Anton Nootenboom - Serving Men's Mental Health—One Step At A Time
ManTalks Podcast
Connor Beaton
4.8 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Talking points: masculinity, culture
Honored to have connected with the Barefoot Dutchman himself this week. In case you hadn't heard, Anton Nootenboom recently finished walking over 3100 miles—barefoot—from LA to NYC to support men's mental health. Yes. Barefoot. We dig into the why, the how, and Anton's core philosophies. Listen in, team.
(00:00:00) - Intro, and what the mental and emotional strain was like
(00:15:39) - Why Anton wanted to raise awareness for men’s mental health
(00:22:04) - What are men struggling with the most these days, and what needs to change
(00:37:48) - The struggle of shifting perspectives on men’s culpability and responsibility, and what to say to younger guys
(00:44:12) - Why is it important for men to do hard things?
Anton Nootenboom is a military veteran with three tours in Afghanistan. He faced severe mental health challenges afterwards, including depression and suicidal thoughts. He found healing in barefoot walking and speaking out about his experiences. Today, his journey embodies his message: men should feel empowered to seek help and talk about mental health.
The #BraveMenTalk initiative, launched in partnership with Barebarics, emphasizes that one man dies by suicide every minute globally. Anton’s walk aimed to raise critical funds and encourage men to embrace a new type of bravery—one that fights against stigma and opens up pathways for support.
Connect with Anton:
-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebarefoot_dutchman/
-TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@barefootdutchie
-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anton.nootenboom.3
Mentioned in this episode:
Self Worth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | all right anton welcome to the man talk show how you doing buddy |
| 0:10.8 | pretty good man thank you how are you i'm good how are your feet feeling |
| 0:14.6 | my feet are doing pretty well actually they've they've got all the time to heal now uh it's |
| 0:20.1 | the rest of my body that I was worried |
| 0:22.0 | about a lot of it. But no, I'm doing better. Good. Well, for those who don't know who you are, |
| 0:27.8 | maybe just give like a 30 second context of what you embarked on this past year in 24. |
| 0:34.5 | Sure. Yeah. So I'm a Dutchman, Dutch Army veteran, and I just finished walking from |
| 0:40.2 | Los Angeles to New York City barefooted, which is a new Guinness World Record to raise |
| 0:45.4 | awareness for men's men of wealth. And it finished as November and just got back home and mission |
| 0:50.5 | complete. Nice, man. Well, why walk across the U.S. and why walk across the U.S. specifically barefoot? |
| 0:59.0 | Well, the bare foot part is there's many reasons to it, but the main reason it takes something |
| 1:03.2 | very out of the ordinary and challenging these days to get attention to raise awareness. |
| 1:07.4 | And the barefoot thing is just a paperclip thing. |
| 1:09.8 | You know, it's a simple and easy as |
| 1:11.3 | using my two bare feet that do the trick to get the attention because no one's ever done it before |
| 1:16.1 | like on that distance and well why you know across the u.s i think men's mental health is a global |
| 1:23.2 | issue but i think the u.s. paints a pretty good picture on how it is right now and it's not good. |
| 1:28.1 | So I figured, you know, if there's anywhere I want to create changes to the US, but also if you want to have like this big ripple effect go into all corners of the planet, doing it in the US as well. Like the platform that you can create is way bigger. So there's multiple reasons. And of course, it's a beautiful country. |
| 1:43.7 | Like I always wanted to go from west to east coast. |
| 1:45.9 | Now I just did it's a beautiful country. Like, I always wanted to go from west to east coast. |
| 1:45.9 | Now I just did it in pretty slow pace. Yeah, you really, really took you. Like, I have, I love to drive across. I actually went across the country. I don't know if many people know this, but when my wife and I got engaged, my father-in-law, who is now 87, I think at the time he was like 81, has a very |
| 2:03.6 | big fear of flying. And we got married outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Canada, |
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