Missionless Men Are the Real Epidemic, With Chris Griffin

"You become your father, and it's really hard not to." Jake Hurwitz opens this episode by reading that line, then sits down across from the person it's about: his dad, Dan.

Steve White was 57 when he moved home to be with his parents because he thought he was done. Years of unexplained blackouts had turned into weekly seizures. He'd been hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, weighed 290 pounds, and his cognitive scores had dropped so far he could barely speak. Then one man he respected told him to fight, and he did.

Steve White was 57 when he moved home to be with his parents because he thought he was done. Years of unexplained blackouts had turned into weekly seizures. He'd been hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, weighed 290 pounds, and his cognitive scores had dropped so far he could barely speak. Then one man he respected told him to fight, and he did. Now 65, Steve runs a clinic helping people with chronic and even terminal illness get their lives back, and he recently finished a run of more than 300 miles through the mountains and rivers near where he grew up. His method is 100 days of total commitment, built on discipline instead of inspiration, and on a lesson he learned the hard way: health is a team sport. Jake Hurwitz and Steve get into why men keep saying "I'm good" long after they aren't, why getting better a little at a time keeps you stuck, and where a lonely 25-year-old guy should actually start. In this episode: - The one sentence from a friend that made him decide to fight - Why our strength is our weakness, and how independence turns men into islands - Show up, pursue, finish: the three rules he rebuilt his life on - The 212 degree rule, and why incremental change doesn't work - Why you have to expect to get better, and be the captain of your own health - The 22 hours outside the clinic that decide whether you recover - Why caring for someone else is the healthiest thing you can do - "Welcome to the beginning," what his father told him days before he died New episodes of The Optimist every week. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Dan Huber lost the company, the house, the cars and the savings between 2008 and 2011. Then the rental they moved into started making the whole family sick, and it took five years and a flooded crawlspace to figure out why.

For a stretch of time, men were told they were the problem. Worthless, unworthy, weak, dangerous. Stefanos Sifandos says a man who absorbs that does one of two things. He disappears into video games and isolation, or he turns aggressive, because a man who doesn't feel powerful will reach for power over someone instead. He has spent 25 years studying what breaks men and what happens when they break. He calls the way back manning in rather than manning up: accountability, ownership, responsibility, starting with yourself before anyone else gets a say. Then it gets uncomfortable. Jake Hurwitz and Stefanos get into the mother wound, and what happens in a marriage when a man never got handed his own autonomy and starts projecting mother onto his partner. Why we keep pursuing the love we believe we deserve. What he says to the men who tell him they hate all women, and the women who tell him the same about men. In this episode: The mother wound, and how projecting mother onto a partner kills attraction before anyone says a word What he tells men who want their partner to be more feminine, and women who want their partner to be more masculine Knowing when to lead and when to be led, and why he calls that wisdom Why women who run companies all day want to soften at home, and why that word sets people off Dating apps, and why his first instruction is to get off them as fast as you can What a genuinely committed relationship costs, and the kind of testing that comes with it Saving the world against doing the work in front of you, and which one actually ripples New episodes of The Optimist every week. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.