“How can you become what you cannot imagine?” -bell hooks

Here’s the last episode of season one! We recorded this LIVE at the University of Minnesota in November 2019. We knew we wanted to end the season with something forward-looking, speculative, and maybe a little weird. We also knew we wanted to bring in a bunch of other voices. These guests were so generous, and so brilliant; we’re super grateful for their contributions.

Thanks also to all of the sponsoring organizations at the University of Minnesota: the Women’s Center, the Asian Pacific American Resource Center, the Aurora Center, the Office of Fraternity/Sorority Life, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Program. It’s definitely cool to see that kind of collaboration; if you’d like to bring #WhatsGoodMan to YOUR college, conference, or other space, get in touch!

Also thanks to all of our listeners over the past few months. It means a lot, and we hope people will keep sharing episodes, sharing quotes, leaving reviews, and of course- continuing the conversations, whether that’s with the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on social media, or in real life!

We will be back!

True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impacts your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again.
-Mia Mingus (who is not IN this episode, but is quoted; more here)

As we approach the end of our first season, this episode is about diving into what accountability means, especially in practice, in real-life situations. That’s a huge subject, of course, and touches on issues like apology, restorative justice, transformative justice, “cancel culture” and a million other things. One episode isn’t really enough to cover all that, but we hope it’s at least a step on a longer journey.

Here are a few of the resources we mention in this episode:

• Barnard Center for Research on Women’s “Building Accountable Communities Project”
• “Dealing With Our Shit” Collective’s Zine
• Mia Mingus’ “How to Give a Good Apology”
• Mia Mingus’ “Dreaming Accountability”
• Dan Harmon’s Apology (18:38)
• Kyra and Malcolm London’s Accountability Process
• How To Survive The End of The World Episodes on Transformative Justice (1 and 2)

Huge thanks to our guest as well, Russel Balenger of the Circle of Peace Movement (TCOPM)!

As always, if you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG. Find our previous episodes here.

Finally, a quick reminder: we’ve created a gallery of all the quote images we’ve shared on social media; feel free to share them too!

Here’s the transcript:

“If I am a man, then what kind of man am I going to be? And how am I going to carry that in the world in a way that leads to the liberation of all people?” —Shannon TL Kearns

Our fifth episode is based around the question of whether the best path forward for a healthy, loving society is to focus on the “bad parts” of masculinity in hopes of creating a less toxic, more nurturing version of manhood, OR do away with the gender binary, and perhaps the concept of gender, in general. Is the goal to be a “good man,” or is the goal to be a good human being? Or is that the wrong way to frame the question to begin with!?

We realize that that has the potential to be a pretty abstract or theoretical conversation, so we tried to bring it down to earth and talk about how our responses to that question might impact the work that needs to be done, and our lives. A big section of this episode is just us reading and reflecting on adrienne maree brown’s must-read piece “Relinquishing the Patriarchy.” 

We also have a fantastic guest for the last word, Shannon TL Kearns of Uprising Theatre and QueerTheology.com.

As always, if you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG. Find our previous episodes here.

Here’s the transcript:

“Your relationship isn’t you being one person with the same wants and needs. It’s you being two or more people, all with their own sets of wants and needs, and trying to figure out where they line up.”
–tony the scribe

Our fourth episode is built around the question “if you had a time machine, and could go back and give your teenage self advice about dating, sex, and relationships in general, what would it be?” That question is very intentionally-phrased, in that this isn’t an episode that is going to be 100% relevant to every single listener. But our hope is that by talking about that question from our own perspectives, there’ll be something interesting, or useful, to take away.

Of course, our perspectives are limited! And we’ll be diving more deeply into other folks’ experiences of masculinity very soon. Also, thanks to our guest, Kelly Evertz.

If you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG. Find our previous three episodes here.

Here’s the full transcript of episode four:

“The goal is not to say all the right things… the goal is to try to show up, be authentically present, and be like, I’m here. I’m doing my best. I really care about this work. I’m going to listen. I’m going to be here. I’m going to respond to critique. I’m gonna be accountable.”
–tony the scribe

This is our third episode, and it focuses on misconceptions about feminism, as well as how men can intentionally engage with feminist work. It’s also very much just one part of a much longer conversation. If you’re just finding us now, I’d recommend checking out our second episode before diving into this one. Find the full list of season one topics/titles here.

If you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG.

Here’s the full transcript of episode three:

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
-Margaret Atwood

This is our second episode, and probably my personal favorite from the whole season. Find the full list of season one topics/titles here.

If you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG.

Also, THANK YOU to everyone who came to our very first live episode recording at the University of MN. The conversation was absolutely fantastic, and I can’t wait for everyone else to be able to hear it too. Double thanks to everyone who tuned into the first episode, subscribed, and shared it.

Here’s the full transcript of episode two:

This is our very first episode! We’ll be releasing new episodes every two weeks. Find the full list of season one topics/titles here.

If you like it, please subscribe (on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual platforms). If you really like it, please feel free to leave a review, and spread the word- share a favorite quote, or ask a question, or just share the link; we’ll be using the hashtag #WhatsGoodMan on Twitter and IG.

Find the full transcript of the episode below.