Episodes

Dylan Beynon, founder of Mindbloom, shares the deeply personal story behind building the first at-home ketamine therapy platform. After losing his mother and sister to severe mental illness, Dylan became determined to bring p...

Brea Starmer, founder of Lions and Tigers, challenges the outdated workplace model that measures face time over impact. Drawing from her experience as a mother of three running a company during COVID-19, she introduces the co...

Douglass Vigliotti, author and creative, explores the tension between doubt and conviction that defines the creative process. Drawing from his parents, his father relentless drive and his mother empathy, Douglass reflects on ...

Donny Jackson, poet and psychologist, reflects on growing up as a working-class black kid in Pittsburgh where his father was a postal worker for 35 years and his mother was a nurse's aide—parents who instilled work ethic, int...

Bjorn Ryan-Gorman, professional snowskater and LGBTQ+ advocate, shares his journey from hiding his sexuality behind aggressive board sports to building a life of authenticity in Portland. Growing up in Montana as a sponsored ...

David Epstein, author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, dismantles the myth that early specialization is the only path to excellence. Drawing from research on elite athletes, musicians, and scientists,...

Daniel Stillman, author of Good Talk: How to Design Conversations That Matter, reveals how conversations are designed—whether we realize it or not. Drawing from his background in design thinking and facilitation, Daniel break...

Ayelet Fishbach, motivation researcher at University of Chicago, dismantles the fantasy-driven approach to New Year's resolutions and goal-setting. Drawing from data spanning multiple years, she reveals that while temporal la...

Dandapani, former Hindu monk who lived monastically for 10 years, shares teachings from his guru on treating the mind as an operating system that must be understood before it can be mastered. He explains the critical distinct...

Cal Newport unpacks his framework for Slow Productivity, built on three core principles: doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality. He introduces "pseudo productivity"—the toxic heuristic that ...

Alan Stein Jr, former basketball performance coach to Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, and other NBA superstars, reveals why knowledge without execution is worthless and how the world's highest performers bridge the gap between kno...

Christy Tennery-Spalding, activist and organizer, shares how growing up near Washington D.C. shaped her oppositional stance to power structures and led her to find a “political home” in San Francisco’s activist community. She...

Andrew Yang traces his path from failed entrepreneur to 2020 presidential candidate driven by a single realization: automation has already destroyed millions of American jobs, and the next wave will be exponentially worse. Th...

Former Navy SEAL and leadership strategist Chris Fussell reveals how elite teams operate under pressure—and how those principles can be applied far beyond the battlefield. Drawing from years of operational experience and his ...

Former CIA field operative Andrew Bustamante pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to recruit spies, run intelligence operations, and navigate a life built on secrecy, loyalty, and manipulation. In this riveting and ...

Carlos Adell shares his unconventional path from growing up in a small Spanish town with limited resources to running a six-figure drug dealing business while simultaneously working as a DJ and industrial engineer. After near...

Alison Shcraeger, economist and author of An Economist Walks Into a Brothel, explains how risk really works and why most people misunderstand it. From studying sex workers in Nevada to analyzing probability theory, Alison rev...

This is a test episode to verify that our Acast sync system works correctly. We will upload this episode with a far-future publish date, then update the midroll timestamp to confirm that the PATCH endpoint successfully syncs ...

Akshay Nanavati is not your typical adventurer — he’s a former Marine, a survivor of war-induced PTSD, and a seeker of what he calls the “crucible of suffering.” In this deeply introspective and intensely raw conversation, Ak...

New York Times columnist and bestselling author **David Brooks** joins Srini Rao to unpack what it really means to know and see another person — and how our ability to connect deeply has deteriorated in a world dominated by d...

Damon Centola, sociologist and author of *Change: How to Make Big Things Happen*, dismantles the myth of the influencer and introduces a radically different model of how ideas and behaviors actually spread. In this thought-pr...

Jennifer Wallace is a journalist, researcher, and mother of three who set out to answer one of the most pressing questions in modern parenting: *Why do our kids feel like they're never enough — and what can we do about it?* D...

In this powerful and perspective-shifting episode, Harvard Business School professor and author **Laura Huang** shares a deeply human and practical roadmap for transforming disadvantage into advantage. Drawing from her book *...

Emily Fletcher, founder of Ziva Meditation and a former Broadway performer, shares how her journey from the stage to spiritual leadership reshaped her understanding of success, fulfillment, and mental resilience. In this cand...