Hi Hotties
introducing a new podcast
Hi Agonistas,
It has been roughly 100,000,000 years since I last wrote to you. So much has happened. The Knicks are in the Finals. Michael B Jordan has an Oscar. I got a new pair of cowboy boots and a new pink cowboy hat. While I’ve been away from this substack, I have been working very hard on two projects. The first is my dissertation, which, it seems, is actually coming together after a very slow start. The second is a new podcast called How to Be a Hot Guy.
Since we’re old friends, I’ll tell you the story of how I came to this project. It was maybe two years ago, when I was having a rough day (I genuinely can’t remember what it was that was bothering me, so obviously it was SUPER important), and I saw a man wearing a nice suit walking down the street, smiling as if he had just won the lottery. I was instantly jealous. What’s it like? I thought to myself. What’s it like to be a handsome, happy man in the world? And then, it hit me. I would start a podcast to find out.
Long-time readers of this newsletter know that of the many things I am interested in, I regularly return to the topics of race, gender, and sexuality. I am always examining how these three nodes of identity coalesce and express themselves through the body, relationships, and especially demonstrations of power. While I have dedicated my life thus far to studying these topics in my academic work and my creative writing here, when it comes to masculinity, there are still things I am trying to understand. Naturally, I decided to ask a bunch of men (some I knew, some I didn't) to get their thoughts.
The premise of the podcast is really simple. I have a list of questions that take the interviewee from childhood to the present, guiding them to narrate how they have understood and performed masculinity. Every person gets asked the same questions, and of course, their answers vary wildly. Generally, though, our conversations focus on relationships, confidence, and personal values. Over the year that I’ve conducted these interviews, I think I’ve been most affected by how many of them shared that they had never thought about masculinity so deeply before. As a result, I think each interview captures some very beautiful, albeit sometimes tender, revelations about how complicated being a man can be. I laughed a lot and learned even more listening to this collection of interesting, earnest, and hot men talk.
I’m really proud of this project and I hope you’ll follow along as I share new episodes. You can subscribe to the Substack for the pod here to get transcripts and audio access. Or, you can follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I’ve put the video trailer for the show below.
And in case you’re wondering, Agony Hour will return to a weekly schedule after all episodes of the pod are out. Until then, listen to the pod :)