In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with bodybuilding, but with building an emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.

A poet, translator, and social theorist, Bly has published more than 30 collections of poetry, including The Light Around the Body (1967), which won a National Book Award, and most recently Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems (2013). His honors include fellowships from Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.

This discussion between best-selling authors Deborah Tannen (You Just Don't Understand) and Robert Bly (Iron John) is presented as a sort of continuing education program. It is utterly delightful. The authors are both funny and serious. They care a great deal about the topic of women and men's conversational styles. The production is so well done that even questions from the audience are picked up by the microphones.

When a woman or a father attacks a naive male, he immediately opens himself up and takes the attack right into himself. "Oh, yes, that is true. I am really bad!" It does not occur to him that the attack may be something quite different. Maybe the woman or father is angry at something else and is displacing or projecting the anger onto the man. The naive male takes in the attack, feels the wound, and then bends over, psychologically.

Robert Bly looks beyond the individual psyche to the problems of our public life, explaining why we as a culture are so adrift. What he finds is an infantilized society in which the battle between youth and age has been won by youth. Bly argues that in the collapse of the old patriarchal worldview, we are becoming a world of "siblings" who do not look up to heroes, leaders, or God, but only sideways at an army of siblings like ourselves. Through the psychological lessons embedded in ancient folk tales, Bly challenges us to move beyond our own adolescent envy and fantasy.

These broadcast quality archival recordings have been edited down into an amazing journey led by Robert Bly, one of America's greatest and entertaining thinkers. This audio explores the poetry of Yeats and goes deep into the author's biography to help bring to light the inspirations of Yeat's great works.

Characterized by petty rivalries, self-indulgence and lack of responsibility, our actions fail to fulfill what Robert Bly describes as our true soul longing. With characteristic irreverence and storytelling from various cultures, Bly tells us what we should be doing about green-haired adolescents and idle elders, not to mention televisions and computers. His insightful focus illuminates the truths and possibilities of a culture caught in an adolescent phase of development.

An extraordinary visit with one of America's leading poets provides a unique exploration of the mystery of maleness. Bly uses fairy tales to illuminate the dark recesses of the psyche, and the result is a powerful intimation of the male experience and potential. From the soft, feminine male persona to the deeply buried wildman, Bly takes us on a journey through unmapped territory of the masculine. For men and women this is a conversation not to be missed.

Robert Bly - one of the most compelling mythologists and storytellers of our time - captures the imagination in two live recordings. In The Human Shadow, Bly takes us on a thought provoking and entertaining journey exploring our "shadow" through poetry, music, and storytelling. What Stories Do We Need? reminds us that the mythology we have inherited is often defective. Just as the church refused to accept the reality Galileo saw in his telescope, literalists have removed the dark soul images that nourished our ancestors from mythology.

In this discussion, Bly talks of four sources of shame, including shame inherited from parents, grandparents, and ancestors, and shame over our bodily and creative instincts. It opens with a Russian fairy story on the Frog Princess and the shame we feel over our interior "Frog Bride." Bly and host Michael Toms discuss the new work in America on shame, most of it done during the last ten years.

Bly describes the three necessary and sequential life phases symbolized by three colors - the "red, white and black," in the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Iron John." He casts a penetrating light on these male life stages, describing complications that arise, for example, when a boy skips the red and goes directly to the white. He also discusses how these stages, when fulfilled, affect men's relationships with women.

Jalaluddin Rumi is unquestionably one of the greatest spiritual poets of the world. This audio features Robert Bly and Coleman Barks each reading his own versons of Rumi. Brilliant musical accompaniment provides playfulness and ground to great spiritual expression.

A Course in Miracles says that this world and every aspect of it got started when the Son of God remembered not to laugh. What we failed to laugh at is the joke that is ourselves. Now, however, you can have a true experience of metaphysical mirth - you might even, yourself, achieve "full realization".

Leaving naivete behind may open up the wilder regions of maleness, where men can wrestle with their demons and, in time, reach maturity and balance, according to Bly, poet and men's workshop facilitator. This is a fascinating dialogue which explores the mystery of maleness and includes Bly's storytelling mastery and poetry.

In these never-before-released "Woodman Johnson Discussions", you will get the complete edited program in eight different sections - 12 hours in total, edited audio. These two icons of Jungian theory share a revealing and insightful conversation on Jungian Analysis and each of their lives' work.Some of the points covered include: The Wounded Feeling Function in the Masculine and the Feminine; Legitimate and Illegitimate Feelings; and Masculine, Feminine, Patriarchy.