50 Minutes of Badass Grandad's Advice to Young Men

How to become a mentor? What does it take to go from a self-described adrenaline junkie who sought his masculine identity in war zones and deadly mountain climbs, to one of the most thoughtful mentors for young men alive today? That is the question at the heart of this episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast.

That is where this conversation goes.

In this episode, Marc Azoulay talks with John Graham, former US Foreign Service diplomat, founder of the Giraffe Heroes Project, and creator of the wildly popular Badass Granddad video series, about what it really means to be a man, and how older men can step up and lead younger ones.

The episode makes clear that for much of Graham’s early life, redefining masculinity was the last thing on his mind. He was too busy living what he thought manhood looked like: freighter ships in the Far East, hitchhiking through an active war in Algeria, climbing the deadly north face of Denali, and filing dispatches from the early days of Vietnam. John Wayne was his idol. Danger was his compass.

“I became an adrenaline junkie. The meaning of my life was to become a man, and I found that in violent adventure.” And that strategy got expensive.

It shows up when a man:

•     Mistakes recklessness for strength
•     Suppresses compassion to appear tough
•     Chases adrenaline instead of meaning
•     And then finds himself, at nearly 30, ordering executions in a war he didn’t believe in, and finally weeping at the emptiness of it all

Not because he lacked courage, but because he had built his whole identity around being feared instead of being known.

That is the deeper problem here. When your whole sense of self is anchored in physical dominance and risk-taking, you lose contact with the rest of yourself. You stop feeling. You stop connecting. You start expecting the world to reward your self-abandonment. And when it doesn’t, something breaks.

Marc and John talk through what it looks like to break that pattern, touching on emotional risk-taking, mentorship for young men, masculine identity, the power of small acts of service, and what it truly means to ask: what is a real man? One kind of strength is about proving yourself. The other is about giving yourself.
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