Brett & Kate McKay 265 posts 0 comments

When I first started the AoM podcast nearly 18 years ago, many people didn’t even know what a podcast was. This was a time before Conan, the Kelce brothers, and your sister-in-law all had a show, and there were only about a hundred…
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 Pooping. Everybody does it, but a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about it. That’s a shame, my guest says, not only because your digestive health is incredibly linked to your overall health, but simply for the fact that there is…
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The psychologist John Gottman famously spent decades watching couples fight in his Love Lab at the University of Washington. He’d wire them up with physiological monitors, point a camera at them, and ask them to argue about some real…
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Your wallet is an essential part of your EDC. It carries your identification and your means of payment. In the past few decades, wallet profiles have been getting thinner and thinner. Men don’t want to sit on a George-Costanza-sized lump…
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Lost and Gone Forever by Guster. If ever there was a band made for college radio, it was Guster. I don’t know how many college radio stations still exist, but the band’s appeal endures — especially on their best album, 1999’s Lost and…
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 Courage is one of our most prized and celebrated virtues. But once you really start exploring it, the nature of courage is surprisingly hard to pin down.Here to help us explore the fascinating complications of courage is William Ian…
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I’ve been writing about testosterone on this site for over a decade because testosterone is an important part of a man’s overall health and wellness. It helps with strength and muscle mass, strengthens your bones, improves your sexual…
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In our podcast episode with Dr. Martin Gibala about high-intensity interval training, he mentioned a high-intensity workout program that was developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force during the late 1950s, took only eleven minutes to…
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in: Odds & Ends Brett & Kate McKay • March 27, 2026The 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…
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 We tend to think of genius as something you’re born with — a rare trait possessed by the Einsteins and Teslas of the world. But what if many of the abilities we associate with genius — a great memory, quick problem-solving, mental math,…
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Back in January, a day before a big winter freeze was about to hit Tulsa and dump a foot of snow on us, our home’s furnace stopped working. I didn’t want to spend a week without heat, so I called an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air…
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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…
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 Cold exposure has gotten a lot of attention the past few years, with people dunking themselves in ice baths for the sake of their health and well-being. But, good news here, exposing yourself to heat by sitting in the sauna or even a…
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When you have a high-responsibility job, your work hours can readily bleed beyond the 9-to-5. You’ve got a lot of tasks that seem urgent and important and an endless number of people who need responding to. This is of course especially…
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Life-threatening health emergencies can happen at any moment. While you should always call 911 and summon professional medical attention for a victim, oftentimes time is of the essence, and paramedics are minutes (or much longer) away.…
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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…
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 When we fail to make desired progress in life, most of us put the blame on physical and environmental limits. But my guest says that what’s really holding people back is what’s in their heads.Nir Eyal is the author of Beyond Belief: The…
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Several years ago, I picked up a field jacket inspired by field jackets from the 20th century. I needed something for those weeks in the fall and spring when it’s too warm for a proper winter coat but too cold for just a sweatshirt, and…
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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…
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in: Advice, Character, Podcast Brett & Kate McKay • March 3, 2026 When it comes to building a happy and meaningful life, most of us rely on a grab bag of strategies — habits and goals around work, relationships, and…
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