An Army of Normal Folks - Man's Search for Meaning

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

For Shop Talk, we dive into Victor Frankl's monumental book, which he wrote in just 9 days after being liberated from a Nazi concentration camp! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney. Alex just walked in the shop. What's up? It's cold. It's getting cold outside. It's cold. It's like 29 degrees. I bought firewood. And Lisa has kind of allergy. She's really highly allergic to stuff. We've got to give her shots every week. We've got to give her shots. You're talking about her like she's an animal? No, I give her shots every week.

You got to do it yourself? I give it to her. Like you stick a shot in her? Two shots every week. Oh, gosh. I hate medical. stuff like that. Oh, do you? Yeah.

Do you have a vaso vagal? I'm not really happy for, but Bezo bagels like you get queemish and you know how to sit down when needles go in you and stuff. Yeah, yeah. That's called a vaso vaguer. Yeah, I think I mentioned before on the podcast.

I was afraid of needles. That's why I never gave blood, but John Norman kind of pushed me to do it you was. And so yeah. That's good. But still, I wouldn't want to do it to Lisa every week.

Anyway, because Lisa can't, so I love, we both love cozy fires of the fireplace. Yeah. Natural fires. There's no like ceramic walls. You got a nice one in your living room, right? Yeah, but here's the thing.

If the firewood's a little damp or whatever, the smell it puts off, it makes her sick. So. No damp wood. Well, I haven't owned a lumber company. So last month, I got two cords of firewood and actually killed rot it. Nice. So now it's not. Yeah.

So now we get, anyway, I spent all weekend on love it. And you have to pay a classic for the use of the facilities? I probably should have, but I did not. And anyway, now we've got killed dried firewood that I'm building, Lisa and I talked about this morning. I'm building our first fire in the fireplace tonight, and I cannot wait. I'm going to have a glass of red wine, sit in my comfy chair with my wife next to the fire and just veg.

That sounds pretty nice. I can't wait. I really, that's like, I don't know. I guess that's what old people get excited about, but I'm pretty excited about. You would just need a Manhattan and be perfect for you. It would be perfect, but I'm not going to make a Manhattan. I'll just have a lease up a bottle of wine somewhere. So anyway, that's what we're doing tonight.

And you're right, all on the heels of a simple comment. It's cold outside. That was good. But for us, we could talk about absolutely anything. Yeah, that's right. It was shop talk. We're at the shop. So that's it.

All right, today, guys, we're going to talk about Victor Frankl's book, Man Search for Meeting. There's a summary about his life and his book called Man Search for Meaning. It's from a blog called Mind for Life, and the post is titled The Power of Choice, Freedom Over Circumstances. Alex, as usual, has prepped up something that'll make us think for shop talk, and we'll dive in right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner.

This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes, and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for Hello Fresh, and they take Fresh Start to a whole new level. Fresh, high-quality-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted. Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30, trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or false. calling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas.

Yeah, that happened a lot. Just simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more. Waste less. And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner. Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.ca and use code Dinner 50. That's Hellofresh.ca, code Dinner 50.

And the winner of the IHeart Podcast Award is you can decide who takes home the 26 IHard Podcast Awards Podcast of the year by voting at IHeartPodcastawards.com now through February 22nd. See all the nominees and place your vote at Iheartpodcastawards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at Audible. dot com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from

OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that they're There's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your. Podcasts. You can accomplish a lot in a decade.

You could earn a bachelor's degree and a master's degree back to back. You could compete in two separate consecutive Olympic games. Well, we made my favorite murder. It's spent 10 years of true crime, 10 years of conversation, and 100 years of swearing. Here's the thing. Everyone. Politeness. Go fuck yourself.

Get to f*** yourself. We have something for everyone. Advice, support, and a safe space for your feelings. This is terrible. Triflers need not apply. Stay out of the forest. You're in a cult. Call your dad.

Don't worry. It gets worse. Toxic masculinity ruins the party again. I said, dad, what the hell? What are we going to do? And he goes, what the hell? I don't know. We're going to sally forth.

We're going to sally forth. You guys, stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie? A cookie? Listen to my favorite murder on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Goodbye. You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka,

Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman

and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids.

The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl starting January 19th on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back. Welcome back, Bill. Thanks. You're doing all right. How's things in your world? I mean, I can't talk about it all in the air, but I can tell you some after. You can talk about some of it if you want to. No, not appropriate.

Alex's bailed life, I assume. Hey, I think we're going to take the kids, though, to your playoff game on Friday, so that's exciting. What are you going to do? Bill's teams in the playoffs. They keep winning. Yeah. I think I told you this over the phone last week. I'm going to bring the kids on Friday. You need to text Lisa. I will. Because she often is there by herself or just with Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee. That's what the kids call. But anyway, if you text her and tell her you're coming and bringing the kids, she'll be excited. You all to sit up there. Yeah, it would be awesome. We're playing a really good team too. Oh, yeah. So you're not sure. I've spent all weekend breaking down film.

I mean, put together a really good game plan, but they're a good football team. They're well coached. Got a lot of athletes. So it'll be a... That's how much this guy cares. All weekend, breaking down film. None of his kids are on the team, running a company. Doing an army and what I do.

I love it. All right. Here we go. Again, I'm going to read you a summary of Victor Frankl's life and his book, Man's Search for Meaning. Bill has not read yet, and he needs to. No, actually, you asked me off air, I know I have this book. Somebody else told me I had to read it.

I bought the book and everything else, good intentions, and not enough time, effort, energy, and I'm sure I forgot about it. But now I'm going to go dig it off my shelf and read it because in front of the fire. You're shaming me. All right. So this thing is from a blog called Mind for Life,

and the post is titled The Power of Choice, freedom over circumstances, which, what a title. I love that. So here we go. How important is the power of choice? In 1942, the director of the Neurological Department of the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna and his wife were forced by the Nazis to abort their child. Holy crap, this is terrible. Why am I reading this? The first line makes me want to get sick to my stomach. They were forced to abort their child by the Nazis. Wow. Soon afterward, the couple was arrested along with the husband's parents and were deported to the, oh, really? They reported to a ghetto north of Prague and it's spelled T-H-E-R-E-S-I-E-N-S-T-A-D-T. I'm going to call it the arresting Stott,

ghetto, north of Prague. Within six months, this gentleman's father succumbed to exhaustion and died. In 1944, Victor Frankel, his wife Tilly, and Frankl's 65-year-old mother were transported to the death camp at Auschwitz. His mother was immediately exterminated in the gas chamber, and his young wife was moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she died at the age of 24. In 1945, suffering from typhoid fever, Victor was finally freed when the U.S. forces liberated the camp on April 27. It wasn't until August of that same year on returning to Vienna that he found out about his wife, his mother, and his brother, who were also murdered at Auschwitz. Can I just pause before we keep going?

I know this is setting up how this guy overcame it, but when you read that, does that not just break your heart? Yeah. I mean, I know we're... I guess we should never get numb to the atrocity. of German-Nazism. I can actually pull up a stat while we're talking about Auschwitz

that will shock you a little bit, too, but keep going. Okay. Through these experiences, Victor Frankel developed his theories on Logotherapy, otherwise known as the third V&E School of Psychology.

Logotherapy is a quest to unlock the will to meaning in life. It is searched to find purpose in the chaotic circumstances of the world. Logo means meaning in Greek. Meaning?

Got it. While confined in the death camps of Nazi Germany, Frankl noticed that those around him who did not lose their sense of purpose and meaning were able to survive much longer than those who had lost hope. From those thoughts, he wrote his famous book, Man's Search for Meaning. Here, he gives us insight into a more fulfilled and meaningful life. Frankl recognized the importance of our power to choose. More specifically, he understood how free we are to choose our own attitudes about our lives.

Considering all the things he had undergone in his life, this quote is a phenomenal example of his point. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances, to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances, to choose one's one's own way. Even though we are all subject to circumstances are in our lives, we are free to choose, to choose the way we think about these circumstances, to choose also how we respond to them. I dare say that a few of us will undergo the horrors that Victor experienced in the death camps, yet in the midst of that situation, he realized his true freedom, the power to choose his attitude. In fact, he said that though the Nazis could take everything from them, they could not take away this, his power to choose his response to them. We all suffer injustices to one degree or another, though some of these has greater cost.

Our hurt and helplessness remain the same. Comparing our circumstances to others is dangerous, because regardless of the situations, we all have similar feelings. our choice and our response to those circumstances is what matters. How we think about them and how we act on them. Frankel said this in talking about the power of choice. In concentration camps, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine, while others behave like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself.

After all, man is the being who has invented the gas. chambers of Auschwitz. However, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord's prayers of the Shema Israel on his lips. To think that both potentialities are available to us, good or evil, is a sobering thought. We find a similar sentiment in the worlds of the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy. Today, I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call it. on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life so that you and your descendants might live.

Some people believe in determinism, which takes away our choice. This fatalistic perspective places us at the mercy of things in life that happened to us, but as Frankl noted, our beliefs about this type of perspective matter. If we accept fatalism, that our circumstances define us, we are forever held captive to them. but we can choose to believe that we have the freedom to do just that to choose. This is our true freedom. Frankl sums it up. When we are no longer able to change a situation,

we are challenged to change ourselves. Wow. I learned, too, he wrote that man searched for meeting nine days after he was freed from Auschwitz. Really? Is that amazing? It is amazing. And by the way, I'm taking this. with me because I'm about to read this to our football team.

That's awesome. Yeah. We can choose to rise above our circumstances or choose to be victims of it. One of the things when I talk to when I speeches and high schools and things like that, you know, I still do a fair amount of those. Interestingly, there's a part in there that I make the point that, you know, we have health insurance, we have life insurance, we have car insurance, we have security cameras, we have security systems in our house. We have all of these things that when we wake up and take on the day make us feel so happy and secure. And it's all false.

It's really a crock. The police department, the fire department, the police department shows up after you've been shot. The fire department shows up when your house is on fire. You don't have enough time to get there as fast as you need. That's it. And the point is you can have all the insurance of the world, and the police department, fire department, everything else. But the truth is, today your house can burn down and nothing you do about it.

Today, somebody can break in and steal your jewelry. Today, the economic world could collapse and somebody could have a run on the banks and you could end up with no money. That literally could have today your 401k and your investments, the stock market could collapse and it could all go away. Today, as horrific as it is to think about, somebody that you love could be in a horrific car wreck and die, or somebody could murder your wife or children. There could be a school shooting that your family's involved. And I mean, it's horrible to think of, but the world has evil all in it. And all of the things that you think ensure you that make you comfortable that you think you're secure in today, something could happen to make all of that go away.

We'll be right back. Okay, new year, fresh start. And honestly, I'm starting with dinner. This year, I'm being smarter about where my energy goes. and dinner was taking way too much of it. I just signed up for Hello Fresh, and they take Fresh Start to a whole new level. Fresh, high-quality ingredients delivered right to my door, locally sourced whenever possible. Everything pre-portioned, nothing wasted.

Now, I'm not dragging myself through weekend grocery runs, or panic staring at the fridge at 5.30 trying to make something out of random leftovers. And I'm definitely not tossing out food I never used or falling back on expensive takeout apps because I ran out of ideas. Yeah, that happened a lot. simple, stress-free recipes and meals that help me save more. Waste less. And for the first time in a long time, I actually look forward to dinner.

Get your fresh start right now and get 50% off your first box plus free sides for life with HelloFresh. That's right, free sides for life. Go to Hellofresh.c8 and use code Mom 50. That's hellofresh.ca. Code Mom 50. And the winner of the IHeart Podcast Award is you can decide who takes home the 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards, Podcast of the year by voting at IHeartPodcastawards.com now through February 22nd.

See all the nominees and place your vote at IHeartPodcastawards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page.

Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliffe. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.

This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can accomplish a lot in a decade. You could earn a bachelor's degree and a master's degree back to back. You could compete in two separate consecutive Olympic games. Well, we made my favorite murder.

It's spent 10 years of true crime, 10 years of conversation, and 100 years of swearing. Here's the thing. Everyone. Politeness. Go f*** yourself is like what I'm going to say when someone sneezes from now. We have something for everyone. Advice, support, and a safe space for your feelings. This is terrible.

Keep going. Stay out of the forest. You're in a cult. Call your dad. Don't worry. It gets worse. Toxic masculinity ruins the party again. I said, Dad, what the hell?

What are we going to do? And he goes, what the hell? I don't know. We're going to sally forth. We're going to sally fourth. You guys, stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

A cookie? Listen to my favorite murder on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. You know Roll Doll. the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you.

The guy was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's? played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote.

Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl starting January 19th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So when you come to terms of the fact that really you don't have control over any of that stuff, then you start to really think about what you do have control over. And it's your word. It's your responses. It's how you carry yourself. That's the only thing someone can't reach inside of you and take out of you is your character, your word, and your choice.

And it's, I really do. I say that to a lot of young people trying to convince them what's really important in the world. And it's interesting that in that blog summary that Frankl said, the Nazis took everything from them. They took his wife, his family. He had typhoid fever. And he, like many other persecuted Jews, they took everything. But he said the one thing they couldn't take from him was his choice. And when you think about that, and when the world hits us in the mouth with a bad day at work or our kids drive us crazy or something else, and again, it's set in there, it's not healthy to compare people's suffering.

So I don't mean to do it that way. But the point is, if you think about him and his ability to choose, whatever happens this week that, drags us down, I think it's really thoughtful and helpful to remember that really the desperation of those events largely depend on how we choose to respond to them. And our response can be really convicting to other people in those moments. That's a really good point. You can be a beacon of light and hope in someone else's darkness by illustrating a church. choice of response. I mean, when you were reading this, I was thinking about Christ on the

crossing, forgive them father for they don't know what they do. Yeah. I mean, it's how we choose to, what's that? Oh, so the, when you're talking about security, it reminded me this great quote from Helen Keller. She said, security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or, or nothing at all. Who wrote that? Ellen Keller.

Is that great? She's a bad... I mean, yeah, I wish I had her on my football team. I'd take people like that. Go visit her home in Alabama. I don't know if you've done it. I know, you've told me. I'm going.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a great shop talked. It's just as a reminder that we're all going to be hit in the mouth. We're all going to have problems. And you don't want to compare them because one, you know, There's levels, obviously, but how it feels to you is very, very personal. But it's really not about that. We should expect problems to come. But what we have to do is understand we have the freedom to choose a response to that.

And that's liberating in the face of difficulty. And like you said, serves as a beautiful illustration to uplift others who are also dealing with issues because we all are dealing with them. All right, something negative. 66% of U.S. millennials do not know what Auschwitz is. What? And 48% cannot name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto. Are you kidding me?

I'm not kidding you. How was that possible? And then one of the most surprising results, the survey found, too, is nearly 20% of millennials in Gen Z and New York feel that the Jews cause the Holocaust. And I got to tell you, I actually met someone this week. How was that possible? our education system two-thirds of kids are not on grade level in america we got a lot of problems what were you best say i'm sorry oh i met somebody this weekend this was like it's actually like affected me in a negative way so they're in you know mississippi i meet this person and she kept

talking about black people is um is like you know they're not you know they're not worth anything good they just cause problems and i'm like why are you talking about them as a group like that like these are individuals and the data doesn't even show that there's great data One of my mentors, Brad Wilcox, he's like the leading marriage expert, and I forget the exact data, but it's something like, you know, 56% or 65% of black men are married and have a job, right? So it's even just like this misconception out there that there's just like this big swath of people. The title of this article is most black men are doing just fine. So it's like, why are we categorizing all of these people? What was this racist woman talking about?

But she's like, that's just how we grew up in Mississippi. and that's just, you know, how we, but I'm saying it was shocking to me to, like, hear somebody verbalize this, you know, to me, like a wealthy, affluent person in Mississippi saying this to me. I'm like, I hope you got in her grill a little bit. Oh, yeah. That a boy. But I'm saying it's just like, you know, this stats, too, 20% of millennials in New York feel like the Jews cause the Holocaust. Like, it is shocking how much of this, you know, racism is still out there, yeah. It's patent ignorance.

Yeah. That makes me want to throw up. But, you know what? It's the only time I've actually experienced that in Mississippi. So to be fair, with all the negative. Yeah, let's not hammer Mississippi. Then we end up being what we're detesting. I've been there for a decade, and that's the only, honestly, conversation I've had like that.

It's just incredible to me that people exist in today's world that actually think that way. But here's the thing. How do we choose to respond to that? Yeah. How do we choose to respond to that blatant racism? Well, I told her actually Bill Dunnman's data, which is fascinating. I tell you about going to his presentation. Yeah.

That in Memphis, 80% of the crime is committed by 20% of the perpetrators. And that number, that 20% is only 1,800 people. So you have 1.3 million person population hostage. So it's like you think the problem is that big. No, it's like 1,300 people. Just throw them in jail. Like we got to deal with those people or 1,800 people. Yeah.

It's really not like there's all these bad people out there, white or blacker and different. It's 1800 people. Yeah, that's, we've actually talked about that a lot on the chamber, the chamber commerce, the president's circling the chamber commerce. And it's exactly that. There's about 2,000 people holding a municipal area, total area that's almost close to million people hostage by their actions. And the police will tell you that they're not arresting new people all

the time they're arresting the same people over and over and over again so you get rid of those 2,000 people and your crime drops by about 80%. Yeah, but Bill Donovan is choosing to be positive about the situation. Exactly right and we can choose to detest that woman or try to educate her. We can to choose to not fathom how 60% of millennials have never even heard of Auschwitz or choose to educate them. Make sure that our schools are actually teaching about this. For God's sakes, that's all. We need to do a whole, we need to do a series on school.

Yeah. Yeah, we should. All right, so that's a lot. Read Mansearch for a meeting. That is how the Shop talk supposed to go, you know. Actually, be great to do a follow-up shop talk once you've read the book. Yeah. And then deeper thoughts from Bill on Man Searcher Meeting.

I'll do that. And I promise you I will read the book. I own it. I've got to read the book. Okay, guys, how important is the power of choice? Well, since it's the only thing that you really own that nobody can take from you, I would say that would be something that is of vital importance. Victor Frankel's life in his book, Man's Search for Meaning,

got a lot to learn from it. First and foremost, as a member of the Army of normal folks, protect what you can protect, your word, your response to issues. your ability to choose your response to those issues. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review it, share it on social, share it with friends, subscribe to the podcast, and write me anytime at bill at normalfolks. If you have ideas for Shop Talk, we'd love to take them up.

And if you have ideas for people, we'd be guests on an army of normal folks, Alex will call them up and see if they can actually put two sentences together and then we can interview them. and that's how it works? That's how it works. Okay. Yeah, that's it. Enjoyed being with you in the shop. We'll see you next week.

I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. The ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay. but he really tried hard not to be.

Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And the winner of the IHeart Podcast Award is, You can decide who takes home the 26 IHeart Podcast Awards podcast of the year by voting at IHeartPodcastawards.com now through February 22nd. See all the nominees and place your vote at IHeart Podcast Awards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app.

Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at Audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link.

There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 2016, we said, let's do a podcast. Little did we know it would last 10 years. I mean, but here's the thing.

Stay out of the forest. You're in a cult. Call your dad. This is terrible. Keep going. You guys stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

A cookie? My favorite murder turns 10 this month. Join us for new episodes every Thursday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to my favorite murder on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. What if mind control is real? If you can control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping? with you. I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP,

aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, starting January 20th. This is an IHeart podcast.

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