How to Change Your Mind Without Losing Yourself

In this episode, Drew and I dive into some of the biggest beliefs we’ve shifted over the years—and what it actually looks like to change your mind. We talk about Drew’s evolving views on religion, why I’m way less convinced that people are as changeable as we like to believe, and why I think trauma might be getting a little too much airtime in the self-help world. We also get into the loneliness epidemic, the quiet power of community, and why so much of “personal growth” isn’t about becoming someone new—it’s about learning to work with who you already are. Leave a comment below about what you’ve changed your mind about—and enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: 72 Episodes and the Work Behind It 00:02:00 Why We Need to Change Our Minds More Often 00:03:14 Drew's Shifting View on Religion 00:04:33 The New Atheism Movement and Its Limitations 00:05:44 Religion's Benefits: Community, Service, and Local Focus 00:06:43 The Dogma Dilemma: Can You Have the Good Without the Bad? 00:13:06 The Feature Is the Bug: Why Religion Works So Well 00:17:54 Mark's Big Mind Change: People Are Less Malleable Than We Think 00:18:53 The Twin Studies and What They Revealed 00:21:06 What Actually Changes: Attitude, Not Identity 00:26:45 The Self-Acceptance Paradox 00:24:47 It's a Skill Issue, Not a Personality Issue 00:26:15 The Dangerous Desire to Become a New Person 00:30:41 Mark's Contrarian Take: Trauma Is Overrated 00:33:24 The Trauma Narrative as Cop-Out 00:35:18 Resilience: The Underrated Human Trait 00:37:55 Drew's Contrarian Take: Optimism About the Future 00:39:35 The Data on Human Progress 00:43:17 Climate Change and the Solutions-Create-Problems Cycle 00:46:35 Closing Wisdom: Keep an Open Mind ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ 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://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ 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/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Drew, I noticed something very exciting.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:03Mark Manson?

  Today, this is our 72nd episode.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I probably should know that, but no, I did not.

• 0:09Mark Manson?

  You know how I know that?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  How do you know it?

• 0:11Mark Manson?

  I opened up the Notion database and counted how many episodes there were in it.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so I probably shouldn't know this.

• 0:20Mark Manson?

  I have two thoughts. One is, that's a lot of episodes. It doesn't feel like that many episodes. It feels like way fewer than that. That's my first thought. And then my second thought is, when I think about some of the podcasts that have like 1,500 episodes or 2,000 episodes.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:36Mark Manson?

  And I'm like, what the fuck?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:40Mark Manson?

  How do you guys do that?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:42Mark Manson?

  That's a lot of work. It's a lot of talking.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  It's a lot of talking. It's a lot of work. I don't think people do realize how much work goes in. A lot of people don't realize how much work does go into these.

• 0:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  If you have a show that's been got thousands of episodes, my God.

• 0:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  I don't know how they, I don't know how they do it.

• 0:56Mark Manson?

  It is a lot. Well, first of all, I just, I think I'm done. I'm not gonna do anymore.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  You're done?

• 1:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  What am I gonna do?

• 1:05Mark Manson?

  I don't know. You're pretty good. You're pretty good with your hands. We could use some more insulation in the other studio.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  All right. We talked about AI taking my job last time, but this is, this is.

• 1:15Mark Manson?

  This is a little sudden. Didn't think it was gonna happen this quickly. Okay, I have a gripe about podcasts in our space.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23Mark Manson?

  Is that I feel like, and I definitely feel this tendency myself. You know, when you're kind of running through this machine gun of guests.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33Mark Manson?

  Who come from all these different places and have written all sorts of different types of books or have studied different things. As a host, you kind of just feel like you're, I don't know. It feels like there's no intellectual consistency to things. One of my gripes about the podcasts in this space is that hosts just go out and get the most popular guests they can find, and they bring them on, and they'll just let them say whatever, and they don't disagree, and they don't push back, and they don't change their mind about anything.

• 2:00Mark Manson?

  And I don't like that. And I feel myself getting tugged in that direction as well, and I don't like that either. So, in honor of that, I would like to do an episode today about things we've changed our minds about. Significant things, not just like minor things, but like major.

• 2:19Mark Manson?

  Beliefs or assumptions that we have changed or dropped over the last few years. And in the consequences of that, and also like what that looked like.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that process, yeah.

• 2:31Mark Manson?

  Because I do think the ability to change your mind is super, super important.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Underrated skill.

• 2:35Mark Manson?

  And especially these days.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:37Mark Manson?

  And it's, it should be lauded and encouraged rather than ridiculed. So I figured maybe we could do our part.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 2:47Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Let's get into it.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 2:56Mark Manson?

  You, sir, what have you changed your mind about? What were you wrong about?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Well, okay. This is, this is actually something, I don't know if I've changed my mind on it, but it's, I think I see myself in a position to start changing my mind on it. So I thought, I thought that was kind of a cool one I could bring up here. I'm not sure if I'm changing my mind or if I'm in the pre-stages of changing my mind, maybe.

• 3:19Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  I have changed my approach to this topic, which is religion in general. Okay. Let's just dive right into it.

• 3:26Mark Manson?

  All right, let's start with religion.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  For the longest, I just haven't been really, I grew up around religion, in religion. I was religious at one point, growing up as a child, you know?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Because you adopt whatever's around you, right? And then I got older, was exposed to more of the world and I was like, oh God, okay, no. This isn't for me. I saw the problems with it. I've seen a lot of people, a lot of the damage that religion has done, both on an individual and cultural societal level too. And then on top of that too, I think in my formative years too, which, you know, like kind of came of age in the 2000s, I would say. And there were a lot of like, kind of very vocal atheists out there.

• 4:10Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Especially in the intellectual realm. And I really wanted to be like an intellectual, or at least ally myself with them, you know?

• 4:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Atheism became cool.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  It was.

• 4:21Mark Manson?

  Like, like kind of 2006 to 2008, you had like Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens and.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Richard Dawkins.

• 4:26Mark Manson?

  Richard Dawkins.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to kind of, I wanted to be aligned with them.

• 4:33Mark Manson?

  But it was a very, sorry to interrupt, but it was just for the listener, it was a very. It was it was a very rigid atheism like it wasn't it wasn't like a kind of passive oh we don't believe in God it was no religion is a problem and everybody should be atheist

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:50Mark Manson?

  Type of type of vibe going on.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Right, which I wasn't real familiar with atheism before prior to that, but what I understand was it was more just like a I don't believe in God, just leave me alone.

• 5:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Right? And then kind of came this more virulent strain of atheism and it was like jihad atheism basically, right? Like like like there was like they were actively like, look, this is how religion is damaging society, people in general. Um, I think there was a lot around, you know, the first or the the first, the second Iraq war. Um, and you know, there was a big religious undertone to a lot of that and people were freaking out like, hey, get this out of of the discourse right now because it's getting very ugly very quick. So I understood that and I kind of I aligned myself with that lately, though. Last few years, I would say, I look around at some of my family and friends who do still, they go to church and they

• 5:41Speaker 01

  they have families and they bring their families to church and they maybe they pray or they celebrate religious holidays and all that. And you see this, there's like, there's a community around it.

• 5:53Mark Manson?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Um, they help each other out, they're service oriented, a lot of them are. Uh, whereas like my non religious friends, I don't see as much, uh, they're not volunteering, they're not donating as much.

• 6:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Um, also, the other thing I've noticed lately, too, is they're very locally focused. But people, you know, churches in general are very hyper local.

• 6:13Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  And they care about local issues, um, a lot. And we've talked before on this podcast about how we think uh, both you and I think that people are over indexed on global issues and under indexed on their local communities.

• 6:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I'm like, well, there's a solution right there. But okay, I'm not, I'm not fully changed my mind yet, like I said, because I still do see a lot of the the damage it's done, the dogma, I really don't like the dogma in any religion. Um, I don't, I think there's just a

• 6:43Speaker 01

  There's so many problems with it, but what I'm trying to figure out is, is there a way to incorporate the good parts of religion without the bad? And people have tried to do this, I think, and I just don't see it working the way that like, religion is this glue that binds people together. And if you take out all the supernatural and the mysticism and the magic of it all, what are you, you're not really left with the same thing. It's something completely different and I'm not sure if it's a binding presence or not.

• 7:11Mark Manson?

  Well, and the, the kind of the tragedy of it too, is that what you find is that the more dogmatic and judgmental the religious sect, the stronger that binding is.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yes, which is scary to me.

• 7:23Mark Manson?

  Which is, because it's, I mean, that's, that's just human nature, right? It's like the higher the barrier to entry and the higher the barrier to exit, it's like the more, and the more, the more sacrifice you have to make to be in the group, the more you're going to care about the group and the more you're going to engage with the group. I'm curious like where this started. I, I find like belief change is so interesting to me because I think ide- idealistically, I want to believe that it's an information thing. It's like, you know, you come across a data point and you're like, oh, that, I need to change my prior assumptions. But I also know that's usually not how it works. So I'm, I'm curious, like, where do you think this started? Like, what was the, what was the crack in the surface?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, just pointing to examples in my life where I've noticed it more and that the older I get, I think my values are changing a little bit too, where it's less about, I do want to find something that's bigger than myself and, you know, you get older and those kinds of things, you start thinking about your role in society and the world and the legacy you leave behind. And so you start thinking about these bigger concepts. And I just can't help but notice that people who have been religious throughout their lives in my life, kind of have that sense of grounded sense of purpose and meaning around them.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And so that, I mean, there's also too, what I've also seen is more in the kind of intellectual realm, the intelligista, if you will, especially in the United States, seems to be kind of having a little bit of a religious

• 8:54Mark Manson?

  Oh, for sure.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  resurgence right now.

• 8:55Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  And so I'm, I'm kind of wondering if I'm just, you know, like, oh, the smart, the smart people are doing this. Maybe I should look into it, too. I don't, I don't know.

• 9:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I don't know where I really stand on it, but I can feel, like I said, I can kind of feel myself shifting, at least opening my mind to like, okay, what's going on? Why, why is this resurgence happening? Is there something to it? But maybe those virulent atheists that I, I once kind of like looked to for a lot of, I guess, philosophy around life and everything like that, maybe they don't have it figured out. A lot of atheists are just miserable people, too. You know, I mean, there's a lot of just miserable people in general. I get that. But it's like, uh, the, it, it became kind of like you were angry and, and you're angry at the world and kind of there's just like a little bit of a nihilism to it that I'm just like, ah, I don't, that doesn't quite sit right with me.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  So I don't know if I can pinpoint an exact time or place.

• 9:49Mark Manson?

  Well, it sounds like there's a, there's a handful of factors. One is that your personal value shifted, right? So you start valuing more community.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:58Mark Manson?

  So being supportive of people, engaging with people, relationships. And you started to notice that the people who are really good at those things were more religious. Coincides maybe with a little bit of this kind of cultural pressure of like, you know, some of the it thinkers at the moment are religious people.

• 10:20Mark Manson?

  It is interesting to, you know, speaking of, I think Harris and Dawkins in particular.

• 10:27Mark Manson?

  Now that it's been 20 years, you know, one, one of the, I used to be a huge Sam Harris fan and, and I've met Sam a number of times and he was super nice and we had great conversations. The, the interesting thing about him though, is that he, he is kind of infamous for not changing his views.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 10:43Mark Manson?

  And it, it's actually ironic that he comes up in this episode about changing beliefs. Because I think the, probably the most appropriate criticism of him is that he really doesn't update his views and, or doesn't seem to, at least as a, as a public observer of him. He doesn't seem to update his, his views dramatically. And Dawkins is like very proudly not updated his views on religion. And so it, I don't know. I just, I always, my default, when I see, when I notice that somebody has gone 20 years without changing their mind about anything, I trust them less. And it's, to me, that's a little bit of a signal that there's like a little, there's some closed mindedness going on there.

• 11:29Mark Manson?

  I'm interested if, you know, on this show, we've had a number of guests who have come on, I mean, you and I have talked quite a bit about like the loneliness epidemic and the loss of community. You know, David Brooks came on and we had a whole episode about the lack of community in American life. And he and I talked quite a bit about church and like the lack of religion. Arthur Brooks came on, talked about some similar stuff as well. I'm wondering how much, you know, the research that has gone into this show, seeing the data points around loneliness, fragmentation, isolation, lack of purpose and meaning, the mental health crisis, like how much do you think that has influenced you?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, that was a point I wanted to bring up. I, especially like the loneliness epidemic. And I'm like, well, people are looking for community. Why don't, and I'm like, well, why don't people have community? You look back, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, it was, you had a built in community.

• 12:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  When the church was more central to people's lives, or mosque, or synagogue, whatever. And that, yes, that absolutely influenced me. I'm like, okay, well, but the thing is, is I still keep going back to, can you, can you build that community? Can you build that sense of community, that sense of, of belonging?

• 12:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Without all the downsides. You know, you, you talk a lot about like, the best thing about a place is usually the worst thing about a place, whether it's a country or a city or whatever. The best thing about a person is usually also, that's a double edged sword. It cuts both ways.

• 13:00Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Is that, is that true of religion? I don't know.

• 13:03Mark Manson?

  My gut says yes.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:05Mark Manson?

  It's funny because my wife and I have had a number of conversations around this because it's like, we've had very honest conversations between ourselves that like, kind of the one thing that we feel like we lack at the moment is community. Like everything else in our lives is going great, but, and we do have friends and we have people that we hang out with, but yeah, there's like that lack of. Communal solidarity in our lives at the moment and we've tried all sorts of things. We've gone to like different clubs and activities and my take on this is that it is exactly what you said. The bug is the feature, right? Like it is the fact that religion is bound to these supernatural cosmic existential beliefs.

• 13:49Mark Manson?

  It's what causes the problem. It's like people are literally willing to die for that group or that community, which that causes many problems, but that's also the benefit. Cause like, I don't care how cool your pickleball group is.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly where I go with it.

• 14:06Mark Manson?

  Like you're not gonna die for them.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  You should try out these groups or you should, you should.

• 14:09Mark Manson?

  It doesn't work.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Go volunteer for a local cause or something like that. And I'm like, yes, those things are important. I get that and they help, but it's not the same thing.

• 14:16Mark Manson?

  It's not the same.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  And so, I don't know. I'm just really torn by all of that because like, it would be great if you could have all the benefit without the cost of it, but I'm just not sure if that's, that's how that works. And you know, Tim Urban came on too, and he said, you know, we're, it looks like we're a religious species. Like, like you said, it's a, it's a feature, not a bug.

• 14:36Mark Manson?

  Right. I think it was Pascal said, there's a God-shaped hole in us and, and if it's not filled with religion, it will get filled with something else.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Right. Right. And we've attempted to do that before too. Like all the atrocities of the 20th century where, you know, we were trying to replace religion with politics and we're still trying to do that to some extent today. And it's not working out, right?

• 14:57Mark Manson?

  It's not recommended.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And you could argue that it wasn't really working out with religion either. There was a lot of atrocities committed in the name of religion as well. I don't, I don't know. I just don't, I like, I'm in the process, like I said, I'm in the process of just kind of wandering and figuring out, how does, what is the, is, is there a way to go about harnessing all of the good things of religion without having to, you know, just like get into this really tribal mindset.

• 15:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Around it. And I just, I don't know. I don't think there is. And so.

• 15:33Mark Manson?

  There was a period where I thought Buddhism could do that because Buddhism is, is really not very, at least in the West. It's not very dogmatic and you don't kind of have all these like supernatural judgments going on.

• 15:47Mark Manson?

  But it's funny, I never found that. Like, I've been parts of a number of different Buddhist groups and places that I've lived and done a bunch of retreats and gone to a bunch of meditation sessions and stuff. And I don't know, it, like you said, it feels very fragmented and isolated. The people are super nice, very sweet. Some of the events are really nice, but like, I don't know, I think about like my parents when I was a kid in their church community and it was super tight knit and people really relied on each other in a way that I don't see my generation doing.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:27Mark Manson?

  And that worries me a little bit. Or at least, at the very least, I look back now and I'm a little bit envious of that.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Mark Manson?

  You know, it was the sort of thing that like if my brother or I was sick and my parents had to go do a thing, it like they had fifteen people they could call to come watch us. Like, it wasn't even a question. Like, it was just, somebody's there, right?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And and most people now would be hard pressed to find one or two.

• 16:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know where I land on that.

• 17:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I, but yeah, I feel my mind changing around that and the process of it has been interesting. Yeah.

• 17:06Mark Manson?

  You said that. Cool. Very cool.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  What about you, Mark? What have you, what have you changed your mind? You get this question quite a bit, like, do you stand by your books? Do you stand by statements you made?

• 17:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the, the, the quick, the quick and dirty answer to that for listeners who care. I do stand by the books. Generally speaking, I stand by almost everything I've written in, in my books. What I would quibble with is, is specific instances of, of language. You know, some, some things I think are overstated, some things I think are understated, some examples I think don't hold up super well. So it's like, when I go back and look at subtle art now, I'm not thinking like, oh my God, I got chapter four so wrong. I think chap, I think the principles in chapter four, or chapter three, or whatever are correct.

• 17:59Mark Manson?

  It's just now I look back and I'm like, I would do that sentence differently. Or like, eh, there's a little bit of nuance that should have gone here. So the big thing for me is

• 18:10Mark Manson?

  I have come to the conclusion that people are much less malleable than I used to think, and I think most people think. Like, I think most of who we are is pretty much determined by some combination of genetics and in the culture, cultural environment we grew up in. And that is something, it's funny, so where my mind has changed on this, I think it has much more to do with time and personal experience, because the research around this has been around for a long time. And I remember the first time I was exposed to the research around this, was I did a bunch of reading around twin studies in like 2013 or something. And I was like,

• 18:54Mark Manson?

  wow, that's really fascinating. Basically, twin studies is what they did is they found

• 19:00Mark Manson?

  identical twins who were separated at birth. There was a researcher in Minnesota who just like dedicated his entire life to finding these twins that were separated at birth, and then he would go find them, and then he would run all these tests and studies on them to figure out essentially how much of our, how much of us is nature and how much is nurture? So how much is like baked in at the beginning, and how much is affected by parenting and upbringing and all this stuff? And one of the spicier discoveries of this body of research is that parenting styles doesn't really matter a whole lot. And even things like, you know,

• 19:44Mark Manson?

  school system or type of education, like a lot of the stuff that most parents especially, but older people spend their time worrying about, like, you know, am I raising my kid correctly? Am I, are they doing their homework? Are they going to the right school? Like, all this stuff is actually pretty marginal, and the most fundamental things is essentially is really just A, genetics, and then B, peer group and cultural environment. Right. And so I was exposed to this a long time ago. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. But, you know, obviously, there's still a huge component of ourselves that is malleable, that can be changed and improved and developed and is alterable, I guess. And so I just stayed

• 20:27Mark Manson?

  focused on that. And I guess really what happened is, as my career went on, and

• 20:36Mark Manson?

  I had more and more exposure to, I guess, the same people over a long period of time. You know, being in this industry, I've now met a lot of people who have, I mean, there are people that I coached 10 or 12 years ago that, like, industry people coached 10 years ago, readers and fans that I've kept in touch with for over 10 years, people in my life that I've helped in the past that I have kept in touch with for 10, 12 years. You just start seeing those data points and you start realizing, you're like, yeah, they don't, people don't really change a whole lot. Like, it's, and I feel like that is, is an extremely contrarian take in this industry. Especially, yeah.

• 21:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, it's, that's not, that's not a very, like, that's not something I'd put on a billboard or my Instagram account, but like, I, for the most part, I don't think people change a whole lot. I think really, like, if you're, generally speaking, if you're, if you're a highly anxious person, when you're 20, you're probably going to be a highly anxious person when you're 40. What changes is your attitude and disposition towards it. Yes. Your ability to manage it, the behaviors that you attach to it, right? Similarly, it's like if you are somebody who's very detail-oriented and perfectionist, like, you're probably not going to stop being detail-oriented and perfectionist.

• 22:01Mark Manson?

  I think there's this, there's this naivete, especially with young people, and especially not to make it political, but I think, you know, left-wing people, that you are, each individual is completely malleable, you know? So if you're a highly anxious person, you can train yourself to stop being anxious. If you're a perfectionist, you can train yourself to stop caring about details and wanting to optimize everything. And it's like, most of this stuff is just baked in and that doesn't, that's not a death knell, like, that's, that's actually...

• 22:34Mark Manson?

  Bringing it back, like the the worst thing about somebody is also usually the best thing about something like perfectionists. They drive themselves crazy, but they also tend to be very, very high performers. Anxious people, sure, they worry all the time, but guess who catches the risks and the problems before anybody else? It's usually the person who's worrying all the time, right? So it's like, I guess this in this kind of ties into the community thing, because I think the things that feel like a hindrance. As an individual, when you're isolated, if you embed yourself into a community, they actually become useful, right? Like it's it's if you are all these kind of weird things that you're prone to in these quote unquote, mental health issues or your neurodivergence or whatever.

• 23:19Mark Manson?

  They are, they will feel like a handicap if you're sitting in a room by yourself all day, every day, you know? But when you are embedded with a group of people where you can be, you know, your specific brain and personality and individual traits can be leveraged by the group. It actually becomes the best thing about you and it and it and it actually becomes part of your identity and it becomes who you are. And so I just think I very much become convinced that.

• 23:52Mark Manson?

  That it's like personal growth, quote unquote. It's not really about changing anything. It's it's primarily two things. First one is just simple self acceptance and self knowledge, just becoming aware of your own shit and being okay with it. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, like, I'm an ADHD motherfucker and it like, you know, three days out of five, it drives me insane and causes problems, but those two days that it doesn't, man, I'm like cooking, right? So we've all got something like that in ourselves and you just learn what it is and you learn how to manage it and you develop a healthy attitude around it. And then you just try to put yourself in situations where you can leverage it.

• 24:33Mark Manson?

  And then two is just skill issues like I just, it's funny, like getting on social media and looking at content creators in our space, because they they will like.

• 24:47Mark Manson?

  Take a very basic thing, and when I say basic, I'm not trying to diminish it at all because I know it's extremely hard for a lot of people, including myself. But like something very simple and basic, like saying no to somebody, right? Like standing up for yourself and just like putting your foot down and saying no to somebody that you care about. That's a very difficult thing to do for most people. And I think it is something that we all struggle with at some point in our lives. And some people struggle with it chronically, a lot. And it's a skill. It's a skill. It's like anything in life. Like there was a time in your life where you didn't know how to do your taxes. And it was fucking terrifying and difficult and intimidating and it made you miserable.

• 25:30Mark Manson?

  And then you did it once, and then you did it again, and then you did it again. And then eventually it just becomes like an annoying part of adulthood. And it's like so much of this stuff that people call like healing or transformation or renewal, you know, or like the new you, all this stuff. It's like, it's a skill issue. Like you just, you figured out how to say no to people you care about, which is a really, again, not to diminish it, that's a huge, it's like a massive, it's a massive fucking life skill. Like it is a very important life skill. But let's not kid ourselves, like you're not a new person.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Just because you can say no.

• 26:10Mark Manson?

  You developed a skill.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:11Mark Manson?

  And underneath, inside, you are still the same person. Maybe your thought process and your attitudes and some of your emotions around it have shifted. But that doesn't mean you're a new person. And that doesn't mean you should try to be a new person. And I think actually that desire to constantly become a new person,

• 26:35Mark Manson?

  to change yourself and transform and all this stuff, like it can be self-defeating because there is a subtle hint of Of self loathing underneath that.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, we, we, in a recent episode too, we did, you talked about, we talked about change. And you said, you think the mistake people make when they're trying to change is changing that disposition. This is what you're saying again, is trying to change the disposition when actually what we have to change is kind of the way we handle it or the way we express ourselves through that disposition.

• 27:06Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  You make the very good point, though, about the self acceptance thing. And you, you wrote this, I was probably back about in 2013 as well. When you wrote a critique of the self help industry, which we also covered recently. And you said that there was this hidden paradox within self improvement, which is self acceptance is the end goal of self improvement.

• 27:28Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Which is, there's no improvement there. It's acceptance of what there is.

• 27:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  And that's, it's that mind shift, which I guess is a change in itself. But yeah, you don't change who you are. You just accept who you are and learn to work with it. And that, that's been a huge one for, for me.

• 27:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Definitely over the last several years, just like accepting, I'm a perfectionist. I'm anxious in certain situations. I'm socially awkward in situations. That's okay. And the, and then the weird thing is, is when you do experience that, though, it feels like a big change.

• 27:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  It feels like a huge, huge change.

• 28:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And it's kind of not. There's another paradox hidden right there.

• 28:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it, it is. You do feel like, you can feel like a new person, right? I, I think it's kind of in the same way of like, I don't know. Let's say, let's say you lose 50 pounds, right? People will say, oh, it's the new you. You know, you could even feel like I'm a new person, right? But like, are you a new person? Like, I think about that sometimes, like, am I really a different person than the guy who was 50, 60 pounds heavier and drinking three, four times, times a week? Like, no, that was the same guy. It just, I, A, I had a lack of skill set around managing cravings and, you know, lack of knowledge around nutrition and good fitness habits and all that stuff. And, and B, yeah, I had some like,

• 28:51Mark Manson?

  There was still certain emotional proclivities and impulses that I was blind to. I had not figured out about myself yet. And when I figured those out, like, yeah, they're really disappointing to discover those things.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:05Mark Manson?

  And there was, there sure, there definitely was an emotional process of being like, oh, wow. I really just can't control myself around food sometimes, you know, and like, that was a sad moment and it was uncomfortable and difficult to kind of work through. But at no point was I a different person. I just learned how to A, accept it and B, manage it. And, and, and then develop the skills on top of that to like, okay, well, let's just not put myself in these situations really. Getting good at saying no to certain things, right? So that's been my perspective. I, I think it's, it's, and it's primarily just been through like, the longevity of my career in this space and the amount of people that I've seen.

• 29:49Mark Manson?

  Like if you, if you really do dig back in the old blog archive and you probably remember some of this stuff, like it very much was more optimistic or idealistic around, you know, hey, if you do these things, you know, you can change and you can, you know, change your life in this way and that way. And if you believe these things, you know, you can heal yourself and all this stuff. And I think, again, it's not that I, it's not that that stuff is wrong. It's just I would frame it differently. I would write it differently today. Like, I think the advice is probably still correct. It's just like, the packaging and explanation is, is slightly off.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Mark, what do you believe that most people don't believe or you think most people don't believe?

• 30:32Mark Manson?

  Oh, this is the, the Peter Thiel question.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:35Mark Manson?

  I love this question.

• 30:42Mark Manson?

  So the, the tricky thing about this question is that it's always, it's always so relative. Like who, who is most people? I will tell you the most salient one recently, I'm going to stick within the self-help stuff. Like while we're kind of on, on the mental health, personal growth stuff. This is definitely a minority position in this industry, which is I think trauma is overrated.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 31:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I don't think trauma is nearly as, and again, for anybody listening to this.

• 31:13Mark Manson?

  Who's experienced trauma and is suffering from trauma. I am not, um, the intention here is not to diminish or belittle your experience. Like, don't get me wrong, trauma is definitely a thing and it definitely causes a lot of problems for a lot of people.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  It's not good.

• 31:30Mark Manson?

  It's not good. It is, it is a thing and it is not, it is not a good thing.

• 31:36Mark Manson?

  What I'm kind of like, what I'm pointing out is, I, I would say it's more of the, kind of the Gabor Maté view, which is like, everything is trauma, right? It's, um, and I, I've seen this, especially you, you, this is really starting to proliferate on like, Instagram and TikTok and stuff like, you know, it's, I, I saw an article recently that said like, if you have ADHD, it's because of trauma, right? If you have, like, all neurodivergence is a result of trauma. If you have problems sleeping, it's a result of trauma. Like, it's like, everything is fucking trauma.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:09Mark Manson?

  And I, I just don't buy it. Like, it is, trauma is a thing. It does mess up a lot of people, but when you actually look at the data, like, the majority of people who experience trauma, they, they don't experience PTSD or any sort of PTSD-like symptoms. They experience something called post-traumatic growth. Like, I think it's 70/30. Like, 70% of people who experience a trauma in their life, within a year or two, will look back and say that they are actually a better person for experiencing that trauma. Whereas only roughly like 30% of them will say that they're worse off from experiencing that trauma. So the majority of people who experience trauma grow from the trauma. And, uh, and coming back to this point about, uh, you know, the importance of genetics and

• 32:54Mark Manson?

  just predispositions towards certain behaviors or personality traits or, or proclivities, like, I think people don't want to accept that. Like, people, I don't know, anxious people don't want to accept that they're an anxious person. Perfectionists don't want to accept that they're perfectionists. People with ADHD don't want to accept that they have ADHD. And so trauma just becomes this kind of perfect, just-so story. You know, cause, cause we, we all have things about our childhoods and our upbringings that we're, we, we're not happy about, that we're like upset about. And we all have painful experiences in our past. And so if there's, it, it, it just becomes such an easy cop-out to say, you know,

• 33:38Mark Manson?

  Well, I like, I don't really do well with pressure at work and it's because, you know, my, my mom was always getting on my case for this thing and that and I think it traumatized me and I've been in therapy for, and it's like, no, you, you just don't handle pressure well. It's fine. It's totally fine. You're not, there's nothing wrong with you. It's, you're like, some people are different. And so I, I just think that, that it's a very seductive narrative that people buy into. It's also a very seductive narrative to sell to people. It's an easy sell to people. You know, if you, you basically take anybody

• 34:18Mark Manson?

  who is in a, in a rough patch in their life, or who maybe has had a traumatic experience recently, and you can put them in a seminar room and, and spend an entire day telling them how trauma explains everything that they don't like about themselves in their life, and they'll gladly give you thousands of dollars for it. So I, I just, I think it's a little bit of a grift. And again, I don't, like, for the people who are legitimately suffering from it, heart goes out to them, but it's not, it's not the catch-all explanation or problem that it is. And I worry that when you encourage people to identify with their trauma too much, they actually begin to indulge in it and kind of identify with it.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, we had Dr. Julie on just a couple of weeks ago, and a clinical psychologist who's seen some, seen some things. Let's just say, she's, she's worked not only with the general population, but also with combat veterans. And her big takeaway from all of it was, I'm not surprised by the things that screw people up. I'm surprised by how resilient people are. And she found it to be her big, the biggest part of her job, or one of the biggest parts of her job, was to help them realize that. And I've heard other therapists say similar things to you. Like, when somebody comes into my office, I'm not there to fix their problems. I'm, I'm there to show them how they can, they have the capacity to deal with these problems. Even if they're seeking out therapy and there's obviously something wrong going on,

• 35:45Speaker 01

  like you're saying, there's like, the, the human condition is a resilient one, for sure.

• 35:50Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  I think it's about kids, too. People, I think people don't give kids enough credit for how resilient they are.

• 35:55Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  So it's like, humans are very, very resilient. We're very adaptable, very resilient. We're, we are built to handle a certain degree of, of traumatic events in our lives. We just are.

• 36:06Mark Manson?

  But a lot of that, so this, and this is where this, it starts to concern me, is, is a lot of that depends on what the person believes about themselves.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:16Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:16Mark Manson?

  So like, when you look at people who experience post-traumatic growth versus people who experience PTSD, like, one of the biggest indicators of people who see it as something that they grow from, is that they believe they can grow from it.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:30Mark Manson?

  Right? And when you look at people who like, believe that trauma is just a, a, like, immutable

• 36:39Mark Manson?

  scar on your life.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a death sentence. Those are, if you believe it's something you can never get over, then you're never gonna get over it. And also, on the flip side of that, you can, you can take non-traumatic events, non-traumatic life experiences, and if you tell people that it's, it's traumatic, they will start experiencing it as traumatic.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:58Mark Manson?

  So, and that's where you get stuff like, uh, you know, it's like a, a college kid has to listen to a lecture they don't like, and they, they say it's traumatic, you know? And it's like, but then they actually start exhibiting the, the symptoms and effects of, of PTSD. And it's like, well, yeah, cuz you can, like, the, the brain is an expectation machine. And so if you, if you like, program enough expectation for a result to happen into it, it'll start happening.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. We talked, in the resilience episode we did recently, too, we talked about that second arrow, right?

• 37:27Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  And that's where that all comes in. You're, you're taking, the, the first arrow is the real pain, that the second arrow is you're spinning up this narrative around the pain.

• 37:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  And... Yeah, especially in a social media soaked world where you're getting kind of like a help for those second arrows, you know, here's some, here's some spin up this narrative about.

• 37:48Mark Manson?

  You're being validated and encouraged for, for, yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I get that.

• 37:52Mark Manson?

  Terrible second arrows. Yeah. What's your contrarian take? What are you going to get canceled for?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 37:58Mark Manson?

  We've already canceled me. So what are you going to, what are you getting canceled for?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So I, this goes back to the relative thing too. It's depends on who you're comparing your contrarian take to. Mine is though, I'm generally optimistic about the future.

• 38:13Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Not just my future. I mean, I'm just saying in general, like for society, for humanity.

• 38:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I'm generally optimistic and it's not a political thing. I thought this before the elections, I have for years. Where every, there's kind of this doom and gloom nihilism going around, especially if you read too much news.

• 38:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I am generally an optimist. I'm not saying that it will be great for everyone.

• 38:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  There's going to be uneven distribution of the great things that I think are to come.

• 38:45Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Which there always are. I'm not saying that there won't be some dips and some setbacks along the way. I just generally think that the way we're headed and the way we've been headed for a number of decades is the right direction. And that we shouldn't stop. I'm not saying we're at a place of utopia by any means, but we're headed in the right direction in so many different ways. And I wish, I wish more people would kind of sign up to that.

• 39:11Mark Manson?

  Or be aware of it.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Just be aware of it. Yeah. Mark, when you and I were born in the mid eighties, 40% of the global population lived in extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank, right?

• 39:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Which is, it's, it's pretty low bar. It's only a few dollars a day that, that will get you above that threshold, but still, today it's eight and a half percent, around eight and a half percent. In just 40 years.

• 39:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  That happened.

• 39:34Mark Manson?

  And that's. Two billion people or something like that, one and a half billion people.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  That's another, another point I wanted to make. When, when you and I were born, there were about 4.7, 4.8 billion people. There's over 8 billion people now.

• 39:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And we've reduced the, the poverty rate.

• 39:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  While the, the population has grown by like 70% in that same time period. So it's insane. So it's literally billions of people. Um, we can do better. Yes, we absolutely can. There's still way too many people living in extreme poverty.

• 40:02Mark Manson?

  See, I, I thought you were gonna go, uh, this is not where I thought this was going. I thought you were gonna get into like AI sex robots and you know.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  I'm getting there.

• 40:09Mark Manson?

  Okay, okay. That's what I'm excited. That's what I'm optimistic.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're gonna be cheap and everywhere. It's gonna, yeah.

• 40:17Mark Manson?

  Give me a VR headset and a, and a dick glove and I'm, I'm good to go, man.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  A dick glove.

• 40:24Mark Manson?

  Give me the, give me the AI porn.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  But there, I'm okay, but that is another thing, like, uh.

• 40:30Mark Manson?

  Sorry, go back to the, the, the starving, the 2 billion starving children.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right. Well, okay, another, so in, in 1800.

• 40:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Let's just say, okay, uh, almost one, about one in four children died before the age of five.

• 40:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Okay, now it's down to like one in 200, uh, something around there. So we've, we've reduced that by a factor of 50.

• 40:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  That's insane. In 200 years, we've done that. The, the, the, it, when I start to do this though, I can already hear the people being like, well, you know, it's not evenly distributed or whatever. And that's true. It's not like all these benefits have not been necessarily evenly distributed. And we have access now to like clean water, the healthcare that we have, electricity, uh, all, all of the things that kind of undergird a modern society are miraculous marvels. Like, kings didn't have these a couple of years ago, right?

• 41:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  That argument always seems to fall short with a certain, uh, group of people though, um, who say, well, it's still, uh, like, you know, whatever it is, somebody has more than you still, so it's still doesn't count or something. I don't know what that, I, I don't quite get that.

• 41:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  I've never quite understood that. So, but if you just look at the general arc of history, and again, this is not a political thing. I didn't magically change my mind or, or because of some election or anything like that. I just think that this is actually where the world is going.

• 41:49Mark Manson?

  Poverty, literacy, equality, like, education.

• 41:53Mark Manson?

  Health, life expectancy.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Life expectancy was another one.

• 41:58Mark Manson?

  Technology, like, across the board.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:00Mark Manson?

  Things have gotten better.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  So, um, I'm, I'm generally optimistic about that. Again, it, it, we could screw this up and it could go the other way. And that was kind of Steven Pinker.

• 42:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, when, uh, he wrote, uh, what was the book?

• 42:13Mark Manson?

  Better Angels of Our Nature.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Better Angels of Our Nature, that one, yeah. He has this, it's a laundry list of this is how things have gotten better. Death rates have gone down, murder. Yeah, even in the 20th century with all the atrocities, murder rates were still lower than they were, you know, even a few hundred years ago.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  And I think there's other people who are very, I think they're more politically motivated. They're like, yeah, it's gonna be great because my guy's in office now and look, we've turned around. And as soon as they get voted out, oh, everything's terrible. I haven't thought that. I think just generally speaking, this is way bigger than any political movement. It's, it's more, we should continue doing these things and figure out better ways to continue doing these things as well.

• 42:49Mark Manson?

  It's like a, it's like a market, right? It's like generally up into the right, but.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  You got recessions.

• 42:56Mark Manson?

  It's jagged.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:57Mark Manson?

  All the way up and it's, we're so present bias, recency biased, that like, all we notice is like the short-term oscillations and we don't notice the general up until the right.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:09Mark Manson?

  Movement.

• 43:11Mark Manson?

  I've had this, I've had this discussion with people before. I mean, I, I'm generally on the same page.

• 43:17Mark Manson?

  The thing that, that people always throw at me is climate change. And, um. I'm curious, wh- wh- where's your optimism with that?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  So, so the, the solutions of today create the problems of tomorrow. I think that's like a Kevin Kelly thing or something like that. He talks a lot about that, but, um. We're like the climate crisis, the climate change, um, fiasco that we're facing right now was created because of the industrial revolution back in the 1800s, right?

• 43:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  That revolution though, brought a whole bunch of people out of that abject poverty, what we were talking about in 1800. I mean, it was something like 90 some percent of people lived in poverty all around the globe.

• 43:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Uh, and the industrial revolution was a huge force behind, uh, bringing people out of poverty. We can feed, clothe, house people. It created another problem, though.

• 44:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  But so I, I think we're on our way, though, too. We are now, we're able to technological advances in agriculture. For instance, we're using, we're figuring out ways to use less land to produce more food to, to support the populations that we have right now.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Agriculture, too, is getting a lot more precise. So they're developing different types of machinery that can go through like a field. Look at each plant individually, use some AI.

• 44:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Look at each plant individually. Okay, this one needs a shot of some pesticide or herbicide here. This one doesn't, this one's fine. So instead of just blanketing, you know, a whole field with, with pesticides or herbicides, whatever, we can be more targeted about it. Saves money, makes food cheaper, makes it more accessible. We use less land, we use less inputs, we use less carbon. I think we're going to figure this out. I really do.

• 44:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  We're going to create new problems that we haven't even thought of yet.

• 44:56Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Nobody thought of the environment in the 1800s when the industrial revolution was going on.

• 45:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  But I think we, I, we figure things out. Again, we're resilient. People are resilient.

• 45:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  We'll figure this out.

• 45:07Mark Manson?

  It's, one thing that I heard about this is that actually if you just kind of isolate the Western countries, like the North American and Western European countries,

• 45:18Mark Manson?

  our net emissions have actually been declining for like 20 years. And, and actually a lot of Western countries are actually net positive.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:25Mark Manson?

  Carbon, in terms of carbon emissions.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Net negative.

• 45:28Mark Manson?

  Or sorry, net negative in terms of carbon emissions. And actually, if you look at like who's emitting the vast majority of the carbon, it's, it's China.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:37Mark Manson?

  And they have been, I believe they're currently building like 50 to 100 nuclear power plants.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:43Mark Manson?

  They've just built the biggest dam in the world. Like, they're going all in on clean energy.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:48Mark Manson?

  But it just takes 10, 20 years to like ramp it up, so.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Same thing of like fusion technology, like we're like tantalizingly close. Like we might be to a, a super, super clean and, and safe energy source.

• 46:00Mark Manson?

  And now we're turning into a tech podcast, Drew. What are we doing?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I know.

• 46:03Mark Manson?

  What are we doing?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, that's a rant, I just had to say.

• 46:08Mark Manson?

  So what's the wisdom of the week?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't come.

• 46:12Mark Manson?

  You didn't come over. Don't, don't we get like a Willie Nelson blowjob joke?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that we know. I'm sorry.

• 46:20Mark Manson?

  I wish I had a dirty joke. I should have prepared something.

• 46:24Mark Manson?

  Maybe that should be our sign off from now on.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Is this the dirty joke?

• 46:27Mark Manson?

  The just, just the dirty joke corner. Maybe that that's just what people start listening to us for.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Here's the wisdom of the week. Keep an open mind.

• 46:39Mark Manson?

  But not so open your brain falls out. That was Carl Sagan, by the way.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  That's who it was. That's okay.

• 46:45Mark Manson?

  Great quote.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  All right, guys.

• 46:51Mark Manson?

  The subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. Edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choys, our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.