NYT: "Men need better fitness role models"
What Attia, Huberman, Bryan Johnson and other meatheads of masculinity get wrong.
What’s News? is a critical look into the latest aging & longevity news and ideas.
Summary: In January, I wrote about building physical strength and flexibility in 2026 using a simple, 11-syllable mindset (see the Context section below). And now I find something approaching communion with Sebastian Langdell, a Baylor University English professor, who wrote a New York Times op-ed (gift link!) this week about his circuitous journey in creating a strength training habit for himself. He writes about the almost inescapable fitness advice pushed by the big podcast names that hold themselves out as experts on the subject. There’s Tim Ferriss on fasting; Peter Attia on ketones; Bryan Johnson on transfusing his son’s plasma; Andrew Huberman on the best way to char a steak (nevermind that steak char is something akin to cancer dust). To Langdell, each seemed to be playing off clichéd masculinity tropes, which, he wrote, made him feel rather hollow.
Only after he began following fitness concepts pursued by artists—cartoonist Alison Bechdel; novelist Laura van den Berg; singer Harry Styles, who has credited writer Haruki Murakami’s book on running with freeing Styles “from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession”—did professor Langdell find an open door to the kind of non-preening strength he was looking to build in midlife. (I also invited him to join AGING with STRENGTH, to find a like-minded community of active, intelligent, grounded believers in strength in all its forms, not just physical.)
Insight: We’ve all had enough of the myth of the ripped older man as an avatar of late-adulthood fitness (haven’t we?). There’s nothing wrong with building lean muscle, eating well and staying in incredibly good shape. Just look at 60-something Lenny Kravitz. But the bro-y idea that fitness after 50 requires questionable biohacks, pricey supplements or giant muscles of the cartoonish variety rendered by AI, above, is obnoxious overkill.
Takeaway: Aging like an ass-kicking artist is underrated. Which is why I instead advocate the Move like it’s 1899 mindset: “Move your body. Every day. With purpose.”
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I've gotten tons of value from Huberman through the years, and I feel the charred meat claim is taken out of context. That topic has been discussed on his podcast, and both his solo and guest episodes are well researched; the show notes provide all the supporting information for the curious and nerdy reader. Credit is always fairly given, and the nuance is right there for anyone willing to actually listen before forming an opinion. Pulling one line out of a two-hour conversation and treating it as the whole message says more about the critic than the source.
So true! While Attia, Huberman, Ferriss et al have basically become grifters IMO, I will say that Attia's Outlive book did provide lots of info that I found helpful. But he and many others seem to be in it now for nothing but a money grab that too many fall for. At 80, your advice has been invaluable for me. Fortunately I see a few others like Dr Howard Luks that are dispensing great info for older folks like myself. But as you've said along with another older guy I met at the beach this morning, just keep moving!