The topic of health and fitness has long been a popular one for magazines, and in most recent times, for blogs and Instagram accounts. But what these modern publishers and influencers probably don't realize is that they're standing on the shoulders of an ambitious eccentric who laid the foundation for much of modern American media: Bernarr Macfadden.

My guest today is Mark Adams, who wrote a biography of this proto fitness guru called Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet. Mark and I begin our conversation with how Macfadden discovered a passion for health and fitness as a young man and failed at his attempt to become a personal trainer, despite coining the motto "Weakness is a crime; don't be a criminal." We then discuss how Macfadden went on to start the highly successful magazine, Physical Culture, and then an entire publishing empire, which pioneered many of the confessional, first-person, personal branding techniques still used today. Mark shares the tenets of Macfadden's sometimes sound, sometimes wacky health philosophy, including his advocacy of fasting, and what happened when Mark tried out some of Macfadden's protocols on himself. Mark and I then delve into how Macfadden founded a utopian community in the New Jersey suburbs, was convicted of obscenity charges, trained fascist cadets for Mussolini, and ran for U.S. senator on a physical fitness platform. We end our conversation with why Macfadden was forgotten, and yet had a lasting effect on the world of health and fitness, as well as media as a whole.

Get the show notes at aom.is/macfadden.

#624: The Crazy, Forgotten Story of America's First Fitness Influencer

War is a violent and bloody business, but it's rarely a no-holds barred free-for-all. Instead, codes of conduct that determine what is and isn't honorable behavior on the battlefield have existed since ancient times.

My guest today explored these various codes in a book she wrote during the decade she spent teaching at the United States Naval Academy. Her name is Shannon French, she's a professor of ethics and philosophy, and her book is The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present. Shannon and I begin our conversation with the pointed questions she used to pose to the cadets she taught as to how being a warrior was different than being a killer or murderer, and when killing is and isn't ethical. She then explains how the warrior codes which developed all around the world arose organically from warriors themselves for their own protection, and how these codes are more about identity than rules. Shannon and I then take a tour of warrior codes across time and culture, starting with the code in Homer's Iliad, and then moving into the strengths and weaknesses of the Stoic philosophy which undergirded the code of the Romans. From there we unpack the code of the medieval knights of Arthurian legend, what American Indians can teach soldiers about the need to make clear transitions between the homefront and the warfront, and how the Bushido code of the samurais sought to balance the influence of four different religions. We end our conversation with the role warrior codes play today in an age of increasingly technologized combat. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/warriorcode.

#625: The Code of the Warrior

You're lying in bed at night and hear a noise downstairs. Is there someone in your house, and if there is, do you know what to do?

While we'd like to think we'd rise to the occasion and readily dispatch with the bad guys, my guest today argues that without preparation and training, you're likely to flounder, and that you should have put more thought into how to keep the invader out of your house in the first place.

His name is Dave Young, and he's a security expert and the author of How to Defend Your Family and Home: Outsmart an Invader, Secure Your Home, Prevent a Burglary and Protect Your Loved Ones from Any Threat. We begin our conversation with how Dave got involved with security training, the intensive field research he did for his book, and the basic equation criminals use in deciding whether or not to make your house a target. We then delve into how to tweak that equation in your favor, beginning with casing your house like a criminal would; we go over the vulnerabilities to look for as you walk the perimeter of your property, and the actionable changes to make to deter would-be home invaders. Dave then walks us through what to do if someone does invade your home, including the criteria to use in picking a place to hide, choosing a weapon to fight back, and selecting an engagement point to confront the intruder. We also get into the importance of firearm training, if you decide to own a gun for self-defense. We end our conversation with an oft-overlooked part of surviving a home invasion: the months and years of psychological and judicial aftermath. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/homeinvasion.

#631: How to Prevent and Survive a Home Invasion

เหตุการณ์อื้อฉาวของ บอส-วรยุทธ อยู่วิทยา สะท้อนอะไรในสังคมไทย เราสามารถเรียนรู้อะไรบ้างจากมุมมองของแบรนด์กระทิงแดง กระบวนการยุติธรรมของประเทศไทยควรรับมือกับเหตุการณ์ดังกล่าวนี้อย่างไร

เคน นครินทร์ สรุปบทเรียนจากประเด็นที่น่าสนใจจากเคสนี้ ใน The Secret Sauce: Executive Espresso

Executive Espresso EP.114 เลือดข้นตระกูลอยู่วิทยา ผ่าอาณาจักรกระทิงแดงและ Red Bull

The inside story of the booming video game industry from the late 1990s to the present, as told by the Managing Director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment (The Division, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations).

At Massive Entertainment, a Ubisoft studio, a key division of one of the largest, most influential companies in gaming, Managing Director Polfeldt has had a hand in some of the biggest video game franchises of today, from Assassin's Creed to Far Cry to Tom Clancy's The Division, the fastest-selling new series this generation which revitalized the Clancy brand in gaming.

In The Dream Architects, Polfeldt charts his course through a charmed, idiosyncratic career which began at the dawn of the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox era -- from successfully pitching an Avatar game to James Cameron that will digitally create all of Pandora to enduring a week-long survivalist camp in the Scandinavian forest to better understand the post-apocalyptic future of The Division.

Along the way, Polfeldt ruminates on how the video game industry has grown and changed, how and when games became art, and the medium's expanding artistic and storytelling potential. He shares what it's like to manage a creative process that has ballooned from a low-six-figure expense with a team of a half dozen people to a transatlantic production of five hundred employees on a single project with a production budget of over a hundred million dollars.

A rare firsthand account of the golden age of game development told in vivid detail, The Dream Architects is a seminal work about the biggest entertainment medium of today.

Available September 1, 2020 from Hachette Audio as a digital download, and in Print and Ebook from Grand Central Publishing. 

Download: 
https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781549157011-the-dream-architects
https://www.downpour.com/the-dream-architects
https://audiobookstore.com/audiobooks/the-dream-architects.aspx
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/David_Polfeldt_The_Dream_Architects?id=AQAAAEAcCGFIbM
https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-dream-architects/id1526440168
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Dream-Architects-Audiobook/1549157019?qid=1598970252&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=6PMN761YQCP58CT47YKJ
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/dream-architects-adventures-in-the-video-game-industry/415171
https://www.nookaudiobooks.com/audiobook/328259/dream-architects-the
https://www.estories.com/audiobook/342675/David-Polfeldt/The-Dream-Architects
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-dream-architects-2


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THE DREAM ARCHITECTS by David Polfeldt Read by Matt Wolfe - Audiobook Excerpt

Paleontologist Jiangmai O’Connor studies prehistoric bird fossils found in China to answer questions about the evolution of dinosaurs and flight.

Science Friday

Digging For Answers About Avian Ancestors

The kitchen of a busy restaurant can be a chaotic, frenetic environment. But the best chefs create a kind of personal eye in this storm, from which they can efficiently craft meal after meal without ever moving their feet. The system they use to do this is called mise-en-place -- a French word that means "to put in place," and signifies an entire lifestyle of readiness and engagement.

My guest today spent years interviewing over a hundred chefs and other culinary professionals about the mise-en-place philosophy and then translated it into a system that can be used outside the kitchen in a book called Everything in Its Place: The Power of Mise-En-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind. His name is Dan Charnas and we begin our conversation with how Dan, a writer, realized that mise-en-place was something that could be used by everyone, and the system's three general principles and ten tools. We then unpack some of those tools, both in how they're used by cooks in the kitchen, and how they can be applied by regular folks at home and the office. We begin with the importance of squaring your checklists with your calendar and the one organizing process Dan most recommends: something called the 30-minute "meeze." We then discuss how to arrange your physical working space for greater efficiency and the importance of working clean. From there, Dan explains what he thinks Stephen Covey's famous idea of putting first things first doesn't take into consideration, and why it's important to understand the difference between what Dan calls "process time" and "immersive time." At the end of our conversation, we discuss the tension between perfection and delivery, the way the "call and call back" communication system used in kitchens creates teamwork and respect, and the fact that the success of any organizational system rests on daily commitment.

Get the show notes at aom.is/workclean.

#652: Chefs' Secrets for Organizing Your Life

When you think about ancient Greek tragedies, you probably think about people in togas spouting stilted, archaic language -- stories written by stuffy playwrights to be watched by snooty audiences.

My guest today argues that this common conception of Greek tragedies misses the power of plays that were in fact created by warriors for warriors, and which represent a technology of healing that's just as relevant today as it was two millennia ago. His name is Bryan Doerries and he's the author of the book The Theater of War, as well as the artistic director of an organization of the same name that performs dramatic readings of ancient tragedies for the military and other communities. Bryan and I begin our conversation with what tragedies are, what this civic, religious, and artistic form of storytelling was supposed to do, how it was created by war veterans for war veterans, and how a civilian classicist ended up putting on these plays for current and former members of our modern military. We discuss how the ancient Greek tragedies depicted the depth and spectrum of human suffering, the intersection of fate and personal responsibility, characters who belatedly discover their mistakes, and the fleeting chance of changing behavior in the light of such realizations. Bryan also explains how the tragedies may have been a form of training for young people on how to grapple with the moral ambiguities that mark adulthood. And throughout the show, we dig into how tragedies, by showing people they're not alone, getting them to confront uncomfortable realities together, and bridging divides, can serve as a transformative technology for collective healing, not only for military veterans, but anyone who's dealt with trauma, loss, and the general confusions and hardships of the human experience. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/theaterofwar.

#660: How Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Heal the Soul

In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk with guest host Christian Rivera about using your 6th cognitive function in your stack to break a loop. This episode (Part 4) covers the INFJ, ISFJ, ESFP, and ENFP personality types.

Personality Hacker Podcast

Using Your 6th Function To Break A Loop - Pt 4 (IxFJ - ExFP) | PODCAST 0358 |  PersonalityHacker.com

How Do Wildfires Affect Our Bodies?

Participation in the "Disquiet Junto" project led by Marc Weidenbaum: Phase Transition.
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
https://disquiet.com/0471/

Ice cubes fall into a glass.
Recorded with a Tascam DR-100MKII + built-in mics Uni.
The Tascam is placed vertically on the glass, in contact.
A Pure data patch lets you hear the recording transposed to 3 voices  and brings out their harmonic components by spreading out them over time.
At the beginning we hear the untransposed sound.
This is the same Pure data patch as for:
https://soundcloud.com/gerard-paresys/3stones-disquiet0441

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Participation au projet "Disquiet Junto" de Marc Weidenbaum: Phase Transition.
Enregistrer le son d'un glaçon dans un verre et faire quelque chose avec.

https://disquiet.com/0471/

Des glaçons tombent dans un verre.
Enregistrés avec un Tascam DR-100MKII + micros intégrés Uni.
Le Tascam est posé verticalement sur le verre, en contact.
Un patch Pure data fait entendre l'enregistrement transposé sur 3 voix et fait apparaitre ses composantes harmoniques en les déployant dans le temps.
On entends au début le son non transposé.
C'est le même patch que pour:
https://soundcloud.com/gerard-paresys/3stones-disquiet0441

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More on the Disquiet Junto at:
https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:
https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0471-phase-transition/

#631: How to Prevent and Survive a Home Invasion

The Art of Manliness

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