Brett McKay here and welcome to the edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.

Now, there have been many books written about courage.

About cowardice, however, there's only been one.

The author of this long book on cowardice joins me today, tag me while my cowardice

is so much ignored, is at least equally important to understand his courage.

Now, the fear of the former may actually serve as a stronger motivator toward doing daring

deeds.

His name is Chris Walsh, and his book is cowardice, a brief history.

Today in the show, Chris explains how a coward can be defined as someone who, because

of excessive fear, fails to do what he's supposed to do.

And yet, how the assumptions behind this definition can be hard to pin down.

Discuss why cowardice has been so condemned through time so much so that the military

is longs to the crime worthy of execution.

We all discuss why the fear of being a coward is so tied into manliness and why that label

causes the worst insult you can level out of man.

Chris delves in the way that external checks on cowardice, the depersonalization and mechanization

of warfare and the rise of the therapeutic lens on life have diminished the moral heft

of cowardice.

He then argues that despite this fact, in the way that cultural contempt for cowardice and

a personal fear of it can lead to negative effects, it remains an important prod towards

doing one's duty in a foundation of moral judgment.

And we enter conversation with how we can use the fear of cowardice as a positive motivator

...