Shortly after we recorded this interview, this guest went on to compete in the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation No Gi Tournament, and became a World Champion.
I’ve known Isaac Greeley since we were kids, we ride the same school bus together, and shared a lot of experiences growing up in a small town, in a small school, where some of the best people on earth are mined from the ground like silver.
Isaac talks with Manlihood about the life lessons he learned as a high school and college wrestler, and how that translated into his career as a chiropractor, and a coach who has coached champions in any number of combat sports.
Isaac talks about the bonds formed in mentoring relationships with coaches, in small groups with other men and young men, and the way that challenges and hardships as an athlete have helped him overcome similar challenges in everyday life.
Andrew Wright of the hard-rock band My Silent Reality has had one dream for many years, to be a rockstar. He’s fought through obstacles that derail others to make that dream a reality – a reality that is anything BUT silent.
Andrew Wright sits down with Josh Hatcher to talk about his music, his story, and to encourage men to dream big, make a plan, and then do the work to make it happen.
Strongman, strength coach, philosopher, and father figure to millions of YouTube followers Elliot Hulse speaks with Josh Hatcher of the Manlihood ManCast.
Modern culture is rejecting masculinity, and that rejection has been orchestrated for quite some time.
Elliott says that Marxist teachings and philosophy have greatly influenced western culture to abandon the idea of the traditional nuclear families, and the fathers place in it.
The role of the father is important in our culture
Elliot talks about the significance of a man’s influence in the home, his own experiences of rejecting his father’s strictness and toughness, only to later appreciate it when he became a father himself.
Culture must have a rite of passage to manhood.
Looking at the breakdown in modern society and family life, Elliot lays out the similarities with many ancient cultures and their rites of passage, as a boy leaves the world of the mother and joined the atonement of the father.
Elliot Hulse is not a misogynist.
He may have views on gender that run contrary to the feminist movement, and in fact, may even be a little different from my own, and the views of Manlihood as an organization. He loves and respects women, and in this interview talks about a conversation with his daughter after she found a YouTube video online accusing him of being a misogynist.
Elliot Hulse rediscovery if his Christian faith
He talks about how his Christian faith shapes his views on philosophy, the family, culture, and more, and talks about how his quest for purpose and identity and mentoring others led him back to the Christian faith of his youth.
The message of Elliot Hulse is resonating with folks who want to hear it. Almost 2 million subscribers on his Strength Camp YouTube channel, and almost 900k on his Elliot Hulse YouTube channel. It’s worth giving his message some thought and discussion.
As men, we often think of strength, and courage, and honor – which are certainly qualities that go with manhood – but when we think about how our manhood relates to the fairer sex – there are things they notice that they see as manly that we may not!
In that list, several things were answered multiple times
Communication
Kindness
Honesty
Humility
The idea of Masculine and Feminine Energies is a misnomer
I believe that men and women share many qualities. Women can nurture, and men can nurture. But women do it in a feminine way, and men do it in a masculine way. Men are strong, and women are strong – but we are strong in ways that are unique to who we are. A strong woman is not masculine, she’s feminine. A gentle man is not femnine, he’s masculine. We need to stop ascribing energies to genders.
By now you’ve all seen the Geico commercial with the guys from 90’s hip hop supergroup Tag Team rapping about Ice Cream. If you haven’t – you’ve probably been living under a rock, but here’s a link
An interview with DC Glenn of Tag Team
DC Glenn, aka DC The Brain Supreme sat down with Josh Hatcher for this episode of the Manlihood ManCast to talk about the birth of that 90’s classic, “Whoomp, There it is!” the journey of Tag Team through the years, and the group’s opportunity to inject a shot of joy in people’s lives with a silly commercial in the middle of a pandemic.
A Man’s Personal Development is Important
He talks about learning, and why it’s important for a man to always be educating himself, the power of networking, and why it’s important to hustle.
Tag Team dominated the charts in the 90s
Tag Team has sold over 7 million copies to date, and their smash single was followed up with a platinum selling album. The group was #1 on the Billboard Hot R&B Charts, #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts, spent 16 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard sales charts, and continued to stay in the Top 10 for another 24 weeks.
DC Glenn is living his bucket list
The hustle isn’t foreign to DC Glenn, as he’s working to launch a line of “Scoop, There it Is” inspired ice cream, working as a voice over artist and actor. And even though he’s done amazing things, he’s still got big dreams. He told Josh, “I want to be on The Mandalorian!” Anybody out there know a way to help DC Glenn make that happen? Let’s help him out!
Life is hard sometimes. We face obstacles in our path that stop our progress, hold us back, even harm us sometimes. What if those obstacles were NOT the enemy that we thought they were? What if overcoming those hardships was actually the very point of it all?
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
– Marcus Aurelius
We need to view hardship as an opportunity.
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
– Napoleon Hill
Sometimes, we know the reason for our adversity.
The question of WHY is always running through our heads and hearts when things get hard. It’s okay to look for that. Sometimes, the answer is that we are foolish. Our own stupid choices may have caused our hardship. Sometimes, the hardship may be the result of injustice, or someone else’s bad decisions. The answer to WHY can be helpful sometimes for us to avoiding the same hardship in the future.
For example, if I eat Taco Bell at 9PM and get the runs at midnight, i can curse the adversity of the runs, or I can learn from the situation.
Sometimes we do not know the reason for our adversity.
There are times that despite our best efforts to decode or understand, the hardship before us is impossible to decipher. We look for someone to blame or hold accountable, or a way that we can avoid similar hardships in the future, but answers elude us.
It’s in these moments that we have to remember that the purpose of our suffering or the purpose of our obstacle may not be an intentionally, cosmic or divinely ordained moment, but rather a natural progression in life. Hardship will always come. That’s the way of it.
We often look at life as a force that throws things at us… we blame life, or God, or the Devil, or “the system” or whatever malevolent entity we chose. Maybe our perspective is jaded. Maybe it’s not that bad things are handed to us to hurt us. Maybe the truth of life is that SOME challenges come our way so that we can be strengthened as we overcome them?
The right question about hardship is, how can this strengthen me?
We must learn to view hardship as an opportunity for growth. An opportunity for something great to happen. That’s not so hard when it’s an easier hardship. That’s really hard when it’s accompanied with great loss and pain.
But the truth is that is the human condition. We are all living in a broken world, where broken things happen. Since the beginning of time, when sin and brokenness entered the world, perfection was broken, and broken things happen. Redemption is what happens when we allow the brokenness to be overcome.
“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.”
– William Arthur Ward
“Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the “hero” within us is revealed.”
– Bob Riley
The secret to overcoming adversity is in not avoiding the hardship, but in facing it.
And in some cases, embracing it. Surely, there are some needless hardships that we can avoid by making better decisions – that in fact is the very nature of getting stronger in the face of adversity, in that we learn from the consequences of our mistakes. But for most hardship, enduring it, solving it, learning to bear it, learning to get help when we should, becoming strong – this is what we are supposed to do. If we avoid it – we never learn these things. We never grow. We never thrive. We never WIN.
Bestselling author and men’s podcaster Jim Ramos speaks with Josh Hatcher about the need for men to be strong in the midst of a culture that seems to condemn strong and noble masculinity.
Ramos is the founder of Men in the Arena, a non-profit Christian ministry focused on equipping men to honor God in their leadership of their family, church, and community. Men in the Arena has a weekly podcast with more than 250,000 men from around the world, and a facebook group of more than 10,000 men who tackle the issues of manhood and help to build each other up.
Jim Ramos’s book, Strong Men Dangerous Times spells out a clear definition of masculinity, one that is rooted in faith and tradition, and sounds almost counter-cultural. He spells out clear expectations for men, and speaks to their deepest struggles and insecurities.
For several years, physicists and scientists and philosophers have presented the idea that the concepts in the Matrix movies may not be as fictional as they would appear.
And he’s not alone. Many scholars have pondered the question, are we living in a reality, or a simulation of some kind?
In the Matrix trilogy, Morpheus addresses Keanu Reeve’s character, Neo, and offers him a choice. Take the BLUE PILL and continue to believe what you know, or take the RED PILL and you can see the truth. That Red Pill metaphor has permeated culture, with everything from conspiracy theories to the incel movement, to just a general representation of mankind accepting truth.
Are we living in a simulation?
I don’t believe that the simulation is a computer or holographic simulation – but I do believe that there is some truth behind this concept. Let’s look deeper.
Cognitive Dissonance
According to Simply Psychology.com Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.
Narrative Culture
If the last couple years have taught us anything, it’s that there are often multiple narratives, and often a prevailing narrative that we are expected to accept. Some of those narratives are perpetuated and bolstered by powerful forces.
Who owns the media?
15 billionaires and 6 corporations own and control almost all of the major media outlets in the United States.
The FBI and the CIA have declassified many of their old case files and operations. They are not all declassified, and some are heavily redacted. One thing is clear, there are things that have been done by these government agencies that raise suspicions about their motives, their intentions, and their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, the sovereignty of other nations, and the freedoms of the American people.
If the CIA could do experiments on US citizens in the 1960s, why would we believe they stopped today? If they were influencing foreign journalists to portray a false narrative to the people in order to participate in psychological warfare, why would we assume they stopped today?
I understand that these questions are bordering on conspiracy theory. I want to make it clear that I’m not saying with concrete evidence that there is malfeasance, but judging on what was done in the past, it takes a certain degree of cognitive dissonance to believe that these actions have stopped.
Here are a couple of declassified events and programs that ought to give you pause before you trust the narrative that the media is telling you the truth, and that the government has your best interest at heart.
I want to encourage to look these up for yourself, and read the original declassified files, and then rather than just assume a conspiracy theory about them, be aware of these as historical instances that may shape our current reality.
Operation Mockingbird
Operation Northwoods
The Tuskegee Experiments
The Gulf of Tonkin
MK Ultra
What is the truth?
Part of the problem we have in our culture today is that we have muddied the entire concept of Truth. One group says one thing, and the side says another. We have very little ability to distinguish the Truth from a cleverly crafted fiction.
Is There A Higher Reality?
I spoke with Brennen Nakane recently as we recorded an interview that will air later in the season, and in our pre-interview conversation, he had some amazing thoughts on the idea of us living in a simulation that I thought were worth adding to this conversation.
What if it’s not about a “simulation” but about a higher “reality”? What if this is a temporary reality in comparison to a permanent reality? When we see “glitches” or random coincidences that seem to point to a designer, maybe they are actually pointing to a Grand Designer?
What if there IS more to this life than just the 70-90 years of sleeping, working, and complaining about random crap?
