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MAY/JUNE 2020 Vol. 29, No. 4

THE BEST SANDWICHES IN AMERICA

THE MEGA STAR JOINS THE MEGA FRANCHISE— A FIRST LOOK AT

Africa’s Wildest Safari

TOUGHEST

MOVES TO GREATER

TAMING GIANT GRIZZLIES

POLLUTION

58 The Fast and The Curious

64 Best Sandwiches in America

68 Space Oddity

ON THE COVER John Cena photographed for Men’s Journal

by Joe Pugliese on February 25, 2020, in Los Angeles. Styling by Mark Holmes for Art Department. Grooming by Sussy Campos for Art Department. Production by Zach Crawford & Co Productions. Cena wears shirt by Brunello Cuccinelli, available at mrporter.com. Undershirt by Calvin Klein.

Jeans by JBrand. Watch his own.

Walk on the Wild Side

MAY/JUNE 2020

MEN’S JOURNAL

photograph by JOE PUGLIESE

CENA WEARS SHIRT AND JEANS BY POLO RALPH LAUREN.

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85 29

24 NOTEBOOK

12 Adventure

The pilot who’s dead set on making the idea of electric planes a reality.

38 We’re With Her Linda Cardellini on the importance of messy friendships.

52 Gravel Bikes Affordable options that don’t skimp on the bells and whistles.

57 Smart Appliances Refrigerators that simply keep your food cold are so last year.

26 Drinks Kombucha—a fermented tea— is coveted among the health conscious. A slew of new offerings are attracting boozehounds, too.

28 Deep Dive 5G is the high-speed network poised to transform transportation, communication, our homes, and even the art of espionage.

30 Style

45 Fly Fishing Trout are catching a break, thanks to new equipment geared toward hooking almost any type of fish.

48 Wireless Earbuds Before you ask, yes, there are AirPods. But that’s not all.

49 Tennis Racquets

The latest denim designs to keep you covered, day to night.

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Serving up the latest in design and technology for players of all levels.

MEN’S JOURNAL

THE BLUEPRINT

85 Health and Fitness The gym tool to get you strong, cassava root, and an actor’s guide to (not) getting in Marvel movie shape.

L AST WORD

104 Ray Liotta The eternal goodfella on the pitfalls of Hollywood, fearing the unknown, fatherhood, and going with the gray.

FROM LEFT: COURTESY CORVETTE, CHRISTOPHER TESTANI, COLTON TISCH

Greenland is hoping to rev up its economy through tourism. Can the island handle it?

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Letter From the Editor

O B O DY T O L D M E

there’d be days like these.

There are a lot of lyrics rattling around my head as I sit down to write this letter in mid-March, but somehow the John Lennon tune is the one I find myself humming most while washing my hands for 20 seconds—minimum! Strange days, indeed.

Obviously, the backdrop of a global pandemic is an odd time to be working at a lifestyle magazine. There’s no playbook for any of us right now.

We’re all just learning how to get by minute by minute: monitoring the news, buying rationed packages of toilet paper, holding loved ones close, and occasionally hiding under the covers. (Well, that was one man’s approach.) But amid the uncertainty, I found a lot of unexpected comfort in this issue of Men’s Journal.

Let’s just start with our cover star.

I met John Cena a few years ago, and I have to agree with contributing editor Mickey Rapkin, who writes, “Cena looks like a He-Man action figure hit by whatever gamma ray turns Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.”

But I was also struck, as Mickey was, by the depth beneath those muscles.

Unbelievably, this month’s feature on an

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action star, joining the world’s biggest action franchise, had me Googling a TED Talk on the power of vulnerability.

Didn’t see that one coming.

This is just one of the reads in this issue that takes you somewhere unexpected. The man who taught rescued grizzly bears to act in your favorite films and TV shows, like Game of Thrones, is actually the guy hoping to create the biggest continuous grizzly habitat in the United States (“The Bear Whisperer,” page 72). The creator of one of the all-time most bingeable shows, The Office, is taking the workplace comedy into outer space (“Space Oddity,” page 68). And the bucket list African safari is raised to a whole new level when deputy editor Larry Kanter takes a stroll, along with a rifle-packing guide, through the Tanzanian bush (“Walk on the Wild Side,” page 78).

We strive in every issue of Men’s Journal to push beyond the ordinary—even our ode to the once-humble sandwich is boundary-pushing. And I’d love to debate the merits of whether pulled pork served open face on roti even qualifies (spoiler: It does), but right now there are bigger f ish to fry. So shelter in place with the ones you love, and have plenty of reading material on hand.

(Have I got a magazine for you.) And I’m confident we’ll be humming a new tune very soon. In fact, I’m changing my handwashing soundtrack to “Here Comes the Sun” immediately and until further notice.

One last programming note: This is my last issue as chief content officer of Men’s Journal. I have enjoyed every single second of making this magazine and website. And even better, I have been lucky enough to work with an amazing staff that I adore—and I know we are all headed for brighter days.

GREG EMMANUEL Chief Content Officer

MEN’S JOURNAL

Field Notes Feedback

The Sandwich Survey

I loved Mia Mercado’s defense of hangovers (March 2020). She’s right about Malört, which is essentially diesel fuel disguised as alcohol. She’s also right that if it weren’t for hangovers, we’d never sober up. They teach us to learn through pain and suffering. Yet, fools we are, we drink on.

RICK TELANDER CHICAGO

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COVER LETTER I enjoyed “Fastest to the Top,” about record-setting Nepalese climber Nims Purja. I’m not a climber myself, but I do spend a lot of time snowboarding in the mountains and can thus appreciate Purja’s truly amazing accomplishments.

I love Andy Samberg, but Purja should have made the cover.

BO GREENE SHERMAN OAKS, CA MOVER’S REMORSE Thanks to Blane Bachelor’s story “Cali’s New Foodie Capital,” I found myself wondering why I ever relocated from outside Sacramento.

MICHAEL KILGORE INDIANAPOLIS LASTING APPEAL I’ve been a subscriber since MJ first launched.

The first place I go is to The Last Word. The interviews are always great. The latest one, with Bob Odenkirk, was no exception.

BARRY SCOVEL BELLEVUE, WA MEN’S JOURNAL

MJ readers weigh in on what they consider the greatest thing on sliced bread. Check out our 10 favorite new sandwiches on page 64.

¬ Sherman’s Sure Choice, Zingerman’s Delicatessen (Ann Arbor, MI) @mattgelgota ¬ Burnt Heaven, Char Bar (Kansas City, MO) @dylangr0ce ¬ Pastrami on Rye, Katz’s

Delicatessen (New York, NY) @danny.hidalgo ¬ The Z-Man, Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que (Kansas City, KS) @brocksstarr ¬ Hot salami sandwich, Gioia’s Deli (St. Louis, MO) @chefandscrub ¬ Italian sub, The Original Nottoli & Son (Chicago, IL) @chedandscrub ¬ Pastrami sandwich, Harold’s New York Deli (Edison, NJ) @armen_madalian

#MJwild

A Drift at Dawn @MORRITOSR | Elk River, Tennessee Show off your photos using the Instagram hashtag #MJwild.

CONTACT US: TWITTER @mensjournal FACEBOOK facebook.com/ MensJournal INSTAGRAM @mensjournal EMAIL letters@mensjournal.com SEND LETTERS to Men’s Journal, 4 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004. Letters become the property of Men’s Journal and may be edited for publication.

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D I S PAT C H E S F R O M A W I L D W O R L D

Greenland is hoping to ramp up its adventure tourism with outdoor pursuits like mountain biking. But can—and should—its small coastal communities handle a boatload of tourists? by RYAN STUART

into a rhythm on my first mountain bike ride in Greenland when I nearly slam into a singletrack traffic jam.

While pedaling over a slab of rock, the giant Ilulissat Icefjord suddenly appears in front of our group of five riders—who all stop on a dime in front of me, staring in silence. Icebergs, from car-size cubes to massive hunks the length of aircraft carriers, stretch to the horizon in shades of white and blue.

We’ve come to Greenland in September, during the few weeks between mosquito season and winter, with the plan AM JUST GETTING

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to spend seven days exploring the MTB potential along the country’s west coast. What we’ll quickly realize, though, as we pedal, boat, and fly around, is that this trip is more than scoutIlulissat ing: We’re witnessing Greenland’s GREENLAND awkward emergence as the next bucket-list adventure destination.

“Greenland feels like Iceland did 15 years ago,” says Chris Winter, a mountain-bike tour operator and the reason our group is in

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Notebook

ADVENTURE

Riding outside the town of Ilulissat, 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

the first to take mountain bikers to Iceland in the mid-2000s. After that, Greenland was the logical next step.

Our starting point is Ilulissat, a village nearly 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle but barely halfway up Greenland. The picture-postcard town of bright buildings on exposed rock is home to roughly 4,500 people—and nearly as many sled dogs. Dozens of them howl at us from the ends of their chains as we pedal past. We spin up a walking trail, snaking through glacier-polished slabs of bedrock, and then hoist our bikes onto our shoulders to march straight up a ravine. Down the other side, we arrive at the icefjord viewpoint.

From here, the trail parallels the ice spectacle, and we never go far before stopping to stare out at the ice and snap another dozen pictures. When there’s silence, I can hear the icebergs grinding against each other—even the drips as they melt.

Greenlanders don’t wonder about global warming—they can see it. Seventy-six percent say it’s impacting their lives already. Chatting with locals, you hear stories about warmer weather, shrinking icebergs, and less and less sea ice. Last year was particularly alarming. The summer shattered heat records. The ice sheet saw a near-record net loss of ice. “I was on the deck in a tank top.” our waitress at the local brewpub tells us one day.

Wildfires, almost unknown on the world’s largest island, raged on the tundra for weeks. “The weather is getting weird,” 014

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the hotel-shuttle driver tells us. “It’s not predictable anymore.”

After two days in Ilulissat, we head south on an overnight ferry to the village of Sisimiut. With no roads between the dozen or so towns on the west coast, water and air are the only ways to commute. The ferry, which feels more like a nature tour than public transit, cruises past the mouth of the f jord, dodging icebergs, pods of minke and humpback whales, and dozens of fishing boats longlining for halibut.

“Tourism is still something strange to many Greenlanders,” Mads Skifte, the deputy director for Visit Greenland, tells me at the end of our trip. “There are so few resources: If one company drops out, the whole industry in a community can collapse.”

This becomes obvious in Sisimiut. In a marina full of small boats there’s only one water taxi that takes out tourists.

The captain shuttles us to a midpoint of the Arctic Circle Trail, a 100-mile route through valleys, across rivers, along

GREENLANDERS DON’T WONDER ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. THEY CAN SEE IT. MEN’S JOURNAL

lakes, and over passes between the towns of Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut. Only a handful of cyclists have ever pedaled here, and we’re bikepacking for three days back to Sisimiut.

The first half-day is amazing. The trail weaves through the hills backdropped by ridgelines covered in fall colors. A steep descent leads us into a willow grove—and that’s where the fun ends. Bushes grow right over the trail. When we can pedal, it’s a shin thrashing. Pushing is not much easier: Every few strides a pedal hangs up, spins, and slaps into a calf. We’re bloodied and exhausted when we make our first camp.

The next two days are a similar mix of pleasure and pain—f lowy singletrack and then tortuous bushwhacking. The landscape varies from narrow canyons to wide-open plateaus and lakeside flats. We watch caribou prance across the tundra and arctic char spawn in crystal streams.

Most of the time we feel alone, but we pass a dozen hikers every day.

In the last f ive years, traff ic on the ACT has exploded from a few hundred backpackers per season to about 1,500 in 2019. They’re part of a 10 percent growth in visitors f lying to Greenland in the last decade. Cruise ship passengers have doubled in five years. More tourists will come when two airports extend their runways to allow international f lights.

(Now the only flights come from Denmark or Iceland.) Before they do, Skifte says, Greenland needs to think about the kind of destination it wants to become.

“Do we want planes full of low-budget travelers coming in?” he asks. “Greenland is an adventure destination. We need to take care of the nature, the culture, the people, the wildlife. We need to think sustainably or we don’t have anything. ” Before the trip, I had felt guilty about flying halfway around the world to a place that’s warming faster than almost anywhere else. But after a week in Greenland, I feel different. Global warming, because it’s such an ever-present reality here—rather than a future prospect—is simply a fact of life. So instead of burying your head in the sand, you look into the distance and decide to either do something about it or adapt, as the Greenlanders are doing.

As Skifte says, “The global warming issue makes Greenland intriguing. People should come and see it for themselves.” Q

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PROFILE

Another Man’s Treasure Jake Koehler has become YouTube’s most unlikely star—by searching riverbeds and drainage ditches for whatever riches they might possess.

AKE KOEHLER is in Helen,

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COURTESY OF JAKE KOEHLER(3)

Georgia, clad in full scuba gear, dead-man f loating in a shallow section of the Chattahoochee River. He’s hoping to strike gold, preferably in the form of a wedding band. But the host of the popular YouTube treasure-hunting channel, DALLMYD—pronounced D-Almighty— would settle for just about anything. Even a lost cellphone would suffice.

In warmer seasons, this stretch of the Chattahoochee is crowded with tubers. But today, Koehler hasn’t seen many people on the water aside from his cameramen, Beau Darkens and Joseph Talerico. With their camouf lage wetsuits, bug-eyed cameras, and metal detectors, they look like a band of misfit superheroes.

Just when it seems like the morning might be a bust, Koehler emerges, victorious. “You’re never going to believe what I just found!” he says, pausing to heighten anticipation. “A penny!”

Koehler might be playing up this mock f ind, but his enthusiasm over even the tiniest discoveries is contagious. During his waterborne expeditions—which are as likely to take place in drainage ditches as actual rivers—he’s discovered gold, human remains, diamonds, tombstones, a Rolex, knives, megalodon teeth, laptops, and drones. “You never know what you’re going to find,” he says. “It’s the not knowing that pulls me.”

Koehler, 27, began posting videos to YouTube in 2011, mostly about gaming.

But one day as he was paddling down the

Chattahoochee on his surf board, he took a pair of goggles along and found himself amazed at the universe of detritus he saw below the river’s surface. Soon after, he found a working GoPro in the river and began filming his adventures, changing the focus of his channel. In 2016, he came across a pistol and called the police to report a potential murder weapon; later the cops informed him that the weapon’s serial number had been scratched off, furthering his suspicions that it might have been involved in a crime. The related video—featuring meditative underwater sequences and f ist-pumping moments of discovery—went viral, transforming DALLMYD into one of the top-ranked sports channels on YouTube. Koehler now boasts a library of more than 500 videos and nearly 10 million subscribers.

DALLMYD is about dogged pursuit of the unexpected. And Koehler is a perfect guide for the journey—the sort of person who can spend hours scuba diving in icy, knee-deep water, looking for gold but knowing that he might only come up with a penny. Both onscreen and off, his enthusiasm is hard to resist. In 2018, Columbus, Georgia, declared Jake Koehler Day. In 2019, the U.S. Navy, call-

ing Koehler a “treasure-hunting guru,” invited him to join them in a search for explosive ordinance in San Diego. He has accepted viewer invitations to Canada and the Bahamas. One fan even took him on a boat trip down the Amazon. Along the way, Koehler has earned enough from the YouTube platform to buy a condo in Columbus, overlooking a wide section of the Chattahoochee.

Back on the river, time passes slowly.

A few feet from where Koehler is f loating, the two cameramen have hunkered down in a wooded area, waiting for him to emerge with something, anything.

Suddenly, Koehler hollers: “I did it!”

The cameramen hop to attention, trotting up the river toward Koehler, who is holding up a wedding band. He turns enthusiastically toward Talerico’s camera, saying: “I braved the cold, and I got a ring!”

He runs a f inger along the band’s smooth interior. Be it nickel, steel, or gold, it’s obviously an item that, at some point, the owner intended to keep forever.

That alone makes it a banger, enough to anchor an entire nine-minute video.

Koehler slips the ring into a bag secured to his waist. “OK,” he says. “Let’s get back down there.”

and says, “We thought that was you. Can we get a picture?”

Despite the incessant recognition— whether on riverbanks or roadways—it’s still striking when, later that night, the 15-year-old cashier of a restaurant practically tears up when Koehler walks through the front door. “I’ve been watching you since I was 10,” the kid says. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

As a new breed of YouTube celebrity, Koehler has no studio, no label, no team. If fans run into him, they know there’s a chance they’ll become part of his recorded narrative. “It can get a little weird sometimes when people I’ve just met start talking like they think we’re family,” Koehler says. Then again, that’s how he tends to treat them.

Back outside, the night has cooled.

Koehler says, “I think I’m going to go back and give that kid something. I mean, he was crying.” In the cab of his truck, he sorts through the finds of the day, but he’s already given away most of the items he

found. Unsatisf ied with what’s left, he starts going through his equipment bags.

“I think I’m going to give him my vest,” Koehler says, holding up a black life jacket with his name embroidered on it.

“Your vest?” Talerico says, incredulous.

“I can always get another vest,” Koehler says “I think it’d really mean something

Above right: Koehler with a scooter he found while diving with the Navy. Below: Exploring a spring in Florida.

THE CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER f lows

through the center of Helen, a tourist town in the Chattahoochee National Forest, about 90 miles northeast of Atlanta. As the crew approaches a public river access leading to their next search, a man f lags them down in front of a hotel. “Hey, wait a minute!” he shouts, pointing at Koehler.

“I recognize your face! You find guns and stuff in the water!”

On hotel balconies above, people begin to emerge from their rooms to hang over rails. A small crowd soon forms along the riverbank. “Everything’s personal with Jake,” Darkens says, as Koehler presses small finds—lures and coins—into children’s palms. “He’s all about positivity in a world where negativity and drama tend to rule.”

Koehler spends the afternoon facedown in the water with oxygen tanks on his back. Onlookers cheer as he periodically surfaces with scratched sunglasses and other detritus. It’s only later, in fading light, that Koehler decides to call it a day. As the trio begins the walk back to their hotel, the driver of a pickup truck stops and motions for them to jump in.

A mile down the road, in the parking lot of Koehler’s hotel, the driver jumps out 017

The Aviation Pioneers Squad Scott Kelly Rocio Gonzalez Torres Luke Bannister

SUPER AVENGER NIGHT MISSION

Notebook The opulent lobby of the Royal Mansour.

THE GETAWAY

The Royal Treatment Marrakech is a magical place, but making the Royal Mansour your home base for a visit is a spellbinding experience that will make you feel like legit royalty. by GREG EMMANUEL

version of Japanese ninjas, they would f ind gainful employment at the Royal Mansour Marrakech. The staff there must receive similar training because they come and go in total secrecy while executing any mission they’re tasked with. This was most evident the morning my wife and I ordered breakfast on our

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private rooftop terrace. (Yes, you read that correctly. More on the layout of our accommodation later.)

Moments after placing a call to the concierge, we went upstairs to find a table already set with a ridiculous bounty of Moroccan delicacies, including a tasty f latbread called msemen and harira, a tangy chickpea soup—right beside our personal plunge pool. There was no knock MEN’S JOURNAL

at the door, no bell—no footsteps! How exactly these hospitality ninjas pulled it off was not so easy to figure out. Our “room” at the Mansour was modeled after a traditional Moroccan riad, meaning the 1,500-square-foot abode was hidden behind a giant wooden door and featured an open-air sitting area where the North African sun poked through the clouds two stories above our heads. The rest of

COURTESYF OF ROYAL MANSOUR MARRAKECH

F THERE WAS a Moroccan

NEW !

TIGERBALM.COM

Notebook

TRAVEL

MARRAKECH MUSTS FLY DIREC T Marrakech is exotic, but it’s also surprisingly close. Royal Air Maroc flies direct from New York to Casablanca daily (just seven hours), and it’s a short flight to Marrakech from there.

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Clockwise from top: A riad’s private roof deck, the hotel spa, the Mansour’s newest restaurant, Sesamo.

treatment begins. The grounds are equally meticulously curated, and wandering the indoor-outdoor expanse mimics being in Morocco’s labyrinthine medina—the ancient walled-in part of the city, which is a five-minute walk from the Mansour.

With so few rooms, the guest-to-staff ratio is stupidly lopsided, and the full army is on display at the hotel’s four restaurants, where you are served with precision care.

At our splurge meal at La Grande Table Marocaine, which specializes in ultrarefined versions of traditional Moroccan fare like tagines and savory stuffed puff pastries called briouates, a prix fixe menu meant course after course of insanely delicious food. Stuffed after the decadent meal, I had no choice but to take my elevator to my bedroom. It’s good to be the king. Q MEN’S JOURNAL

E AT E VERY THING That includes sheep eye—one of the many delicious bites on the Marrakech food tour (marrakechfoodtours.com), an incredible gastronomic trip deep into the hidden world of the souk.

DON’ T LE AVE WITHOUT... ...taking a sidecar tour through the medina...buying a rug at Soufiane Zarib...drinking coffee at Bacha cafe...strolling the gardens of Jardin Majorelle...lounging with a cocktail on the roof at El Fenn.

FROM LEFT: ROYAL MANSOUR MARRAKECH (3); COURTESY OF BLACK TOMATO (2)

the lower level consisted of a cozy living room with a fireplace, a curving marble staircase led to a gorgeous bedroom above, and yet another floor up was that roof deck.

Feeling lazy? A private elevator stopped on all three floors. As for the ninjas, it was my hunch that a door near the kitchenette on the first f loor was their secret egress leading to a series of hidden tunnels—but I never wanted the illusion to end.

Amazingly, our riad was one of the smallest of the 53 private residences that make up the sprawling Royal Mansour— the largest is a nearly 20,000-square-foot palace. The proportions are royal because the hotel was literally built by a king, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, with a reportedly unlimited budget. Handcrafted by more than 1,200 artisans, the hotel is a jaw-droppingly detailed blend of tile, sumptuous finishings, and wood accents.

The spa is a white lattice–lined space so heavenly looking it relaxes you even before the traditional Moroccan hammam

GE T OUT You can spend days wandering the medina, but an entirely different experience is just 45 minutes outside town, in the Agafay Desert. The moonlike landscape is an otherworldly place to hike, mountain bike, or ATV. And the bespoke outfitter Black Tomato (blacktomato.com) can set up nearly any experience. The Terre des Etoiles ecolodge is worth a stop for lunch or an overnight.

Notebook

FOOD

Ceviche is a staple of the Latin American kitchen. Why not make it a go-to crowd-pleasing recipe in yours? by ADAM ER ACE

MAKING CEVICHE is not exactly

rocket science—you marinate raw sea food in a high-acid solution until lightly cooked. The fact is, if you can use a knife and own a refrigerator, you can make your own batch of ceviche, a money move whether you’re throwing a cookout, planning a picnic, or in the middle of a successful fishing trip. Sourcing the freshest, highest quality seafood you can f ind is key; if you 024

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wouldn’t eat it raw, you shouldn’t turn it into ceviche.

Scallops are great, but this marinade also brings out the best in tuna, f luke, snapper, and bass. You can switch up the garnishes or leave them off entirely.

Instead, serve the ceviche naked and put out bowls of condiments—crushed chicharróns, chopped mango, torn Thai basil, toasted peanuts—so people can customize. Q MEN’S JOURNAL

photograph by CHRISTOPHER TESTANI

FOOD STYLING BY BARRETT WASHBURNE; PROP STYLING BY CARLA GONZALEZ-HART

Raw Material

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Introducing Lands Uncompromised, a cause-marketing campaign driving awareness, support, pride and passion for our nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public lands.

Go to MensJournal.com/LandsUncompromised to follow, support and engage.

Notebook

DRINKS

Cultured

KYLA

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GTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LIVING FOODS

DR HOPS KOMBUCHA BEER

FLYING EMBERS

JUNESHINE HARD KOMBUCHA

photograph by CHRISTOPHER TESTANI

Notebook

DEEP DIVE

[1] 5G runs on high-frequency waves with high data capacities but with relatively short ranges.

[2] As a result, 5G cell towers will run along city streets, connecting self-driving cars, security cameras, and traffic lights.

[3] 5G small cells on street lights will also help boost cell coverage.

A jargon-free primer on the next-generation wireless network. by MIA MERCADO

IRST, THERE WAS 1G, and

it sucked. This f irst-gen network was what Gordon Gekko’s blocky cell phone used in the ’80s. Now, 5G’s blistering speeds threaten to make our 4G current networks as archaic as Reagan-era tech. Here’s how it could change your life.

F

1 / TRANSPORTATION If you just felt something, that was all of Silicon Valley fist-bumping, because self-driving cars will be a reality with 5G. Unfortunately, wireless providers might need years to build the needed infrastructure for these vehicles.

2/PUBLIC SAFETY 5G will play a huge role in disaster response and prevention, mostly by seamlessly linking public-safety communications, such as ambulances, dam sensors, and traffic lights.

MAY/JUNE 2020

3/ HOME Smart-home networks will have the capacity to handle a constant, large flow of data from tiny sensors in air filters, lightbulbs, and HVAC units, to help improve a dwelling’s safety and energy-saving capabilities.

TWO CONTROVERSIES TO KEEP AN EYE ON [1]

4/WORK Prepare to say goodbye to super-laggy video conferencing and hello to 3-D-hologram meetings with your boss and colleagues, thanks to 5G-supported augmented reality.

5/ENTERTAINMENT

[2]

These days, streaming Succession without any glitches seems more far-fetched than autonomous cars. 5G should eliminate such server overloads, and take only five seconds to download super-high-def movies. That’s, like, all of the Transformers movies in less time than it takes to nuke a Hot Pocket.

MEN’S JOURNAL

Illustration by by DAVID JUNKIN

Notebook

Vette Vaults Discov Ahead Why a massive engineering rethink might change your mind about the classic American sports car. by JESSE WILL

NEW GENERATION Cor-

vette Stingray is here, and engineers have finally done what GM has been teasing for more than a decade: shift the engine behind the driver. Why bother? Pushing that weight toward the middle of the car means more-predictable handling, but it also looks revolutionary.

Since the Vette’s long hood is gone, designers were free to create something modern, almost Ferrari- or Lamborghini-like.

Unsurprisingly, the Corvette performed pretty close to one of those exotics during our trip around Lake Mead, Nevada. Its dual-clutch eight-speed maintains power through shifts, while a magnetic ride suspension performs magic underfoot.

Inside, you’ll find plenty of room, a wellconsidered interior, and tech that actually works: a near-zero-lag touchscreen and the rare rearview cam that’s useful.

Some might say the new Vette lacks theatrics. That its small-block V8 engine isn’t loud enough and doesn’t crackle like the fire-breathers of yore. But this Stingray is young, and more power and tailpipe pyrotechnics are sure to follow.

In the meantime, new Vette drivers will dig details like Stealth Mode, where the interior goes dark—console, buttons, everything save your mph readout and other essentials. Just you, machine, road. No distractions. How subtle. How

A

Q

The Corvette Stingray drop-top adds about $7,500 to the sticker price.

MSRP (FROM)

HORSEPOWER

0–60

TORQUE

$58,900

495

2.9 sec.

470 lb-ft

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STYLE

Season

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photographs by NIGEL COX

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Find the Right Fit

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Not Just for Truckers

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GROOMING

The Slowed-Down Shave Most mornings, a once-over with an electric razor will suffice. But certain days call for the ultimate close shave with minimal irritation and no ingrown hairs. Here is your five-step step, at-home, barber-shop-worthy routine. by ADAM HURLY

1 / EXFOLIATE

2/ CONDITION

3/ LATHER

4/ SHAVE

5/ PROTECT

Just like sanding wood before staining it, the gritty L:A Bruket Petitgrain Face Scrub ($34) uses sea salt to gently slough off the outer layer of rough, dead skin, reducing razor drag. The almond oil it contains softens and calms the face.

Pat your face dry with a clean washcloth, and apply a few drops of Acqua di Parma Barbiere Shaving Oil ($66). The lemon peel oil and basil extract– infused formula with hyaluronic acid softens hair and skin for better razor glide.

Pick a shave agent that hydrates skin with natural oils and extracts, like Claus Porto’s Musgo Real Classic Scent Shaving Soap ($50 with lather bowl). Whip it with a badger brush until it’s aerated, which will take a couple of minutes.

Supply Single-Edge 2.0 Safety Razor ($75) is an easy introduction to a single-blade razor, facilitating a close shave with fewer bumps and ingrown hairs. If you have irritation-prone skin, avoid shaving same spot more than once or twice.

Give your skin a cold-water rinse to close the pores, then apply a nickel-size amount of Bevel’s Restoring Aftershave Balm ($15). It soothes on contact and helps reduce the dark spots that come from razor burn.

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illustrations by KYLE HILTON

Engineered for Enjoyment

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PROFILE

The Elon Musk of Airplanes A British Columbian bush pilot is well on his way to owning the first all-electric airplane fleet—and he’s doing it with decades-old planes.

T WAS cold on the morning

of December 10, 2019, in Richmond, British Columbia, when 63-year-old pilot Greg McDougall took off in his 63-year-old f loatplane and f lew into history. As far as f lights go, it was wholly unremarkable. McDougall, the CEO and founder of Harbour Air—the world’s largest seaplane airliner, based in Vancouver, Washington—was in the air for about 10 minutes. And the plane, a De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, was constructed two years before Sputnik was shot into space.

Its new paint job, however, hinted at its exceptionalness: bright blue and green, with technical-looking graphics on its nose.

“This is what the motor, batteries, and electrical wires look like,” McDougall explained before the flight, pointing at the schematic, which depicts a 750-horsepower (or 560 kW) electric propulsion system.

With a crowd gathered at the edge of the Fraser River, McDougall took off in the floatplane for its debut flight as potentially the world’s first all-electric commercial passenger aircraft, and from the get-go, it was clear something was different. With no internal combustion engine burning fuel, there was no exhaust and no deep piston rumble. The air was remarkably calm, and the emissions for the four-minute f light: zero. It wasn’t exactly a Wright Brothers moment, but in the morning air, it must have felt something like the first f light in Kitty Hawk: quietly revolutionary.

I

gall is fond of saying. He first told me this when I met him in an airport hangar two weeks earlier. Around us, technicians and mechanics were working on a variety of floatplanes in various states of disassembly.

At the center of it was the De Havilland 036

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Greg McDougall, just before his historymaking flight.

with its electric motor. With roughly 170 other electric-f light projects underway around the globe, Harbour Air pulled ahead of the others by introducing perhaps the most novel concept out there: simply electrifying an old, dependable plane.

“We’re just making old technology as clean as possible,” says McDougall.

Rather than building and certifying a plane from the ground up—a long and expensive process—Harbour Air simply needs to certify existing planes with its new propulsion system. This relatively quick process may see passengers boarding e-planes in as little as two years. After that, Harbor Air will begin outfitting its entire fleet—40-plus planes that carry out 30,000 flights annually, primarily taking business commuters between Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle—with electric motors.

Manned electric flight isn’t a new idea.

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It’s been around since the 1970s with single-person prototype planes. What’s changed is the urgency brought on by the climate crisis. The aviation industry contributes an estimated 2.4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. As someone who had the ability to be part of the solution, McDougall felt compelled to do something.

“I just thought somebody had to pioneer the next step,” he says. “It’s going to be a difficult road, but I’m used to that.”

Born in Southern California to Canadian parents, McDougall first traveled in a plane as a kid. “I realized then that’s what I wanted to do,” he says. Flying school followed high school, along with his first job, as a bush pilot in the remote north.

In the early 1980s, when a recession hit and McDougall found himself unemployed, he decided to start his own airline. He

DIANE SELKIRK/E.GATEHOUSE

“TECHNOLOGY WILL SAVE US,” McDou-

Harbour Air CEO

BY THE NUMBERS

FIRST E-PLANE FLIGHT

63

Years that this specific Beaver airplane had been in use before being outfitted with an electric engine.

12,820.42

leased a few of floatplanes with a partner.

“We had no business experience and not much of a plan,” he says. But McDougall did know the kind of company that he’d want to f ly for. “In those days, the bush pilot mentality meant taking risks that didn’t need to be taken,” he says, describing pilots who f lew in bad weather with overloaded planes. “We wanted people to trust us enough to put their kids on our planes.”

As the company transitioned from flying charters for the lumber industry into a regional commuter airline, McDougall realized that earning customer trust also included protecting the places they were based. “We f ly over these spectacular glaciers and forests every day, and we have a role in keeping them that way,” he says.

One of the first steps to help safeguard the environment came in 2007 when, through offsets, Harbour Air became North America’s first fully carbon-neutral airline. But McDougall knew the aviation industry could do more. “I drive a Tesla,” he says. “Plus, I’d been reading about the electrification of transportation. I thought, Why wouldn’t we put this in an aircraft?”

Initially, McDougall says they were stymied by the costs: Established aviation companies were making electric motors only as a sideline, and none were the right match. But in February 2019, Roei Ganzarski, the CEO of MagniX, a Redmond, Washington–based electric-propulsion technology firm, walked through the door and said he wanted to put his motors in a plane. When the two companies decided to get a plane flying by the end of 2019, news of the project created positive buzz—and plenty of naysayers.

“The traditional aviation industry doesn’t really embrace change,” McDougall says.

When he was inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame in May 2019, he used his speech to let the aviation establishment know that while he appreciated the honor, his major contribution—the electrification of commercial f light—was still to come.

“I could almost hear the harrumphing,” he says, “which of course was inspiring.”

Tons of annual CO2 the plane could save over a traditional combustion engine.

75% Anticipated savings in engine maintenance costs.

30 Minutes the e-plane will be able to fly, plus 30 minutes of emergency reserve.

other words, this f light is really just the beginning, and there’s a long road ahead.

Critics point out that fossil fuels are 40 to 50 times more power-dense than current batteries, and batteries just don’t last long enough for regular flights. Charging them can take too long. But Ganzarski believes change will come quickly. “Before Tesla,” he says, “no one invested in batteries for cars because there was no car to use them. The same thing will happen with aviation.”

Harbour Air is f lying small planes on short routes, so McDougall f igured current batteries would already work for them—and his change may serve just as inspiration for other companies. “The aviation industry is safety-focused and risk-averse,” says Lynnette Dray, a senior research associate at University College London’s Energy Institute. “So there’s a lot of value in getting prototype models to market, so the technology has a chance to become familiar and trusted.”

McDougall is even more optimistic.

“Over the 10,000-hour life of a motor,” he says, “a conventional engine would cost around a million bucks in maintenance, whereas an electric motor should cost us virtually nothing.”

Harbour Air is now deep into the certification process and has begun accelerating its test flight program, taking the e-plane into the air on a near weekly basis “People

DIANE SELKIRK/E.GATEHOUSE

IN DECEMBER, as the Beaver touched

down, a cheer rang through the crowd gathered along the Fraser River. When McDougall hopped out of the plane, he and Ganzarski hugged. At the ensuing press conference, Ganzarski proudly proclaimed: “We just flew the first electric commercial aircraft. Next year, there’ll be more,” he said. “Call it competition.

Call it cooperation. It’s the future.” In

McDougall taking off on test day with what he hopes will be the first commercial e-plane.

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INTERVIEW

WE’RE WITH HER

Linda Cardellini The co-star and a producer of Netflix’s Dead to Me talks about dating your friends, her lifelong love of game shows, and the likelihood of a Freaks and Geeks reboot. by SAR AH Z . WEXLER

Dead to Me is about grief, friendship, and what we’re willing to forgive. Your character hits it off right away with Christina Applegate’s, and they become inseparable. Do you find friendship to be that intense in real life?

I think it’s representational of female friendship. Female friendship is messy.

That best friend is the first to tell you you’re messy, but also, if somebody else calls you crazy or messy, they’re the first to defend you. I think female friendships are like family. We’re pretty open about crying, we’re pretty open about anger, and that open communication is what any relationship relies on.

Do you feel the same way about friendships with men?

With a male/female relationship, there can be some guarding going on. I do love my male friends, though, because I can run anything by them and get a different perspective. They’re good at looking at all angles of the situation.

I still have the friends I’ve had since kindergarten. Even my signif icant other—I’ve known him since I was 10.

MIKE ROSENTHAL/THE LICENSING PROJECT

How did it go from friends to romance?

I don’t really dabble with my male friends because you’ve got to be careful—it will get serious real fast. This seemed like something worth crossing that line for. So we did, and I thought,

Well, this is good. This is serious. This is it.

THE BASICS Age

Where do you fall on that vulnerable-versus-thick skin continuum?

As a child, I was always told that I was overly sensitive.

But the thing that I thought was wrong with me actually became the thing that made me capable of doing what I love. I have learned that sometimes your weakness can actually be a strength.

You’ve had an unusual career arc: You’re in your 40s but are Top 5 Prizes on just now starting to be cast The Price Is in leading roles. What’s that Right been like?

This is the golden era of TV and streaming content, so there are roles that weren’t explored before. When I first started, people would Reboots and reunions are say, “Once you’re a certain so popular right now. Could age, over 30 or over 40, you see reuniting for a Freaks and Geeks there’s nothing there.” That’s terrifying. where-are-they-now?

But the business has changed—because Never say never, but it would be a hard there is more content, there’s more one to revisit because so much of that room for underrepresented voices and show was about the bittersweet disroles that aren’t just for the bright, new, comfort of being in high school. Once shiny object. you’re beyond that moment, you realize all those things that you thought were Your big break was on Judd Apatow’s cult so important aren’t that important, and favorite Freaks and Geeks more than 20 that the world is so much bigger than years ago. What do you think has kept you your small school. But if everybody working, versus struggling the way many signed on, I would love to get back other child performers have? together.

I love what I do and constantly work harder to be better at it—it’s as if it I can’t let you go without asking about were a sport. A lot of it has to do with this: You once won a fireplace on The resilience and perseverance, which is Price Is Right? an interesting mix for a creative person.

The first thing I did when I got to Los You have to be vulnerable in so many Angeles was to wait outside all mornways, but you also have to have a thick ing to be on The Price Is Right. I was skin, and those two things are in conso nervous, but I won a gas fireplace trast to each other. mantle. I was in college living in a dorm, and I didn’t need it at all, but I chose that over the cash value. I had it for years and years, but the funny thing is, I actually lost it in a f ire at my storage facility. So yeah, I lost my fireplace in a fire. But I love The Price Is Right—I still watch it. I also watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! I like a good gamble. Q

I LOVE WHAT I DO AND CONSTANTLY WORK HARDER TO BE BETTER AT IT—IT’S AS IF IT WERE A SPORT.

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Notebook

SEAL OF APPROVAL

BOOKS

TYPE CAST Three of spring’s buzziest new novels—different genres, all impossible to put down.

THRILLER DINING I’m a

MUSIC My musical

vegetarian, and I just started eating at this vegan place in Venice, California, called Plant Food + Wine. It’s really clean, simply prepared food. The gem Caesar and the raw lasagna are really good, but the kelp noodle cacio e pepe (above) is my favorite dish.

interests tend to shift with whatever project I’m working on. I’m about to do a film set in Detroit in the 1950s, so I’ve been listening to a lot of John Lee Hooker, working through his entire library. The song “Boogie Chillen’” is a good place to start.

FILM Dr. Strangelove is

BOOKS I’ve been

amazing, but I’m also a big fan of Fail Safe, which came out the same year, 1964, and is less remembered.

Both movies address Cold War paranoia.

But whereas Dr. Strangelove was a parody, Fail Safe was serious, and very good in its own right.

thumbing through After Ikkyu and Other Poems by Jim Harrison. The pieces are beautiful and short, and rooted in Zen studies. I haven’t read Harrison’s novels yet, but I like his vibe.

The End of October by Lawrence Wright In this prescient page-turner, a U.S. doctor travels abroad to investigate the death of 47 people, only to discover that a deadly virus will soon turn pandemic.

LITER ARY

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier A pregnant 18-year-old pizza-delivery woman strikes up a curious friendship with a stay-athome mom, and soon becomes uncomfortably fixated on her.

HORROR

ACCORDING TO

The star of Quibi’s Don’t Look Deeper and Showtime’s Black Monday discusses a blues icon, Jim Harrison’s poetic Zen, and his other recent obsessions.

D O C U M E N TA R Y

ROY COHN REVISITED

—AS TOLD TO J.R. SULLIVAN

MUSIC

BIG TWANG THEORY Perma-cool country songsmith Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit stick to their brand of refreshingly unfussy alt-rock on Reunions, the group’s first studio album since 2017. It’s loaded with Isbell instaclassics, including “What’ve I Done to Help” and “River.”

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DON CHEADLE: CARA ROBBINS/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES. JIM HARRISON: JEAN-CHRISTIAN BOURCART/GETTY IMAGES. DR. STRANGLOVE: EVERETT COLLECTION

Don Cheadle

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones Four friends, each a member of the Blackfoot tribe, shoot a young elk while hunting in an area where they shouldn’t be.

A decade later, the group must reckon with their transgression when they become the pursued.

WHERE YOU CAN MAKE YOUR DREAMS A REALITY

Wake up to a world of breathtaking possibilities. See how Belgard paves the way to your own personal sanctuary. Belgard.com/dream

ES SE NTIAL S FOR THE WE LL- EQUIPPE D MAN

Fly-fishing is synonymous with trout, but a new generation of rods and reels is making it easy to land any type of fish. Here’s the gear you need for all conditions—and species. by RYAN KROGH

MEN’S JOURNAL

MAY/JUNE 2020

FISHING

LAKE FISHING FOR BASS AND BLUEGILLS Vice Rod and Reel Redington This setup has everything you need to get into fly-fishing, including a fast action rod for easy casting, a durable reel, and the matching line that’s perfect for bass, bluegills, and even trout. $300; redington.com

Fly Box Monthly Subscription Postfly The box, mailed to your door, includes a selection of flies, six to 12, for your choice of fishing, including warmwater and trout. It also includes angling tip sheets and small gear items, like a sun buff. There’s no better reminder to get on the water. From $25 per month; subscribe.postflybox.com

BEST UPGRADE

Tacky BigBug Fly Box Fishpond With enough space for 144 flies—fewer, of course, if you’re storing big streamers—it’ll be hard to run out of space in this polycarbonate box. Plus, the silicone backing slits makes anchoring flies easy. $35; fishpondusa.com

Carbon Fiber Net Bubba

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SALTWATER STRIPERS AND REDFISH MF 9-11WT Seigler Reels This flawless aluminum reel has an oversize handle and a lever drag system that can be adjusted during a fight to bring in even the toughest fish. $1,000; seigler.fish

G-Loomis Designed for adaptability, this series of saltwater rods (7 to 12 weight) has a tapered construction that makes casting in wind or with heavy flies a cinch. $895; gloomis.com

BEST UPGRADE

Perdido Matte Brown Tortoise Sunglasses

Nomad 2 Pliers Hatch Outdoors

Saltlife With glass lenses and five layers of antiglare coating, the Perdidos are perfect for long boat days. $99; saltlife.com

SMALL-STREAM TROUT Trout LL Rod

Ultralite MTX-S Fly Reel

Sage Using Sageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Konnetic HD graphite material, this rod series is designed for casting dry flies, but it works well in all scenarios, making it a great, versatile choice. $800; sageflyfish.com

Hardy A hybrid carbon fiber and aluminum alloy frame, with a fully sealed disc drag, makes this reel bombproof without losing its lightweight performance. $450; hardyfishing.com

BEST UPGRADE

Ripstop Rod Case Filson

Flyweight Wading Shoe Simms With a synthetic upper and Vibram soles designed for slippery conditions, wet wading has never been so comfortable. $169; simmsfishing.com MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S JOURNAL

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BEST FOR IPHONE DEVOTEES

BEST FOR AUDIOPHILES

AirPods Pro Apple The Pros pair quickly with iPhones while working with Siri and iMessage. The unique vented tips relieve ear pressure for a comfy all-day fit, and mics optimize sound in real time. $249; apple.com

MW07 Plus Master & Dynamic Expect clear and balanced sound across a range of tunes from these buds. Along with 10 hours of runtime per charge, the MW07s have comfortable silicone ear wings with tenacious grip. $300; masterdynamic.com

BEST FOR WORKING OUT

Battle of the Buds

Elite Active 75t

True wireless is now the standard for streaming tunes and taking calls, so we tested 15 sets to find out which pair punchy sound with killer convenience. by TOM SAMILJAN

Jabra These waterproof earbuds will survive your grueling runs, rides, and rope circuits. They have a well-rounded sound and an app with which you can tweak the EQ and find the buds when you lose them. $199; jabra.com

BEST FOR LONG BAT TERY LIFE

BEST FOR NOISECANCELING

BEST FOR TIGHT BUDGETS

Galaxy Earbuds+

True Wireless ANC In-Ear Headphones

Echo Buds

Samsung With 11 hours of runtime, the Galaxy+ will last from New York to Hawaii on one charge.

These discreet earbuds have decent sound, three mics to optimize your voice during calls, and a snug fit. $150; samsung.com MAY/JUNE 2020

1More These earbuds have hybrid dual drivers that create crisp sound with a toggle that fires up two levels of the best noise cancellation in our tests. $199; 1more.com MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S JOURNAL

Amazon With decent bass, adjustable Bose-powered noise reduction, sweat resistance, and up to 20 hours of battery life (with charging case) these buds are a bargain that work with all three virtual assistants. $130; amazon.com

TENNIS RACQUETS

Four Aces A mix of clever designs and cutting-edge materials make for a new breed of racquet that can improve your game, no matter what you’re working on. by CAITLIN THOMPSON

Aero Drive USA

Gravity Pro

Ezone

TF40 305

Babolat The Aero Drive is the choice of many intermediate players because it excels at everything from serves to backhand returns. The wider string spacing gives extra ball bite, to build confidence. $229; babolat.us

Head If your game thrives on variety— think slice and dice to power baseline—you need a stick with a bigger sweet spot. The graphene Head is more forgiving for those who employ a variety of shots. $230; head.com

Yonex Need to up your serve game?

This racquet’s aero-shaped head and the graphite in the throat below help launch balls.

Beware: Shots might hit the back fence until you get used to the power. $290; yonex.com

Technifibre After the serve, the return is the toughest shot. The TF40’s graphite build, along with an alloy and polyester braid, means even your off-center returns— blocks or full swings—rocket back. $230; tecnifibre.com

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BIKES

Rule the Off Road

Ritte

Gravel bikes used to be a mixed bag of road racers on fat tires and mountain bikes with drop bars, but snagging an all-terrain ride that’s fast on the street and over soil is easier than ever. by CLINT CARTER o g ee e d 3,800; 052

MAY/JUNE 2020

MEN’S JOURNAL

e cc

Libra DL

Grail CF SLX 8.0 ETAP

Kona Kona’s designers opted for smaller 650b wheels fitted with chunky 47mm tires to monster truck it over roots, with a dropper-seat compatible post that’s ready for downhills. At home on bikepacking trips, the Libra’s frame is covered in gear mounts. $3,999; konaworld.com

Canyon Incessant vibration saps your fun, so the Grail’s saddle has a shockabsorbing seat post that works with a floating handlebar to soak up the shakes before they hit your forearms. With smooth electronic shifters, this is the SUV of off-roaders. $5,000; canyon.com

Warbird Carbon GRX 810 Salsa As fast as a road racer, the iconic Warbird eats up sketchy terrain, too. The low bottom bracket and long wheel base add stability, while vibration-reducing seat stays and 42mm tires float over crater holes and worn trenches. $4,099; salsacycles.com

Cannondale Embrace the lefty fork’s asymmetrical styling and you’re rewarded with 30mm of travel for smoother descents on rocky trails. A lockout lever on the front fork means you might actually keep pace with your mountain-biking buddies. $3,750; cannondale.com

MAXIMIZE YOUR RIDE TIME Don’t skimp on accessories. This gear will make riding safer and more enjoyable, and keep your bike sparkling between outings.

Endura Pro SL Shell II

Pearl Izumi X-Alp Gravel

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LEM MotivAir

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ALL-DAY ENERGY GIVE YOUR WORKOUT— AND YOUR ENTIRE DAY— AN EXTRA EDGE.

F

eeling tired all day?

You’re not alone.

According to a 2018 report by the National Safety Council, two-thirds of working Americans feel fatigue daily. Now imagine putting in your eight hours, balancing life outside work, and trying to get a workout in. While a proper diet and sleep should help combat chronic fatigue in most folks, there are also times when you need an extra boost.

Enter PERFORMIX®’s new SST PRE and SST H2.

UNLOCK THE MULTITUDE OF SCIENCE-BACKED BENEFITS OF MOLECULAR HYDROGEN. Studies have found that molecular hydrogen is a powerful antioxidant that can relieve inflammation, treat metabolic syndrome, and improve athletic performance. Now, PERFORMIX® has created the first energy boosters that harnesses the power of molecular hydrogen.

THE POWER OF MOLECULAR HYDROGEN Their new SST PRE is a best-in-class, transparently dosed preworkout formulated with their patent-pending Molecular Hydrogen Matrix to improve alkalinity. Studies have found tha alkaline water enhances anaerobic exercise by providing lactic acid buffering and increased ATP production to help make your workouts more intense and effective.

SST PRE’s Molecular Hydrogen Matrix contains a combination of 1,000mg of Acetyl L-Carnitine HCI, magnesium salts, acids, and Redmond’s Ancient Sea Salt containing elemental trace minerals, which supports whole body alkalinity and generates molecular hydrogen.

TESTED BY THE BEST FOR THE BEST PERFORMIX® has proven the effectiveness of SST PRE by testing it at its NYC-based gym, PERFORMIX House. In a unique trial, group fitness class participants saw a significant increase in heart rate and overall calorie burn on days they took SST PRE vs. days they didn’t.

TO-MARKET ERY SYSTEM akes the best-in-class formula nd supercharges it with a ry tri-phase delivery system. ecular Hydrogen Mini Cap and ix deliver active ingredients, other fat-soluble compounds ay, while PERFORMIX®’s rk Timed-Release Terra nt Dosing Beads deliver nts over time. elivers all day Energy, Metabolism, & Focus and supports Whole-Body Alkalinity.

BEST-IN-CLASS FORMULA In addition to the benefits of Molecular Hydrogen, SST PRE and SST H2 also boasts ingredients aimed at boosting energy, metabolism, and focus, including caffeine and Lion’s Mane mushroom for energy and focus and Yohimbe Bark Extract for metabolism.

AVAILABLE AT GNC AND GNC.COM

TRAIL SHOES

By mixing a hiking boot with a trail runner, grippy approach shoes will get you to the base of a climb, but they’re comfortable enough for everyday use. by BERNE BROUDY

1/ Crodarossa Lite GTX Dolomite Made for technical terrain and heavy packs of gear, these kept us steady on glacial moraines and while clambering up technical gullies in wet and dry conditions.

A Vibram outsole with a toughas-nails SuperFabric upper was protective, supportive, and supple. $190; dolomite.it

2/ Rebel Approach Shoe

3/ TX Guide

Evolv The sticky outsole on these water-repellent canvas-and-suede kicks will take on a V1, the toe cap warding off scuffs. But the shoe lacks the support to carry heavy loads. $115; evolvsports.com

LaSportiva Best for technical approaches, the aggressive lugs give this shoe tenacious grip and braking. A combo of Vibram compounds, including IdroGrip for wet terrain, kept us sure-footed. $159; lasportiva.com

4/ Konseal LT Arc’teryx Rappelling in the minimalist Konseal felt like wearing technical bedroom slippers.

Light and sticky, with a breathable mesh upper, these are ideal for short approaches. $135; arcteryx.com

5/ Five Tennie DLX

6/ Mission LT Approach Black Diamond Technical enough for cragging, the Mission has a liner easy to slip into barefoot. A breathable upper vents the sweat out, and the nylon rock plate made tricky approaches easier. $140; blackdiamondequipment.com 056

MAY/JUNE 2020

Five Ten A running shoe midsole makes carrying crash pads and haul bags fatigue-free, while the flat outsole’s rubber grips vertical rock slabs. Inside, a sock liner hugs your foot and a padded heel locks it in place. $170; adidas.com MEN’S JOURNAL

APPLIANCES

Smart Home

GE Appliances

Smart Refrigerator With Craft Ice Maker LG This automatically makes two-inch spheres of slow-melting ice for craft cocktails while your smartphone dials in the temps for different compartments. $4,400; lg.com

Slide-in Range Samsung The look of a built-in range sans the budgetbusting price. An app shows which burners are on, but we love the temp control, which can take a low-and-slow roast to searing, from the sofa. $1,400; samsung.com MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S JOURN

Maytag

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action flicks.... There’s not

IT IS NOT CLEAR HOW WE GOT ON THIS

Below: Cena trains with veterans at FitOps camp. Bottom: Having a moment with Vin Diesel in F9, the next Fast & Furious flick.

something less predictable and way more interesting: a genuinely woke American hero who raises millions of dollars for veterans and writes children’s books about how boys can learn from their mistakes but is still funny enough to make Amy Schumer wet her pants.

And he’s accomplished it all not because of the way he looks but almost despite it, challenging the expectations of executives and the public at every turn. As if a 250pound, six-foot-tall sentient action figure couldn’t possibly have a rich inner life.

“Everybody thinks I’m going to come in and smash somebody over a table,” Cena tells me. “Because that’s what I’ve been fortunate enough to do.”

THERE’S NO CABERNET ON SET TODAY,

but it turns out we don’t need any wine to get into it. Cena dismisses my softball questions about F9’s wacky stunts or hanging out with co-star Cardi B at the craft services table. He’ll barely engage the topic of Charlize Theron’s instantly iconic bowl cut. “Not once did I notice the haircut,” Cena says, maybe more severely than need be. “I would show up and, it’s like, ‘Today I get to work with a very talented actress.’

At the end of the day, I was like, ‘Man, she made me a better professional.’ ” To be clear, Cena is unfailingly polite (not to mention military-grade punctual). By all accounts, he was the same on the set of F9, which was shot on multiple continents.

“There’s a sequence that involves John zip-lining in Edinburgh,” says the film’s director, Justin Lin. “It must’ve been the most annoying thing for him to shoot, because we ended up hanging him on that zip line for several days. But John had a lot of trust in the crew and the stunt team and kept coming back happy to do it again.”

During our chat, on the other hand, Cena doesn’t come to life until we start talking about—of all things—Dr. Brené Brown, the prominent thinker and professor whose popular 2010 TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” posits that self-actualized, happy people have one thing in common: the belief that vulnerability makes you beautiful. What she advocates for is a very different kind of Monday Night Raw, telling the crowd: “You cannot selectively numb emotion.

You can’t say, ‘Here’s the bad stuff, here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to

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topic, but John Cena and I are discussing the joys of sipping red wine. “I enjoy red wine for the same reason I enjoy a cup of coffee or an occasional cigar,” he says.

“They’re vehicles for connection. You cannot chug red wine. It’s easy to chug a cold beer, it’s easy to do a shot. But strong coffee is to be sipped. Red wine is the same. Especially, like the bolder cab—it’s a vehicle for conversation.”

If this isn’t the kind of trash talk you were expecting from the squarejawed actor and global face of the WWE, Cena knows that and, well, that’s on you.

We’re standing inside a fancy photo studio in Hollywood, a cavernous space with vaulted ceilings, the afternoon sun streaming in through massive skylights. Loud club bangers scream from some unseen speakers. Cena is currently promoting F9—the latest installment in The Fast & The Furious franchise (due out in April 2021) and also his first.

So here he is, posing with one of the film’s gorgeous co-stars: a 1968 matte black Dodge Charger (driven by Vin Diesel’s character in the film). The 800-horsepower custom roadster, constructed of carbon f iber, may be the most beautiful thing in the movie (after Charlize Theron), and it comes with a chaperone, who tells me the car’s tank is designed to hold less than a gallon of gas to prevent explosions when f ilming stunt crashes.

Cena’s career, on the other hand,

has gone positively supernova. About two years ago, he skillfully negotiated the transition from WWE champion to bankable leading man—with starring roles in Transformers spin-off Bumblebee and the raunchy comedy Blockers. His evolution is finally complete with F9, which introduces Cena as Vin Diesel’s long-lost brother, the skilled assassin Jakob Toretto. He’s just finished shooting the next Suicide Squad, reimagined by director James Gunn. Next, he’ll go for laughs with Vacation Friends, a twisted comedy directed by one of the producers of Silicon Valley.

Hang the Mission Accomplished banner.

But Cena’s also been on a different kind of journey, one that’s richer than the whenwill-Hollywood-take-this-guy-seriously narrative. In person, Cena still looks like a He-Man action figure hit by whatever gamma ray turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. His hands are like meat puppets. When he changes his sweater between photographs, a jagged vein on his right shoulder threatens to escape from beneath his taut, tan skin.

But at 43, Cena is hard at work remaking himself. The man who once bragged to Howard Stern about a one-night-stand with a “fat chick” has chiseled himself into

feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin.’ ” Which of Brown’s ideas initially caught his attention, I ask. Cena does not hesitate: “Be brave enough to be vulnerable.” Why that one? “Because it goes against everything that boys and men are taught,” he says.

Cena’s origin story has been told before, but if you’re late to the party, the details make for its own motivational TED Talk: At age 12, a skinny kid in remote West Newbury, Massachusetts, asks his parents to buy him a weightlifting bench for Christmas, explaining: “I get the shit beat out of me every day because of the way I look.” Suddenly the world is in color. Newly jacked, he does a stint playing Division III football in college, then moves to Venice, California—with two duffel bags and $500 in cash. He’s sleeping in his 1991 Lincoln Continental and showering at the legendary Gold’s Gym, where he works the front

desk. The future is in serious doubt. And then he hears about a training camp in Orange County for wannabe professional wrestlers. Five years later, Cena is crowned world champion at WrestleMania XX, firmly announcing himself (and his jean shorts) as a potential heir to the WWE’s first true crossover star, The Rock.

That Cena conquered Hollywood shouldn’t be all that surprising. For more than a decade, after all, he was essentially acting on two of the longest-running prime time soap operas in history, WWE SmackDown and Monday Night Raw. And his personality in the ring—an All-American hero who preached “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect”—made him diehard fans and mortal enemies.

“I’ve had stadiums of people calling me such horrible things,” he said. “For like 12 years, half of the audience told me, ‘You fucking suck!’ And the opposite said, ‘No man, you’re all right.’ ”

If some of that negativity got under his skin, that’s OK, because he understood what mattered most: that people were talking about him. That’s something the WWE and Hollywood have in common, he says. “Make moments that resonate with people. Or you get to not have your job.”

When Amy Schumer and Judd Apatow opened the door with Trainwreck, inviting him to play an oversize gym rat who has comically physical sex with Schumer, Cena walked through it—with nothing but a towel draped over his still-erect junk.

Cena is using his newfound platform in unexpected ways—to encourage men along their journeys of self-discovery while helping the next generation unlearn (or never learn) the meathead wiring of his youth. He’s doing the latter as the author of a series of best-selling children’s books about a talking truck named Elbow Grease—an underdog in a family of oversize

monster trucks who figures out that failing is the best way to learn.

The next book in the series, Elbow Grease: Fast Friends (due out this fall), tackles jealousy. Says Cena: “A lot of people get consumed by jealousy, especially nowadays when you can see all these terrif ically, wonderful things that people are supposedly doing on social media.” The book is a surreptitious secret weapon designed to cut off toxic masculinity at the root. “Maybe,” he says, “you can reach a young reader at 4.”

IT’S HOKEY TO SAY THIS,

but it cannot be avoided: What brings John Cena joy is giving back. Despite the flurry of showbiz action in his life now, he prefers to use our time together to talk about FitOps, a nonprofit that prepares veterans to return to civilian life by training them to become certified personal trainers.

It’s estimated that 20 veterans commit suicide every day, Cena notes with obvious pain. “For the number to be that high, something is broken,” he says. “There’s no perfect fix. But we’ve got to start somewhere.”

FitOps runs five training camps a year, inviting 40 veterans at a time to Bentonville, Arkansas, for three-week sessions. “The program is designed to give veterans purpose again,” says Matt Hesse, the army vet who founded FitOps and is the CEO and founder of the sports nutrition company Performix.

Attendees graduate with a certificate in personal training, as well as the marketing and social-media skills to find clients and build a real business.

A couple of years ago, Hesse invited the wrestling star to visit one of FitOps’ camps.

It was a rare opportunity for a civilian.

“We’re trying to create an environment where the veterans are able to be vulnerable and let go,” Hesse says. “And John wanted to be respectful of that. He spent about two days at camp with us. He slept in the same barracks that all the vets sleep in. John was very present. The last thing we do each day is get around a campfire. And one vet gets

up and tells his story. Some of those stories start at their childhood, some start the day they enlisted, but almost all of them end in tears shared by everybody—including John.”

At one campfire, Hesse says, Cena asked if he could speak. “He talked a lot about understanding what your purpose is and the value of having a vision for your life,” Hesse recalls.

Cena’s involvement with FitOps makes sense on multiple levels. The actor has always been vocal about supporting the troops. But even more meaningfully, his path—from scrawny kid to college athlete to WWE superstar to Hollywood box off ice champion—has been f illed with moments of self-doubt, in which he questioned his purpose. Through it all, he has been fueled by a commitment to self-improvement and physical fitness.

And it’s only natural that he’s partnered with Performix, a brand built on helping people find purpose through fitness.

Not long after visiting the FitOps camp, Cena went on Ellen and told America that for every dollar the public donated to the organization, he’d match the donation, up to $1 million. He met his goal and now plans to do the fundraiser again this year—from Memorial Day to Veteran’s Day—putting another million dollars of his own on the line.

As Hesse and I wrap up our conversation, he asks me an unexpected question: Which John Cena did I meet, he wants to know.

I ask what he’s getting at. “I mean there’s several,” he says. “There’s a lot of depth to that guy. There’s a John that is insanely intense and disciplined about everything that he does. Then there’s funny John—the guy you’d have a beer with in the backyard.”

James Gunn, director of The Suicide Squad reboot, says the same thing. Cena, he tells me, is “probably the best improviser I’ve ever worked with in my entire life.

And I’ve worked with a lot of comedians.

He is so funny but also dark and twisted.

But a really, really funny guy.” Justin Lin, unprompted, echoes that point. “What I appreciate most about him is that he can become goofy at the snap of a f inger,” Lin says. “He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure, critically underappreciated comedies and can rattle off quotes nonstop.”

I didn’t meet that John Cena. (Though he sounds like fun!) I got the intense John Cena. The one who, when the discussion turns to cars, tells me he’s in the market for a Mini Cooper—but refuses to acknowledge that the idea of John Cena squeezed behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper was funny.

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GREG DANIELS

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Taping The Office in 2007: Steve Carell (left), Rainn Wilson, and Greg Daniels.

“THAT GREG USES HIS WIZARDRY TO MAKE US LAUGH, INSTEAD OF DESTROYING SOCIETY, MAKES ME GRATEFUL.”

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MJ

THE

BEAR WHISPERER

Doug Seus made his name by mastering a near-impossible and perilous feat: training grizzly bears for Hollywood ďŹ lms.

Then he came up with a radical, equally ambitious plan to protect the species that he holds dear. by RICK BASS

Photographs by CHAD KIRKLAND

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GRIZZLIES HAVE BEEN extinct in Utah

for nearly a century, but there’s a giant one in Doug Seus’ backyard. When the bear sees Doug, it hurries through an open chain-link gate—and charges. A magpie swoops out of the way. The 1,250-pound bear closes in, stops, and rises to its ninefoot height. At age 78, Doug is still burly, but the bear, now just yards away, could easily knock him off his feet and ragdoll him around. Instead, the giant wraps its arms around Doug, delighted. The grizzly wants to play.

Seus, an animal trainer and a grizzly advocate, steps toward the bear, named Little Bart, and meets his embrace. Little Bart leans in, and they begin to waltz.

Dressed in jeans and a red f lannel shirt, Doug almost disappears next to the animal.

When Little Bart wraps his jaws around Doug’s head, Doug pushes back. “Ahhh,” he says. “No.” Little Bart is getting carried away; Doug smacks his huge shoulders.

Little Bart pulls back, releases Doug, and then swats him on the shoulder with a paw, as if to say, You know I was only funnin’.

There’s a good chance that if you’ve seen a wild animal in a movie or on television sometime in the past 40 years, Doug and Lynne Seus trained it in this backyard, outside Heber City, Utah. The couple has taught wolves to howl, raccoons to run up trees, and cougars to yowl on command.

Their specialty, though, is the grizzly.

They’ve trained four adults, an improbable feat: Bart, Little Bart (or Bart II), Honey Bump, and Tank. The movies The Edge, Evan Almighty, Into the Wild, and Legends of the Fall featured a Seus bear. In Season 3 of Game of Thrones, Jaime Lannister leaps into a pit to save Brienne of Tarth from being devoured by Little Bart.

In December, Discovery Channel premiered Man vs. Bear, in which competitors face off against Little Bart, Honey Bump, and Tank in races, barrel-rolling, and other 074

MAY/JUNE 2020

physical challenges. In one episode, Little Bart plays tug-of-war with a 170-pound MMA fighter—and yanks the guy into a pond within 14 seconds. On set, the Seus grizzlies were exemplars of professionalism, says Vincent Cariati, Man vs. Bear’s showrunner. “It wasn’t like you’re dealing with an untamed wild animal,” he adds.

“They’re having fun.”

Over the past three decades, the Seuses have worked not only to train grizzlies but also to protect them. In 1990, they founded the Vital Ground Foundation, a nonprofit that has conserved 617,000 acres of private land—an area roughly the size of Olympic National Forest—for wild grizzlies. It has achieved this, in large part, by working with and convincing landowners to establish wilderness sanctuaries. It also purchases lands outright with money that the Seus bears generate in Hollywood and with donations that Doug, Lynne, and the grizzlies help to raise.

“It’s astonishing how Doug and Lynne have translated their passion for bears to inspire wildlife enthusiasts across the MEN’S JOURNAL

nation,” says Ryan Lutey, Vital Ground’s executive director.

Vital Ground remains the only nonprofit dedicated to partnering with landowners to protect grizzly habitat. Despite its success, grizzlies no doubt remain in peril, and few people know this more acutely than Doug Seus. “I’m optimistic,” he says, “but it is urgent.”

LITTLE BART, THE LARGEST of the three surviving Seus grizzlies, lives next door to Doug and Lynne in a giant modif ied doghouse that opens out onto spacious acres of yard; Honey Bump and Tank have their own spreads nearby. The three bears each consume about 30 pounds of raw meat, apples, and carrots a day.

The autumn day I visit, Doug spends an hour with Little Bart, going over the basics: stand, roar, headshake, booty shake.

I watch from a lawn chair six feet away, on the other side of a single strand of safety wire. Doug spends anywhere from a few minutes to eight hours a day working with the bears, depending on how playful they’re

photograph by FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

“It’s hard for most of us to get past our fears to see bears for what they are,” says Doug Chadwick.

“Seus is brave enough to break through.”

From left: Doug Seus hopes to connect the Lower 48’s six isolated grizzly subpopulations; Little Bart mugs for the camera at the Seus ranch.

feeling. “They’re so intelligent,” he says, “that we have to vary the routine to keep them interested.” Through the session, Little Bart’s eyes remain fixed on Doug.

It’s as if he’s trying to bridge some gulf between them and at times is frustrated by his inability to share his joy fully.

Doug doesn’t train his bears. “I teach them,” he says. He never carries bear spray or any other defense when he’s with them. They’re family, for one. But even if they weren’t, “the animal knows if a backup is there,” he says. “It has to be a relationship of trust and dignity.”

He learned to build this trust through trial and error. He’s respectful but firm, always, and he knows how to anticipate what the bears want. Timing is critical, as is positive affirmation.

In Russia, there are trained circus griz-

zlies. But “the Europeans use leashes,” Doug explains, along with barriers and muzzles. And there are mishaps. Last October, a 660-pound Russian circus bear attacked its handler during a performance, likely provoked by the audience’s flashing cameras. Another circus employee managed to zap the grizzly with a stun gun before the handler suffered major injuries.

Doug and Lynne, meanwhile, form close, lifelong relationships with their bears. “It’s hard for most of us to get past our fears to see bears for what they really are,” says Doug Chadwick, a founding board member of Vital Ground. “Seus is brave enough to break through and make that connection.”

Doug takes great pains to keep his bears happy. For Game of Thrones, he trailered Little Bart to Los Angeles two weeks before the taping, so that he had time to acclimate. Once the cameras were rolling, Doug kept classical and country music playing to help calm Little Bart.

When he performed well, Doug, who was standing above the pit, fed him whipped cream with a long-handled frying pan.

“Bart was phenomenal,” said Gwendoline Christie, the actress who played Brienne, after the filming, adding that Little Bart was easier to work with than certain human actors.

After the morning session, Little Bart runs down to a pond to swim and cool off. As Doug and I walk back toward the house, Little Bart tries to keep us from leaving. He picks up a branch and breaks it over his head as if he were crushing a beer can. He’s mugging—clearly, desperately, communicating, Stay a little longer, play a little longer. “They’re the most honest animals in the world,” Doug says.

Doug’s interest in wildlife began when he was young. Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, he spent much of his free time MAY/JUNE 2020

075

rambling around the woods. “I touched things,” he says, “which deepened my affinity for nature. Kids have to be able to bring a salamander home, take care of it, feed it.”

In his early 20s, having long felt drawn to the West, he headed to Utah. He met Lynne in 1967, at a hotel restaurant where she was working as a hostess. “His friends called him Charlie Potato,” she recalls. “He had no manners, no money, no morals. I was instantly fascinated.”

In 1971, the couple married in Los Angeles, where Doug had found work finishing concrete. Wanting their lives to be a bit wild, they decided to buy a wolf pup, Kiska, from a local animal trainer and raise it in their backyard. Shortly afterward, the couple decided to decamp from L.A. to Heber City, Utah. Doug took a job at a sawmill and Lynne as a script coordinator for a Park City film company.

Broke, they stayed with Lynne’s mother for several months, until they could buy the farmhouse where they still live.

In 1973, Wild Kingdom, a nature and wildlife TV show, happened to come through the area, looking for a wolf to film. Doug, on a whim, showed the crew Kiska. The show not only offered him the job, but it also asked him to care for some other animals—a cougar, a fisher, an owl—that it was filming while in town.

For Doug, it was a dream gig. I could do this, he thought. I want to do this.

He and Lynne started training badgers, deer, raccoons, and other critters, given to them by a local trapper. They figured out their methods on the f ly and were soon making a good living, never mind that they didn’t, and don’t, have an agent.

Doug had long had a passion for grizzly bears and soon noticed that movie producers always seemed to be wanting 076

MAY/JUNE 2020

From top: Doug and Lynne Seus at their home outside Heber City, Utah, where they’ve raised four adult grizzly bears; family photos, bears included.

one for f ilms. The jaw strength of an adult grizzly is roughly on par with a bull shark’s. The Seuses were undaunted. In 1977, they adopted their first grizzly, Bart I, from a Maryland zoo, which had heard they wanted to raise one. Then, as now, you need a permit to own a bear, but “it was easier” back then, Doug says.

When Bart I was just shy of six weeks old, he was shipped via air freight to Salt Lake City. Doug and Lynne drove to the airport late one night to meet him, with bottles of special high-fat formula that they’d developed. They took Bart home, nursed him, and patted him all night just as they would a newborn child. “He was special,” Lynne says, with a catch in her throat even after all these years.

Training began almost immediately.

Lynne says that Doug was “obsessed, persistent, determined, enduring—a unique power that borders on madness.” She was the balance, the cub’s mother. (She and Doug still go out to comfort their bears MEN’S JOURNAL

during thunderstorms.) Bart went on to appear in more than 30 f ilms and TV shows and became a phenomenon. In 1997, the Los Angeles Times speculated that he was Hollywood’s highest-paid animal actor, pulling $10,000 a day. The following year, Bart presented at the Oscars for best sound-effects editing. He held the envelope in his teeth, then, Doug says, dropped it as a joke. Doug had to pick it up and hand it to Mike Myers to announce the winner.

As Bart’s star rose, the Seuses had an idea: capitalize on Bart’s charm to raise funds to protect wild bears. They soon founded Vital Ground and teamed up with grizzly advocates Doug Peacock and Doug Chadwick to bolster their efforts. Their plan succeeded. Actors who had worked with Bart—Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Steven Seagal—readily joined the fight and donated. Jeff Bridges has referred to the Seuses as “his crazy friends” and praised their efforts to protect “exactly the right places in the Northern Rockies.” In 1989, the Seuses emptied their savings and made what became Vital Ground’s first acquisition: 240 acres of forest and wetlands outside Choteau, Montana. “To be doing something,” Doug says, “instead of just wishing—it was the best feeling.”

Bart I died of cancer in 2000, to the Seuses’ tremendous heartbreak. They’d already adopted a second bear, Tank, but the same year Bart I died, Little Bart and his sister, Honey Bump, came to the Seuses as orphans. An Alaska state trooper had found the 5-month-old cubs after poachers killed their mother. The Seuses began bonding with and training the cubs immediately. Once, Little Bart—missing Alaska, frightened—bit Doug’s hand pretty hard, requiring stitches. “[Little Bart] was a little rough,” Doug admits, “but they come to trust you.”

NOWADAYS, DOUG SPENDS less time

on movie sets than on his work with Vital Ground, which is headquartered in Missoula, Montana. During my visit, he starts the day in his living room, calling a family with land near the Mission Mountains. Doug badly wishes to place a section of their property under a protective easement, which would limit various non-bear-friendly development, such as houses or subdivisions, on the land. But purchasing the easement is complicated: Two of the family members are eager to move ahead, but the third, the family patriarch, is dubious. Doug keeps leaving voicemails and passing along messages.

photograph by FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

“Tell him I’m here when he’s ready,” he tells one of the man’s relatives, during one of a half-dozen calls.

Doug has been chasing the old man for years. The property is, well, vital.

In the fall, bears are drawn out of the Mission Mountains to eat apples in an orchard there, for one last feast before they hibernate. But in the orchard, the bears are among people and thus vulnerable: Human-caused mortality is the number one limiting factor restricting grizzlies’ recovery in the Lower 48.

Life is good for Little Bart and the other Seus bears. But, generally speaking, it’s damned hard to be a grizzly these days. In 1800, an estimated 50,000 grizzlies roamed the Lower 48. By 1975, that number had dived to about 600. Today there are roughly 1,800 bears. But they’re split into six isolated subpopulations.

A gauntlet of development—highways, neighborhoods, ranches—prevents any of the subpopulations from reaching one another to breed. And as the human world swells and burns, their populations are at greater risk of blinking out. Slender pathways and buffers, such as the Mission apple orchard, are needed to reconnect and safeguard the scattered bears.

Doug is haunted by the thought of

“The Great Bear is the spirit of the West, and of America,” says Doug.

“But our rapacious appetite has caught up with us.” the West without a free-ranging grizzly population. “The Great Bear is the spirit of the West, and of America,” he says.

“But our rapacious appetite has caught up with us.” As long as he and Lynne and Little Bart are here, there’s at least one faint path forward. “They have done more to help wild grizzlies than anyone will ever know,” Doug Peacock says. Still, the Seuses would be the first to tell you that more needs to be done.

Vital Ground has an immediate goal of protecting another 188,000 acres of

MEN’S JOURNAL

land essential to bridging the stranded subpopulations of wild grizzlies. It’s an ambitious plan, requiring both tremendous money and convincing.

John and Leanne Hayne run a 3,000acre sheep ranch in Dupuyer, Montana.

“The grizzlies have made my life more complicated,” John tells me during a visit. He once had a grizzly kill a ewe right in front of him. “It was over in 10 seconds,” he says. He had to surround half of those 3,000 acres with electric fencing to keep out bears and wolves.

He’s not entirely anti-grizzly, though.

“I’d sell an easement to Vital Ground if they paid me enough,” he says. How much is hard to say. Land prices are escalating quickly, which deepens Doug’s sense of urgency.

LATE IN THE MORNING at the Seus

ranch, an engineer comes by. The BBC show Animal Impossible wants to measure how much force Little Bart generates when he slams a paw on the ground, and the engineer is designing a pressure plate to record it. Even with the Discovery Channel series, “Hollywood doesn’t need us so much anymore,” Doug concedes, grumpily.

“They can do stuff with animatrons now.” Projects like this one give him and Little Bart something to do. I feel a tug of sadness watching the whole thing, then remember: This is saving bears, because much of the money that Little Bart raises still goes toward protecting wild grizzlies.

At dusk, Doug and I sit on his porch.

After spending time with Little Bart, my sense of scale is all off: The Seus ranch feels dollhouse-size. “Mankind is so greedy,” Doug says. “People are all money crazy now.” He is particularly concerned about the federal government’s recent push, under the Trump administration, to expand logging and mining on public lands, lands upon which wild grizzlies greatly depend.

“It’s become sadly economic,” he says, shaking his head.

As far as Vital Ground goes, money for habitat acquisition, about 2 to 3 million dollars a year, still f lows in through Little Bart and back into the wild country that he will never see or know. Little Bart is happy, though. After all these years, Doug says, “he and I are learning new things.” A gulf still exists between them, however small, and one always will to some extent.

Doug and Little Bart are content trying to close it anyway. MJ MAY/JUNE 2020

077

Most visitors to Africa experience its wildlife from the safety of a Land Rover. But on a walking safari, things get real fast.

BY LARRY KANTER

HE FIRST THING WE NOTICED WERE THE

vultures, about a dozen of them, perched on the flat top of a tall acacia tree. Every so often, two or three of the birds, white-feathered and ominous, would swoop down into the tall grass, remain out of sight for a few moments, and then return to their perch. “Something has definitely been killed,” Mark Thornton said. “Let’s go see what it is.” He paused a beat. “Of course, whatever killed it is still around here, too.”

We were deep in a swath of largely untouched wilderness in Serengeti National Park. The closest human was perhaps 75 miles away. Our plan was to set off on foot, but first Thornton, a veteran safari guide in Tanzania and one of the few guides in all of Africa to lead multiday walking tours of the bush, laid down some ground rules.

“We walk single file, and we stay quiet,” he said. “That way we hear things.” He went on. “If a lion or a buffalo appears, do not run. You’ll be scared, but stay behind

Top: Mark Thornton. Below: Thornton, in front with a gun, leads group up a kopje.

We stared at the buffalo. The buffalo stared at us. I noticed that Thornton had shouldered his rifle.

A backcountry tent camp in the Serengeti.

MJ

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THE PLAYBOOK FOR A LONGER, STRONGER LIFE

Aqua Fight Club What do you call a melee of big-wave surfers, NFL stars, pro swimmers, and armed forces vets vying for control of a foam toy at the bottom of a pool? Underwater torpedo. by JEN MURPHY

PRIME HALL is in the deep end,

keeping a death grip on an oblong kiddie pool toy as two pro football players grab at his ankles and an MMA fighter bodylocks his waist. Hall shakes them off, backflips, and launches the toy

through the small goal on the bottom of the pool—all on a single breath. A former Marine Corps officer, Hall is the founder of the Underwater Torpedo League, the pro arm of a sport that’s akin to submerged rugby (see rules on the next page). “It can look MEN’S JOURNAL

like a free-for-all,” Hall says. “But it is controlled chaos.”

Underwater torpedo requires conditioning, endurance, and calm—which is why it’s become a preferred way for pro athletes to amplify their fitness.

Here’s how to get in on the action.

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to bottom of pool. Land in a squat and touch hands to bottom. Push off hard through feet to propel to surface as quickly as possible. Climb out of pool and repeat for 9 reps. As you get stronger, add reps until you reach 20.

STRENGTHEN UPPER BODY: GUTTER-UPS

Jump into deep end, then paddle to side and grip pool edge. Maintaining grip, take a deep breath, and go underwater, locking out arms so body is parallel to pool wall. In a swift movement, pull chin up to the ledge, then hoist torso out of water like you’re getting out of the pool—hands on the pool deck, arms locked out, shoulders over hands, belly touching pool edge. Gently lower into the water for 1 rep.

Repeat up to 30 reps total or until fatigued.

IMPROVE VO2 MAX: UNDERWATER DUMBBELL CARRY

WORKOUT IN THE WATER The Underwater Torpedo League—currently eight teams large—is based on the West Coast, but ad hoc games are popping up across the U.S. Newbies will need high baseline fitness, including sport-specific prep. But this demanding pool routine, created by Hall, is effective for anyone looking to level up their fitness. Try it once a week, and unless you’re a strong swimmer, do it under the watchful eye of a lifeguard.

rest between rounds: 100meter freestyle swim, breathing every 2 strokes for the first 25 meters, 4 strokes for the second 25 meters, 6 strokes for the third 25 meters, and 8 strokes for the last 25 meters. Focus on efficiency, using a relaxed and methodical stroke rate the whole time. As you get stronger and more comfortable, add more rounds, up to 5 at a time.

FOR EXPLOSIVE POWER: BURPEE BOTTOM OUT

BUILD LUNG CAPACITY: FREESTYLE BREATHING LADDER

Stand at the edge of pool’s deep end. Step into water, body forming a straight line, to sink

Average length of a game.

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25

SECONDS

1

MINUTES

UNDERWATER TORPEDO BY THE NUMBERS

Perform 2 rounds of the following, with a 30-second

Average amount of time spent underwater per play.

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Drop a heavy (30 to 50 pound) dumbbell into deep end of the pool. Take a huge breath, inhaling through mouth, then continue to inhale through nose to open the diaphragm and fill entire chest. Step into water, toes pointed, sweeping arms above head to propel to bottom of pool, and grab dumbbell.

Lean forward and walk along pool bottom for as long as you can (as shown). Release air little by little to extend time underwater, and drop dumbbell and surface when necessary. Rest up to 5 minutes and repeat. Start with 2 reps, building up to 4 reps. On the last rep, walk dumbbell to shallow end to remove from pool.

3

The number of matches adding up to a game.

RULES IN THE POOL Two teams of 11 play in a 14-foot-deep pool. Five players per team are allowed in the pool at a time. When the whistle blows, both teams vie for the torpedo that’s sunk in the middle of the pool. The object is to score through a small goal (about 18 by 24 inches) and inhibit the opposing team from doing just that. Surfacing while holding the torpedo incurs a penalty, so players must pass to a teammate before rising to the surface to catch a breath.

Maneuvers like barrel rolls, front and backf lips, and pushing off of the pool walls help players evade defenders and advance the torpedo.

Defensive players can tackle, pull, and grapple in an effort to wrest free the torpedo. However, kicking, punching, choking, and grabbing goggles or swimsuits are illegal. Substitutes stand on the pool ledge, ready to tap in for gassed teammates.

There is no designated goalkeeper. The first team to score five goals in a match wins; games are the best of three matches.

5

MINUTES

The amount of time players have to regroup between matches.

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WORKOUT OF THE MONTH

On the Prowl If you want to max out on both strength and endurance in one go, load up a sled and get to work. by MALLORY CREVELING High Push

SLEDS, ALSO KNOWN as prowlers, have become emblematic of football training, because they’re used to replicate the effort of pushing an object that doesn’t want to budge (like an offensive lineman). But more gyms are starting to offer them—typically if there’s a turf area.

“Not many training methods can challenge your power, strength, and endurance all at once quite as well as the sled,” says Patrick Jones, a strength coach at Performance Lab by the Wright Fit in NYC. Sleds are foremost a lower-body test.

First, the glutes engage to get the contraption moving, then the quads and hamstrings activate to maintain momentum. The core fires throughout, protecting the spine and helping to transfer force to the sled. “The pushing position used to drive the sled is the same that’s needed for power sports, like running or soccer,” Jones says. Better yet: Hand straps, a TRX, a harness, or a light battle rope turns it into a full-body workout tool.

We headed to the Wright Fit to find out just how it’s done. If you’re new to the sled, start light and focus on body position—particularly maintaining a neutral spine—and build the weight gradually; the sled is a self-limiting tool, so should you load it up too much, the thing won’t move.

Low Push

Sled Push—High and Low Start with hands on the high poles or the low crossbar, hips hinged forward slightly. (It should feel like bracing to push a broken-down car along the street.) With back straight and core engaged, drive through balls of feet and push the sled with small, quick steps.

Do a high push one direction and low push back; 40 seconds equals 1 set.

Plank Pull Tie the end of a battle rope to a sled, with the rest of rope extended along turf.

Go to the other end of rope and hold a forearm plank, facing sled. Maintaining a straight line from head to heels, pull rope with left hand until sled reaches you. Repeat on right side for 1 set.

THE WORKOUT

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Side Pull

Pull Row

E XPERT TIP

Face the sled, holding straps that are attached to the low bar. Stand far enough away so that the strap is taught with arms extended. Drop into a low squat, and row elbows back to progress sled toward you. Reset and repeat; 15 pulls equals 1 set.

SHUTTLE RUNS

Bear Crawl Pull Place a harness clipped to the prowler around waist. Start on all fours, facing away from the prowler, and lift knees off floor. With left foot moving with right arm and vice versa, bear crawl forward; 30 seconds equals 1 set.

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Cassava Takes Root Also called yuca, cassava is a staple in African and Latin-American cooking. And it’s become a darling among athletes looking for a vitamin-rich, gluten-free culinary edge. by MARJORIE KORN

OUT OF NOWHERE, Americans

have found cassava. Grown in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the root, with its bark-brown exterior, is being turned into everything from chips and cheese puffs to pizza and pancake mix.

Healthy eaters are clamoring for the ground-flour form, which is Paleo-friendly, gluten-free, and a one-to-one substitute for

wheat flour. But cassava is fairly healthy in its own right. It’s a complex carb, meaning it’s filling and offers long-lasting energy. It also contains fiber and a host of vitamins, including vitamin C—an antioxidant needed for collagen production.

So hit the kitchen with these recipes— one contemporary, two traditional—and discover how delicious the tuber can be.

FOOD STYLING BY BARRETT WASHBURNE; PROP STYLING BY CARLA GONZALEZ-HART

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photograph by CHRISTOPHER TESTANI

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WHAT WORKS FOR ME

Scheer Force Actor, comedian, and podcaster Paul Scheer has been cleaning up his act—at least when it comes to his health.

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Self-Starter

Look the Part

Clear Your Head

COURTESY OF SECHEL PR

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H E A LT H

Sound Effects Noise pollution is everywhere. You need to protect yourself. Here’s how. by JULIA SAVACOOL

OU ALREADY KNOW loud

places—sporting events, live concerts—aren’t good for our hearing. But it turns out that noise pollution is a constant in our lives, with potentially detrimental effects. A 2019 World Health Organization report citing French research suggests noise pollution in major cities has risen to such levels that it can cost

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residents more than three healthy years owing to ailments related to damaging sounds. That’s on top of an obvious outcome—hearing loss, which is irreversible.

“The human brain is remarkably good at tuning out background noise, but our autonomic nervous system, which controls the function of our major organ systems, still responds to it,” says Rick Neitzel, associate professor of environmental health MEN’S JOURNAL

sciences at the University of Michigan.

“Noise levels can absolutely be harmful even if they are not bothering us.”

So before you attend your next spin class (which can clock in at 100 decibels or more—the danger zone according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), here are some of the consequences of living in a high-volume world—and what you can do about it.

illustration by JOHN HOLCROFT

YOUR BODY ON NOISE

When you live and work in loud places, your body goes on higher alert. “Noise exposure can cause physiological stress and changes in the nervous and hormonal systems,” Neitzel says.

“These changes can trigger the fight-or-flight response, which over time can be harmful to various systems.” And it’s another way that poverty is damaging to society: Lower-income neighborhoods tend to be considerably louder than more affluent neighborhoods, with lasting effects on children living there. For everyone, here’s how noise pollution puts us at risk: 1. Chronic noise exposure is

associated with learning challenges in kids and faster cognitive decline in older adults, research from Germany and the University of California, Los Angeles suggests. Plus, people who live in noisy areas, like near an airport or highway, have twice the rate of depression and anxiety as people in quiet areas, according to a study in Plos One. And exposure to noise at just 50 decibels can bring on headaches, a study from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia suggests. FYI, a quiet library is 30 to 40 decibels, and a vacuum is 60 to 80 dB. 2. Loud noises enter your ear as

sound waves, then travel down the ear canal into the inner ear.

The fluid-filled cochlea is lined with tiny hair cells that send electric signals to your brain to interpret sound. Loud noise can permanently damage these hair cells, shuttering commu-

nication to your brain, according to the American SpeechLanguage-Hearing Association.

1 2

3

4

3. The odds of having a heart attack increase by 12 percent for every 10-decibel increase in traffic noise, and high levels of noise can lead to an irregular heartbeat, according to German and Danish researchers.

More noise also equals higher blood pressure. Research shows for every 10-decibel increase in nighttime noise from local airports, hypertension risk can rise by 14 percent.

4. Traffic noise also appears to

be a contributing factor to obesity. Researchers in Spain and Switzerland studied data collected from 3,796 people and found a 17 percent increase in obesity rates for every 10-decibel increase in traffic noise level. A possible reason: hormonal and nervous system changes due to chronic noise exposure.

NOT YOUR GRANDPA’S HEARING AID

A SOUND DEFENSE Childhoods spent driving around with the music at maximum start to explain why, according to a CDC survey, 15 percent of Americans 18 and older have some hearing loss.

Here’s how to keep your ears sharp.

FOLLOW THE 60/60 RULE

The biggest culprit for preventable hearing loss is listening to loud music through headphones, says Garrett Thompson, an audiologist in New York City. “Listen at 60 percent of max volume, and take a break after 60 minutes,” Thompson says.

WEAR PROTECTION

For anyone working in loud environments—construction sites, tarmacs—buy a pair of professional earmuff-style hearing protectors. If you need earplugs for commutes or in a loud spin class, single-use foam ones available at the pharmacy work fine.

TRY WHITE NOISE

It’s counterintuitive to fight noise with noise, but if your house is loud, a white noise machine for background sound might help you hear with more clarity, suggest results from an animal study in Cell Reports.

KNOW YOUR DECIBELS

Just like you track your steps, you can track your noise exposure. The Apple Health app can tell you whether your headphone volume is too loud. And a free app from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the NIOSH Sound Level Meter, measures the volume around you, informing you of hearing endangerment.

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Spin Class The key to sprinting faster and climbing on a bike without petering out is increasing the force you apply to the pedals. Here’s the protocol to your strongest cycling season yet. by CLINT CARTER

ESPITE THE embellish-

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in cycling, glory often goes to the rider with the greatest lower-body strength.

You might not have plans to hit the pro circuit, but anyone who has designs on a cycling race or trip, or even those who want to shave a few minutes off their morning commute, will want to sprint, climb, and accelerate faster. And the best way to do that is to supplement time in the saddle with stints in the weight room.

JOSE MANDOJANA

ments of disc brakes, aerodynamic rims, and carbon f iber forks, bicycles are simple machines. Their primary purpose is to propel you forward, which they do by transferring power from your legs to the rear wheel. So it stands to reason that the more power you have to transfer, the faster you move. When

D

you see professionals sprinting to a finish line at 35 mph, it’s safe to assume they’re packing serious muscle beneath the spandex.

“Cycling is far more strength dependant than any other endurance sport,” says Jonathan Vaughters, a former pro rider and head coach of the EF Education First Pro Cycling team. Unlike running, which depends on cardiovascular capacity,

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THE EXPERT’S GUIDE TO CYCLING FASTER PHASE ONE: POWER AND STABILITY

Pendlay row

The muscles used in cycling fall into two groups: power generating and power transfer. For everyday cycling, the first set is more important.

“The power muscles in your legs—particularly the quads and the glutes—serve primarily as your motors,” says Borut Fonda, the lead scientist at the AbsoluteBlack Science Lab in Slovenia.

Meanwhile, when you mash the full force of your quads and glutes into the pedals, your body wants to rise out of the saddle, which isn’t energy efficient on flat roads. So stabilizing muscles come in, preventing it from happening.

Your arms, back, and core hold the body rigid and apply counterforce necessary to stay pinned down.

“During acceleration, you’re putting so much strength and torque into the pedals that the body has to lock down,” Vaughters says.

“Otherwise, you’d throw

yourself off balance.”

By building your power and stabilizer muscles in the gym, you essentially increase the size of your body’s engine and help keep it working at peak.

For the exercises below, aim for three to six sets of six reps, with as much weight as you can safely handle. Do it twice a week. If you’re new to these moves, start with a lower weight until you’ve mastered the form.

POWER 1. BARBELL SQUAT Another quads-glute challenge, this move also requires abdominal muscles to fire, which are key stabilizers.

Rack a barbell at chest-height, loading it medium-heavy.

Position the bar on your shoulders behind neck, stand, step back, and place feet hip-width apart. Keep your back flat and heels on the floor as you squat. Pause briefly and reverse for one rep.

2. PENDLAY ROW Muscles in your back and arm keep the body stiff against the bike frame as you sprint hard or power up a steep climb, so spend time on your upper body. Start like you would a deadlift. Hinge hips to grab a lightly loaded barbell. With legs still and back parallel to floor, pull barbell to chest, elbows behind rib cage, and tap weight on floor for one rep.

No amount of gym work entirely replicates time in the saddle. Try to average one long (four- or five-hour) ride plus a shorter jaunt per week. No time for a half-day outing?

Quick bouts of intense cycling can serve as a good substitute. A study presented at a conference for the International Journal of Exercise Science found that cycling intervals three times per week could improve riding speed by 18 percent among new cyclists in a month.

Here’s the structure used in the study: Ride for four minutes at what feels like 60 percent of your max effort. By the end, you should feel winded but not spent. Follow that with a one-minute recovery, pedaling slowly. Repeat eight times, adding up to 40 minutes.

You can do this on an indoor bike, too. After a short warm-up, go all-out for 30 seconds to find your max RPM or wattage that day. Figure out what 60 percent of that number is, and use it as a guideline for the workout. Do this a couple of times per week, and after a month, you should see those numbers steadily improving.

MATTHIAS DROBECK/SHUTTERSTOCK

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STABILITY 1. CORE WORK A strong, still core will help prevent a loss of power transfer as you ride uphill, while lessening pressure on the hip flexors, especially at the end of long rides, when legs are pooped and proper form is hard to maintain. Do an array of exercises—high plank taps, crunches, side planks, mountain climbers—to hit a wider range of abdominal muscles. Twenty reps are a set.

Better Fit, More Power

100

2. DEADLIFT It’s the quintessential glutes move—and it has more to offer. At the apex of the lift, stabilizing muscles in the legs and torso turn on, which you’ll use while climbing. If legs are tired from a string of gym sessions or rides, drop the weight and add reps. Stand over loaded barbell, feet shoulder-width apart. Hip hinge back, lift bar, lock out legs, and reverse to start.

PHASE TWO: ENDURANCE

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INTEL

Longer Lives for Golfers

Health News

KETO DIET MAY HARM BONES

Here we go again. A new study says red meat is risky business. Researchers at Northwestern medical school and Cornell University sifted two decades of data from nearly 30,000 people and found that those who ate two servings of red meat a week were 3 to 7 percent likelier to develop heart disease compared with non-meat eaters. Red meat was also linked to 3 percent higher overall mortality risk. As for other animal protein, poultry has a similar risk factor for heart disease, but not overall mortality, and fish posed no associated risk.

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As keto frenzy continues, athletes should proceed with caution. A study in Frontiers in Endocrinology finds that the low-carb, high-fat food plan may cause an alarming decline in bone health among athletes, in this case, elite race walkers.

“Blood markers indicated both greater bone breakdown and reduced bone formation for the keto group,” says study co-author Louise Burke.

Though the jury’s out if you do keto mainly to lose weight.

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FROM TOP: LORI ADAMSKI-PEEK/GALLERY STOCK; MARCUS NILSSON/GALLERY STOCK

TO SAVE YOUR HEART, RECONSIDER THE BURGER

The next time you catch flack for spending too much time on the links, here’s a rebuttal: It could help you live longer.

Research presented at the International Stroke Conference looked at data from 384 golfers ages 65 and older over a 10-year period. It found that people who golfed regularly in their later years have a 40 percent lower rate of death than nongolfers. “Our study is perhaps the first of its kind to evaluate the long-term health benefits of golf,” says Adnan Qureshi, M.D., a professor of clinical neurology at the University of Missouri.

“Regular exercise, exposure to a less-polluted environment and social interaction provided by golf are all positive for health,” as are stress relief and relaxation.

And you don’t have to be obsessed to reap the benefit.

As little as once-a-month golf outings can have a positive health effect.

33%

TO FORTIFY YOUR STEEL TRAP, GO SOMEWHERE NEW

The percentage of people who can correctly identify the potency of cannabis edibles based on the THC-content numbers shown on labels, according to a new Canadian study. The research also suggests that color-coding edibles would help people know exactly what they’re getting.

AGING, EXERCISE, AND INFLAMMATION We know that exercising consistently throughout your life helps keep you healthy, and research from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, suggests that while working out is inflammatory in the short term, it reduces inflammation—a marker of many diseases—as you age. For now, drink. Cherrish tart cherry juice has natural anti-inflammatory powers to reduce soreness and hasten muscle recovery, making it a preferred recovery drink for athletes.

A LONG-TERM FITNESS TRACKER

FROM TOP: GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF FITBIT

Since nixing BMI as a marker of health, the workout world took up another: resting heart rate, in which a lower number indicated better fitness. But a study in Plos One, using almost a year’s worth of data from over 92,000 people, finds that RHR may be unreliable—it can vary

rate. Stability is good, and changes can indicate cardiovascular or lung issues, infectious disease, and more.

Keep tabs on yours for months and years; other research has found that a rise in RHR of 15 BPM or more over the course of a decade doubles a person’s risk of dying.

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS MAY UPSET METABOLISM If you get a diet soda with an extra-value meal, you may be increasing the harm. Research from Yale University finds pairing the artificial sweetener sucralose with carbs can lead to weight gain by disrupting the body’s ability to regulate sugar.

No, this isn’t an invitation to drink regular soda.

Go for sugar- and fake sugar–free beverages like Smartwater, which has a slew of tropical flavors.

MEN’S JOURNAL (ISSN 1063-4651) is published Bi-monthly 6 times a year, by Weider Publications LLC, a division of American Media LLC, 4 New York Plaza, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10004. Periodical Rates Postage Paid at the New York, NY, Post Office and at additional mailing offices. Copyright © Weider Publications LLC 2020. All rights reserved. Canada Post International Publications Mail Sale Agreement No. 40028566. Canadian B.N. 88746 5102 RT0001.

All materials submitted become the sole property of Weider Publications LLC and shall constitute a grant to Weider Publications LLC to use name, likeness, story, and all other information submitted of the person submitting the same for any and all purposes and cannot be used without permission in writing from Weider Publications LLC. Men’s Journal is not responsible for returning unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, letters, or other materials. Weider Publications LLC and American Media LLC, publisher of Men’s Journal, do not promote or endorse any of the products or services advertised by third-party advertisers in this publication. Nor does Weider Publications LLC or American Media LLC verify the accuracy of any claims made in conjunction with such advertisements. Subscription rate is $24.00 for 1yr (6 issues). in U.S.A. In Canada 1yr (6 issue). $ 34.00. Outside of U.S.A. and Canada 1yr (6 issue), $45.00 for 1 year. U.S. orders outside of USA must be prepaid in U.S. funds. For customer service and back issues call toll-free (800) 677-6367 or write to: Men’s Journal, P.O. Box 37207, Boone, IA 50037-0207.

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103

The Last Word

Ray Liotta The eternal goodfella, co-starring in the upcoming Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, on the pitfalls of Hollywood, fearing the unknown, and going with the gray.

What’s the best advice you ever received?

It was never one single conversation, but it was just watching the way my dad lived and learning the way he looked at things that turned out to be the best advice. He had an automotive store in Jersey City, New Jersey, and it seemed like it got robbed every week. But he had this attitude of not ever being too shaken up by it—stuff happens, you’ve got to deal with it. What else can you do?

How did being adopted shape your life?

As I got older, I cared less about it, but I always looked at it as being given up, not like I was special and that somebody wanted me. I felt like I was damaged goods, and I would wear that on my sleeve. When I would try to hit on a girl, I would use it—“poor little me, I was given up.” But when I did meet my birth mom at the age of 44 and found out the whole story—that she had already been abandoned and thought I would be better off—I was already over it. I realized my life would never be what it is if I hadn’t been adopted. My parents were great, and I really lucked out. I’m thankful to my birth mother for putting me up for adoption.

How should a man handle getting older?

Just go with it, because it’s a reality that 104

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Is there a key to survival in Hollywood?

Early on, I was seduced by all of the clubs. The scene in the ’70s and the ’80s was nutty. People were doing all kinds of drugs and it was a very confusing time. I wasn’t half as bad as some of these stories you hear, but you have to be careful not to be idle for too long What career advice would you give the younger you?

That “making it” means getting to work with the people who are at the top of their game. There’s nothing more exhilarating than that. The best directors I’ve worked with, whether it was Marty Scorsese, Ridley Scott, or Jonathan Demme, have all had a real excitement about putting a makeMEN’S JOURNAL

believe situation onscreen and making it seem real. That’s why it blows my mind when egotistical actors behave like the world revolves around them. You play make-believe: What are you acting like a dick for? Ninety percent of the time you read things that actors say or do, or you watch them on a talk show, and it’s like, “Oh, my God, shut the fuck up. Stop talking.”

What role should religion play in a person’s life?

I think religion is more of a way of controlling, and consoling, people.

Still, to this day the thought of what’s out there scares the shit out of me, but that’s only because I don’t have a real belief. My mom died in my arms, and my dad died in front of me, and that shook me. The older that I get, the more I want to believe something is out there.

—INTERVIEW BY SEAN WOODS

GARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGES

What have you learned from fatherhood?

It’s made me a better actor and a better person because it made me more understanding of people. I got divorced when my daughter, Karsen, was 4. I didn’t have her until later in life, and I never found anybody to have more kids with, but I love being a dad. Fatherhood opens up your capacity to love. In the grand scheme of things, that’s really what it’s all about: helping other people.

What other point could there be?

you can’t fight. You still take care of yourself and exercise, but go with the gray. It’s not a bad look.