Hello, hang up and listen. Listeners, you probably know me if you don't. This is Josh Levine,

your host. I am here because we have a special presentation in our feed this week. We have a new

show at Slate. It's called Man Up. And the first episode is great. And it's also relevant to folks

who like our show. So I'm here with Amon Ismail, who is the host of Man Up. What's Up, Aman?

What's up, Josh? It's great to have you, and I love the show. And the reason that we're featuring it in our feed, actually two reasons. Number one, good audio content. Yep.

You've got to have quality audio content for the people.

Number two is that there is a sports theme and a sports focus on this show. You talked to a guy who was a

championship boxer and is now a boxing coach. So can you just explain a little bit how you got to

this guy and why he was the perfect figure for your first episode?

I first heard about Eric Kelly through Instagram. He posts these really, really funny videos of his clients, people that he trains. But way before that, he was a favorite to go to the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. So I was so curious how someone who can

go from being the number one boxer to being kind of like this meme artist, right? He grew up in

Brooklyn in the 80s during the crack epidemic where fighting in the street was necessary. He channeled

that energy into the boxing ring and became

one of the top boxers in the country. This guy became a professional boxer because of his ability

to survive outside of the ring. It was that same energy, that same wanting to fight or needing

to fight outside of the ring that would end his career. He ended up getting into a bar fight

in Michigan where someone swiped a pool cue across his eye and injured him permanently, which instantly

ended his career and ended his chances at actually competing in the Olympics in the future.

Yeah. And so the theme of this series is it's about masculinity.

It's about what makes a man, and there's an interesting conversation in the show that I

won't spoil, but there's a distinction drawn between being a man and being a good man

that I thought was really thought-provoking.

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