The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen. C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor who used to write food criticism for the LA Times. He’s also an avid rock climber and tabletop game player. He uses these interests to explore the philosophy of games and how the scoring systems we use in our daily lives can subtly take over our values. For example, law school rankings were designed to help students assess what a law school has to offer, but then law schools started making institutional decisions so they could rank better, even though those changes didn’t actually improve the student experience. Or we buy a sleep tracker to see how we’re sleeping, but then become obsessed with our sleep score, which in turn makes us anxious about sleep, which makes our sleep worse. Nguyen calls it “value capture.” The number that was supposed to represent what you care about ends up replacing it. One insight that he made in the book that has stuck with me is the distinction between an achievement attitude and a striving attitude. Achievement players play to win; striving players play because they love playing. It’s made me think about the metrics I’m tracking and whether they’re actually helping me live a flourishing life. 

Flint and Tinder Vintage Sateen Shorts. It hit 95 degrees in Tulsa last week. In March. So I’ve officially declared shorts season open and realized I could use a pair that wasn’t just another chino short. Flint and Tinder based these on 1940s U.S. Army fatigue uniforms. The fabric is matte on the outside, soft against the skin, and comes garment-washed so they don’t have that stiff new-clothes feel out of the box. The vintage military silhouette is exactly what I was after. Not cargo shorts, not golf shorts, just a clean utilitarian look that actually goes with things. Shorts for when you’re tired of reaching for the same khaki pair every time it gets warm.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Hoosiers. Our kids both play basketball, so we figured it was time to sit them down for this 1986 classic. Gene Hackman plays a new coach with a checkered past who takes over a tiny Indiana high school team and leads them on an unlikely run at the state championship. He ruffles feathers and fights to earn the respect of his players, the town, and a doubtful teacher/love interest. It’s a pleasant, feel-good movie (with an 80s synth soundtrack that feels amusingly out of sync with the 1950s setting) that makes the Indiana countryside look awfully bucolic. Great to watch after your March Madness bracket has been busted. 

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man by Tom Junod. Tom Junod is widely considered one of the greatest magazine writers of his generation — he spent decades at Esquire penning the kind of long profiles that made you feel like you’d met the person. This is his first book, and it’s a memoir about his father, Lou, a charismatic, larger-than-life philanderer who cast a long shadow over Tom’s upbringing and adulthood. What starts as a son trying to understand his dad turns into something much heavier. Digging around in the past, Tom uncovers family secrets that had been buried for decades. The book is both touching and devastating — devastating in its revelations, and also in how dang well it’s written.

Devil’s Den State Park. Our family did a 16-mile spring break backpacking trip on the Butterfield Trail in Devil’s Den State Park in northwest Arkansas this week. While the Ozark Mountains don’t pack the height and grandeur of the ranges out West, they don’t mess around. There are some long, steep inclines on the Butterfield Trail that reacquainted us with the hurts-so-good satisfactions of strenuosity. We camped at a spot called Rock Hollow right next to a river, which made for a nice burbling background to our sleep. The rest of the park has a lot of pretty spots, as well as structures built by the CCC in the 1930s, which adds a cool historical layer to the whole thing. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity of NW Arkansas, Devil’s Den is worth the trip.

Americans Didn’t Panic About the Telephone. We Didn’t Need To. When concerns about what the internet and the smartphone are doing to our minds and culture are brought up, people sometimes dismiss them by saying that folks have always wrung their hands about new technologies. But as Andrew Heisel points out in this piece, that’s not actually the case. When the original telephone became mainstream, people weren’t much concerned about what it was doing to the world. That’s because it was genuinely useful, and its upsides very clearly outweighed any potential downsides. Our (legitimate) worries about the smartphone arise because we sense that, in its case, the dynamic is the reverse. 

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: Say Yes to (This) Life and DB Dialogues: Zena Hitz on the Religious Life.

Quote of the Week

All human situations have their inconveniences; we feel those of the present, but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. 

—Benjamin Franklin

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Carson the Magnificent by Bill Zehme. Bill Zehme spent decades working on this biography of Johnny Carson but died before he could finish it. Mike Thomas stepped in to complete it. Zehme’s writing crackles. He has a gift for highlighting small details of his subjects (which you can see in another book of his I enjoyed about Sinatra) that seem like they shouldn’t matter, but when taken together paint a full picture of the person. He does this masterfully in this Carson bio. Carson was the most famous introvert in television history. He was genuinely warm on camera, but completely unknowable off it. Carson was ambitious, and that ambition cost him a healthy family life. He was married four times, and the divorces were caused by his alcohol-fueled cruelty. He could be a real son-of-a-bitch to the people closest to him. Besides getting a view of Carson the man, Zehme lets readers see what television and the entertainment world was like in the 20th century — which was certainly a lot more glamorous than it is today. 

Garmin Forerunner 55. I wore an Apple Watch as daily wear for years, then stopped (getting notifications bugged me). But I’d still strap it on for Zone 2 cardio and HIIT sessions to track my heart rate. Its battery life is abysmal, though, so I had to remember to charge it the day before each session. I usually forgot, so no watch to track my heart rate. I wanted something that monitored heart rate but didn’t require me to babysit the battery. The Garmin Forerunner 55 solved that. If you’re not using the smartwatch mode or GPS, the battery lasts for a few weeks. I like that it’s not packed with a crazy overabundance of features, and as to the features it does have, I can’t speak to them, as I don’t use them. I just use it for heart rate monitoring, and it seems accurate and gets the job done. It’s reliable too; Kate’s been using one daily for several years and hasn’t had any problems with it. 

“Lonely Town” by Brandon Flowers. The Killers’ frontman put out a solo album back in 2015 called The Desired Effect. It’s one of my favorite albums. The whole thing is great, but my favorite track is “Lonely Town.” It’s a nostalgia-infused rock/synth gem that sounds like it was part of a John Hughes soundtrack. Pet Shop Boys producer Stuart Price had a hand in it, and you can hear that influence all over it. If you’ve only known Flowers through the Killers’ bigger hits, give this one a listen. It’s a song that sounds both timeless and like a specific era all at once.

Pat Riley thinks a suit makes a more effective leader. He might be right. Last week, Pat Riley was honored with a statue outside the Crypto.com Arena (now there’s a catchy name) in Los Angeles, and he used the occasion to make a plea: NBA coaches need to go back to wearing coats and ties on the sideline. Riley was famous for his game day style. Always a sharp Armani suit. And it wasn’t just vanity that caused him to dress sharp. It gave him confidence. Research backs him up. A 2015 study found that wearing formal clothes shifts people toward abstract, big-picture thinking — the type of thinking leaders need to be good at. Another study found that employees who dressed up more than usual saw boosts in self-esteem and performance. “Look the part, be the part,” as Prop Joe memorably put it in The Wire. Of course, the pandemic-era athleisure quarter-zip has become so entrenched that when coaches were polled, over 80 percent preferred staying casual. Comfortable, yes. But the look does not mean business.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Why Aren’t the Young People Dancing Anymore? and Sunday Firesides: Despise Not the Thing That Would Save You. 

Quote of the Week

Character, greatly as it is to be desired, is NOT a thing in itself but a product of sanity and right living. It is founded and maintained only by constant performance. There is no way to hurry it. It is useless to try to cultivate it as such for when you do you are likely to end a prig. Character of the real sort is quite like health and happiness. It should need and get very little DIRECT attention but appear like the fragrance of a flower in the process of normal, vigorous, wholesome, purposeful living, doing.

—Frank H. Cheley

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Blood Touching Blood by Derrick Jeter. One of my favorite corners of American history to read about is the Indian Wars after the Civil War, particularly the conflict between the US Army and the Comanches and Apaches. Derrick Jeter is a writer and historian who specializes in Texas history, and in his debut novel, he drops readers into a regiment of Buffalo Soldiers stationed in West Texas, led by a violent, haunted colonel named Ethan Pendleton who eats lemons like apples, rind and all. The regiment is on the tail of an elusive Apache named Victorio, and Jeter captures the brutality of the conflict in the American Southwest in gory, unflinching detail. It’s kind of a combination of Lonesome Dove, Empire of the Summer Moon, and the works of Cormac McCarthy. I enjoyed the read. 

BAMF Style. This is one of the OG men’s style blogs; it’s been publishing regularly since 2012 and is still going strong. The site breaks down iconic outfits from television and film, gives you the history and background of the clothing, then offers suggestions on how to replicate the look yourself. Whenever I spot a cool jacket or shirt in an old movie or TV show, I go to BAMF Style and they almost always have something on it. I respect the consistency of this author. Great resource for style inspiration.

Mountain & Sackett Ties. I wear a tie to church every Sunday. It had been a while since I bought some new ones, and mine were looking pretty ratty. I wanted to freshen up my Sunday best, so I picked up a few ties from Mountain & Sackett, which has been making ties in New York since 1957. I love supporting a Made in America business. Old-time AoM readers might remember Mountain & Sackett; they used to do giveaways with us back in the early days of the site. The quality is excellent, and their designs are sharp without being flashy. If you’re in the market for a new necktie, check them out.

Harvey. I’d seen the play version of Harvey back in high school but had never watched the 1950 film starring Jimmy Stewart. What finally got me to sit down and watch it was a local connection: the library branch near me in Tulsa (The Peggy Helmerich Library) is named after the actress who played Nurse Kelly. Back then she was Peggy Dow. She married a Tulsa oil baron, retired from acting, and moved here to raise five kids, devoting the rest of her life to philanthropy in the city, particularly for health and reading. The film itself is charming: Jimmy Stewart plays a genial, unflappable man whose best friend is an invisible six-foot rabbit named Harvey. Hijinks ensue. Stewart’s aw-shucks-ness is a little much in the film, but overall it’s a pleasant flick to watch on a low-key evening.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: Don’t Lose the Thread and Does the Character of the People You Listen to Matter?

Quote of the Week

I do not believe that anybody in any circumstances can be happy until he expresses that which God has made to dominate in his life; until he has given vent to that grand passion which speaks loudest in his nature; until he has made the best use of that gift which was intended to take precedence of all his other powers.

—Orison Swett Marden

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. The founders of Huckberry gifted me this book over a decade ago, and it sat on my shelf unread until a few weeks back when I finally cracked it open. It’s the first novel I’ve read about Vietnam, and man, it was brutal. Marlantes captures the relentlessly unromantic misery of that war and puts you right in Nam. You get detailed descriptions of leeches burrowing into skin, the jungle rot eating through feet, and the violence that arrives suddenly and without any sense of meaning behind it. He also does a bang-up job of capturing the social dynamics of the war, particularly the racial tensions between black and white soldiers, as well as the tensions between the guys in the bush and the leaders in the rear. Marlantes was a Rhodes Scholar who volunteered for Vietnam, served as a Marine lieutenant, and earned the Navy Cross, so it’s a book based on very firsthand experience. Took him 30 years to write it. Fair warning: lots of f-bombs and graphic violence throughout. Again, it’s brutal, but if you want to understand what Vietnam actually felt like for the guys on the ground, I don’t think you’ll find a better book.

Double Indemnity. After watching The Apartment and seeing Fred MacMurray play the sleazy philandering executive, I decided to go down a MacMurray rabbit hole with my movie picks. 1944’s Double Indemnity was the obvious next stop, and it didn’t disappoint. This is filmmaker Billy Wilder at the top of his game. Insurance salesman Walter Neff (MacMurray) gets tangled up with Barbara Stanwyck’s anklet-wearing femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, and the two of them hatch a scheme to murder her husband and collect on his accident insurance policy. The dialogue is razor sharp. Every line between Neff and Dietrichson crackles with a mix of flirtation and menace that keeps you off balance the whole film. And Edward G. Robinson as the claims adjuster Barton Keyes does a great job playing an insurance adjuster; the guy treats insurance fraud investigation the way a homicide detective treats a murder case. The whole movie has this inevitability to it that’s like watching two people walk toward a cliff they can both see but refuse to acknowledge. Insurance fraud has never been so suspenseful. Straight down the line, baby.

Jetboil Stash Cooking System. When we go backpacking, one piece of gear that has been consistently useful — and gives me a surprising amount of joy to use — is the Jetboil Stash. The thing boils water in about 100 seconds. That doesn’t sound like a big deal until you’ve been hiking for eight hours with a 40-pound pack and you’re so hungry you’re tempted to eat your dehydrated beef stroganoff as is. With this Jetboil, you click the igniter, turn the knob, and by the time you’ve gotten your spork out and torn open the Mountain House bag, the water’s hot and ready. Everything nests together — burner, fuel canister, stabilizer — into one compact unit that slides into your pack without taking up much real estate.

The Death of Bar Soap in America. Dan Kois over at Slate wrote a fantastic deep dive into the decline of bar soap in America, which traces the whole cultural history of soap — from Louis XIV taking only two baths in his entire life, to the rise of Procter & Gamble scaring people about germs to sell Ivory, to the invention of Softsoap in 1980, to body wash outselling bar soap for the first time in 2009. Many people have switched to body wash because they think it’s more sanitary than a bar of soap. But Kois did his own study on this: he took a used bar of soap and a shower pouf used to lather body wash to a bacteriological lab to see which one harbored more bacteria. The pouf had 43,000 colony-forming units per square inch. The soap? 2,500. Advantage: bar soap. Of course, a lot of guys just use body wash directly, sans pouf, but then it doesn’t lather all that well. We still use bar soap in our house (Irish Spring, baby), and I hate going to hotels where all they’ve got is body wash bolted to the wall in some refillable dispenser. The lather is weak, you have to keep pumping the thing, and I’m always vaguely suspicious that housekeeping is filling those branded bottles with whatever’s cheapest. Can’t beat a good old-fashioned bar of soap. May it endure.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: Turn on Your Inner Lights and Confessions of a Digital Backslider.

Quote of the Week

There are two ways to interest a man or arouse his curiosity. One is to tell him something that he didn’t know. The other is to remind him of something he has forgotten.

—A.E.N. Gray

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Aerobic Exercise Proves Just as Effective as Antidepressants in Large Review. We’ve talked about the mental health benefits of exercise on AoM for years, and I’m fond of saying that if you struggle with depression and aren’t regularly exercising, you haven’t yet begun to fight. So it’s nice to see a massive new analysis that confirms this mantra, as well as the reams of research that have previously proven the depression-fighting benefits of physical activity. Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, this analysis looked at data from nearly 80,000 people across more than 1,000 studies and found that exercise reduced depression symptoms with an effect size comparable to (and sometimes surpassing) that of antidepressants and psychotherapy. Aerobic exercise (running, walking, cycling) came out on top, and group settings outperformed solo workouts. And of course exercise has benefits beyond mental health and doesn’t come with the negative side effects of antidepressants nor the cost of therapy. If you’re battling the black dog, even taking a daily morning walk can help keep it on a leash.

People’s Choice Old Fashioned Original Beef Jerky. In looking for an all-natural beef jerky, I decided to try some from People’s Choice — a family-run operation out of Los Angeles that’s been at it for four generations. I wasn’t sure about the jerky at first; as compared to the gas station variety, which is typically thick, moist, and sweet, it’s thin and very dry. But dang, it really grew on me. The jerky kind of melts in your mouth and releases this bona fide steak-like flavor the standard rubbery stuff can’t touch. The ingredient list for the Old Fashioned Original variety is really clean: just beef, salt, and spices. No sugar. No preservatives. No MSG. I also like that it’s not excessively salty; a lot of jerky out there makes you feel as dehydrated as the meat. All in all, it tastes like what a cowboy would’ve been chewing on the trail, and I’m digging it.

The Twilight Zone: “Printer’s Devil.” In season four of The Twilight Zone, episodes were stretched from their formerly tight 25-minute runtime to an hour. While most of those longer installments sagged under the additional length, this was one that benefited from it. The story follows a struggling newspaper editor who, desperate to save his failing publication, makes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious drifter who offers him success on a silver platter. The scoops pour in. The headlines write themselves. Circulation skyrockets. But there’s a dark price to be paid for the paper’s new popularity. It’s a resonant plot that shows that our modern era of cutthroat competition for clicks, subscribers, and relevance isn’t anything new, nor is the temptation to sell your soul for some attention. 

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher. I first read this book way back in 2013, and I still think about it regularly. I’ve been going back through my highlights this week, and it holds up. Gallagher’s argument boils down to this: the quality of your life depends less on what happens to you and more on what you choose to pay attention to. She came to this realization after being diagnosed with cancer and deciding she wasn’t going to let the disease monopolize her focus. It was published in 2009, before the current discourse about phones and distraction, so a lot of her insights are extremely prescient. If you enjoy Cal Newport’s writing on deep work, you’ll enjoy this book.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: Give It to the Busy Man and Navigating the Tricky Tension Between Love and Respect.

Quote of the Week

Mediocrity is obscurity.

—Timothy Fuller

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Flint and Tinder Reverse Sateen Fatigue Shirt. Years ago, I picked up a vintage military-inspired field jacket from Flint and Tinder that’s become one of my go-to pieces. They discontinued it, but this reverse sateen fatigue shirt (really more of a shacket) is pretty close to that field jacket. The reverse sateen weave is the same fabric used in classic M-51 military uniforms. Flint and Tinder added just enough stretch to make it comfortable for all-day wear without losing that rugged, broken-in military heritage. Perfect for the coming spring when you need that lighter layer for in-between temps.

“Arthur’s Theme” by The New Edition. I’ve got a weird soft spot for muzak. You know what I’m talking about: smooth, instrumental versions of pop hits that filled department stores in the ’80s or were played in elevators. It provides some background stimulation without being distracting. The New Edition has a muzak take on Christopher Cross’ “Arthur’s Theme” that slaps and is nostalgia-soaked. Takes me right back to Saturday afternoons at Montgomery Ward in the 1980s. It’s great to listen to while you’re doing puzzles. Check out my complete muzak puzzle playlist.

Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross. I like reading Tyler Cowen. He’s always got some interesting, contrarian takes. Talent didn’t disappoint in that department. The premise of the book is that most of us are terrible at spotting talent, whether we’re hiring employees, choosing business partners, or just trying to figure out who’s worth listening to. Cowen and Gross argue that traditional interviews and résumés miss what actually matters. Instead, they offer practical frameworks for identifying high performers. Look for people who are “energizers” rather than “de-energizers.” Ask candidates what they’ve been learning lately or what they’re obsessed with. One bit that stuck with me: people who’ve overcome real adversity often have a kind of resilience and resourcefulness you can’t teach. It’s a quick read, but packed with lots of interesting insights. 

“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” by Gay Talese. This 1966 Esquire profile is one of those pieces that gets referenced constantly in discussions about magazine writing, so I finally got around to reading it. Journalist Gay Talese wanted to do a profile of Sinatra, but the singer was sick and refused to be interviewed. So Talese built his piece by spending months hanging around Sinatra’s entourage, talking to everyone in his orbit, and observing the crooner at work and play. You’re with Sinatra in recording studios, watching him brood in restaurants, and feeling the tension when his mood darkens. Talese uses something as mundane as Sinatra having a cold as a way to reveal the guy’s character — his volatility, generosity, paranoia, and charisma. This is one of the canonical examples of “New Journalism,” which uses the tools of fiction to write nonfiction. If you’re interested in what great writing can look like, it’s essential reading.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: The Sweet Taste of (Healthy) Revenge and DB Dialogues: On Happiness in Action.

Quote of the Week

A man who has never enjoyed beautiful things in the company of a woman whom he loved has not experienced to the full the magic power of which such things are capable.

—Bertrand Russell

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The Apartment. My most recent Zone 2 cardio movie was this 1960 Billy Wilder film. And man, it was sadder than I expected. Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, an ambitious insurance clerk who lends his apartment to his bosses so they can carry on affairs, hoping they’ll return the favor with a promotion. Sounds like it’d be a comedy, and parts of it are, but the movie gets pretty heavy. Lemmon’s performance is top-notch. He perfectly captures a guy who keeps compromising his dignity to climb the corporate ladder, all while quietly pining for an elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine. Wilder doesn’t pull any punches. By the end, you’ve watched all the characters hit bottom before bouncing somewhat back. 

EPIC Provisions Sea Salt Beef & Beef Liver Bites. Lately, I’ve been wanting to incorporate some liver into my diet. It’s packed with nutrients and minerals like iron. But I’m not ready to sauté a whole liver with onions. These jerky bites from EPIC Provisions are a baby step to get into the offal game. They’re made from 100% grass-fed beef, mixed with a small amount of beef liver. They don’t taste quite as good as straight beef jerky, but I’m fine with trading a bit of liver flavor for the benefits liver brings. A serving packs 11 grams of protein and hardly any carbs, making them a macro-friendly way to hit your protein goals.  

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. My march through Tom Wolfe’s canon continues, and this one might be my favorite so far. Wolfe takes the story of America’s early space program and turns it into both an enlightening history and a hilarious character study. What he captures brilliantly is the manly ethos of these early jet test pilots — men who pushed experimental aircraft to their limits, sometimes dying in the process, to prove they had the right stuff.  The irony Wolfe hammers home is how the Mercury program actually stifled everything these pilots valued; instead of pushing the envelope in demonstrations of skills, the astronauts had to submit to being what they themselves called “spam in a can” — passengers strapped inside rockets, pressing buttons when told. Wolfe’s writing crackles with energy, and his ability to get inside the competitive, death-defying culture of test pilots is masterful. This was a lot of fun to read.

Students Are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up. A lot of the concern around artificial intelligence and young people has centered on the way they can be robbed of learning academics by employing A.I. to do their schoolwork. Clay Shirky, a vice provost at New York University, says an even more worrisome danger is “emotional offloading, the use of A.I. to reduce the energy required to navigate human interaction.” Young adults are using A.I. to draft emails to their teachers, send messages on dating apps, and respond to friends’ texts. Anxious about saying the wrong thing, they deprive themselves of the experience of having real, unscripted — sometimes messy but ultimately refining — interpersonal interactions. One haunting anecdote I heard on this front was that a young man and woman who liked each other were each using A.I. to write the messages they exchanged, so that their early courtship was actually two robots talking to each other. Dang dystopian. 

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect, Just Aware and The Power of “I Like,”or Why Do People Hate the Idea of Motivation?

Quote of the Week

Head knowledge is good, but heart knowledge is indispensable. The training of the hands and feet must be added to make a rounded education. We must all learn these days to become spiritual pioneers if we would save the world from chaos.

—E.V. Hammond

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The Hustler. The Hustler was my most recent Zone 2 cardio watch. Paul Newman plays “Fast Eddie” Felson, a pool shark gunning for the legendary Minnesota Fats (played by Jackie Gleason). The black-and-white cinematography is beautiful, but it’s the story that keeps you hooked. The movie’s a meditation on ambition and how it can drive you to greatness or destroy everything you touch. Eddie’s got all the talent and ambition in the world, but he keeps sabotaging himself because he doesn’t know how to harness it. The pool match sequences are top-notch. Made me want to go and play pool. 

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. I’m re-reading the Old Testament this year and using Alter’s translation for my reading. Alter, a literary scholar, spent decades working on this translation, and his focus on capturing the Hebrew’s poetic power makes these ancient texts feel immediate and alive. The footnotes are what make this edition invaluable. They’re not overly theological, but instead offer clear explanations of historical context, wordplay, and literary techniques that you’d otherwise miss. It’s broken up into three hefty volumes and the set is pricey, but the investment in shelf space and price tag has been worth it for me. 

The Backcountry Rescue Squad at America’s Busiest National Park. The most recent New Yorker features a great piece by Paige Williams about search and rescue operations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s the busiest national park in America, and the terrain can be wild and brutal. As a result, many visitors end up needing to be rescued. To carry out these missions, the Park Service relies on both paid professionals and volunteer organizations like BUSAR (Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue), which operates in the Smokies. BUSAR is made up of elite outdoor athletes who drop everything to save strangers in the worst conditions imaginable. They take no pay and show up in their own vehicles, buying their own gas and gear. They train relentlessly for the gnarliest scenarios, with exercises that include building fires after being submerged in frigid creeks, practicing technical rope rescues on steep slopes, and attending strenuous weekly workouts. Be sure to check out our article on why you might consider volunteering for a search and rescue team yourself.

Stormy Kromer Mackinaw Coat. I bought this coat over a decade ago, and it’s become my go-to when the temperature gets frigid. The 26-ounce virgin wool is thick and warm without being bulky, and the unlined design makes it easy to layer. I often wear it over my suit when it’s cold on the way to Sunday morning church. Six pockets give you plenty of room for gloves, a wallet, and your smartphone. It’s not cheap, but the construction justifies the price; this thing is built to last. I’ll probably pass it down to my grandkids. Plus, it looks incredibly handsome. 

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Ex Libris: Man’s Search for Meaning.

Quote of the Week

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Round House Duck Canvas Bib Overalls. For heavy chores around the house or helping my friend slaughter chickens at his farm, I put on my Round House overalls. This Oklahoma company has been making jeans and overalls right here in the state for over a century. Their duck canvas bibs are tough, comfortable, and functional. What sets Round House apart is that despite being made in the USA, they’re really dang affordable. The duck canvas bibs are currently on sale for $60. If you need workwear that can handle actual work without breaking the bank, Round House delivers.

Freaks and Geeks. I missed this cult classic when it originally aired for a single season in 1999, but we recently watched it as a family and really enjoyed it. It follows a group of high schoolers in suburban Michigan in the early 1980s, and producer Judd Apatow nailed what the time looked and felt like: the clothes, the home decor (wood-encased TVs!), and the pop culture references. For our kids, the show was a window into teenage life before the advent of smartphones. The show and its characters grow on you as the season progresses, and there’s a human, good-natured vibe to the whole thing; the show is kind to its characters, even when they make boneheaded decisions (here’s looking at you, Lindsay!). The episodes don’t tie things up neatly or pretend teenagers always learn their lessons, and I could tell our kids were often thinking through and evaluating the choices the characters made in a healthy way (that’s the power of fictional storytelling!). The show is frequently hilarious, though the humor is so subtle you hardly know why you’re laughing (it’s often out of sheer awkwardness — Apatow’s speciality). We were all bummed when we made it through all the episodes — I wish they’d made more seasons!

90% of Men Are Not Toxic. We haven’t talked much about “toxic masculinity” on AoM because I’ve always thought the panic around it was overblown. My working assumption has been that most men are solid dudes, and the a-holes are just a small, loud minority. So why focus energy on the dumb-dumbs and treat all men like they’re inherently terrible? A recent study out of New Zealand confirmed my hunch. Researchers analyzed data from over 15,000 men, measuring eight markers of toxic masculinity — things like hostile sexism, narcissism, sexual prejudice, and opposition to domestic violence prevention. Using statistical modeling, they found that only 10.8% of men displayed clear signs of toxic masculinity. The vast majority of men — nearly 90% — aren’t toxic. They’re just regular guys trying to do right by the people around them. 

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield. We’ve had Steven Pressfield on the podcast several times, and while his historical fiction is top-notch, I keep coming back to his books about the craft of writing. While they’re focused on writing, the advice applies across domains. Do the Work is my favorite; it’s a short, pithy book that I revisit whenever I need a kick in the pants. Pressfield’s central concept is “Resistance” — an internal force that keeps us from doing our most important work through procrastination, self-doubt, and distraction. Pressfield emphasizes that you don’t need perfect conditions or complete clarity to begin; you just need to start and trust that the work itself will reveal what needs to happen next. At under 100 pages, it’s less a book you read once and more a short manifesto you return to whenever you need someone to tell you to quit overthinking and just do the damn work.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: No Regrets and Don’t Just Read the Great Books. Read Schlocky Ephemera, Too.

Quote of the Week

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.

—William E. Channing

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.