Welcome to Media & Reflections, a space where news about The ManGood Project meets the deeper stories that inspired it. Here you will find media releases, articles, and interviews that share the project’s vision, along with personal reflections drawn from years of mentoring boys and men on rivers, in classrooms, and around campfires.
These writings explore what it means to grow into empathy, courage, and cooperation in a changing world. Some pieces respond to current conversations about masculinity, while others, like The Two Kinds of Laughter, offer timeless insights born from lived experience. Together they form a continuing dialogue about how boys and men can feel less pain and cause less harm, discovering their own ManGood along the way.
The Two Kinds of Laughter
by Pip Cornall, The ManGood Project
Not all laughter is created equal.
Around a campfire, laughter can be medicine. When a river guide tells a story about his own mishaps, or someone shares a quirker that gently teases our masculine habits, the laughter loosens something inside. It disarms bravado, opens a door to honesty, and lets light into places usually guarded by silence. That kind of laughter connects and heals.
But there’s another kind. In pubs or locker rooms, laughter can turn sharp and cruel. Men often bond by putting someone down or mocking vulnerability. The sound may be the same, but the effect is the opposite. Instead of opening hearts, it closes them, rewarding ridicule and punishing empathy.
The difference lies in intent. River laughter lifts everyone. Pub laughter pushes someone out. One builds belonging; the other feeds exclusion.
When guided with care, humour becomes a bridge to humility rather than a weapon for dominance. It reminds us that joy and compassion can coexist in men, and that real strength begins where ridicule ends.
Two Laughs
One kind of laugh can lift the soul,
it joins the heart and makes us whole.
By firelight or river bend,
it heals the wound, it helps us mend.
Another kind can cut and bruise,
mocking hearts it dares to use.
It builds a wall, it shuts the gate,
feeds the fear, and fuels the hate.
So choose your laughter, true and kind,
the one that frees, not traps the mind.
For when we laugh to lift, not shove,
our humour turns to healing love.