How Nikhil Taneja Is Making Men Cry

He knows the importance of being earnest. Which is what gives his answer to ‘what kind of guest would you never invite to your show?’ its unsparing precision. Occasions like this are the few times Nikhil Taneja seems to entertain any sort of public discord.

The cheerful and charismatic media entrepreneur’s increasingly popular podcast Be A Man, Yaar! has been on more and more phone screens ever since it landed in 2023. It was among the Best of 2024 podcasts on Amazon Music, according to the platform. “The idea came to us from the Yuvaa Roadshows that we hold across the country, going to campuses and speaking to a lot of young people,” Taneja says over a video call.

Yuvaa is a media company that he co-founded with filmmakers Amritpal Bindra and Anand Tiwari. It is closing in on seven years now and is a 40-person unit—talent that is responsible for the traction that BAMY! has picked up online with conversations around vulnerability, relationships and intimacy between men, the culture of support between men and the like.

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“At our campus visits, the contrast between what young women told us and what young men said was this: A lot of boys would talk about loneliness, isolation, lack of intimacy, lack of love. Women would talk about facing harassment, but they would also tell us that they had access to tribes and sisterhoods,” Taneja recalls.

He clocked something crucial—these men weren’t missing romance; they were missing each other. “The men would talk about loneliness, anxiety and depression. They’d be like, ‘No one’s there to support us. We don’t get empathy from women anymore’. This was happening at a time when women seemed to have realised that everyone should learn to take care of themselves— a shift from the conventional role of women tending to men’s emotional needs. Which is obviously fair, but these men felt abandoned nonetheless,” the podcaster says.

Since 2024, 'Male Loneliness' has been spoken about more than anything else in the men’s interest space. Helpline data, surveys and research from over the world as well as India label it an epidemic needing urgent addressal. Alongside the success that he gained professionally (he co-produced Bang Baaja Baaraat, one of the first web series to come out of the Hindi space, and served as head of development at Y Films, a Yash Raj vertical), Taneja struggled with anxiety and depression for years himself. And then he discovered that men must come to men’s aid.

“I wanted to create a show where we could have men recognise that you don’t need women to talk to you. Why can’t you talk to each other?” says Taneja, who asserts being a man is talking it out. “In the second season, we made hugs a big deal. I hug every guest at the end of the episode. Why must it be so awkward?” he asks.

Despite the legion of the red pill rising, the world is reawakening to soft boys. And BAMY!’s positioning of it as content has been profitable. “Zakir Khan (the comic) once told me that sometimes he can’t believe how I have managed to get brands to give me money for what I want to do—to talk about empathy,” he tells me, adding, however, that it wasn’t always the case. For the first season of the podcast, multiple brands pulled out of collaborations with them.

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“We then decided to say, f**k it. It was 2024 and we put in some amount of money, created the show and launched a trailer. It went viral. In the same week, The Man Company, Amazon Music and Maybelline India closed with us,” Taneja shares, adding that more brands have got behind BAMY! ever since.

The list of guests on Taneja's show includes actor Vicky Kaushal, singer Prateek Kuhad, filmmaker Karan Johar, model Sushant Divgikr, author Vikas Divyakirti and actor Naseeruddin Shah. He is aware of the fan following each of these names boasts in their respective circles of interest, but the one he cherishes the most is the one with Bhuvan Bam.

“That episode has to be probably the best example of what the show was always meant to be—just two men forgetting they're on camera... and letting emotions flow,” says Taneja, whose firm belief that men should learn to hold and cry with each other, and not just promise to go to wars for each other, has brought guests from all corners of male pop culture.

What he is referring to is the minute-long pause the actor-YouTuber, overcome with emotion while talking about his father’s alcoholism, took on the episode. “During that episode, Bhuvan gets emotional, is seen figuring out ‘What do I say and how?’ I chose to give him that moment entirely and not fill that gap with words, interruptions or further questioning.”

With BAMY! seemingly overcoming the perception of self-absorption that men on podcasts are said to practise, he is aiming to take the show to streaming. “We are in conversations with a bunch of platforms. But I do want to make sure that the show is as accessible as it has always been,” says Taneja, who defies the ‘manosphere’ brand of podcasting prevalent on the internet with a conviviality that some might see as bordering on cloying.

“If you talk to any man not in the language of opinions and ideas but with emotions, they will be on board with it. Should we applaud men for showing emotions? Maybe not, but it’s the only way to normalise it. That’s what I try to do—spotlighting male vulnerability and attempting to face your own emotions,” he notes.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what kind of guest he would never invite to his show, it is the filmmaker Sandeep Reddy Vanga, director of Kabir Singh (2019) and Animal (2023). “This is not to diss him. But people who espouse a certain kind of angry masculinity have such a strong fanbase of people who take their word for everything,” he says. “Even if I can make them see my point, the cutdown of it will be the four times that they have shut me down, with fire emojis and sigma male shoutouts. I don't think Mr Reddy and his followers need my show,” he adds, laughing.

We agree, they don’t—and it goes the other way, too.