Midlife Male by Greg Scheinman

Midlife Male by Greg Scheinman treats middle age as a practical problem to work through in conversation, one accomplished guest at a time. The guests come from football, the wellness business, hotels, kitchens and performance coaching. Scheinman's style is admiring, but his questions aim at method. He asks how a guest shaped a day, handled an ego or decided what to change, and the talk keeps coming back to what a man in his 40s or 50s can actually do next. Troy Aikman is one of the clearest examples. He says that even when he was young he knew a Super Bowl would not fix whatever else was wrong in his life. He also describes how the attention that came with arriving in Dallas as the first overall pick shaped the way he carried himself in public. Today, he says, he is no longer a prisoner of it. Jason Wachob, CEO of mindbodygreen, links his company's founding story to a back surgery he nearly had. He describes wellness as five connected pillars: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional and environmental. For anyone looking for more meaning, his advice is to edit a life rather than flee it, and to build around the mortgage and the family's needs instead of quitting for Bali. Chip Conley, founder of the Modern Elder Academy, argues that men fixate on sleep, food and workouts while neglecting social wellness, meaning the people who serve as emotional insurance in a hard week. He connects that gap to men comparing their insides with everyone else's outsides, and to a higher suicide rate among men in midlife. High performance coach Dana Cavalea is blunter. Change comes through schedule, Cavalea says, with a daily plan, an eating structure and a training structure. Robert Irvine, a chef, author and entrepreneur, remembers needing to beat every man in a room and learning to stay quiet and listen. In that exchange Scheinman talks about his own struggle with ego first, which shows how personal the interviews can get. Executive coach Bryan Gillette, founder of Summiting Group and author of EPIC Performance, is another guest. Several numbered episodes are labelled as re-airs, bringing back the conversations with Conley, Cavalea and Irvine. Expect sponsor reads, plus plugs for Scheinman's book, his coaching, and a Sunday newsletter organised around family, fitness, finance, food, fashion and fun. The tone stays warm and sincere. There is little confrontation and no irony. The energy comes from follow-up questions and personal connection. To start, the Aikman conversation offers a familiar name speaking openly, and the Conley episode lays out the show's strongest case for friendship as part of health.