .

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

In the meantime, if you do enjoy this episode, please do take a moment to click the little heart button 🤍 to “Like” this post here on Substack. One way to think of the 🤍 button is as a Net Promoter Score—your click on that little heart is the answer to the question—if someone asked you about it, would you recommend this piece to a friend?

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this one: what is your own relationship with addiction and addictive patterns? Even if you’ve never been addicted to anything at all—although that’s doubtful—what do you know, or think you know, about the mechanisms of addiction? Most of what I thought I knew for most of my live was wrong, and it’s been highly informative, useful, and interesting to get more familiar with what addiction really is, and how it affects just about all of us.

Show Notes

RUNNING

how “we all ran when we were kids,” and “it's a thing that we are naturally meant to do.”

“Running isn't what people think it is”

“It's not even running that I like that much. It's stopping. It's the feeling that you get of having done something.”

…human scale and human speed movement…when we move through the world on our own two feet…we see the world and in the way that we evolve to see it.

“coming into a village on foot changes everything.”

DISTANCE IS DIFFERENT

There's something about making a journey over the course of many days under your own power—It becomes a pilgrimage…

“nobody remembers the things that are easy.”

“long expeditions allow me to disconnect from the world in a way that I can't in running a marathon or even running a hundred miler.”

“recovery is all about focusing on what's right in front of you.”

“the end was anticlimactic.”

that full immersion in something so real is something that, we don't get a lot of in regular life.

INTEGRATION

“I didn't know how to integrate the lessons that I had learned along the way into my life.”

“today, pretty much everything that I do, I try to ask myself, how am I using this?”

BORED WHILE RUNNING?

“Ultra Runners as a group are not a particularly bright group of people…”

“I've gotta just get through this next class…”

the natural beauty and fascination of the world pulls me along

the natural elasticity of our conscious experience

BODY MANAGEMENT

“People will ask how's possible to run 5,000 miles…? It's not—it's only mentally possible.”

“there's a great trust that goes on.”

I can consciously activate different muscles or certain parts of my musculature or physiology and, change what's happening on the fly.

“we have a brilliant piece of equipment here, that is way smarter than we are.”

“You try to anticipate what may go wrong.”

“almost always the answer is eat something, drink something and walk or slow down for a minute.”

TRANSCENDENTAL MOMENTS

“I yearn for those moments…it's why I actually do the event because that ability to be in a moment where you're completely empty, find a way to get past it…that's what allows me to not panic when something's going wrong with my business or when things get hard in my marriage, or one of my kids is having problems.”

“the biggest mistake most of us make is we make big decisions at really bad moments.”

“I want to go have a new painful experience somewhere.”

“people talk themselves outta stuff because they are afraid…most of the things we're thinking about are probably just going to be really uncomfortable.”

ADDICTION

“this is the difference between adventure and addiction. The adventure usually turned out to be very difficult but rewarding, whereas the addiction turned out to be nothing but a letdown once I got started…”

addiction tends to reward the acquisition of the feeling, but that the feeling itself is really not so rewarding, whereas with more things that we're attached to, it's kind of the other way around…

“it took me a few years to realize how important and necessary my obsessive nature was and what a valuable asset it is.”

“it is about harnessing the superpower of addiction or obsession and pointing it towards positive things.”

“if you are doing a behavior that's not serving you, then why are you doing it? I don't care if you label it or not. If alcohol is no longer serving you in the way that you hoped that it would, then stop doing it.”

“change very often is a catalyst to, not necessarily easier things, but necessary things.”

for me, choosing to stop drinking was the last thing to change. the end result of that was enough of my consciousness surfacing, that it finally became clear to me that this just doesn't really fit for me anymore.

“there was a recognition finally that, nobody was coming to save me. … what I wanted was someone to actually force me to quit.”

“being vulnerable is the best thing that I've learned how to do.”

“I'd gone to AA meetings to learn how to control my drinking because it was really messing up my drug use. … When I finally quit, I didn't quit forever. … [after] 30 days I couldn't come up with a reason not to keep doing it.”

Classical addiction psychology teaches that the “it” that needs to change is the drinking, but the “it” is something deeper.

“not drinking is not that hard, figuring out the rest of life's the complicated part.”

“Too many people get mired in the, ‘why am I the way I am?’ instead of focusing on ‘how do I get myself out of this?’”

the myth of addiction is that it's something unusual. We're all wired this way. We're not in our bodies enough.

MODERATION IS BORING

“Moderation's boring… I don't spend as much time in the middle ground as other people. A lot of times I'm either up here or I'm down here. …I like it that way.”

“if you're not getting out there in nature and testing your body…what the hell are you doing here?”

DEPRESSION

“if you go on a six day crack binge and you spend all your money, you might be a little depressed right after that…”

“the best way to get myself out of a funk was to help somebody else get out of theirs.”

addiction is depressing, both during and as a result.

feeling low was a symptom of not living right, and I had to be willing to see that as true.

“cut myself some slack… allow ourselves to just be, and not feel the pressure of, oh my God, look at all the things I'm not getting done today.”

You can find Charlie, his book, film and 5.8 Dead Sea to Everest expedition project at CharlieEngle.com

Charlie’s favorite song to listen to while running is September by Earth Wind and Fire.

Further Reading

You might be also interested in some of my other writing on alcohol, especially these two prior pieces Change of Heart and A Five-Minute Love Affair With Natural Wine.

Charlie Engle, Running Man

Running The Sahara film

EVRYMAN mens groups

I also recommend the following books on alcohol and addiction:

Annie Grace, This Naked Mind — my favorite book on how to change your relationship with alcohol

Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain

Stanton Peele, Love and Addiction

Adi Jaffe, The Abstinence Myth

Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal

David Poses, The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies about Addiction and the Truth about Recovery

Holly Whitaker’s here on Substack

Amy Dresner, My Fair Junkie: A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean

Leslie Jamison, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

Carl Erik Fisher, The Urge: Our History of Addiction

Johann Hari, Lost Connections

Caroline Knapp, Alcohol, A Love Story

Mary Carr, Lit

Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease

…Please stick around, I’ve got some questions for you:

What is your own relationship with addiction and addictive patterns? Even if you’ve never been addicted to anything at all—although that’s doubtful—what do you know, or think you know, about the mechanisms of addiction? Is there anything that you feel that you need to do—and is it something that you also really want to do?
Is there anything physical, or otherwise, that you do that takes you to extreme states of being?
Can you see how addiction could be reframed as a super-power and redirected towards positive obsessions?
Is there anything about how you are currently living that you would like to change?
Are you a runner? What’s your favorite distance and place to run?

Please join the conversation by answering any or all of these in the comments below.

Become a subscriber

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

…or just share this post with some folks that you love:

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this episode by clicking that cute little heart ❤️down below ↓

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Today, I'm speaking with Galen Kirkpatrick. Galen is a professional paraglider pilot and coach, and the 2022 FAI Women’s Pan-American Paragliding Champion, which means that she’s a world-class practitioner of the exceptionally rarified and extraordinary sport of sky racing! Racing paragliders is a lot like sailboat racing in that the object is to complete a given course in the shortest time possible, racing around marks or “turn points”—but it’s all in 3D, up in the sky.

In additional to her passion for flying, she’s a skier, improvisational comedienne and a very talented Tetris player, and, I would add, humble, intelligent, courageous, passionate about her sport and about life, and a pioneer.

I’ve been a paraglider pilot myself, which is how Galen and I met a few years ago, and we both know what it’s like to practice something so incredible, that most people don’t even know exists, and also—whether they’re right about it or not—that most people consider ridiculously dangerous.

Galen stopped in for an interview in between flying trips to Brazil and Colombia, both frequent destinations for pilots this time of year, and I’m excited to share this conversation with you. Galen is the both the first fellow pilot, and the first trans woman I’ve had on the show. She is someone who I’ve learned from, and shares the experience of how paragliding has been a teacher for me and so many others.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this: how has your relationship with gender and your own identity evolved over time?

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

Show Notes

Some of the topics that we cover in our talk:

Becoming a professional paraglider pilot

Flying as a discipline — “we require ourselves to get our s**t together.”

Free flight as a form of self-expression

How flying forces you to get your s**t together if you want to fly well, and safely.

Discipline, and how creating an environment where you can remove yourself from the equation — “I really thrive in an environment where I can remove myself from it.”

How flying “becomes not an escape, but sort of like a higher project, something that's to be worked on.”

Risk and Creativity

Fear and Anxiety

Managing Risk — “by seeking expertise and training really hard and immersing myself in the sport, I can manage all this risk, but I'm still performing in a unforgiving environment.”

Identity and Gender Dysphoria

Gender Euphoria

Limiting Nature of a Binary Point of View

Getting More Specific about "Binary"

Deconstruction of Gender

“Men talk about their feelings and women blow snot rockets.”

Activism and Resistance

The Responsibility of Coming Out

Learned to Stop Learning

Paragliding as an Infinite Game

“it's not about in it to win it, it's in it to live it”

You can find Galen on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/galenmmmk/ and in this profile in Cross Country magazine.

The music that you hear briefly is Flying, by Moon Duo.

Further Reading

You can dig into paragliding racing on airtribune.com and also on the FlyMaster Live Tracking site (although it’s pretty opaque). A great resource if you’re interested in paragliding is Gavin McClurg’s Cloudbase Mayhem podcast. If you want to learn to fly, search up your local paragliding school. In the San Francisco Bay Area, I recommend Airtime SF and Penguin Paragliding.

You might enjoy some of my other writing on the subjects of sports, paragliding, and identity, especially The Last Time.

Richard Reeves on Equality Without Androgyny

Kathryn Bond Stockton’s book, Gender(s) and interviewed by Ezra Klein Gender Is Complicated for All of Us. Let’s Talk About It.

Become a subscriber

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

…or just share this post with some folks that you love:

I’ve got some questions for you… please join the conversation.

How has your relationship with gender and your own identity evolved over time?
What is your own relationship with risk?
Do you experience sport as a form of personal expression?
What might you possibly come out about?—that is, be more open, forward and direct in expressing about yourself?
Did you learn anything new listening to this conversation?
Are you playing a finite or an infinite game?

Please join the conversation by answering any or all of these in the comments below.

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this episode by clicking that cute little red heart ❤️down below ↓

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Today, I'm speaking with Ashanti Branch, who is a pioneer in education reform and in youth mental health. Ashanti is the founder and executive director of The Ever Forward Club, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting marginalized students in their journey towards graduation from high school by providing them emotional tools and mental health support. Ashanti is a keynote speaker and advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General, a Fulbright fellow, and a four-time TEDx speaker.

Raised in Oakland by a single mom on welfare, Ashanti found his passion while tutoring struggling students in a school with a majority of African-American and Latino students. It broke his heart to see 40% of these students want to drop out at such a young age. By helping to fulfill their deeper emotional needs to feel safe, be seen and heard, The Ever Forward Club has helped 100% of its student members graduate from high school, 90% of them enroll in higher education, and has also achieved a 0% incarceration rate compared to the national incarceration rate, which is 8% for black males, age 20 to 24.

Most recently, Ashanti and The Ever Forward Club have formed The Million Mask Movement, dedicated to helping young people reveal their true selves and find out how much they have in common with their peers.

Ashanti and I met through EVRYMAN, one of the leading organizations for men's work and men's groups, and reconnected at the suggestion of one of my previous guests, Michael McDowell. Ashanti and I are both natives of the San Francisco Bay Area, and we are both passionate about helping young men to grow and become more whole.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this: what is the mask that you're wearing, and what part of yourself would you reveal if you took it off?

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

Show Notes

Some of the topics that we cover in our talk:

Choosing to prioritize health, and healthier eating. Wanting to show up as his best self.

The meaning of discipline.

What it means to be an adult.

Intimacy, sex and the range of deep connection.

Thinking “wrong” and giving room to explore someone’s thinking.

The power of positive confrontation.

The Million Mask Movement.

You can find Ashanti at https://www.branchspeaks.com, The Ever Forward Club and Million Mask Movement, as well as @branchspeaks on Instagram.

The music is The Mask by the Fugees.

Become a subscriber

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

…or just share this post with some folks that you love:

I’ve got some questions for you… please join the conversation.

What have you learned lately that has changed the way that you live?
What values do you embody, in your own life?
What does discipline mean to you, and what’s your own relationship with discipline? (I wrote about my own in Someone Else’s Discipline…)
What does intimacy mean to you, especially in a non-sexual context?
What is the mask that you're wearing, and what part of yourself would you reveal if you took it off?
How do you confront someone in a positive way, with love and respect?

Please join the conversation by answering any or all of these in the comments below.

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this episode by clicking that cute little red heart ❤️down below ↓

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This is chapter 04. You can find all of the parts of the book published so far in this post.

The part of San Francisco where we lived when I started middle school was right in the geographic center of the city, a mix of of stately captain’s homes, time-worn Victorians, and working-class four-plexes, grey in the seams and lit in the early mornings by the gentle pulse of the old Coca-Cola sign on the downtown horizon. My memory of the city in those years still has daylight in it, but the colors are muted like photos of those times. My parents were both working and doing well enough that they’d bought a big place on a double lot on the corner of Hill and Sanchez, and my father would stand on the deck overlooking the southern part of the city and practice star sights with a sextant, dreaming of taking off to sail the roaring forties. My world was much smaller, limited to the few blocks I knew from my paper route and sometimes down to 24th street, still taking the big hills sitting down on my skateboard like a little kid.

Perhaps in part due to their success at work, their marriage had begun to unravel, and that, combined with the double-digit mortgage rates of the time, meant that they couldn’t afford to keep sending me to private school. That very special place that I used to take the school bus to every morning only ran through fifth grade anyhow, and so many of us kids that went there had tested so far above our grade level, that it seemed to make sense for me to skip ahead at the end of fourth grade and start sixth grade a year early.

I showed up at Everett Middle School in the fall still wearing my same football jersey and brown corduroys from fourth grade, a little kid amidst an older, bigger, and much more diverse public school population. My parents had given me half of the converted downstairs as my room—and I made sure to keep the basement door tightly shut, as I was still very afraid of the dark back corners that reached up under the old house.

At my new school I found myself way ahead of the math teacher as she tried to explain the simple geometry of a rectangle and yet very much behind the waves of pre-teen kids crashing around the high-fenced prison yard outside. Real sex was in the air—tight jeans and ESPRIT tops, lip gloss, LeSportsac purses, roller skates and Fast Times at Ridgemont High—and I was unprepared. At first I put my energy more and more into the fantasy worlds that I’d already been deep into in third and fourth grade—the adventures of Tintin and the Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide led directly to a dresser drawer full of glossy 80’s porn, bulging with issues of Hustler and Oui that I’d snake from the corner store that I passed every morning on my paper route. Those intensely captivating images took me further and further away from the reality of what was happening at school, and yet also made it just possible for me to believe that the girls in the halls would all soon reveal that their sixth-grade daydreams were as triple-X-rated as the so-called letters that I loved reading in my stash of adult mags.

That first year at Everett was tough. My parents were busy and distracted, and I found myself in the deep end, all alone. School was easy—too easy—and the environment was a major downer compared to where I’d been going before. Jumping from fourth grade into the first year of middle school I found myself no longer in the beautiful, historic and inspiring surroundings of the Crocker Mansion and now, instead, locked up in a place seemingly purpose-built to make you think of escape, with thick walls, high fences, and a klaxon sounding on the hour.

I started to skip out however I could, going over the fence to buy Funyuns and Dortios at the corner store down at 18th and Church, or through the back of the library and up the stairway to the roof, where I’d try to make sure not to get spotted by any adults while at the same time hoping to be seen by my friends down in the yard. School was no longer a place of learning about Ishi and art and math—it was a place to socialize, but in a zoo of more than a thousand kids, it was easy to get lost in the crowd.

After school we’d meet on the stairs in front of the block-wide three-story institutional building, and my friends and I would go to this cafe called Just Desserts down the street that had a back patio where we could hang out for however long we wanted to. I would buy a slice of lemon poppyseed cake and make eyes at this cute little punk girl named Silke, but I didn’t have a clue what to say to her. After sitting around there for an hour or two, we’d get bored and start to try to figure out where we could go and hang, or party, for the evening.

Especially since my hair was getting longer, I looked a few years older than I was, although ten or eleven plus three or four sure doesn’t get you anywhere near the legal drinking age. Even so, it was often me who volunteered to go try to get alcohol. I guess I felt like I had do something to earn my stripes.

I cruised back to the store on the corner right behind our school and posted up in front, waiting for an older stranger to come by. After an impatient few minutes, I figured, f**k it, I’ll just go in and try myself. I knew I’d be a hero if I could manage to ”buy up” on my own. Holding my board in one hand by the front truck, I pushed through the swinging door and went straight to the beer fridge. I was already fascinated by all the varieties on display, and I stood there for a couple of minutes reading the labels. This was before the time of micro-breweries and craft beer, but there was already a wide range, including German beers like Becks and St Pauli Girl, Japanese imports like Sapporo, dark beers, light beers, Guinness, all sorts of stuff, and I was feeling the responsibility of choosing for all my friends, and for getting our money’s worth.

In the end, I knew the right call was whatever was cheapest. I pulled out a twelve-pack of Schaefer and went up to the front of the store, where the liquor was kept on shelves behind the counter. The friendly older woman smiled across at me as I stepped up, leaning my deck against the freezer case. Meeting her eyes for a second, I figured, be bold, act natural, don’t hesitate, and then I said the magic words for the first time—“How ‘bout a…fifth of Popov?” as I bent down to pull a cylinder of frozen orange juice out from next to the popsicles and It’s-It’s. She reached up for the plastic bottle and set it back on the counter in front of the register, next to the twelve pack. “Having a party?” she asked. “I looks like you might actually get away with this,” cackled the voice in my head, as I pulled out my money. “Yeah,” I said, keeping it casual, “a birthday party.” I handed her the cash and then stuffed my loot into my backpack along with my school notebook, swinging it over my shoulder as I went out the door.

The following year, we started to get our hands on grass and to hear of stronger drugs. I had a friend named James that I had met at summer camp who lived in Berkeley—and Berkeley was like a synonym for ”acid” in those days.

One afternoon I took the BART train over to meet up with my friend. He said he knew where to go, and so we walked down to Telegraph together, two twelve-year olds looking to score. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen, but, as it turns out, a big part of the answer to the question of how to buy drugs is that people who have them can tell if you are lookingto buy them.

We must have had that look in our eyes, because before too long some dude approached us with his low key drug-dealer street patter—“Doses, doses, doses.” I looked up to take him in, along with the whole scene laid out behind this guy—ragged storefronts stapled-over with concert posters, greasy wax-paper pizza wrappers and cans in the gutter, people squatting on the stained concrete sidewalk, breathing the exhaust of cars idling at the stop signs.

I’d been all over the city of San Francisco already myself, and up to the end of Haight Street plenty of times to buy skateboard parts. This was a similar zone of hippies and drifters, but even more dirty and disorganized. Berkeley did carry some weight by way of its history, but it didn’t look good, and as a San Francisco native, anywhere outside the city was never going to be more than second rate anyhow.

Turning my attention back to the dude standing in front of us, I asked “Whatcha got?” “Purple gel. Hundred mics,” he said, opening his palm to show me a little paper envelope. He picked up the bindle and revealed a few tiny squares of what looked like colored gelatin. I glanced over at my friend, and he kinda shrugged and nodded back, so I dug into my cords and fished out a twenty that I’d earned doing computer programming after school, and the dealer handed me the gas. I think we ended up with something like ten hits. My buddy and I split, and I headed straight for the BART station on Shattuck to get back to the city ASAP—I wasn’t interested in sticking around over there.

Now that I had a source, I was the kid with the acid. I’d already realized that if I had alcohol or drugs, I was guaranteed to have friends—and not just other kids but cool, colorful, often older kids who didn’t follow the rules for their own sake. This habit of buying my way into relationships stuck with me for until sometime in my forties, when I finally realized that the answer to the question “Is it love, or money?” should be one or the other, and certainly not both.

The year I learned how to buy drugs on the street was the same year The Wall came out, and it often played as a double-feature with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, at the UC Theater back over in Berkeley. We’d all pile onto that same BART train that I’d taken to go score, and I’d hand out hits on the way, so that it would be coming on as we settled into our seats for the first movie. From downtown San Francisco, the train dips into a tunnel beneath the bay, and then emerges on the other side in a grey tangle of freeway overpasses and industrial waterfront, the wheels screeching as the tracks curve through Emeryville. We made this journey several times, watching the city recede into the distance across the water as we began to feel the acid kick in. Sitting on that train, waiting for our stop, it was impossible not to feel that we were in for a long ride.

And—let me just ask you, have seen The Wall? By now everyone knows that you want a tranquil, serene—and safe setting for a psychedelic experience, not something that does it’s best to conjure up a psychic war. It’s not even generally a great idea to drop acid and just go sit in a movie theater, let alone a movie like The Wall—and of course we weren’t just on acid, but acid and whatever booze we could get our hands on, as well. Ask your guidance counselor—LSD and alcohol are not a good combination. Mind-blurring downers and mind-opening stimulants—no, not a great mix—and keep in mind, that we were all still only twelve or thirteen years old at this point.

Those movie nights were both boring and terrifying. Sitting in a chair watching a screen at that age, f*g A, I wanted to be outside, running around, skateboarding, doing something and instead I was frying so hard I couldn’t see straight, the visual and auditory blast of the film combining with the hallucinatory effects of the drugs to produce not a peaceful sunny-day kaleidoscope of shimmering rainbow tracers and pixellated fractal starfields, but an all-out sensory assault. The Wall is one of the most accurate depictions of nightmare psychosis made on film, and it turns out that there isn’t much difference between psychosis and a bad trip. Relentless images of marching soldiers, screaming, twisted faces, and guns going off, accompanied by Pink Floyd’s bombastic, high-drama psychedelic soundtrack were all a bit much to sustain for two straight hours in the dark. When I wasn’t fidgeting, adjusting my cramped knees, and trying to catch the eyes of one of my friends with a silent look that might give them some idea of how much distress I was in, I was pinned to my seat, gripping the arms of the chair, my back and ass muscles clamped tight as I tried to remind myself that the ordeal would be over in a few hours—and wishing that it would be over even sooner.

At least Rocky Horror was more in the spirit of fun, although if you’ve ever seen it you’ll understand that it was its own kind of torture, made up of interminably repetitive sing-alongs of campy B-movie theme songs that plowed their own horror-show groove in my poor little head. “Let’s do the time warp”— for f**k’s sake, not again, please.

Looking back, I can’t actually conjure up any memory of fun on those movie nights, even though that was of course the idea of what we were all doing over there. I was going along because these were my friends—the ones I had earned—and I didn’t want to be left out. Let’s just say it was unpleasant at best, and really, it’s more accurate to say that I hated going to those double features.

Once in a while we’d be rescued by a parent willing to come fetch us with a station wagon at two in the morning—kind of them, but also—what the fk were they thinking? Nobody asked what we were up to, as far as I know—and I do know now that if I picked up a handful of pre-teen kids at that hour and they were anywhere near as out there as we were, I would at least ask them what they had been up to. But no—no questions asked, I suppose in the spirit of 80’s free parenting, or…what? I still don’t know.

Thanks for reading, and for being part of this journey. This is chapter 04. You can find all of the parts of the book published so far in this post.

Anyone who is a paid subscriber between now and… some time before the book is published will be able to get a copy of the book for just the cost of shipping when it comes out.

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This is an early version of chapter 03 of my memoir in progress, the working title of which is Freedom, At All Costs.

You can read the written version of this piece by following the link in the show notes below. I’ll be including these voiceovers of my writing on the BROTHERS AND TEACHERS podcast to mix things up a little, and because I enjoy doing them.

Do me favor and if you do listen to this, give it a like and/or a review on whatever platform you listen on—that will help other people find it.

Enjoy!

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This is an early version of chapter 02 of my memoir in progress, the working title of which is Freedom, At All Costs.

Do me favor and if you do listen to this, give it a like and/or a review on whatever platform you listen on—that will help other people find it.

Enjoy!

Join nearly 1,000 other subscribers for writing and audio on identity, addiction, and adventure.

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This is an early version of chapter 01 of my memoir in progress, the working title of which is Freedom, At All Costs.

Do me favor and if you do listen to this, give it a like and/or a review on whatever platform you listen on—that will help other people find it.

Enjoy!

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Today, I'm introducing a new component of my Brothers And Teachers podcast: voiceover audio of my memoir in progress. The working title of the book is Freedom, At All Costs, and the book is about redefining freedom. For most of my life, I thought it was about escape, about getting out, finding something else, about leaving. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to get away, and I did find freedom, but it also came with some very real costs. In the end, I've come to realize that freedom was a lot closer than I thought all along, and that most of all, it comes from inside.

I've been working on this book for some time already, and I've begun to post chapters of it on my Substack. Now I'll be sharing audio of those chapters in the podcast feed as well. I like doing these voiceovers and it provides some variety in between the interviews that I'm doing. These episodes will be numbered starting with the letter F to distinguish them from the regular podcast episodes, which you will continue to see with the letter E.

Although I enjoy other types of writing, I’ve always been drawn to memoir, and when I woke up a few years ago and remembered that I wanted to write, memoir is what came to mind first of all. Memoir is not autobiography, but stories from a slice through life. Some of my favorite examples of memoir writing are Reckless by Chrissie Hynde, Acid for the Children, by Flea, I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, by Tim Kreider, Where The Body Meets Memory, by David Mura, Another B*t Night in Suck City, by Nick Flynn, Just Kids, by , The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer, This Boy’s Life, by Tobias Wolff, Ham on Rye, byCharles Bukowski, Drinking, A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp, and The Hard Crowd,* by Rachel Kushner, just to name a few.

You can listen to the podcast either on Substack or on any of the usual podcast apps. I like Overcast, but you can find BROTHERS AND TEACHERS on Apple, Spotify, Listen Notes, Amazon, et cetera.

Here are the chapters that I’ve published so far:

Up In The Cave
Round File
North Dallas Forty

Do me a favor, and if you do listen to the podcast, give it a like, and or a review on whatever platform you do listen on- that will help other people find it.

Thanks a lot for reading and listening, and I hope you do enjoy.

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Today I'm speaking with Kim Stanley Robinson, a true legend of a writer, and also as an advocate for better stewardship of planet Earth and for sustainable cohabitation with all the species that inhabit this unique gem of a planet. Stan has published more than twenty books and has received great recognition for both his creative work, his advocacy, and although he's quick to qualify it as the work of a novelist, the fact is that he has made quite a mark with his science as well.

Stan and I met through the Long Now Foundation here in San Francisco and reconnected through our mutual love of the High Sierra, in particular through the shared experience of independently coming across Paiute obsidian knapping sites simply by following our intuition in looking for good places to rest while out hiking.

Especially since I'm working on building a third career as a writer, I value very highly Stan's life experience as a working artist who's met with such success—and also as someone who embodies warmth, curiosity, irreverence, adventure, poise, truth, and openness, just to name a few of the values that I see in him.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this: what is your relationship with the natural world? How does it feel to be in nature and to be part of nature? And how does that inform you in your daily life, and as you look towards the future?

Show Notes

The Cardboard Set Problem — “science fiction has a standing weakness in formal terms in that you know that it's made up. It's set in the future. It's maybe on another planet. When you're reading, you know it's made up.”

Imagining Mars based on the High Sierra and the American West.

How he became a writer.

Poetry, and how “if you're interested in writing poetry, then paying attention to the moments that might turn into a poem is one of the most important things you have to do.”

On formal training as a creative writer — “I don't think you can do much to teach writing of fiction. I don't believe in the MFA.”

Geography — “It's one of the main projects we have in civilization today, is to do better at geographical comprehension and expertise.”

A story about getting “locally lost” in the Palisades Basin. “There’s expert overconfidence and then there's just ordinary overconfidence.”

The “deep pleasure” of wayfinding—and how, unlike in the mountains, “you can’t backtrack” with life errors. “Experience often teaches you stuff that is no longer relevant.”

His avoidance of risk, perhaps due to “being easily scared, so that the risk is not felt as a stimulant…” but more to the very personal experience of seeing a friend die of leukemia at age fifteen, and how that gave him a “hunger” to live. He used to judge climbers for something like an inability to appreciate the subtle, but has since come to see that his judgment was “very inappropriate,” much like judging someone for their sexual preferences. He had to re-educate himself by paying more attention.

Making a devotional practice of “being a dog”—and the spiritual nature of sport.

The erotic charge of being in the mountains, having a relationship, even a “love story” with a place, and how “to love the inhuman” is strange and worth exploring.

How the “dream of transcendence,” becoming immortal through disembodiment is a lie, because “we're never gonna download our brains into computers.”

How returning to civilization from the mountains used to be like a “return to hell,” but he has since freed himself from that dualism, and “going to the Sierras is no longer an escape,” because he realized “I was gonna be just as fine at home as I was up in the wild.”

How much of what has happened in the way of negative side effects of civilization has been “by accident,” because science is an ongoing experiment, but that now we have a “moral choice” to move past the capitalist, patriarchal entitlement of not having to change, of thinking something like “if I have to change or else the world is wrecked, then the world is gonna be wrecked and I am not gonna change.” We need to realize that “the health of the planet is the health of your own body.”

How Gary Snyder taught him about moving “from dominance to resistance” in masculinity, and how Gary’s presence has been a guiding light.

The Kingdom of San Francisco as the cultural capital of California, and how lucky we are to have been able to live here.

Finding Stan

You can find Kim Stanley Robinson’s books everywhere. He’s not on social media himself, but there is a fan site at https://kimstanleyrobinson.info, as well as a KSR subreddit, and he speaks regularly at events in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Further Reading

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

Kim Stanley Robinson, The High Sierra: A Love Story

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry For the Future

Davis, Scott, Snyder, Opening the Mountain: Circumabulating Mount Tamalpais, A Ritual Walk

The Long Now Foundation

The Half Earth Project

Become a subscriber

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Now — I’ve got some questions for you…

If you’re a writer, what sort of formal training have you pursued, and how useful has it been for you? (I’ve taken a bunch of independent classes and workshops, probably the best of which overall have been Jack Grapes’ Method Writing).
Have you ever been macro lost? (I have to say, I haven’t, and I’m sort of wondering how I might actually get that lost… It’s not that easy).
Have you experienced how wayfinding in the physical world can contribute to a better sense of finding one’s way in life?
What’s your own relationship with risk and danger?
Have you ever experienced an erotic charge from being in the mountains? (I’ve written a bit about this in this piece, and Liz Goldwyn writes well about this in her book Sex, Health, and Consciousness).
What is your relationship with the natural world? How does it feel to be in nature and to be part of nature? And how does that inform you in your daily life, and as you look towards the future
Have you ever consciously given something up? How did that feel, and what were the results? (I write about one of my own experiences giving something up in The Last Time).
What’s your favorite science fiction book? (Aside from KSR, one of my favorites is Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus)

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this episode by clicking that cute little red heart ❤️down below ↓

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Today I'm speaking with Chris Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn, Civilized to Death and a very active Substack called as well as his long running podcast by the same name. I came across Sex at Dawn several years ago and that book has played a big part in cracking open my thinking about love, sex, and relationship, as it has for many many others. More recently, I took the opportunity to meet up with Chris at a retreat that he co-hosted in Montana, where we connected as fellow writers, van travelers, hot spring aficionados and former-but-not-current-users of psychedelic substances. Chris mentioned that he and his partner would be spending the winter in Crestone and invited me to stop by sometime, and so, just a couple of months later, I found myself recording this interview in his little office studio slash guest bedroom... and so... I think it's fair to say that I've been in bed with Chris Ryan.

Especially since I'm working on building a third career as a writer, I really value Chris' life experience as a working artist who's met with some success—and as someone who embodies warmth, curiosity, irreverence, adventure, equanimity, poise, truth, and openness, just to name a few of the values that I see and share.

I'm grateful to Chris and Anya for the invitation to visit with them in Crestone, and for his support of my efforts with this podcast and as a writer. As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or consider just this one: is there anything about yourself that you have come out about—or that you haven't come out about, but could, or would like to embody more openly?

I’m offering a 33% discount on paid subscriptions right now through the end of the year. In addition to all of my writing and podcast episodes, paid subscribers get super cool DECIDE NOTHING pins, access to occasional bonus and AMA posts and chats—and the opportunity to order a copy of my book when it comes out for just the cost of shipping. If you’re enjoying my writing and podcast and would like to see more episodes like this one, please consider becoming a paying subscriber.

Show Notes

Changing the Relationship with Alcohol

“The problem is the lack of problem.” I suggest that perhaps he “suffers from a lack of trauma.” He feels that he didn’t need to stop, but he “wanted to clearly know that I was in charge.” “It works well when the dog knows you’re the boss.” It’s not so much the question of whether there’s a “problem”—if you feel like changing, that’s reason enough. “A lot of people feel like it’s a failure to give up and let go of things that used to work…”

Maia Szalavitz’s thesis in Unbroken Brainthat there is no such thing as an “addictive personality,” and that addiction is a learning disorder. Stanton Peele’s book Love and Addiction. If you have a “hole in your psyche,” the problem isn’t the substance, it’s the hole.

Learning to let go… to choose to close a chapter consciously, not as the result of some catastrophe, or of ‘hitting bottom.’ “If you let go, that's empowering—as opposed to having it ripped from your grasp…” “There's something powerful about letting go… There's power in conscious loss.” We have a culture of attachment… of attainment, of accumulation…

When I choose to let go of things, I can look back and see the gold in the past. “Why would you want to carry around the ashes?” “If you don't put it down, then you can't up anything else.” I write about letting go in The Last Time.

Relationships with other men, and with women, and how coming out is a form of “facing a fire.”

“A lot of straight men are just f*g boring.” “A lot of my closest male friends have been gay… Those relationships had an intensity and an openness that I rarely find with straight men” “Straight men are fragile.” “To be a gay man…means that you have faced a fire.” “They’ve been through the experience of saying ‘fk it, I'm gonna be authentic.’” A lot of us remain untempered without some sort of defining challenge.

Homosociality

“I think there's a lot of homoerotic energy in this culture of masculinity.” “Vulnerability and courage are two expressions of the same thing.” Grayson Perry. David Buchbinder, Studying Men and Masculinities. Eve Sedgwick. There is a continuum between homosociality and homosexuality. We have a need and a hunger for intimacy and affection that isn’t sexual. “One of the pleasures of watching sports is seeing this unrestrained expression of love and happiness…and joy with a group of men.” We experience homosocial contact—and being in our bodies—vicariously through sports.

Dogs and Children

“If I were living the way humans were designed to live…then kids and dogs are just part of the deal…” “I don't want to be locked into that b**t world by way of a kid…” It always seemed like kindof a bad deal to me. Seth Rogan: ‘If I don’t have kids, maybe I’ll feel bad about that for the two or three months just before I die… but if I do have kids, and it’s a mistake, I’m gonna feel bad about that for fifty years.” “You should never write a book unless you absolutely have to…and I think that way about kids. You shouldn't have kids unless you really really need to.”

Grief Becomes a Constant

“As I get older, grief becomes a constant. … In addition to those people that are gone, there’s also the potential lives that you aren’t gonna live". The “fantasy of what could happen in my life. You get older and it narrows.” There’s just not enough time to do everything. He doesn’t feel conflicted about kids… For me, “allowing myself to feel the grief is part of letting that go.” Chris says that, “I admire that…but I don’t envy it.” Choosing to not have children as a form of resistance to our current cultural and economic model of what it means to be a man. “Kids are like a clock on the wall” that help to keep track of how old we are…

Identity and his own ‘Coming Out’

When do you feel that you became the version of yourself that you are now? the “perfect embodiment of this self…it’s like two images that come over each other and there’s that moment that they line up perfectly…like an eclipse…” That feeling of “this is exactly where I need to be.” A moment of realization that “it was monogamy that was freaking me out…I didn’t understand that because I’d never conceived that there was any other possibility for a way to arrange a relationship…” that led to his own ‘coming out,’ as “not, by nature, monogamous,” and how taking that fork in the road tempered him. The challenge of choosing to honest with himself—and everyone else.

Love

The conflict of being forced to only love one person. Feeling love as a “closure.” “Its not about monogamy or non-monogamy, it’s about authenticity.” “People come to me for relationship advice… The only approach I advocate is authenticity and honesty and sincerity, and compassion for where your partner is coming from.” Love as a vehicle for growth and expansion.

Generosity, Giving and Taking

It’s about balance. “Energy flows through us.” Learning to accept from others… and learning to ask. “We feel weak because a muscle is growing.” Who’s giving, who’s getting, whose stuff is it… “The first forty years of my life was an inhalation, and somewhere around forty…was the beginning of an exhalation.” “You do own something to the celestial bank account…” “Not having kids means you’re able to be generous to a lot more people.”

You can find Chris on Substack at and on the web at https://chrisryanphd.com.

Become a subscriber

I’m offering a 33% discount on paid subscriptions right now, through the end of the year. In addition to all of my writing and podcast episodes, paid subscribers get super cool DECIDE NOTHING pins, access to occasional bonus and AMA posts and chats—and the opportunity to order a copy of my book when it comes out for just the cost of shipping. If you’re enjoying my writing and podcast, please consider becoming a paying subscriber.

And/or buy a gift subscription for someone else:

or just share this post with some folks that you love:

Love reading?

I do highly recommend joining me as a subscriber to Chris' Substack ... and you might enjoy some of my other writing on the subjects of alcohol, masculinity, identity, fatherhood—especially The Man Pays and The Last Time.

…as well as these books and other resources:

Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain

Stanton Peele, Love and Addiction.

Grayson Perry on Youtube.

David Buchbinder, Studying Men and Masculinities.

Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.

Seth Rogan on not having kids

Toronado SF

I’ve got some questions for you…

What is your own relationship with alcohol, and how has that changed over time? Is there anything about that relationship that you’re aware of wanting to change?
How do your own relationships with other men, or women, play into your relationships with women, or men, or whichever?
Is there anything about yourself that you have come out about—or that you you haven't, but could, or would like to embody more openly? What has that coming out done for you—or, what could it do for you?
Do you have kids? How did you end up as a parent, or not? What has that been like for you?
Is there anything that you have consciously given up—and what was that experience like?
And… what would you have asked Chris in an interview?

Happy New Year from San Francisco

And finally, please don’t forget to let me know that you enjoyed this piece by mashing that cute little red heart ❤️down below ↓

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Today I'm talking with Bill Maeda, a very humbly self-described "54-year old married dad," a lifelong athlete and personal trainer, and, more recently, something of an accidental TikTok star. Although Bill has been into fitness and physical training since he was a teenager, his journey to finding his strength again in middle-age after a bout with cancer and depression is particularly inspirational—and that, along with his warm, open, direct, very strong—and very funny presence is what's led so many people to connect with him on social media. I reached out to Bill out of the blue as someone that I saw embodying positive presence, and he very generously accepted because he appreciated my invitation and wanted to be part of the mission of what I'm doing with the show.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or consider this: what is your relationship with your own body and your physicality, and how does your body, your strength, and your physical wellness relate to your identity and your mental health?

Show Notes

Getting into trouble at an early age—and early signs of his physicality being very active. He didn’t want to be a “jock,” but he did start lifting weights, and despite also taking up smoking cannabis at the same time, he showed a strong affinity for weightlifting.

As his fellow high school students started to take notice, he began to teach and train them, and was soon invited back into the gym at the private school that he had had to leave just a couple of years prior due to bad grades.

Becoming his current self—fairly recently. Colon cancer in 2012, long recovery and slide into depression. He had an “arrogant delusion” that “cancer doesn't happen to me,” and had a serious and very humbling struggle to recover his physicality that resulted in a dive in to depression.

Looking back, he sees the roots of his depression in a childhood “shielded from challenge and adversity,” and that he “didn't know what it was like to overcome hardship” until he got cancer. That hardship, and the isolation and repetition of working solo with clients led him to feel alone and a lack of “texture” in his life.

Being challenged by one of his clients to start posting on YouTube brought him into contact with people all over the world, which helped him to realize how much he needed connection and “unpredictable interactions” to feel normal and good.

Bill talks about self awareness and having a “strong moral compass,” that has roots in seeing his dad’s willingness to apologize and another mentor’s focus on finding win-win solutions, and grew into an inclination towards kindness and patience, both of which have been reinforced by his experience as a father.

We talk about what he calls “violent expression” as something that humans have and need to express, for self-defense, and as an objective for physical training. We need to express this “potential energy,” otherwise it will back up in the system, just like any other shadow.

We talk about his journey to fatherhood, and how he always knew that he was going to be a father, but didn’t want to be one until he “calmed down” enough. Now he has two daughters. Even so, at first he didn’t see his first daughter as a ‘person,’ until she told him to “dip it” one day when he was eating tough bread with a bowl of soup. This moment was a paradigm shift and he sees that as “the day where I became a dad.”

I asked Bill what he’s afraid of, and he expressed his concern for the lack of connection and engagement so many of us are seeing and feeling, in part due to how pervasive social media and other technology is these days. He’s doing his part to help people be active and connect with each other—and imagines that it may require something like the Bai Lan phenomenon that’s currently happening in China to shake us up.

You can connect with Bill on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

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Further reading

You might enjoy some of my other writing on the subjects of depression, fatherhood, connection, and physicality, in particular The Man Pays and Freedom at all Costs.

…I’ve got some questions for you…

If you have experienced depression, what is it like? Have you been able to identify any root causes or contributing factors?
What do you think about what Bill calls “violent expression”? Is this something that you ever feel or have the opportunity to express?
What is your relationship with your own body and your physicality—and how does your body, your strength and your physical wellness relate to your identity as a person, and to your mental health?
Where is your own moral compass pointing? What the values that you hold close and seek to embody?
What keeps you on your toes?

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Today I'm talking with Fernando Desouches, Managing Director of the New Macho strategic division at London-based brand marketing agency BBD Perfect Storm, whose mission is to help brands grow through positive gender narratives. Along the way Fernando led a radical repositioning of Unilever's Axe brand and has worked with many other global brands to help them stay relevant, dispel negative cliches and redefine how they approach and understand masculinity.

I came to meet Fernando starting from a short podcast that my friend Loic Le Meur did with Michael Katz about “dream yoga”. I searched up Michael's name and came across an interview that he did with Mickey Feher, and then from looking through other episodes of Mickey’s MANTORSHIFT show (see below), I found an interview he did with Fernando about “The New Macho,” which was enough to make me curious…and now he's on the show here.

Fernando's accent can be pretty tricky to understand, so in this case I have provided the full transcript of our interview here on decidenothing.substack.com. It is well worth the extra effort in listening, as Fernando is working at the cutting edge of masculinity, identity, and gender—and he kind of blew my mind with what's going on today in the world of brands, advertising and marketing, and how some brands are taking the lead in moving towards a more sustainable relationship with customers, and in helping to inspire people to come into better relationship with themselves.

As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes or at least consider just one, which is: what does identity mean to you in the context of gender? And where do you think cultural constructs like masculinity and femininity are headed? I'd love to hear from you, and you can subscribe, recommend, share, and comment right at the bottom of this page or in whatever app you're listening with.

Fernando is doing important work in bringing the conversation around evolving masculinity into the very powerful realm of advertising and marketing. He's someone whose work I respect, who is speaking up with his own voice as a new man and who I want to get to know more deeply, all of which is why I've invited him to be with us here today.

Show Notes

His mid-life crisis coincided with an assignment to reposition men's body fragrance Axe, because the brand promise of the 'Axe Effect' was “no longer working.” In the research they did on the brand, they came across the idea that men are "performing their masculinity rather than living it." (see Studying Men and Masculinities, David Buchbinder)

They moved the brand positioning from a "conquering game" to a "connection game, between equals, " and to show men that their most attractive self is when they are who they are.

"When we ask women what they like most about men, they told us [they like] men that are confident being who they are, and they make the them laugh, and have humor."

What boys absorb at an early age in understanding what they have to do to be part of the male cohort, and how, with repetition, these repressions become unconscious.

How men are valued for what they have, what they do, and how they look and "not much for who they are," and how marketing can change that, by "opening a bigger scope of values for men," and "different types of masculinities."

...the ones that don't get what they want and say "I'm not happy" because I couldn't get what I want... But that's not true if you're performing who you are, because even though you get it, it will feel empty.

Men's work and "walking the path" of transformation. "This work gave me not only insights about where men were in a different environment, but also connected me with the power of men." Vitamin M.

The journey of reconnecting with ourselves, and others. the "interesting part is when I recover the masculine energy, to start doing from there." ...and to integrate those elements into a more complete being.

His client at Unilever's Man+Care brand said that Fernando's work had "allowed our brand to be a part of the change we want to see in men and their place in society." They wanted get men to care about "care." But why? Where did that idea come from? "At Unilever and other companies they have demonstrated that brands that have a certain purpose or grow by helping the society and the environment to grow, have more sustainable growth over time, more brand love and more growth.

Sustainability in Marketing: A brand is the emotional relationship with the person who is buying it in a certain space, so, how do you transform that emotional space in a way that society needs it? We have data that shows that the brands that are doing this well, benefit from it.

Brands that actually do good things realize more long term value, and more "brand love."

I have argued that Advertising is Obsolete, and in a way, the proliferation of brands and 'easy marketing' on the web reduces the friction for brands that actually do something to rise up—and for brands that do "lazy marketing" to disappear. Let's hope so.

Like advertising, 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are also sort of obsolete. These are ways of summarizing the world. "Where we are going is from the place where you perform it [your identity] to the place of being, in that place of being that you describe as presence."

"You can be the brand saying, Okay, I will read where men are and represent that, or you can sense where men are going to or represent that."

The trap of progressive masculinity is created by a the counter-movement away from traditional, patriarchal masculinity to a 'progressive' masculinity that is 'anything' as long as it is not traditional masculinity. This version of a definition of progressive masculinity is just as constraining as traditional masculinity. If we break open the box, "we go from rules to, there's no rules but the ones you make—and this is the journey. This is the difficult part, and this is something that is not easy to do."

"So many men today feel lost. We broke the rules, but we are not giving the tools." We're still dealing with the legacy of "of course I would like to engage into a more meaningful career, but people judge me for the car I drive..." and women saying (quite understandably) "I want men to don't ask me what they need to do." This isn't about consent, but about each individual person having a sense of what is good and right and true for themselves, and in relation with others.

David Buchbinder writes "we need to get to the place where we're ready to abandon the idea that men must conform to a certain model of the masculine if they are to be counted as men."

Examples of positive masculinity? David Attenborough. Yvon Chouinard. Two men who are not just inspiring change but leading change, and serving from a place of compassion and care.

Principles what they embody: service, generative action, and resistance. Equality not only for humans, but between humans and other species, and the planet.

Fernando's current work with The Unstereotype Alliance, Mr. Porter, the Global Boyhood Initiative.

His journey of fatherhood, and raising boys. Listen to them, and be with them. Making a conscious commitment to taking care of their children that supersedes the partnership itself.

"When I became a father and realized what it means, I started to respect more people that decide not to have kids."

He sees being childfree as a brave choice. "We can't have an eternally growing population; it's killing us." These people are often "very creative, and do what they love because they have less financial pressure and not the frustration of I tried, but I couldn't..." This childfree population is "reaching certain critical mass now and we need to listen and see what is happening there." Choosing to be child-free can be a generative action. It is for me.

"If we are saying being a man is what you want to make about it, that also needs to encompass not being a father."

Full Transcript

Bowen Dwelle: Fernando, so great to have you with me. So really first question. How did you come to be doing this? What inspired you as a marketing person, a brand strategist, to bring this point of view about the new man and involving masculinity into your work?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah it's interesting. So it is like when you can join the dots from the past , like Steve Jobs said. I work 18 years in a company called Unilever. Quite famous, big company. I realized later that I work most of the time either in brands that talked to men or brands that then I launch a men part.

The Axe Effect

Fernando Desouches: So I worked for Man plus Care three years , and then nine years for Axe. But also [00:04:00] I worked for Suave and launched Suave Men in Argentina . What got me the attention is something that happens in parallel. That is my middle age crisis at the moment.

My assignment was to reposition the Axe campaign, the campaign idea what the brand stand for. In the past, the brand was super clear. It has a promise that was called the Axe Effect when you wear the fragrance and then you get as many women as possible. But then we realized that this wasn't working with the same direction anymore, and this was the year 2013. So we did a deep research to understand where men were across the globe in 10 countries. We talked to 3,500 guys. And in the output, we got for that study, there was a slide that I really engaged to really resonated with me that says men are performing their masculinity and not live it.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And I said, I see this all around. We don't need to go to China or in the States. It was all across [00:05:00] the globe. But also I was seeing in Iran, I said, Yeah, that is true. So men are men are performing who they are, not their masculinity. I said, something is very weird, and we need to do something about it. And this is how that changed the brand. And we went for a place that would transform how the brand communicate with men.

From Conquering to Connection

Fernando Desouches: That was through attraction in a very singular way. So attract as many women and as you can and as a conquering game, you conquer women. And we move that to a connection game where we invite men or we show men that their most attract serve is when they are who they are.

And they need to embrace that. And we will give a set of product to hands that, and we have proof of that. We test it also, we ask women are men. And it was very clear. We ask guys, Okay, what do you think that makes you more attractive in the eyes of women? And they would tell us be muscular or be fit , show off wealth and behave in a manly way. But when we ask women what they like most about men, They told us men that are confident being who they are, and [00:06:00]they make the them laugh, have humor.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: So it was very clear and I need to change that.

Bowen Dwelle: this is the Axe body spray, right? That's what you're talking about - you said it wasn't working anymore, and I just want to clarify. And not that the acts body spray wasn't working anymore, as if it ever worked in the first place, but that the message wasn't working with men anymore.

I remember this from, this interview that you did with Mickey Ferre, that you talked about changing the operating principle of this campaign from an attraction game to a connection game, and I just thought that expression was so beautiful.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. The way we say it is more for a conquering game to a connection game.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes. Thank you.

Between Equals

Fernando Desouches: And we've continued, it was a connection game between equals. Its regarding the gender, so everything in the same level. And the interesting part is that is not only a message that relax either the opposite sex or another gender, but your parent it relax, the person that is interesting in generating that.

Bowen Dwelle: Absolutely. As you [00:07:00] said, it becomes a game, which can be a very positive thing, the game of life, a game between equals and a game not about conquering or about dominating or even winning. It reminds me of this concept from this book, The Courage to be Disliked, which talks about this concept of keeping relationships horizontal as opposed to relationships with verticality. It's very much the same thing. It's about equality.

Early Conditioning

Fernando Desouches: This was the beginning. So you asked me how it started, and I realized that after relaunching the brand, I said, There's a lot of work to do. When I started digging on what was happening and realized two major conditioning amongst other that men were having and young boys were the first conditioning when we are 6, 7, 8 years old.

And what has being a man and when men don't cry and put yourself together, that part, that boys absorb consciously and act accordingly to keep their parents happy and, and be part of the male cohort. [00:08:00] And that with time, the parent that have is that this repression on certain behaviors and exacerbation of others make that, that the beginning is conscious, then become unconscious.

And when we are teenagers, young adults, we disconnect emotionally. We don't understand very well where we are. But the one that I found super interesting is the one that follows that the second big conditioning for me that was, okay, once we are young adults or teenagers and we aspire to be a successful man, how does it do look like?

And still today it's very narrow and materialistic when men worth for what they have on how they look and not much for who they are. And that marketing can change because marketing can build as an aspiration of men and actually is part of the problem marketing and the media on how we show the aspiration for men. But we can open that, showing a bigger scope that represents different values for men that could be and bring inspiration because if a brand that has certain respect starts showing different type of [00:09:00] masculinities, that will be accepted in the way, the same way they did with different standards of beauty for women or different genders, expressions, or different abilities more recently.

Performative Masculinity

Bowen Dwelle: This relationship it leads me to a couple of questions. Perhaps first to go back to how your personal evolution relates to where you found yourself professionally. You mentioned a midlife crisis or midlife moment. Was there an awakening for you personally in terms of your own masculinity and your understanding of yourself that contributed to this direction of interest in your work?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. So I think it was that I had everything. I had the work I dreamt of. I was working on that, I was living abroad, I already have my wife, one kid, but something was missing. So it was that call that, that you get at that stage. It doesn't matter if you get what you want or not, because many people, as we build aspirations in a way [00:10:00]that is a ladder, that we need to grow and get that, the ones that don't get it says and I'm not happy because I couldn't get what I want. But that's not true if you're performing who you are, because even though you get it, it will feel empty.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: And that was the call. One day, I was walking in the coast walls here, outside London, in the countryside, feeling not very good. I sat on bench by myself looking at the woods, and this is when the lightning came. I, At that moment, I realized I need to leave. I didn't know where I have to go, but I need to do it. I need to leave. And it wasn't immediate. That was 2014. It took me three years to leave. But from there, that day, the plan started.

Bowen Dwelle: And was that when you had the inspiration to create this agency focused specifically on new masculinity?

His Personal Breakthrough

Fernando Desouches: No, the answer no. And this is very interesting because at that moment I felt the need of starting the transformation. But as I did a breakthrough transformation, it wouldn't be a breakthrough if I would see it immediately, what I have to do.

I understood that I need to [00:11:00] plan for change and that change require a change in behaviors and change in beliefs. Get new insights and experiment something new. And it was a long journey when I prepare, in terms of, get some money out before jumping in, get the conditions. Then when I left the company, I study things, I did coaching, I tried with leadership development. I saw that coaching was very interesting, was one to one. When I get leadership development, the type of leader I face were very difficult to transform. And as for change, because they were very successful and very closed.

And then in a trip, again, in the nature in Scotland is where New Macho appears. And I said, Okay. I was leaving marketing aside. I need to get marketing back because that will give me the scale.

And this is when by talking to a friend of mine and a company called bbd Perfect Storm that is in London, we decided together to start working on this.

Bowen Dwelle: Amazing. Great. Great. And just to stick with that for a [00:12:00] moment, your personal transformation there, as you said, you felt a call and you didn't know the answer yet. You didn't know the direction that you would go, but you knew that you needed to go in a new direction and that you felt to plan for change. And it sounds like nature was a big part of that experience.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah, it's the thing that I joined in the dots from the past and I have a call for nature now, so something is there.

Therapy and Mens Work

Bowen Dwelle: I've heard you mention men's work before in some context, was that also part of this process for you?

Fernando Desouches: Yes, of course. Part of the preparation was not only money, part of the preparation was getting the courage and psychological sustain. I am from Argentina, so the good thing there is that

Bowen Dwelle: Lots of therapy.

Fernando Desouches: there's lot of therapy and there is not seen as something bad, but something that helps you to grow.

My mother was a therapist and so on, so I had a therapist. Then I started to open up and then I took, I have a very good mentors that, I [00:13:00] dunno if they were mentor, but they are the guides that help me to path through this. I have a coach that help me to get the courage. I have another leadership development, and writer friend that also give me a lot of tools to go with change and transformation and help me to understand how is the natural way of transformation that this is very useful for men to understand where I am in this path because in certainty that I am walking the path.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And then I met Kenny, that is a guy that also has been working with men in men groups for more than 20 years. And I started getting in with him and understanding in men's group how other men's were thinking outside of my small corporate circle, all of that. Plus, I went to with Mexican shamans. So op really open. I was really in a moment of opening.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, that was certainly part of my experience too in the corporate world. I had my own company for many years and it was fantastic [00:14:00] experience and interesting, successful, fulfilling in many ways. But I did not have the kind of personal connections, myself in that realm that were inspiring and, helping me to flourish and grow personally. And it wasn't only men's work, but certainly men's work was a big part of that for me. So, fantastic to hear a little bit about that, about your journey.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. This work gave me not only insights about where men were in a different environment, but also connected me with the power of men. That I remember being in a, with the guys from Rebel Wisdom that are guys that, that work with masculinity as well. And I went to a retreat with them, and they call it Vitamin M.

And it's true when you are in a circle that you hold the space and men open up and sustain each other. It's something I think we lost for quite a generation or two, or more,

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah,

Fernando Desouches: That was new for me. It was very [00:15:00] powerful.

Bowen Dwelle: that's, Yeah. Great to hear. I experienced the same thing. I think there's something very simple about being invited, and inviting oneself to participate in a group of other men. And, that's the choice I made as well. At a certain point, I realized that I was missing this vitamin M, in my own life, and I went looking for it.

And not only in men's work, but certainly that was part of it. And, people talk about initiation and, these other kind of rituals or processes that can be part of men's work or, or not. But for me, the foundation of it is simply participating, joining, being invited into a group of other men and experiencing directly, as you said, the power of men and therefore some of my own power as a

Fernando Desouches: Of course.

Yeah. And for me, it's not necessary to have a group of men. It's the conditions that men are under. No, I play football all my life, soccer, and I have very good friends there and I have [00:16:00] very, a good fun, banter all the time, but I didn't felt the energy. Energy was when we were present together, open and in circle.

Something like really even I couldn't go there in Zoom. Have to be person.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah. There's an intentionality, certainly again, which is very simple, to set the intention, I often do it at a dinner party, for example. It's just the difference between a conversation that just happens at random versus a conversation that happens with a little bit of intention to go deeper.

Just to sum up on, on men's work, people ask me, what is men's work? What's it for? How do you define it? And I just describe it as a place and a way to practice connecting.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah,

Bowen Dwelle: Is there a simple short definition that you have?

Integrated Masculinity

Fernando Desouches:

No, I think it is what we need. So if you tell me what men need now, is that this reconnection, connecting with itself, because we are moving from that performing that I describing before to being and this is the journey we are under. It's not just understanding the [00:17:00] journey, but part of the journey is reconnecting with myself.

Cause I don't know me have, I am emotionally detached for many years. And interesting part is when I recover the masculine energy to start doing from there. Because some, for many people, the story ends up in being vulnerable and emotionally, or connecting more with the em, feminine compassion and empathy care.

But it doesn't finish there. Once you are there, you need to grab that and do something, Get the masculine bag and do the change through there. From my point, perspective, and through the compassion, from the empathy, from the gap. From there, move.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah. And to integrate these different elements into a more complete being.

Fernando Desouches: indeed.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.

A Positive Role for Marketing

Bowen Dwelle: To go back to your work then, I read what your client, Carlos Gill at Unilever said about your work, what he said is, you've allowed our brand to be part of the change we want to see in men and their place in society.

And that's really beautiful praise from a client and also very illuminating, you know what I mean? To hear [00:18:00] a corporate client say that there is a change that they want to see in men. Really fascinating. Because of course , as you pointed out earlier, the relationship between marketing and identity is complicated and fraught, that is marketing has often in the past served to narrow our identity, and it's of course helped to create the man box, as it did for women as well. And so what role does marketing and advertising have to play in society and how can that role be more positive?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah, I think I can start with the example of what happened there. Know the one you just read. So the brand Man Plus Care have a care there in the center. And when they approach it, us, they told us, Look, we have a problem that is they don't care about care. And we want them to care about care, not just in a physical care, but also openly care because We want to get meaning and we want men to care for themselves and others.

The problem that [00:19:00] happen is that in the man box and the mantra of being a man, care, when we ask them, they tell us, no, care is a feminine trait or something that is self-indulgence. So what I, in terms of self care, what I would self care, whether care myself. And we said, Okay, but men are dying early than a woman, mental health, violence, drug abuse, and all of the things that we know are affecting more men than women, despite this is not a competition. They have to be for, we want the best for men and women.

The thing is we needed men to care for themself.

And when we understand, okay, we understand why you don't care for yourself though, Tell me, what do you care about? And the first thing they would say is, I care for my family. Perfect. So we needed to convince then that they need to care for themselves to care better for the family. So we did a survey with Equimundo that is based there in the us working on communities and gender and Unilever. And we got data from the US that show that when men care more for themself, not just physically, but also emotionally and socially, the more they care for the loved ones [00:20:00] and more people and more hours.

So then we have something that marketing can say, that is, when you're caring for others, start by caring for you.

Bowen Dwelle: It makes sense, But going back one level, how did Dove come up with this idea that they needed men to care more for themselves? They came up with this brand concept. Dove, men cares, or dove cares or something. So where did that idea come from?

Sustainability in Marketing

Fernando Desouches: yeah. There are different type of brands. Of course, this brand is a brand itself, personal care product, so they would say, we want men to care more for them to care the skin . But that is a little bit more than that. At Unilever and other companies they have demonstrated that brands that have certain purpose or grow by helping the society and the environment to grow, have more sustainable growth over time, more brand love and more growth.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: So this is why that brand in particular was looking for a space that bring its [00:21:00] products benefit to life, but also the same time should do good. Brands have in general something that is called brands say - what they talk about and the brand do. What is the change they're carrying. In that case, the change they were carrying was bringing that message and start working with fathers and working, in different ways to give space for men to care for themselves, for the benefit of of us.

Bowen Dwelle: I'm not a brand guy. My involvement in the media world came from the publishing and technology side. But this relationship between marketing and culture and identity and brands is very fascinating to me. And what you've just described is like an inversion, a reversal, of the classic kind of targeted marketing. We're gonna create a product and we're gonna figure out how to sell it to people. It's a reversal of that to, okay, we came up with this cool brand concept, Dove Cares, but [00:22:00] there's some real substance to the care. And it's based on the idea of doing something purposeful and meaningful. And then how does that translate down into products And okay, sure, you're gonna sell men face cream, , as part of that. But there's a mission. There's a mission in there.

Fernando Desouches: And this is the power of a brand. So many things can be copies. So how much you can differentiate in the shampoo you have. Creams, snacks, beverages. So the differentiation in a world that changing that fast and the technology we have today lasts very little in time. It could be copied very fast.

So what brings the difference is the brand, and if you have good quality and the brand is the emotional relationship you generate with the person that is buying it in certain space. So what do you do with that emotional space? How do you transform that emotional space in a way that the society needs it? How you can really add [00:23:00] value apart for the product you sell? And there are people that believes in that and people that not.

We have data that shows that the brands that are doing it well, benefit from it.

Bowen Dwelle: At this point, we should know intuitively, but we also have evidence that brands that actually do things realize more long term value. And I think you said this earlier, brand love, Is that what you said? More brand love? Yeah.

Yeah that's sweet. Because a lot of us myself included have this idea that marketing is sort of inherently evil, and I have said for years that advertising is obsolete.

And I'd love to get your take on this, that perhaps we could just turn advertising off, all of it, right?

Like, why do we need advertising ? Because of course, if I actually need something, I'm gonna go find it myself. Now, of course, advertising is a big part of how capitalist economy works, but, as a thought experiment. What if we just turned it off and all that effort went [00:24:00] into something else?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. Yeah. You are not alone. 70% of the people, or actually not 70% of the people, but people say that if there are 70 or 75% of the brands disappear in media from what day for the other, nothing would change. But there are brands that make the difference.

What a brand does is give you information, Okay, maybe invest a little bit more and buy something that I know that is a good quality or I share the values or just because I love it. And this is why brands are investing, but it's true that lazy marketing is invisible and more, more now, Now with all of the channels you have the amount of information you receive per day, if you don't take really meaningful at the right time in the wrong place,

Bowen Dwelle: you disappear. Yeah. Immediate. Yes. Yes. I think that you're right about that, and I think that is a very positive change . That, . people have much more choice and more immediate choice these days, and so they will react very quickly and move towards what is actually meaningful to them.

Where is Masculinity Headed?

Bowen Dwelle: To get back to [00:25:00] masculinity, I do absolutely feel and share the feeling that, something really is changing, with men and with masculinity much as it has for women in such a big way over the past several decades.

You have named this division that you run The New Macho, and it's all about helping brands to work with men, understand men, and to further the conversation about what is the new masculinity.

And so what is your take on that? Where do you feel that masculinity is going?

Just to say one more thing for me. One thing is that, a greater wholeness, a broader view of what it means to be a man is a big part of that. But part of what happens there is that, as our conception of what it means to be a man or a woman gets broader, it gets closer and closer to what it means to be a person.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah, of

Bowen Dwelle: right?

And less different. And that, that's perfectly fine. But that then leads us again back to the question of, okay so what does it mean [00:26:00] to be a man? If it's a lot like being a person.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. And I wouldn't care about that, that, So I think masculinity and femininities are things that we used to synthesize, to summarize the world. So course men have masculinity and femininity in different degrees.

From Performing To Being

Fernando Desouches: Where we are going is from the place you perform it to the place of being, in that place of being that you describe very well as presence. It's from there when you can then engage with certain attitudes that we may call masculine attitudes or feminine attitudes to respond to a situation that happens.

And this is what I like to think that we are going to an individuation, we are going to understand in ourself, detach from the situation, be present, get the tools, not just one set of tools, several, where we can choose from to respond to something, drive change or whatever we want to do.

I think honestly, I think men are doing the journey. What I don't see maybe is media brand communication following because we have data on that as well. And what would happen, Politicians are not [00:27:00] following as well. So what do we do with some of them? So what do We will regress or we will shape the other.

And I'm working certainly in try, not just working with brands, but also working move the industry, get the attention on industry to do things and drive change on how we can help men in this journey that already started to facilitate them and not regress. It's not easy.

Brands as Part of Culture and Identity

Bowen Dwelle: You said it's not easy. Yes. And nobody wants to be alone. We want to feel like we have companionship and support and to feel the resonance of who we are being with others. Like it or not, brands are a big part of our world, and brands can be a huge expression of identity, it's part of our cultural identity.

Fernando Desouches: And so, it can be a very beautiful thing. And so I really appreciate that aspect of the work that you're doing. As we work with aspiration, you can be the brand saying, Okay, I will read where men are and represent that, or you can sense where men are going to or represent [00:28:00] that.

Bowen Dwelle: I agree. It's putting something out in front. And taking a leadership position.

Fernando Desouches: Yes, exactly.

The Trap of Progressive Masculinity

Bowen Dwelle: So part of back to this question of where masculinity is headed. You've used this term of the man box which is often used to describe the narrow conception of masculinity that comes from a kind of patriarchal and performative history. You've also talked about the trap of progressive masculinity, and if you could just talk about that a little bit and about what's the opposite of the trap.

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. That's very interesting. There is a man box that is not serving men or boys. This is even costing society and there are studies from Equimundo that quantify that. This is the traditional masculinity.

So the counter movement of that was we need to be more progressive and we need to realize that men can be everything they can be, but the traditional one, and then you started to create a sort of conservative, progressive battle that doesn't exist because we are traditional for some [00:29:00] things and progressive for others, and we cannot be in both.

So what happened when we've been a man before, maybe was constraining men, but was very clear and it was a set of rules that were clear when those rules were broken and opened, immediately we went to say, Okay, what is the new playbook? There's no playbook. You write the playbook. So we go from rules to, there's no rules, but the ones you make and this is the journey. This is the difficult part, and this is something that is not easy to do.

So many men today feel lost.

I was in an interview last week before the Brazilian elections, Why (Boris) Johnson can be appealing to men? They said, Okay, I give you the playbook back.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: it's not that those men are bad people or evil or silly, it's they are lost and they need something that even though it's imperfect, can help them to recover some of the clarity.

Bowen Dwelle: And that feeling of being lost, can be a very [00:30:00] desperate place and it can lead to a lot of frustration and anger and people like Bolsonario and Trump, et cetera, they express and embody that frustration and anger. And I think that's a big part of the reason why a lot of people identify with them and there's a reason that men are frustrated, as you just said, they're lost, all the rules are gone.

We broke the rules, but we are not giving the tools

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: because if we break the rules, we need to give the tools. I always said the same. One guy, I was talking in a focus group and I ask about meaning. Cause men are craving for meaning.

They want to do work that brings meaning. And I said to him, Why would you do a more, meaningful job? And he told me, Yes, of course I would like to engage into a more meaningful career, but people judge me for the car I drive.

So this is where we are.

Disconnection

Fernando Desouches: But it is for both sexes, the disconnection. We were working also for a dating app very recently in Europe, talking to men and women. Men were lost saying that [00:31:00] we don't know what to do, if we need to pay the bill. Ask for a kiss. What are the limits? And women were in the same place, saying, 'I want men to, don't ask me what they need to do. Because I think all of these pressure that men are having about the progressiveness come from media. Nobody asked us women.'

So if we don't give the tools or how to navigate, how to recover judgment, to reconnect with yourself , men will continue being lost. And with that, all of what you said, that is where we are very comfortable talking about it because we are very comfortable talking about symptoms of this disengaged, disconnected men.

We talk about violence, sexual harassment, depression, anxiety, excessive sport, work, workalcoholics, alcoholics. So these are the symptoms. The root issue is another one.

Bowen Dwelle: What I was thinking while you were talking about that, is that for me, personally, it comes back to identity, and so much of what we had grown up with and had in the past about whether it's masculinity or femininity, [00:32:00] is a hegemonic definition that comes from outside of ourselves and is external and is not about identity and is it's performative.

So we perform some act so that we can pass as a man, for example. And that gives us, some feeling of identity, but it's not grounded in our own identity. And so the real challenge is to get to a place where, you know, again, whether we're talking about men or women, where we have better tools to understand ourselves, so that the question of masculinity or femininity or whatever-inity becomes less important, actually.

Some of the most beautiful and meaningful definitions or redefinitions of, for example, masculinity that I have read recently have come from Grayson Perry right there in the UK. And he basically says masculinity should be, " whatever you want it to be."

Another definition comes from David Buchbinder, he says, " we [00:33:00] need to get to the place where we're ready to abandon the idea that men must conform to a certain model of the masculine if they are to be counted as men." Because that is what we have had to do, is earn our place as a man by doing some specific things. And come to recognize that masculinity is simply "the totality of how all men might choose to enact socially the fact of their maleness," which is very vague , but it comes back to identity, right? And individuality.

I go back to the tools. What are the tools? Education, how I been educated by following a curricula that I need to attach to. Nobody raised me as ' Grow my own interests and understanding who I am, what is the world I want to see. What is the difference I want to make in the world?'

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Same with work. We have fixed ladders.

Fernando Desouches: And this is where, again, brands can work because brands can give value to that aspiration. As we look what happened with [00:34:00] covid, all of the sudden nurses, male nurses, became something very appreciated of the value by society, This is an example of how culture can give certain tools for men and women to feel validated on their own individuality by following and being who they are.

Examples of Positive Masculinity

Bowen Dwelle: Related to that , can you give some examples of people that are embodying a positive and new masculinity ? Who do you see as examples?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. One that I talk a lot is David Attenborough. He's an elder guy and he's honestly working for a long time on how he can leave a better world that he received.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And regarding his age, he's continue doing the effort in a very engaging way. I think there are men that are breaking the mold. I don't remember now name of the owner of (Yvon Chouinard ) Patagonia, but doing what he has done by saying, Okay, my main stakeholder is the Earth, so we give my company to the NGOs that are really [00:35:00] making a difference there. Brings a new perspective of inspiration, breaking what is not serving to the system. That this, the three months three months profit and loss for companies. So these are the things that I really value in men.

The system is in crisis. Now, we perma-crisis, so the system is in crisis for a long time. So we need to design the new, this is what we need to do. And these people that are showing different perspectives on how you can drive change in an aspirational way are the ones that feel attracted to.

And at macro level, I think these two are great examples of service and change and not small talk change. All actions that come from compassion and care, the planet in this case. And I would imagine this is not easy for them to do. It's not.

Generative Action and Resistance

Bowen Dwelle: I certainly agree with your examples and the principles that they illustrate, of service and generative action, generative at a very large scale, and also [00:36:00] generative not only in terms of equality for humans but also in terms of our relation to other species and to the planet.

Fernando Desouches: And acting it. Acting it in the sense of, what is the integration of both, that warrior, that links with the compassion and drives the change we need. Because the systems are suffering, the environment and people are suffering.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. One of the other beautiful definitions of masculinity that I have come across lately is from another writer that I respect a lot, Kim Stanley Robinson. And he talks about masculinity moving from dominance to resistance.

The thing about patriarchal masculinity, is that it offers this promise of what's been described as a lottery ticket. You know, that as a man, there's this promise that you might get power, wealth, status just because you're a man. The problem is almost nobody wins the lottery.

And so, many men end up [00:37:00] disappointed, angry, alienated, frustrated, et cetera, especially if they remain complicit or subordinated to the system. And that is what leads us to resistance, right? To re resist that system and work against it, and find something different, outside of it, larger than it, new and more valid really, in the present and in the future.

Working to Lead Positive Change

Bowen Dwelle: So what are you working on now that's new and interesting for you?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. On the brand front, we are working with a brand in a campaign against gender based violence in Mexico that is quite high. Next week. I gonna be on a panel at the Unstereotype Alliance Global Summit. That is in the UN headquarters in New York.

We are working with Mr. Porter, that is a brand that aggregates and sell luxury product for men on a survey on understanding success and happiness and how we can use luxury brands to, to change that.

Bowen Dwelle: And also I'm working with a Equimundo one program that calls Global Boyhood initiative that they [00:38:00] go with the Kering Foundation, they launch it together, they go to schools in the UK, US, Italy, France. Mexico and talk to boys four to 13 years old in different themes across their ages, through their teachers about gender expressions, their identity, violence, sexuality, masculinity, all of that. Great. Great. That's beautiful to hear. And I have to say, so impressive and hopeful to hear about all of this very positive work that you and others are doing with brands as leaders of positive change in our culture. Well done, Fernando.

Fatherhood and Raising Boys

Bowen Dwelle: I'm not a father myself, but it very much resonates with me, the importance of working with young people, with boys, on the question of who they are becoming and what it means to be a man and, what the direction is.

You're a father yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. I have

Fernando Desouches: two kids, two boys.

Bowen Dwelle: Two boys. , so what do you tell them?

Fernando Desouches: I try to listen and be with them, and maybe ask questions. The other day one of my kids that is 12 now, he told me no, there was [00:39:00] this guy that is very annoying. And I said, Okay. Did you ask him what happened with him? Did you tell him that what he was doing angers you? Because maybe the answer surprise you.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah. You might learn something. Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: And then try to be with them. When I became a father, it wasn't love at first sight. Is, of course, I always love him, but I needed time. And now they grow. The older they are, the more responsibility I feel. But at the same time, the more enjoyable I find this experience, because I see reflected , I see surprise, and it's interesting. It's not easy.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes. So I've heard . Just last question then since you brought in fatherhood. How did you decide to become a father? Is it something that you pursued as a priority? Or how did that happen?

Fernando Desouches: Yeah. My wife is very wise and I learned a lot from her. And we talk about it. We talk about it, and I said, Okay. We were like 32, 33, and we said, look, we love each other. It's very likely from statistics that there would be a moment that we [00:40:00] split or something that we grow in different paths.

Are we mature enough to understand if we are bringing a son to the world or other to the world that should be at the center of our attention, even though our life goes different ways? we wanted to have kids and we were getting an age. So what we wanted to be sure was having a contract of saying, we understand the responsibility that is this.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And two individuals that, her, myself, could in the future, grow in different direction and split would always be mature enough to agree that we need to take care of that person.

Bowen Dwelle: , I see.

Fernando Desouches: I dunno how serious would be, but that conversation existed. We needed that. We needed, I dunno why.

Bowen Dwelle: . That makes sense. So you both knew that you wanted to become parents and you discussed the meaning of that in the context of your relationship over the long term. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you always know that you wanted to be a father, as a younger person?

Child-Free as a Brave Choice

Fernando Desouches: Yes. the answer is yes. I never doubt it. [00:41:00] But when I became a father and realized what it means, I started to respect more people that decide not to have kids. Maybe it's consistent with what I said, understanding the responsibility of bringing a person to the world. And I know people that wanted to have kids and couldn't, but this is different.

I know people that decided not to have (children) and much more now than before,

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: and I found that very brave because of the social pressure. I was talking the other day with a lady that has come from India. Imagine, indian family, and she decided not to have a family and said I don't want, I agree with my husband, but we both don't want, and that cost me the rejection from my in- laws, that I am the disgrace for the family.

So the bravery of this generation that is open in the game, we couldn't have an eternally growing population. It's killing us.

Bowen Dwelle: a good point. Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And the ones that break the inertia, and said, this is what I want to do. And [00:42:00] then of course, open other point of care. So these people in general, in most of the case, are very creative and do what they love because they have less financial pressure and not the frustration of I tried but I couldn't, which is something that they have to be worked on.

Bowen Dwelle: Yeah.

Fernando Desouches: Opens a new set of population and culture that is reaching certain critical mass now and we need to listen and see what happened there.

Bowen Dwelle: Thank you. That's a very positive point of view and also very refreshing. It helps me, as someone who has chosen not to be a father, for several of those reasons. But it also comes with a cost, it comes with the knowledge of, and the feeling of loss, and you pointing to the generative aspect there is very helpful. Thank you.

Fernando Desouches: No welcome. I didn't know that, the whole story, but I really believe so and I respect a lot that and this is when we maybe too close, but if we are saying being a man is what you want to make about it, that also needs to encompass not being a father, at least a biological father or an [00:43:00] adoptive father, but you can act as a father of people without being father.

Bowen Dwelle: Yes.

Fernando Desouches: And that is fine. That is, doesn't make you less as a man or less as a woman because if we feel it as men, women feel it twice. And we need to respect that. When I was talking with this lady the other day, I was honestly humble about the braveness that is brave because one thing is doing it in London or in California and the other is doing it from Indian roots.

Bowen Dwelle: . Well Put. Thank you. Thank you. Fernando, what a pleasure to meet you and speak with you. Thank you so much for the time.

Fernando Desouches: I enjoyed it, Always learn from these things a lot. So thanks for your time and your interest.

Bowen Dwelle: Great. Thank you again, Fernando, a real pleasure. And I really appreciate the work that you're doing.

You can find Fernando on LinkedIn and Twitter @Fer_Desouches and at BBD Perfect Storm.

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I’ve got some questions for you…

How well does the work that you do align with your own personal values? Is there any way that you would like to change how you live so that you can feel more aligned with your work?
Where do you think masculinity is headed? Is it some sort of ‘new man’ Or is it a new way of thinking about men?
Do you see masculinity shifting from ‘a conquering game to more of a connection game,’ “from performing who you are not to being comfortable who you are,” from “dominance to resistance,” or perhaps some other shift happening?
Do you think that marketing can serve men to open further, as opposed to boxing men in, as it has in the past?
Are you a father? How did you decide, or end up as a parent, or not?

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