Odds & Ends: March 7, 2025

Columbo. I’ve been watching this classic 1970s television show during my Zone 2 cardio sessions lately, and I’ve really enjoyed it. If you’re not familiar with the Columbo format, the show flips the typical detective story on its head by revealing the crime and whodunit up front, then letting us watch Lieutenant Columbo slowly solve the case while the perpetrator squirms. It’s fun watching Columbo play dumb and ask just “one more question” to “tie up loose ends” while the wealthy, sophisticated criminals gradually realize that this unassuming guy, with his rumpled raincoat and cigar, is methodically dismantling their perfect crimes. Peter Falk is amazing as Lt. Columbo. Thanks to Falk’s performance, Columbo deserves to be ranked alongside Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe as one of the great fictional detectives.

Meet the Guys Dating AI Girlfriends. In my podcast conversation with social scientist Brian Willoughby about the effect porn has on relationships, he mentioned that one thing he is researching now is how AI chatbots affect relationship formation and health. This Esquire article gives us a peek into this emerging phenomenon. There are AI apps that let users create digital partners who are perpetually supportive and always up for a chat. They’ll even send you AI-generated sexts throughout the day. And it’s not just young, socially awkward guys using them. A seventy-something retiree uses his AI companion as a “digital mistress” when his wife is having a bad day. What’s alarming is how deeply attached these guys get to their AI girlfriends. One dude even “proposed” with a virtual ring to his chatbot gal. The whole phenomenon raises some pretty existential questions about relationships and loneliness. For me, it’s one more thing I have to talk to my kids about staying away from as they navigate the digital universe.  

Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet by Mark Adams. I read this book back when I had the author on the AoM podcast, and I still think about it today. Long before Instagram models were hawking protein powders, Bernarr Macfadden (born Bernard, he tweaked the spelling of his name to sound more like a tiger’s roar) was our country’s original fitness influencer. After failing as a personal trainer, he launched Physical Culture magazine in the 1890s and built a publishing empire that pioneered the confessional, first-person style that dominates health media today. His fitness philosophies were a mix of surprisingly forward-thinking ideas and complete quackery. What made this book really entertaining were Macfadden’s bizarre life escapades, which included running a utopian fitness community in suburban New Jersey, getting convicted on obscenity charges, training fascist youth for Mussolini, and making a failed bid for U.S. Senate on a physical fitness platform. It’s one of those books that makes you realize how many modern wellness trends are just recycled ideas from a century ago and how a determined eccentric can leave fingerprints all over our culture while somehow being largely forgotten by history.

Wireless CarPlay Adapter. Our car was in the shop for most of February, so we had a rental. The rental car we were using allowed you to connect your iPhone to Apple CarPlay wirelessly. With our regular car, you have to plug it in via a cable, and I found not having to plug and unplug my phone every time I got in and out of the car pretty dang nice. I started thinking, “Man, it would be cool to have wireless CarPlay in our car.” Lucky for me, the very day I started thinking that, Michael Williams over at A Continuous Lean wrote an article highlighting tech he uses that’s actually useful. One of the items he mentioned was this wireless CarPlay adapter. I immediately bought it and now have wireless CarPlay in our car. It’s a small thing, but it’s been a nice upgrade. 

Over on our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: Order Off the Menu and A New Kind of Monasticism: Friendship as a Spiritual Discipline. 

Quote of the Week

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves.

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.