The Subtext: Liver King: Masculinity in Crisis

When the “Liver King” built an empire on raw meat, steroids, and slogans about being “a real man,” what if he wasn’t selling a message based on muscles but mortality? In this episode, Savannah and Lee dig into how the fear of death shapes our obsession with control, strength, and self-sufficiency. Drawing from Untold: The Liver King, Scott Galloway’s research on the masculinity crisis, and Richard Beck’s The Slavery of Death, they trace a cultural thread that might tell us something about how we handle one of the rare, universal experiences: death.

Things we mentioned in this episode:

⁠ Reviving Old Scratch by Richard Beck⁠

⁠ The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck⁠

⁠ The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin⁠

⁠ Scott Galloway on Armchair Expert⁠

⁠ The Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty⁠

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