SOLVED with Mark Manson

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1. Failure, Solved

   7 oktober 2026 · 3 uur 44 min

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   Fail fast. Fail forward. Fail better. As a society, we’ve turned failure into a slogan to celebrate, but somehow we’re more afraid of it than ever. Lees meer

   So what's going on? Most of us say failure is our best teacher, but I doubt many of you have ever walked away from a failure doing a happy dance. IInstead, you probably let the moment rattle around in your head at some ungodly hour, then played it a little safer the next time. Don't worry, you're not the only one.

   Today, Drew and I break down why every piece of advice you've ever received about failure has, well… failed you.

   We cover why indulging in "failure porn" is such a harmful move and what it actually takes to learn from our mistakes (it's not what you think). We explain the evolutionary reason a rejected email can feel threatening. We tell the story of how a country's inability to admit failure got thousands killed, and of a monk so tormented by his failures that he confessed them for six hours a day. We dive into the three different kinds of failure and why the setback itself matters less than the actions you take after. And we even discuss when quitting is and isn't a failure, and the five-question test that reveals the difference.

   Apologies in advance: this episode will not teach you how to avoid failure. On a long enough timeline, the failure rate of everything is 100%. So let's get really great at failing.

   Get your free episode guide: https://mrk.mn/failureguide

   CHAPTERS

   Chapters

   00:00:00 Introduction: The Failure to Understand Failure
   00:01:15 Chapter 1: The Most Overdone Topic in Self-Help
   00:07:39 The Failure Porn Industrial Complex
   00:16:06 Why Failure Worship Made Everything Worse
   00:41:47 Chapter 2: Why Failure Hurts So Much
   01:02:35 The Sociometer Theory: Your Brain's Status-Tracking System
   01:14:28 The Ego, Original Sin, and Why You Can't Escape Failure
   01:31:57 Chapter 3: When You Define Yourself, You Define Your Failures
   02:07:08 Confession, Therapy, and the Technology of Atonement
   02:23:4…

2. Finding Your Life Path, Solved

   2 september 2026 · 4 uur 10 min

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   You've been told your whole life to explore, keep your options open, try new things. And you've done exactly that. Moved cities, pivoted careers, taken every personality quiz. But here's what nobody warns you about: all that freedom might be the thing keeping you stuck.
   This episode digs into a depressed 19th century Danish philosopher who diagnosed our entire modern crisis 180 years before we lived it. We tell the story of Casanova, history's most famous fuckboy, who had more adventures than anyone alive and died completely alone with nothing but 2,000 pages of memories nobody believed. We break down Dan Gilbert's research on why your brain is actually better at justifying your choices than you give it credit for. We walk through Kierkegaard's three stages of commitment, from the aesthetic life of endless options to the point where commitment stops feeling like a choice at all. And we talk about the grief that nobody tells you about when you finally pick one life and let all the others go.
   Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/commitment/
   CHAPTERS
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 The Paradox of Too Many Choices
   00:05:42 Chapter 1: The Prophet of Too Much
   00:08:16 Kierkegaard's Crisis: The Engagement He Couldn't Keep
   00:22:26 Anxiety as the Dizziness of Freedom
   00:43:30 The Media Environment That Makes Commitment Impossible
   01:01:00 Cultural Forces Engineering Indecision
   01:11:40 Chapter 2: The Aesthetic Life: Casanova and the Trap of Endless Novelty
   01:19:24 Five Predictions Kierkegaard Got Right About Modern Life
   01:37:55 Why We're Biologically Wired to Keep Our Options Open
   02:18:30 Chapter 3: The Ethical Life: Learning to Choose With Your Eyes Open
   02:41:20 The Cold Pool Metaphor: Why Commitment Feels Like Liberation
   02:49:28 Self-Concordance: Aligning Decisions With Who You Actually Are
   03:14:01 The Grief of Cutting Off Alternative Selves
   03:19:17 Chapter 4: The Religious Stage: When Commitment Becomes Absurd
   03:30:00 Finding Your Calling: It Chooses You, N…

3. How to Get Lucky, Solved

   5 augustus 2026 · 3 uur 49 min

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   Ask most successful people how they got where they are, and the answer is usually some version of "good timing." Everyone else swears they earned it. We're terrible at seeing our own luck clearly, and even worse at realizing how much of it we could create.
   In this episode, Drew and I get into why: the psychology that makes us deny luck even exists, and what changes the moment you stop pretending everything is earned.
   We start with Warren Buffett - why a man worth tens of billions says the single most important thing that ever happened to him was where and when he was born. Then there's Napoleon, who picked his generals by skipping the résumé and asking one question: "Is he lucky?" And we brought in Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion who’s spent more than a decade studying decision-making, to explain why we keep confusing good decisions with lucky outcomes.
   There's also a stretch on survivorship bias that'll make you rethink every success story you've ever heard.
   Luck comes in three layers. And the research shows you have far more say over two of them than anyone ever told you.
   If you want to take the hand you were dealt and play it better, this episode is for you.
   Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/luck/
   CHAPTERS:
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 Will Smith's Dad and the Luck Paradox: When Success Meets Fortune
   00:01:58 Chapter 1: What Is Luck?
   00:02:23 Why We Avoid Thinking About Luck: The Uncomfortable Truth
   00:16:13 The West's Struggle With Luck: From Greek Goddesses to Probability
   00:21:05 The Three Types of Luck: Introducing the Sansai Framework
   00:36:18 Chapter 2: Heaven Luck: The Birth Lottery You Can't Control
   00:40:56 The Norway vs Sierra Leone Thought Experiment: Luck Is Always Relative
   00:46:20 The Farmer and the Horse: Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows?
   00:54:01 Gratitude as Expanding Your Frame of Reference
   01:00:48 The Two Ways to Screw Up Heaven Luck
   01:07:23 Chapter 3: Napoleon: The Bullied Boy Who Mastered Earth Luck
   01:09:32 Sp…

4. How to Build Confidence, Solved

   1 juli 2026 · 3 uur 57 min

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   Confidence isn't something you build. It's what's left over. You've done the pose. Hands on hips, chest out, an affirmation on a sticky note stuck to the mirror. And then you walked into the room feeling exactly the same, or worse. Here's what nobody tells you: the entire concept of confidence you've been sold was invented by an anxious preacher in the 1940s who mistook his own coping mechanism for a universal law. The research is even uglier. Affirmations reliably make insecure people feel less secure. Visualizing success decreases motivation. The most famous confidence technique in history was built on a study of 42 people that the lead author eventually had to abandon. In this episode we trace where it all went wrong, from Norman Vincent Peale to power poses to the self-esteem movement that quietly failed a whole generation. Then we get into what actually works: a discovery made in a room full of snakes, a 2,000-year-old framework that turns out to be empirically correct, and why the sequence runs exactly backwards from everything you've been taught.
   Get your free PDF guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/confidence.
   CHAPTERS:
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 CHAPTER 1: Why Confidence Advice Is Backwards
   00:07:46 Norman Vincent Peale and positive thinking
   00:10:44 The Peale Fallacy
   00:16:09 When confidence was a sin
   00:27:41 Do affirmations work?
   00:31:19 Does visualization work?
   00:47:01 CHAPTER 2: How Confidence Is Actually Built
   00:53:59 Why confidence generalizes to the rest of your life
   01:03:04 Self-efficacy and its four sources
   01:09:35 The "Do Something" Principle
   01:18:56 Mark's coaching story: lower the stakes
   01:32:28 The case for a little delusion
   01:40:25 CHAPTER 3: Confidence vs. Competence
   01:46:09 Calibration and the Dunning-Kruger effect
   01:51:46 Imposter Syndrome and the high-performer trap
   02:02:05 The Spotlight Effect
   02:04:04 Narcissism: why it gets mistaken for confidence
   02:11:20 How to actually tell confidence from narcissism
   02:26:56 CHAPTER 4: What the Se…

5. How to Change Your Life, Solved

   3 juni 2026 · 4 uur 59 min

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   If you've ever tried to change something about yourself, failed, tried again, and concluded you must just be broken, here's some good news: you're probably not broken. You've just been aiming at the wrong target for years. Who you are is actually a layered system. Most people fail at change because they treat behaviors like permanent traits and traits like behaviors they can flip overnight, spending years aiming at the wrong layer.
   In this episode, Drew and I map out the full system. This is the longest and most personal episode we've ever done.
   Get the free PDF episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/change/
   CHAPTERS
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 Introduction: What Does It Mean to Change?
   00:13:18 The Dictionary Study: How 17,953 Words Led to the Big Five
   00:49:06 Chapter 2: Why the Myers-Briggs Is Basically a Horoscope for Smart People
   01:02:17 The Barnum Effect: Why We Believe Tests That Tell Us Nothing
   01:20:52 The Maturity Principle: How Personality Drifts With Age
   01:36:08 Chapter 3: Layer Two: Your Adaptations Are Not Who You Are
   02:25:55 Why Relationships Are Adaptation Machines
   02:37:55 Chapter 4: Layer Three: Why We Don't Do What We Know We Should Do
   02:44:06 The Checklist That Saved 1,500 Lives
   02:56:57 The Do Something Principle: Start With the Smallest Step
   03:04:32 Environmental Design: Make the Right Thing Easier Than the Wrong Thing
   03:20:18 Social Pressure, Strong Whys, and the CrossFit Effect
   03:44:35 Chapter 5: Quantum Change: The Night Josh Died
   03:54:55 Values Collapse: What Actually Changes in a Quantum Change
   04:17:55 Chapter 6: Bill Wilson: The Man Who Invented AA (And Still Struggled)
   04:32:00 The Messy Middle Nobody Shows You
   04:50:27 Should You Even Change at All? The Three Selves
   04:57:13 Final Takeaways: Pain Is a Great Teacher

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6. Why We Stay in Bad Relationships, Solved

   20 mei 2026 · 1 uur 42 min

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   Why do smart, emotionally aware people stay in relationships that are clearly destroying them? Drew and I dug into the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard marriage, to walk through the seven psychological mechanisms that quietly lock people inside bad relationships and make leaving feel impossible.
   If you have ever watched someone you love stay in a relationship that is destroying them, or if you have been that person yourself, this episode will shine a lot of light on what is really going on under the hood.
   Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/bad-relationships/
   CHAPTERS
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 Introduction: When Smart People Stay Stuck in Bad Relationships
   00:05:05 Meet Johnny Depp: From Kentucky to Captain Jack Sparrow
   00:12:44 Meet Amber Heard: Growing Up in Texas and Breaking Into Hollywood
   00:14:40 Mechanism #1: Normalization - The Water You Swim In
   00:25:11 Mechanism #2: The Identity Trap - Filling the Void
   00:40:07 Mechanism #3: The Slot Machine Effect - Addicted to Volatility
   00:47:08 The Escalating Violence: From Breaking Things to Breaking Trust
   00:49:58 Mechanism #4: Cognitive Dissonance - Rationalizing the Unacceptable
   00:59:37 Mechanism #5: The Sunk Cost Fallacy - Throwing Good Years After Bad
   01:10:00 Mechanism #6: The Guilt Cage - Blaming Yourself for Everything
   01:13:52 Mechanism #7: The Terror of the Void - Learned Helplessness
   01:21:38 The Legal Aftermath: When Nobody Wins
   01:27:33 Practical Takeaways: How to Escape the Seven Traps
   01:39:00 Final Reflections: Compassion for the Trapped

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   ⇨ 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/217i5ys5
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7. How to Overcome Anxiety, Solved

   6 mei 2026 · 2 uur 10 min

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   Here's the uncomfortable truth about anxiety: most of what people reach for to fix it was chosen because it feels easy, not because it works. The supplement that went viral on TikTok, the CBD gummy, the glass of wine after a hard week... they range from doing nothing to actively making things worse.
   We ranked 17 of the most popular anti-anxiety interventions from the absolute worst to the number one most effective, according to the research. Along the way, we get into why alcohol is the anxiety cure that 2 billion people use that actually creates more anxiety in the long run. We talk about the UGC marketing conspiracy behind the magnesium craze. We break down the difference between harmonious and obsessive anxiety, why your brain is literally doing therapy on itself every night while you sleep (and what happens when you don't let it), and why exercise is essentially practice for being afraid. The pattern that emerges is painfully clear: everything that actually works is a lifestyle change, and everything that doesn't is a quick fix. The real question isn't which intervention is best. It's whether you're willing to be uncomfortable long enough for the right ones to work.
   Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/anxiety/
   CHAPTERS
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 Welcome to Solved: Ranking 17 Anti-Anxiety Interventions
   00:04:07 What Is Anxiety and Why Does It Exist?
   00:07:26 The Causes of Anxiety: Genetics, Age, Trauma, and Existential Dread
   00:17:34 The Bullshit Category: Why Alcohol Makes Anxiety Worse
   00:26:37 Not Helping, Not Hurting: Magnesium, Journaling, and CBD
   00:45:34 Digital Detoxes and Breathwork: Short-Term Relief, Not Long-Term Solutions
   00:55:55 The Complicated Truth About Benzodiazepines
   00:59:39 Probiotics, Yoga, and Adaptogens: The Maybe Depends Category
   01:14:43 SSRIs: Effective But Probably Overprescribed
   01:26:00 Psychedelics: Massive Effect Sizes But Still Early Days
   01:40:01 The Top Five: Social Connection as Nervous System Regulation
   01:41:58 S…

8. Your Questions On Manifestation, Confidence, and Getting Over Your Ex, Solved

   29 april 2026 · 1 uur 7 min

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   It's been one year of SOLVED. 20 episodes, 20 million downloads, 3 million YouTube subscribers, and a truly unreasonable number of poop jokes. To celebrate, I sat down with over 200 of your questions and picked the ones that hit the hardest.
   We get into why most people fail at quitting addictions (hint: the problem isn't the feelings, it's that you never planned for them). I explain why, if you have ADHD and can't stop procrastinating, you need to treat yourself like a dog that shits on the carpet. We talk about the real science behind manifestation, why it sort of works but not for the reason TikTok thinks it does. I break down the difference between trait confidence and state confidence, and why "build evidence" is only half the equation. We cover how to handle panic attacks, getting over a "perfect" ex (spoiler: they're not perfect, and thinking they are is the problem), the uncomfortable truth about self-love, the difference between a boring relationship and being bored in a relationship, the purpose vs. money question, what FIRE retirees never tell you, and what I'd reincarnate as. Plus some big announcements: we're going back to the mega episode format in June, the PDF guides are returning, and our first topic is going to be how to actually change your life.
   CHAPTERS
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 One-Year Anniversary and Show Announcements
   00:04:37 Overcoming Addiction and Relapse
   00:08:18 Procrastination and ADHD
   00:11:30 The Science of Manifestation
   00:16:11 Panic Attacks, Siblings, and Getting Over a "Perfect" Ex
   00:20:18 Self-Love, Gratitude, and Religion
   00:27:12 Relationships, Purpose, and Money
   00:36:07 Maladaptive Daydreaming, Personality, and Growing with Friends
   00:39:59 Nomadic Living, FIRE Retirement, Purpose Anxiety, and Reincarnation

   ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha
   ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your pat…

9. Passion, Solved: Is It Really Worth Pursuing?

   15 april 2026 · 2 uur 2 min

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   Nearly 60% of American workers are checked out at their jobs. Meanwhile, every graduation speech in history tells you to follow your passion and you'll never work a day in your life. So which is it?
   In this episode, Drew and I debate both sides. I argue for passion. He argues for practicality. And what we discover along the way is that the whole question is kind of a false dichotomy. We get into the psychology of harmonious vs. obsessive passion (and why one leads to fulfillment while the other led Kurt Cobain to write "I don't have the passion anymore" in his suicide note). We talk survivorship bias, Maslow's hierarchy, and why financial stress literally impairs your ability to think creatively. I share the story of quitting my investment bank job at 24, living on a friend's futon, and knowing within a month that I was never going back. We look at how Jane Goodall took a secretarial job and stumbled into becoming the world's preeminent primatologist. And we land on a phrase I think is way more useful than "follow your passion": develop your passion... because passion isn't something you find, it's something you grow.
   Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/passion/
   Chapters:
   Chapters Lees meer

   00:00:00 The Great Debate: Passion vs. Pragmatism in Your Career
   00:05:04 Round One: The Case for Passion and J.K. Rowling's Story
   00:12:38 The Dark Side of Passion: Kurt Cobain and Obsessive Passion
   00:23:53 Round Two: Financial Stability as the Foundation for Passion
   00:38:47 The Regret Minimization Argument: Why Time Matters More Than Money
   01:02:34 Round Three: Developing Passion Through Adjacent Opportunities
   01:24:33 Cal Newport's Career Capital: Getting So Good They Can't Ignore You
   01:32:34 Round Four: Passion Is Developed, Not Found
   01:41:27 The Aptitude Reality Check: When Passion Meets Natural Ability
   01:51:47 Finding the Balance: The Best of Both Worlds Approach

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10. Self-Help, Solved

    1 april 2026 · 2 uur 2 min

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    We pulled over 2,600 studies and ranked 19 of the most common self-improvement techniques across three dimensions: research quality, consistency of results, and actual effect size. Then we sorted them into four tiers: legitimately works, works sometimes, probably not helping, and straight up bullshit. Microdosing landed in the bullshit tier. Crystal healing outperformed several "serious" techniques. And the number one most effective strategy is something so stupidly simple it's almost annoying.
    We also get into why everything at the bottom of the list shares one thing in common, why the middle of the list is mostly a fancy placebo, and why nearly everything at the top has been around for thousands of years.
    Get your free episode guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/self-help/
    CHAPTERS
    Chapters Lees meer

    00:00:00 Introduction
    00:06:02 Category 4: Bullsh*t
    00:06:13 Suppressing Negative Thoughts
    00:10:53 Microdosing Psychedelics
    00:17:29 Intuitive Decision-Making
    00:24:11 Catharsis / Venting Anger
    00:27:29 Category 3: Probably Not Helping
    00:27:45 Crystal Healing
    00:30:11 Willpower / Ego Depletion
    00:35:02 Power Posing
    00:39:57 Learning Styles
    00:41:18 Positive Affirmations
    00:44:58 Morning Routines
    00:51:37 Category 2: Works Sometimes
    00:52:36 Positive Visualization
    00:59:59 Energy Healing
    01:09:35 Cold Water Immersion for Mental Health
    01:16:53 Speed Reading
    01:23:50 Category 1: Legitimately Works
    01:23:54 Gratitude Interventions
    01:29:45 Meditation for Stress/Anxiety
    01:33:31 Eat the Frog / Hardest Task First
    01:38:42 Bibliotherapy
    01:47:30 Behavioral Activation
    01:59:19 Conclusion

    ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha
    ⇨ 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/217i5ys5
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    Solv…

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