You probably think of the health effects of sunlight as a mixed bag. On the one hand, sun exposure helps your body make vitamin D. But on the other, it can cause skin cancer.

To get around this conundrum, dermatologists frequently recommend avoiding sun exposure when you can, slathering on sunscreen when you can't, and taking a vitamin D supplement to make up for the lack of sunlight in your life.

Yet in seeking to solve one problem, this advice may open up many others and be contributing to ill health in the West.

Today on the show, Rowan Jacobsen, a science journalist who has spent years investigating the health impacts of sunlight, will unpack the underappreciated benefits of sun exposure, and that, crucially, they're not primarily a function of the production of vitamin D and can't be replaced with a pill. We talk about what else is at work in ultraviolet radiation's positive effects on blood pressure, autoimmune diseases, insulin resistance, mood, and more. We also get into how to weigh these benefits against the risk of skin cancer, why health officials in Australia, which has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, have changed their recommendations around sun exposure, and if there's a role sunscreen should still play in your routine.

• Rowan's article in Outside magazine: Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?
• Rowan's article in the Atlantic: Against Sunscreen Absolutism
• AoM Article: Why You Should Become a Sun Worshipper
• Dermatologist Richard Weller's TED talk: Could the Sun Be Good for Your Heart?
• Australian recommendations on sun exposure

• Rowan's website

When men think about optimizing their hormones, they tend only to think about raising their testosterone. But while increasing T can be important, an ideal health profile also means having testosterone that's in balance with your other hormones as well.

Today on the show, Dr. Kyle Gillett joins me to discuss both of those prongs of all-around hormone optimization. We start with a quick overview of the different hormones that affect male health. We then get into what qualifies as low testosterone and how to accurately test yours. We also discuss what causes low testosterone in individual men, and how its decline in the general male population may be linked to both birth control and the world wars. In the second half of our conversation, we discuss how to both raise testosterone and get rid of excess estrogen, including the use of some effective supplements you may never have heard of. We then get into the risks and benefits of taking TRT, before ending our discussion with what young men can do to prepare for a lifetime of optimal T and hormonal health.

• AoM series on testosterone, including How I Doubled My Testosterone Levels Naturally
• AoM Podcast #761: How Testosterone Makes Men, Men
• AoM Podcast #878: The Fitness Supplements That Actually Work

• Kyle on IG
• Gillett Health Podcast on Spotify and Apple
• Gillett Health on YouTube
• Gillett Health website

Friendships are a central part of the lives of both men and women. But from personal observation, you've probably noticed that the dynamics of male and female friendships aren't always the same. You may not, however, have been able to articulate what those differences are or have known what's behind them.

While there's still a lot of facets of friendship that haven't yet been researched, Dr. Jaimie Krems, who runs UCLA's Social Minds Lab, has a lot of interesting insights about what we do know about how and why men and women approach friendship differently. Today on the show, she explains why men and women form friendships and the differences in the size and nature of their social circles, how long their friendships last, and what they look for in friends. We also discuss why men have a greater tolerance for their friends' flaws than women do, why men and women would want to be friends with each other, and how each sex experiences friendship jealousy.

• The Banker's Paradox
• Joyce Benenson's research on "Males' Greater Tolerance of Same-Sex Peers"
• Jaimie's research on women's interpretation of disgust faces
• Jaimie's study: "Friendship Jealousy: One Tool for Maintaining Friendships in the Face of Third-Party Threats?"
• AoM Podcast #229: How Men and Women Socialize Differently
• AoMPodcast #360: Understanding Male Friendships
• AoM Podcast #726: What’s Causing the Male Friendship Recession?
• AoM Podcast #772: How Long Does It Take to Make Friends (And How Does That Process Work, Anyway)?
• AoM Article: How Not to Be Disappointed With Your Friends

• The Social Minds Lab at UCLA
• Jaimie's faculty page
• Jaimie on X

Businesses and individuals often feel overwhelmed and stretched — that they can't get done all the work they need to. The solution they frequently turn to is finding a new app to use or hiring more employees to spread the load.

But my guest would say that you can steal back hours of productive time simply by using the tools and teams you have now, if you learn to use them in a more efficient way.

Nick Sonnenberg is the founder and CEO of Leverage, an efficiency consulting business and the author of Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work. Today on the show, Nick explains how people spend almost 60% of their time doing work about work, and why hiring more people can actually make the problem worse rather than better. He then shares his "CPR Business Efficiency Framework," and how making changes in how you communicate, plan, and manage resources can open up hours of time. We talk about how to organize your communication channels so your work day isn't taken up by what Nick calls "The Scavenger Hunt," one of the most underutilized tools for taming your inbox, how to stop wasting time on meetings, and tiny changes that will add up to many hours saved each year. Along the way, we talk about how some of these tactics can save you time in your personal life as well.

• AoM Podcast #689: Email Is Making Us Miserable — Here’s What to Do About It
• AoM Podcast #972: Down With Pseudo-Productivity — Why We Need to Transform the Way We Work
• AoM Podcast #973: A Butler’s Guide to Managing Your Household
• Teach Your Wife to Be a Widow by Donald I. Rogers
• "Saving Seconds Is Better Than Hours" — Time article by Nick
• Texts.com
• Workona tab manager

• Come Up for Air website
• Leverage website
• Nick on LinkedIn
• Nick on IG
• Nick on X

Fifteen years and more than 200 million downloads later, this episode marks the 1,000th installment of the Art of Manliness podcast! It begins with a bit of a retrospective on the podcast and then segues into an interview with one of the show's earliest guests: Walker Lamond, author of Rules for My Unborn Son. Walker and I revisit the origins of the book and the early days of the internet and have a fun discussion of which of his rules have become obsolete and which remain evergreen. Tune in and enjoy!

A big thanks to our listeners for helping us reach this cool milestone. The support is deeply appreciated!

• Rules for My Unborn Son by Walker Lamond
• Rules for My Newborn Daughter by Walker Lamond
• Walker's Motel: The Starlight Motor Inn
• The podcasts Walker writes/produces for:
  • Anatomy of Murder
  • Cold Blooded
• Related AoM articles:
  • Dressing for Others
  • Flying Is for the Birds
  • My New Favorite Summertime Shoe
  • Why Every Man Should Have 3 Signature Dishes
  • In Praise of the Postcard
  • The Art of Thank You Note Writing
  • The Importance of Developing and Maintaining Your Social Fitness
• Related AoM Podcasts
  • #1: We Who Are Alive and Remain
  • #7: Rules for My Unborn Son
  • #78: The Myth of Following Your Passion
  • #174: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Style
  • #708: Overcome the Comfort Crisis

Plenty of famous explorers and frontiersmen emerged from America's periods of expansion and exploration, and today the likes of Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett remain household names.

You're probably not familiar, but should be, with the name of another prominent pioneer: Jedediah Smith. Smith was a hunter, trapper, writer, cartographer, mountain man, and explorer who notched a lot of firsts: He was the first to lead a documented exploration from the Salt Lake frontier to the Colorado River and was part of the first parties of U.S. citizens to cross the Mojave Desert, the Sierra Nevada, and the Great Basin Desert. Having survived three attacks by Native Americans and one mauling by a grizzly bear, Smith's explorations became resources for those who followed after and led to the use of the South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

In the new book he co-authored, Throne of Grace: A Mountain Man, an Epic Adventure, and the Bloody Conquest of the American West, my guest, Bob Drury, uses the oft-forgotten Smith as a guide to an oft-forgotten period in American history. Today on the show, Bob paints a picture of a volatile American landscape in which trappers and Native Americans collided and clashed in the early decades of the 19th century. We discuss how the Lewis and Clark expedition created a lust for adventure among young men, how the humble beaver played an outsized role in settling the Western frontier, and how warfare changed amongst Native American tribes with the introduction of the horse. Along the way, Bob shows us how the life of Jed Smith intersected with all these historic trends and shares the epic exploits that he and other mountain men took part in while exploring and mapping the American West.

• Bob's last appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #469 — How Valley Forge Turned the Tide of the Revolutionary War
• AoM article about mountain men
• AoM Podcast #681: The Epic Exploits of Kit Carson
• Hugh Glass

As compared to mothers, fathers are sometimes thought of as a secondary, almost superfluous, parent.

But my guest says that fathers actually saved the human race, and continue to do so today.

Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist, a pioneer of fatherhood science, and the author of Life Of Dad. Today on the show, we talk about the role of fathers in human history and how their main role continues to be teaching kids the skills they need to take risks, become independent, and navigate the world beyond their family. We also talk about the physiological changes that happen when a man becomes a father and how dads are just as biologically primed as mothers to parent. In the second half of our conversation, we talk about the experience of being a dad. Anna shares how long it typically takes a man to bond with a baby and transition into the role of fatherhood, how roughhousing is key in building that bond as well as developing your child's resilience, and how your personality and background will affect your parenting. We end our conversation with the difference in how the relationship between Mom and Dad affects how they parent, and the implications of that for building a strong family.

• AoM Article: The Importance of Fathers (According to Science)
• AoM Article: A Man’s Guide to Pregnancy — Getting Ready for the Baby Bomb
• AoM Article: A Man’s Guide to Pregnancy — Your Progeny Enters the World
• AoM Article:New Dad Survival Guide — The Mindset
• AoM Article: New Dad Survival Guide — The Skillset
• AoM Podcast #119: Why Fathers Matter
• AoM Article: You Don’t Have to Be Your Dad — How to Become Your Family’s Transitional Character

• Anna's website
• Anna on X
• Anna on IG