What drew you to this story now, and why do you think conversations about masculinity feel so charged at this moment?
This one started in a brainstorming session several months back on masculinity, spearheaded by Senior Vice President Leora Kapelus and Chief Content Officer Amanda Wills. Rob Picheta asked: What if we actually went inside these so-called "man camps"? He was able to secure us access. If a story requires full immersion, I'm usually all in.
We knew there were two very different experiences ahead: Sonoma, a five-day retreat where we'd be full participants, men looking inward to find healing, and Nashville, a dating bootcamp teaching men how to approach and pick up women (strictly as observers on that one).
As for why now: there's a lot of talk these days about what's going wrong with men, a loneliness epidemic, a so-called crisis of masculinity, the pull of the manosphere. What we hear less about are the people trying to offer solutions, whether they work or not. That gap is why I think this conversation feels so charged. For a lot of young men, the loudest voices offering answers are coming from the darker corners of the internet. These camps claim to offer something different. Rather than debate these spaces from a distance, we wanted to experience them ourselves.
You visited multiple men's retreats, some shaped or led by women. How did the presence of women affect the dynamics of those spaces and the way the men responded?
PIVOT in Sonoma is Lori Jean Glass's creation, and most of her coaches are women. Rather than resist that, the men leaned in. One of them, Matt, told us: "It's funny, because I've always suspected it would be a woman... that would be the mirror and pull it out (of me)."
Nashville was the flip side. The Attractive Man bootcamp, run by Matt Artisan, brought women in as backup coaches and models, giving the guys the kind of unfiltered feedback most of them had never heard out loud. Watching them try those lessons on the streets of Nashville, I found myself genuinely nervous for them. But even the awkward approaches sparked surprisingly honest conversations.
It's also worth mentioning that women shaped this story behind the scenes as well, from its earliest development through editing, production and legal review. Megan Buckelew edited it, Merriam Mikhail helped us navigate the legalities appropriately and Leora was this project's biggest champion from day one.
Did your reporting leave you convinced they offer real change, or mostly a temporary emotional release, especially given the cost?
It depends on the camp. Nashville promises something narrower: confidence, reps, maybe a number by Saturday night. Some men left with exactly that. Whether it translates into lasting change probably depends on the individual. Sonoma is after something bigger, and I struggle to see any space that can "fix" someone in five days. Lori Jean certainly doesn't promise that on her website. The hardest part starts when the men drive off the property and have to live what they've learned.
The cost is real at both: $5,000 for the week in Sonoma and $3,500 for the long weekend in Nashville, which prices out plenty of men who might need it most. (Lori Jean has recently turned PIVOT into a nonprofit, in part to make it more accessible.) But what we watched in that Sonoma room wasn't a performance. Two of the men were carrying fresh grief, and they were willing to set it down in front of us, strangers, and in front of our camera. What many of them seemed to leave with wasn't certainty; it was willingness, and maybe a little hope. Whether that holds is another question.
Was there a particular person, moment or exercise that stayed with you and best captured what this piece is really about?
"Running the bases." I went in expecting to observe men learning to feel. I didn't plan on becoming one of them. Three days into the Sonoma retreat, during an exercise that walks you back through your own life, from your inner child to your "healthy adult," I was the first to completely break. Tears I couldn't stop. David von Blohn, our talented photojournalist, quietly lowered his camera and gave me some space. I remember feeling almost self-conscious. So many of the men in that room were carrying profound loss, and yet there I was, unable to stop crying. Two of them had just lost the people closest to them. Then the dominoes fell. One man, whose wife had died just four months earlier, swore he "didn't want to do this" as his voice cracked. That's what this piece is really about. I realized that hearing another man's raw, unfiltered truth could be just as healing as speaking your own. Rob also wrote a first-person essay about his own experience inside the retreat, which offers another perspective on what happened there. It's worth a read, read it here.
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