Épisodes

  • Your Life Is A Game Of Poker. Here's How To Win

    Your Life Is A Game Of Poker. Here's How To Win
    Aug 23 2026
    Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 People burn a lot of energy fighting over whether success is luck or skill. Wrong fight. In this one I break down the framework that reorganized how I think about all of it: San Sai, an ancient Chinese model that splits luck into three kinds. The luck you're born with, the environment you put yourself in, and the way you play your hand. Two of the three you can actually work on. If life is poker, this is the difference between the cards, the table, and how you play them. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Luck Is Perception: The Newspaper Experiment 00:01:15 The Coffee Shop Test: Money and Connections 00:01:47 Luck as a Learnable Skill 00:02:15 Why Poker Matters: Risk and Decision-Making 00:02:57 Seeing Yourself Lucky Creates Lucky Outcomes 00:03:43 The Resistance to Thinking About Luck 00:04:24 Effort, Output, and the Fairness Instinct 00:04:58 The Birth Lottery and Social Justice 00:05:49 The Self-Worth Problem: Why Am I Unlucky? 00:06:47 The Just World Hypothesis ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #Luck #Success #Mindset #Psychology #SelfImprovement #MarkManson #SolvedPodcast
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    8 min
  • How Lucky Are You Really?

    How Lucky Are You Really?
    Aug 20 2026
    Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Two babies are born on the same day, one in Norway, one in Sierra Leone, and one of them will live 21 years longer. Neither picked a thing. This is the luck everyone fixates on, and it's also the luck you're worst at interpreting. In this clip I run the actual numbers, get into the philosopher's thought experiment that reframes the whole thing (the veil of ignorance), and tell the story of a pastor in Sierra Leone who stumbled onto a $10 million diamond. Because luck is always relative. Lucky compared to what? Good luck, bad luck, who knows? Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Birth Lottery: Norway vs Sierra Leone 00:01:44 What Do We Do With This Information? 00:02:25 The Veil of Ignorance: John Rawls' Thought Experiment 00:03:44 The Pastor and the Diamond: When Luck Defies Circumstances 00:04:35 Luck Is Always Relative 00:05:42 The Chinese Farmer and the Horse: A Timeless Fable 00:07:34 Choosing Your Frame of Reference ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #Philosophy #Perspective #Mindset
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    8 min
  • Why Lucky People Find More Money

    Why Lucky People Find More Money
    Aug 18 2026
    Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Why do two people walk into the same coffee shop and one spots the cash on the floor while the other walks right past it? Richard Wiseman ran the studies, and the results are wild. Lucky people literally see more of what's in front of them. In this clip Drew and I get into how luck behaves like a skill you can train, and why we get so squirmy the second someone suggests our success came down to luck instead of genius. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Why the West Struggles with Luck 00:01:06 Ancient Greece and Rome: Luck as Fickle Fortune 00:01:30 Boethius and the Wheel of Fortune 00:02:06 Medieval Christianity: Everything as God's Will 00:02:35 Machiavelli's River: The Renaissance Breakthrough 00:03:14 The Enlightenment: Probability and Risk Assessment 00:04:13 The Tension Between Fate and Agency 00:04:52 Sansai: The Ancient Chinese Framework for Luck 00:05:34 Heaven Luck: The Birth Lottery You Cannot Control 00:06:08 Earth Luck: The Systems and Environments You Choose 00:07:39 Human Luck: Your Decisions and Adaptability 00:07:58 The Poker Analogy: Cards, Tables, and Skill 00:08:29 The Most Important Decision: Choosing Your Table ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    9 min
  • Myers-Briggs Is a Horoscope for Smart People

    Myers-Briggs Is a Horoscope for Smart People
    Aug 16 2026
    Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change You've probably taken the Myers-Briggs test, put your type in a LinkedIn bio, or had a boss organize your team around it. In this clip, Drew and I get into why that four-letter label is closer to a horoscope than a science. I tell the real story of where MBTI came from: not a lab, but a mother-daughter pair working from a dining room table during World War II, building on Jung's ideas even though Jung himself warned against boxing people into types. We get into the numbers that should give you pause, like the fact that a third to half of people get a different result when they retake the test weeks later, and why it predicts almost none of the things the Big Five actually predicts. Then we get to the part that matters: why slapping a label on yourself isn't harmless fun. Labels become self-fulfilling, they turn into a responsibility shield, and an inaccurate one can have you fighting your own nature for years. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Paradox of Self-Awareness 00:02:45 The Origins of Myers-Briggs 00:06:11 How MBTI Became a Corporate Phenomenon 00:09:34 The Scientific Problems with MBTI 00:12:15 Why We're So Drawn to Personality Tests 00:13:07 The Barnum Effect and Confirmation Bias 00:14:43 Why Inaccurate Labels Are Dangerous 00:16:43 The False Sense of Certainty 00:17:48 When Labels Can Be Useful 00:19:34 Traits vs Adaptations: The Crucial Distinction ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #MyersBriggs #MBTI #PersonalityTest #Psychology #Pseudoscience #SelfAwareness #PersonalityTypes #BarnumEffect #Astrology #SelfImprovement #MarkManson #SOLVEDPodcast
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    21 min
  • Why Positive Thinking Ruins Your Life

    Why Positive Thinking Ruins Your Life
    Aug 13 2026
    Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/confidence Do affirmations actually work? Mark and Drew go through the research on affirmations, vision boards, and power posing, why most of it failed to replicate, and how affirmations can actually make people with low self-esteem feel worse. Plus the WOOP method that makes visualization genuinely useful. Chapters ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #Affirmations #PowerPosing #Visualization #Confidence #Psychology #MarkManson #SolvedPodcast
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    18 min
  • The Anxious Preacher Who Invented Modern Confidence

    The Anxious Preacher Who Invented Modern Confidence
    Aug 12 2026
    Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast:https://mrk.mn/confidence Nearly every piece of confidence advice we have inherited traces back to one anxious 1940s preacher, Norman Vincent Peale, and his book The Power of Positive Thinking. Mark and Drew break down the "feel fallacy," the mistaken belief that you have to feel confident before you can perform, and the surprising fact that the term "con man" comes from "confidence man." Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Origins of Modern Confidence Advice 00:00:45 The Birth of Positive Thinking 00:01:42 From Personal Hack to Global Phenomenon 00:03:03 The Peel Fallacy Explained 00:03:33 Why the Fallacy Persists 00:04:36 The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Solutions 00:05:57 Early Critics and the Confidence Man 00:07:49 The Cult of Positive Thinking 00:10:00 From Heresy to Mainstream Culture 00:11:01 The Millennial Backlash and Modern Cynicism 00:13:27 Personal Rituals vs Universal Solutions ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #Confidence #SelfHelp #Psychology #PositiveThinking #MarkManson #SolvedPodcast
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    16 min
  • How to Actually Change Your Life

    How to Actually Change Your Life
    Aug 9 2026
    Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change Most people who try to change themselves are working on the wrong layer, and that's why they keep failing. In this clip, Drew and I lay out the framework that runs through the entire Change episode: the self operates on three layers at once. Your personality traits are the base, your natural set point, and they barely move. On top of that sit your adaptations, the identities and habits you build to work with your traits and your environment. And at the surface is your behavior, which you can change tomorrow. The mistake almost everyone makes comes down to two errors: treating a trait like a behavior ("I'll be an extrovert starting Monday") or treating a behavior like a trait ("I never go to the gym, I guess I'm lazy"). I get into how I built a whole "party guy" identity in college to work around being introverted, why Allport, Mischel, and even Freud were each partly right, and why real change always starts at the top, with behavior, and works its way down. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Three Layers of Self 00:00:29 Layer One: Personality Traits as Your Natural Set Point 00:00:45 Layer Two: Building Adaptations Around Your Personality 00:01:52 Layer Three: Behavior as the Expression of Identity 00:02:25 Bottom-Up vs Top-Down: Two Perspectives on Change 00:03:41 The Two Fundamental Errors of Change 00:05:35 Accepting Your Traits and Aligning Your Adaptations 00:07:26 Why Everyone Was Right: Integrating Personality Theories 00:09:17 Roadmap for Change: Which Layers Can Actually Shift 00:10:03 The One Way to Change Your Life Overnight ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #HowToChange #BehaviorChange #Habits #Psychology #SelfAwareness #ChangeYourLife #Personality #PersonalDevelopment #MarkManson #SOLVEDPodcast #SelfImprovement #PersonalGrowth
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    11 min
  • Can You Really Change Who You Are?

    Can You Really Change Who You Are?
    Aug 8 2026
    Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change Everyone's taken a Big Five personality test at some point, but almost nobody knows what the results actually mean, or whether they're stuck with them for life. In this clip, Drew and I break down the single most replicated finding in all of psychology: the Big Five (OCEAN) traits, what each one actually predicts about your health, relationships, and career, and why not one of them is "good" or "bad," with a single exception. Then we get into the question that actually matters: can you change your personality, or are you set like plaster by 30? The old guard said no. The newer research tells a far more interesting story. I also get into how I trained myself out of being an introvert in my twenties, turned into an extrovert, and then quietly slid back once I started going to bed at 9pm like an old man. Turns out your personality is less a fixed verdict and more a range you move around inside of. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction to the Big Five Personality Traits 00:01:06 Breaking Down OCEAN: Openness to Experience 00:01:51 Understanding the Trade-offs of Personality Traits 00:02:49 Conscientiousness: Organization and Structure 00:03:16 Extroversion and Agreeableness Explained 00:04:25 Neuroticism: The Anxiety and Stress Dimension 00:05:59 Predictive Power of the Big Five 00:08:20 Can Personality Actually Change? 00:09:53 The Situational Nature of Personality 00:11:11 Real-World Example: Introversion to Extroversion and Back ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/msub25ez ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/8owt1jc4 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ #PersonalityTypes #PersonalityTest #Psychology #IntrovertVsExtrovert #SelfImprovement #PersonalGrowth #PersonalityTraits #HumanBehavior
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    14 min