Hello, everyone and welcome to Outward Slate's podcast for the LGBTQs and you. I'm Brian Louder, an editor at Slate, and I'm really

excited about this week's show, because we're finally going to get a chance to talk about a book

that I've been wanting to cover since it came out earlier this year. It's called Swole, The Making of

Men and the Meaning of Muscle, by Michael Andrew Broder. Now, in case some of those words make you a little itchy,

know that Michael is gay and a very talented critic, so this is definitely not some unexamined

gembrove circle jerk. Instead, it is a kaleidoscopic mix of memoir, history, criticism,

and political commentary with writing that is just bursting at the seams with intelligence,

warmth, and humor.

And it all circles around this question of why so many men, including the author, want to be big. And it also explores what that desire can teach us about the evolution of masculinity over time,

as well as the crisis that it seems to be experiencing today. And though this timing was not really

planned, masculinity's crisis is a subject with renewed relevance after the recent presidential

election, where it's now clear that manosphere influencers and male grievance around something

like wokeism and men's place in society may have had a lot to do with getting Donald Trump

back into the White House.

So whether you even lift, bro, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

We will be back with Michael after a short break.

We will be back with Michael andor Broder.

Michael has been the classical music critic at the Washington Post since 2020, and for

a decade before that, he served as an assistant arts editor and cultural critic for the Washington Post since 2020, and for a decade before that, he served

as an assistant arts editor and cultural critic for the Boston Globe. His essays, humor, and

criticism have appeared in nylon, thrillist, entrepreneur, medium McSweeney's internet tendency,

and other publications. He has also released five music albums under different monikers, most

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