[Cold open - I don't need anyone] I want you to meet a man I respect. His name is Jake — thirty-four, strong in the ways men are taught to measure strength. He fixes his own problems. He carries his own weight. He never asks twice. Ask Jake about his people and he gives you the line that a certain kind of capable man gives: I don't need anyone. And the thing is, he means it. And it's earned — nobody has bailed Jake out, nobody has had to carry him, and he's genuinely proud of that. There's real skill under that pride. Real grit. I'm not here to take any of that away from him. But I want to ask Jake something quieter than a challenge. I want to ask: when did not needing anyone become the proof that you're strong? Because I think most men are carrying that equation around without ever really examining it — and when you look at it closely, it starts to come apart.
[Where the lone-wolf story came from] Let's talk about where this comes from — because the idea that a real man needs nobody didn't come out of nowhere, and it didn't come out of strength either. It came out of a story we handed men like a kit when they were boys. Here's the kit: you're supposed to handle things alone. Asking for help is admitting you couldn't manage. Needing people is for people who can't carry their own weight — and you're not going to be that guy. So the kids who got handed this kit did the only smart thing available: they learned to need as little as possible, and they built their identity around not needing. And for a while — maybe a long while — that works. You handle your own problems. You don't complain. Nobody has to cover for you. There's real dignity in all of that. But here's the thing the kit never mentioned. It was only ever a partial story. The guys who handed it to you were living inside the same story and never questioned it either — so they couldn't see the part they left out.
[The real lone wolf - unsupported, not strong] Here's the part of the story that got left out, and it's hiding in the image we picked to sell the idea. We picked the wolf. The lone wolf — dangerous, free, needs nothing from anyone. That's the picture of strength we handed men. But if you go look at actual wolves, the image falls apart almost immediately. A lone wolf in the wild is not the apex of the pack — it's an outcast or a young one that hasn't found its pack yet. It cannot bring down large prey alone. It loses fights it would win with backup. It's one bad winter from starving. Researchers who study wolf packs have found, over and over, that the wolves with the fullest lives — the ones who eat well, hold territory, and live the longest — run with a crew. The wolf that runs alone isn't the strongest wolf. It's the most vulnerable one. The lone wolf myth isn't a fact about wolves at all. It's a fact about what we needed to believe about strength — and we borrowed the wrong animal to prove it.
[Jake the ronin - skill without a crew] So back to Jake. If a strong man without a crew is more like the lone wolf than the pack leader, what's the right word for him? There's actually an old one, and it fits well. The ronin. In Japan, a ronin was a samurai without a master — highly trained, genuinely dangerous, a real fighter. Nobody was going to look at a ronin and think he was soft. But a ronin was also unattached, without backing, working for whoever paid him that week, with no one guarding his back while he slept. The ronin's skill was never the question. The question was always: what is all that skill in service of? Who does it protect? Who does it build something with? A sword with no crew behind it wins a fight and then stands alone in an empty field, every single time. Jake is that ronin. He is genuinely capable. He has real grit. Nobody is going to take his competence away from him just by reading this. But capable and alone isn't the destination — it's the starting point. The ronin is impressive. The crew is the upgrade.
[What interdependence actually means] Now before we go any further I want to deal with the word, because 'interdependence' is one of those words that sounds soft to a man like Jake — sounds like it means needing people to prop you up, or depending on others to do the thing you should be doing yourself. That's not what it means, and I want to be precise about it. Interdependence isn't 'I can't do it without you.' That's dependence, and Jake is right to see through it. Interdependence is 'I can do it — and I'm choosing to build something with people, because what we build together is bigger than anything I can lift alone, and what I can offer them makes them stronger too.' It keeps Jake's competence. It keeps his pride. It just adds something his competence alone can't build. The wolf that runs with a pack isn't the one who can't hunt. It's the one who can hunt AND coordinate a takedown that no wolf could manage alone — and then eat better because of it. Jake doesn't become less Jake by finding his pack. He becomes a better version of what he already is.
[The pushback - 'crews are for people who can't handle things alone'] Now I know what a man like Jake is thinking right now, and I'm going to say it out loud, because it's the real objection and it deserves a real answer — not a brush-off. The objection is this: crews are for people who need backup because they can't handle things on their own. If you're actually strong, you handle it. The guys who lean on a group are the ones who couldn't stand on their own two feet in the first place. That's the thought. And I want to sit with it, because it's not crazy. There are groups built entirely on shared helplessness — the kind where everyone vents and nothing ever improves. And yes, a man who hops from group to group looking for people to manage his problems is not building strength, he's offloading it. But here's the thing the objection misses. The strongest crews in history — military units, building crews, fire companies, surgical teams — are built from people who can already perform on their own. The crew isn't there to cover for someone who can't. The crew is there because some things cannot be done alone, no matter how good you are. Not 'won't be done as easily.' Cannot be done. The pack upgrades what was already strong. It does not replace what was missing.
[What the pack actually gives you] So here's what happens when Jake finds his crew — and let me make it concrete, because this matters more than the principle. The first thing the crew gives you is a witness. Someone who saw what you did, knows what it cost, and can say so. The lone wolf wins a fight and there's nobody there to say 'I saw that.' A man who works alongside people he respects, and has them work alongside him, starts to know his own worth differently — because it gets reflected back. The second thing is backup. Not covering for weakness, but the knowledge that if something goes wrong tonight, there are specific people you can call. That's not weakness. That's not being propped up. That's what makes a man willing to take bigger risks — because he knows he won't eat the full loss alone if it goes wrong. The third thing, and the one men don't talk about because it sounds soft, is that the crew gives a place where being needed is a full-time condition. In the pack, you give your specific skill to something that needs it. And being needed — having something real to offer that people are counting on — is one of the quiet, deep things that keeps a man from running on empty. The lone wolf wins fights. The man with a crew wins something worth fighting for.
[What Book Two says about this] This is Book Two's territory, and I want to spend a minute on what the book actually says — because it goes deeper than what men usually hear about connection and friendship, and the depth is where it gets interesting. The book isn't asking you to 'open up more' or 'have more feelings in public.' That's not the move. The move is much more Jake-compatible than that. Book Two is about how value travels between people and what happens when it travels freely versus when it stalls. The man who gives his specific skill into a network of people — who teaches what he knows, who solves problems for people who can't, who makes introductions between people who should know each other — that man is not depleting himself. He's building the conditions where his own jar gets filled without him having to ask. It's the same shape we talked about in the first episode of this show — the well that drains one man and the jar that everyone fills. And here's what Book Two adds: the giving that comes back to a man strongest isn't the giving that asks to be paid back. It's the giving where he was genuinely needed, did his real work, and let the rest move on its own. That's the giver-not-taker frame. And for a man like Jake, it's actually one of the most Jake things he can do.
[One small fact from the research] I want to bring one small finding in here, and I'm going to keep it plain and general, because the specifics vary depending on how you look at it, and I want you to take it as the beginning of a thought, not a closed case. What researchers who study how men's relationships work over time have found, consistently and across a lot of different settings, is that the men who stay healthy and stay sharp as they get older are almost always men who stayed embedded in something — a crew, a regular thing with people they know, some kind of context where they were needed and where they showed up. The men who disconnected — who let the crew fall away, who stopped having a regular thing — tended not to do as well across a lot of the measures that matter. Now, the researchers also found that the quality of those connections matters more than the number of them. You don't need a big network. You need a small one that's real. But the common thread in almost every account of a man living well into his older years is some version of the same thing: there were people, and he was useful to them, and they were useful to him. Not complicated. Not soft. Just present.
[Turn it on yourself] Alright — time to bring this to you, because this stops being useful the second it stays a story about Jake. So let me ask you three straight questions. Don't rush them. First: is there something you've been handling alone that's actually heavier than one person should carry? Not something you can't do — something that gets worse because nobody else knows it's happening. Maybe it's a decision you've been chewing on for months, a thing at work that only you see, a problem at home you haven't said out loud to anyone. That's the weight the pack could share — if you'd let it. Second: is there someone in your life right now who clearly needs backup and hasn't asked? The man who is handling everything and never says so — the one who gives the 'I'm fine' answer automatically. You already know who I mean. He's not going to ask. Someone has to make the first move. Third — and this is the Jake question — what is the one specific thing you're good at that a crew around you could actually use right now? Not 'being supportive' in a vague way. A specific skill, a specific kind of knowledge, a specific thing you can do that would make someone else's load lighter this week. Be still for a second with that one. Because the answer to that question is the door into the pack.
[This week - give one specific thing to one specific person] So here's your one move this week. And for a man like Jake it's actually the comfortable one — because it leads with strength, not with asking. Here it is: give one specific thing to one specific person. Not a vague 'let me know if you need anything' — that sentence lets everyone off the hook including you. A specific offer. You know how to do this thing. This problem you're facing right now — I can help with that. Tuesday afternoon I have two hours. Give the concrete thing, to the concrete person, at the concrete time. Here's why that move is the giver's move and not just a favor. When you show up with a specific skill at a specific moment, you hand that man the thing that every man in a real crew knows and almost nobody in modern life gets enough of: someone showed up, for real, with what I actually needed. Not words. Not a like on a phone. Someone used their real skill for me. You're not just helping him. You're putting something in the jar — and you're putting yourself on the map as the man who actually shows up. That's how packs form. Not with a big conversation about connection. One specific thing, one specific person, this week. That's the whole move.
[Outro] So here's where we land. The lone wolf wasn't strong — he was unsupported, and there's a real difference. Jake's competence, his grit, his pride in handling his own weight — none of that goes away when he finds his pack. It gets bigger. The ronin who finds his crew doesn't stop being a fighter. He becomes the kind of fighter who can actually hold ground — because something is behind him worth holding it for, and people behind him worth holding it with. The jar that everyone fills holds a whole town up and makes every person in it needed. And a man who gives his specific skill to a crew around him — who shows up, who makes the concrete offer, who lets value flow — is not becoming something soft. He is becoming the thing the lone wolf was always trying to be and never quite could: someone the pack needs. One specific thing. One specific person. This week. Watched over, as always, by Daisy. See you next time.