SOLVED with Mark Manson - The Last Podcast

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

New podcast launches May 1st! We'll be releasing on this same feed, so all you have to do is stay subscribed to this channel and you'll get all the new episodes as they come out. *** After more than 70 episodes and 30 million downloads, I’ve decided to shut down The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Podcast. Yeah, I know—sounds a little crazy. But the truth is, I wasn’t having fun anymore. The guest treadmill, the pressure to play nice, the temptation to chase clicks instead of meaning—it all started to feel fake. So, I’m pulling the plug. BUT—I’m not going away. I’m launching something new. It’s called Solved—a no-ads, no-guests, deep-dive podcast where each episode tackles one major life topic and breaks it down thoroughly. Think: values, emotions, procrastination—done right, from every angle, with real research and clear implementation. It’s the podcast I wish already existed. So I’m making it. First episode drops May 1 st! Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Follow me: https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose. That is purpose. Dot app. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Mark Manson here. And this is the last podcast of the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast.

Yes, the rumors are true. The hints have been true. All of the little breadcrumbs that I've been dropping over the past few episodes are, in fact, true. We are shutting down this podcast, but we're shutting it down because we're going to launch something very new and exciting in its place. And I just want to take a little bit of time to explain both the reasoning why we're shutting this down and then also what's coming next. So bear with me for a little bit. I'm going to take you behind the scenes, kind of my personal thinking or my personal experience with the podcast the past year, what my reasoning has been and why we are making the changes that we're going to make. and also why I'm extremely excited

and I think you guys are going to be absolutely thrilled with what we produce instead of the subtle art and not giving a fuck podcast. So let's get right into it. The first thing I want to say is that it feels kind of insane the shutdown something this successful. I was actually looking at the numbers

in preparation for recording this. So we had 75 episodes, over 30 million downloads, over 700,000 followers across platform, forms. That technically puts us in the top 0.01% of podcasts, like the top 400-ish podcast in the world, is a massively successful podcast by any objective measurement, which is still a little bit wild for me to think about. And I also, I think it's worth saying, too, that shutting this down is not a good business decision, at least in the short term. There were multiple seven-figure offers on the table from major podcast networks, major ad networks, that we turned down. And a big reason

for turning those down is going to be clear in a little bit. But I just want to make it clear that like this change is really not for the money. It's not like we're not selling out in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's from a business point of view. I might, I might just be shooting myself in the foot here. But I think it's going to be worth it. I think everything that we're going to be producing and putting out is absolutely going to be worth it. In five years from now, I'm going to look back and be like, this is one of the best decisions. So when I look at why I wanted to end the show, there are two primary reasons. And the first one is honestly, just purely selfish.

And that is, I wasn't really having a ton of fun doing the show. And maybe I was apparent to some of you. Maybe it wasn't. but it became impossible for me to ignore past a certain point. I mean, initially, say, the first six or eight months, like there was kind of this honeymoon period, everything's new, everything's exciting. But, like, really once the show got going last summer, it was painfully aware to me that, like, this is just not really my thing.

And we tried to experiment with formats, you know, we tried to introduce segments to the show. Drew and I tried to get a little bit playful and creative with some of the topics that we'd address. We started taking listener questions a lot more. We tried to get a little bit experimental with like guests that we would bring on. But it just, it never sat right. The simple reason why is that I've been in this industry for almost 20 years now.

And my thing, probably the reason that most of you even give a shit that I'm talking right now, is I try to be independent minded. I try to say things that maybe need to be said and nobody else is really saying. saying. I'm contrarian when maybe it's not so popular to be contrarian. I call bullshit when I see it. And in the classic podcast format of bringing on kind of star intellectual guests and thought leaders, I felt completely hamstrung to be able to do that. It is a format that is antithetical in almost every shape and form to

ultimately what I think I'm best at and what I enjoy doing most in my line of work. And that sucks. It really sucks to have a notable guest come on the show and start saying something that I actually kind of don't agree with or I'm like familiar with the research they're talking about, but I don't think the research is very good. And it puts me in a really tough spot of like, okay, do I start challenging this guest and potentially creating like a big argument or debate on the show, potentially alienating the guests, fans of the guest,

alienating the guests themselves, making sure that they're never going to come back to the show. Do I put myself in a position where I'm like suddenly, like I didn't prep for a debate coming into this episode, but now like suddenly I'm having to put myself in a headspace of being willing to argue and debate a really smart person, it was just not fun for me. It felt like a no-win situation.

I can either start to fight and make everybody miserable, make me miserable, make the guests miserable, and make the fans of the guests miserable. Or I can sit there and smile and nod along and pretend like everything's hunky-dory and also be miserable, right? And I experimented with both directions and nothing ever felt right. And nothing ever felt right with the audience either. And I should add too that like the whole process of sourcing, reaching out, booking guests after guest after guess.

It's kind of this, it's a very unpleasant treadmill. First of all, everybody in this space is having the same guests on over and over again. So you're fighting with other podcasts to get the same people on. And then when you do get them on, they kind of just say the same thing they said on the, on the other podcasts that they went on. And if you try to get them off, the thing that they said on the other podcast that they went on, then, you know, they don't really want to talk about some other thing that you want to talk about.

And it, like, I understand that, like, really good podcasters are that, like, that's the skill set, that they're experts at, like, getting a new guest and getting them to open up in a new way and talk about something that they've never talked about or, like, researching really intensely and finding that subject matter that, like, they've never really been super public about. I just found that, like, I don't really care to get good at that. that's not my thing. And I don't think it's the thing that I am best at. I don't think it's the thing I'm particularly talented at.

It's definitely not the thing I enjoy. And I don't think it's the thing that you guys are here for. So what the fuck am I doing trying to do that? Like trying to like get these super spicy breaking guest interviews going. So the whole guest thing was just kind of, it's a little bit of a non-starter for me. And don't get me wrong. like some of the guests who came on the show I had a fucking blast with and had great conversations with. But, you know, there are a lot of guests that came on that I was just kind of like

going through the motions. And it's one of those situations where I have to take my own advice and, you know, I'm constantly telling my audience that the more you care about something, the better you'll be at it and the more impactful it will be to other people. And here I am just going through the motions working on something that I don't deeply care about. I don't think I'm super great at. And not only am I paying the price, but you guys are paying the price as well. So starting a few months ago, it became abundantly clear that some sort of pivot needed to be made. And Drew and I started talking very seriously about what if we just reboot the whole show entirely and start from first principles?

Before I get into that, though, I want to go on a little bit of a rant here. because having been in the self-help personal development podcast world now for a couple years, I'm like a little alarmed by what kind of flies in this space. Not to say that like, you know, the shows are bad or the advice that's being given is bad. It's just I don't think the incentives are very healthy at the moment. So in the creator or influencer world, there's a concept that that's relatively well known in my industry, known as audience capture. And chances are you guys have seen this among people that you followed over the years. Like often somebody will build an audience among a certain demographic or a certain group of people who have like some crazy belief, right?

And the creator or the podcaster or the YouTuber, like they realize that if they, if they change, just keep hitting that crazy topic over and over again. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people keep showing up in force and engaging with them over and over again. And so what you see is that the influencer actually starts to take on those crazy beliefs and that personality of this segment of their audience that they've suddenly captured. And so it's like it's almost like being brainwashed by your audience. Like you're rewarded for feeding into their kind of crazy beliefs or narratives. and so the podcaster or the YouTuber kind of convinces themselves

that they believe those things so that they don't feel any cognitive dissonance when they keep putting out the content that that audience wants. And audience capture is a very real thing. I've seen it happen in my industry many, many times. It's something I'm very careful about and aware of with myself

that I really try to check myself and make sure it's not happening to me. But I think there's something specific to the podcasting world that is similar to audience capture, but it's a little bit different. And I would call that guest capture, which is you end up with these incentives like, okay, fuck it. I'll just, I'll use a real person as an example because there's no way in fucking hell I would ever have this person on the show.

Take Joe Dispenza, for example, right? Joe Dispenza, he's like kind of the new big self-help guru. He's doing these massive seminars and like arenas and stuff. And when you look at his content, it's really, it's kind of just the secret two point Like it's, you know, meditate, breath work, manifestation, believe in yourself. You can be and do anything. It's a bunch of bullshit. Like, we've been here before, right?

But if you have them on your show, it's like a guaranteed four to five million person audience. Like his audience is massive and it is absolutely rabid. They consume every single thing he touches. And so I have quietly watched as multiple people in my space continually bring them on hit on their shows and let him spout his quantum theory bullshit over and over again and i'm not like singling out joe dispens as like he's not uniquely bad in any way he's just an example right because it's like i understand what those podcasters are going through like i know for a fact that some of those podcasters don't believe any of the stuff that he says but they still bring him on the show and they

placate him and they humor him and they let him like go on his spiel about manifesting and quantum spirits and whatever. And then they let the, you know, the four million views or the five million downloads come in. And then they, you know, they move on to the next guest. And to me, that just feels like a certain level of,

of prostituting oneself. And it's like, I find it very distasteful. But I understand the impulse to do that. Like, as a podcaster myself, I want to bring on guests that are going to bring in massive audiences. And so to bring, on somebody with a huge audience, I want to at least placate or go along with whatever they say

and act as though I agree with it or at least don't disagree with it because then that will convert their audience into my audience. I felt myself being polled in this direction while having notable people on the show. And it just made me feel very gross. And it fell, it went against everything that I think I stand for in this industry and in this market. And I don't want to get sucked down that. And so the first thing I will say about the new show that we're going to launch is that there will be no guess on it. That doesn't mean that we're not going to talk to experts.

We're actually going to talk to a lot of experts, but we're going to talk to them behind the scenes. We're going to talk to experts who don't have audiences. We're going to talk to academics. We're going to talk to doctors. We're going to talk to PhDs. And we're not going to bring them on the show. because I don't want that to be a compromising incentive of the show.

I want to be able to present people's ideas and perspectives and be able to criticize them openly and show the pros and cons of certain viewpoints and not feel socially pressured or audience pressured into going along with certain things that maybe I don't believe in or that, frankly, the research doesn't back up. Okay. second gripe and again this is something that I think is a wider problem in the personal

development podcast space but I've also experienced it on our show as well is that you can have one guest on one week and they they'll tell you XYZ and then you have another guest on two weeks later and they say the exact opposite of XYZ and again I feel put in a bind whenever that happens I struggle like, how should I contextualize this? Well, shit, like, is this guy line or was the guy two weeks ago line? Like, should I bring this up? Should I argue with them about it? I think it's beautiful to have podcasts with a wide variety of perspectives and views.

But I do think there needs to be some cohesion or clarity around like, you know, what's legitimate and what's not? Like, certain viewpoints have more evidence behind them than others. But when you present everything as just another guest saying another thing, like, that gets lost in the mix. And again, I think the context is so important and the context is not being featured. It's like being left behind the scenes. So when Drew and I sat down and we were like really just, what do we want to build from first principles? And not only what do we want to build, but also like, what do we feel? feel like this space needs? What is it lacking? What is the show that needs to exist,

but nobody's making at the moment? And the conclusion that we came to is that the space needs a very serious deep dive into individual topics. And when I say serious deep dive, I mean like extremely thorough vetting multiple perspectives, vetting research from multiple places, walking through the history and context and train of thought that, you know, occurred from one generation to the next of thinkers and researchers, like really giving a fully fleshed out view of a single subject instead of just, you know, bringing on, you know, Joe Blow academic or, you know, Jane Smith influencer and asking them the same questions. So we really want to do, like a full, thorough, comprehensive guide to a single subject matter and just simply include

all of the varying perspectives of experts within that single episode. And so that's what we're going to do. They're going to be longer episodes and they're going to be posted less frequently. And the idea is that every time you listen to an episode, whatever the topic is, whether it's procrastination or managing your emotions or discovering your values or discovering your The idea, Drew and I's North Star, as we're putting this together with our team, is that this should be the last podcast episode that you ever have to listen to on this subject. That if you get through this episode of this podcast on this subject, every other podcast that comes up on that subject is going to feel repetitive and like a waste of time. Because you've already done it.

You've already been through the entire mix. you've gotten all the information, you have all the takeaways, and you know exactly how to implement it into your life. That is our goal. And that promise of being the last podcast you ever need, we're keeping that promise with ourselves. Our goal with every episode that we make is that we can never come back to this topic, or at least until there's like some new breakthrough discovery or research, we're never coming back to this topic. This needs to be completely soup the nuts A to Z, cover every single base. so like let's get it right. The other thing about this show is that it's going to be ad-free. This is another incentive issue, I think, in this space, is that as somebody who is doling out life advice, there's a lot of incentives that come from sponsorships and a lot of companies who want to push certain products or relationships.

And I mean, some of them I feel confident with. I mean, a lot of the sponsors on this show are products that I've used, or I actively do use, but there's a lot of situations where a company shows up with a lot of money and they want you to say and do some things. And again, I just don't want to deal with that. On top of that, every single episode is going to come with a full PDF summary and guide. It's going to have all of the sources, citations, and notes. It's going to be a full summary of the episode. It's going to include everything that Drew and I talk about. It's going to have all of the book recommendations and the experts that we talk to. Some of these PDFs, we're working

on the third episode now. Some of these PDFs are like pushing 80, 90 pages. They are absolutely massive. I mean, honestly, it's crazy. I honestly believe some of these episodes are more valuable than entire books written on these subjects. And we're just going to give it out for free. It's just going to be available to all you guys each month as it comes out. So the new show, it's going to be called solved because the idea is that if you listen to the episode and you pay attention and you actually fucking do the thing in the episode, you do the takeaways, you implement it into your life, that area of your life should be solved. It should no longer be an open question. You should no longer feel a need to go read another book

or go hire another coach. If there's one thing that I've learned over the past year with a bunch of the live events that I've done, like meeting a lot of you guys in person, doing a lot of speaking, it seems like the number one issue everyone has at the moment is that there's information overload, but there's no implementation. There's no clear roadmap of like, okay, well, cool. I just listen to this three-hour conversation with this doctor, but I don't know what to actually go do. And so the goal of this new podcast is not only to give you

all of the necessary information, but it's to give you also the implementation along the way, to make it clear of like, okay, these are actually like just the four questions you should be focusing on. And these are the three things that you should do first. And if you do this, this, and this, then you're probably good. The Solved podcast will be launching on May 1st. If you're subscribed to this podcast feed on Apple or Spotify or any other audio platform,

you will automatically be subscribed to the Solve feed. We're just going to switch the subtle art feed over to Solve. If you're subscribed on YouTube and watching this on YouTube, we are going to move the Solv podcast back to the main Mark Manson channel. So if you're not subscribed to the Mark Manson channel, you should go there, get subscribed, because that's where the first solved episode is going to be dropped on May 1st. We're also getting away from like, you know, every other Tuesday or Monday morning

release schedules. We're just dropping episodes on the first of every single month. So the first episode will be May 1st. The second episode will be June 1st. The third episode will be July 1st. The idea is that these are long-term slow burn commitments that you guys make. You can work through an episode at your leisure. The episodes are pretty long. I'm going to warn you. Like we're looking three, four, five hours long, but you can take your time with it. You can listen to it slowly over multiple days or multiple weeks. You can work your way through the PDF guide. Everything is going to come with accompanying exercises and implementations. So you can like really just let it savor in your brain a little bit. Just like let it baste like a turkey on Thanksgiving. And finally,

I do have to say like this, this experiment, this phase of my career, this podcast, as it really, it's been wonderful. It's something that I probably should have done like five years ago. And honestly, if I did start this podcast five or six years ago, maybe things would be different. Maybe I would stick with this format. Maybe we would be doing the same fucking guest treadmill that everybody else is doing. I don't know. All I know is that, like, this has been a really rewarding project over the last year and a half.

It's built a wonderful audience that is so much more engaged than a lot of other places that I post or a lot of other content that I put online. It has introduced me to a lot of amazing people. Like a lot of the guests that I have had on are just like awesome people that I'm so grateful that I am able to know and be in touch with. So it has given me a lot and I am very thankful for it. I just also think it's not the right thing for me. I don't like this it's not a right fit and not only is it not a right fit for me. I don't think it's what you guys want for me either. And so solved is my attempt to a get right with what I want to make.

Like this is what I would want to listen to in this market that nobody's making. So fuck it. Like let me go make it. And I also think it's what you guys want to hear too. I think it's what you guys are going to be more interested in. You know, I don't think you guys need another like, you. know, fucking morning routine and to listen to the same dude who's been on 18 other podcasts to promote his book.

Like, that's just, it's not interesting to me. And I imagine it's not interesting to a lot of you. So thank you for understanding. Thank you for tuning in over the last 18 months. It's, uh, it's been great. And I seriously, I can't tell you how excited I am for this next chapter. Make sure you're subscribed on all the platforms. If you want to get an early peek at some of the PDF content, make sure you're on my newsletter.

go to markmanson.net slash newsletter. We're going to be announcing and pushing everything all over the place. So it's going to be very exciting. And the first episode is going to be on values, which I think is very appropriate considering I'm the not give a fuck guy. So we'll see you there. Drew and I will be waiting. And here's to a new chapter.

The subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishamura, Jessica Choy. our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.