Solved Clips

What Avoidant Attachment Really Feels Like Oct 11, 2026 1161 Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change Most "personal growth" is perfectly designed to feel like progress while producing none of it. In this clip, Drew opens up in real time about being avoidant in relationships, and how he changed the behavior, catching himself, responding instead of shutting down, while the belief underneath it never actually moved. The reali

The Worst Singer in History Sold Out Carnegie Hall Oct 6, 2026 722 Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/confidence What happens when confidence loses all connection to reality? Mark and Drew tell the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the worst singer in history who still sold out Carnegie Hall, and the bank robber who wore lemon juice to hide from cameras, to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect and the real danger of overconfidenc

Why the Most Talented People Never Make It Oct 4, 2026 502 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. The people who make it aren't the most talented or the most confident. They're the ones who can't imagine doing anything else. I went to music school with a dropout rate near ninety percent, and the ones who made it were never the students joking about becoming a pizza guy. Drew and I get into real faith versus blind

The Only Thing People Actually Regret Oct 1, 2026 605 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. People don't regret the decisions they made. They regret the ones they never got around to making. I've made plenty of bad calls, lost money, embarrassed myself, and the only things I truly regret are the times I hurt someone I love. Drew and I get into the research on regret, Annie Duke's point that we all quit too

Why the Marshmallow Test Was Wrong Sep 29, 2026 596 Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change You've heard about the marshmallow test: the kids who waited for a second marshmallow grew up to ace the SATs and out-earn everyone, so willpower is destiny. There's one problem. The researcher who ran it, Walter Mischel, didn't believe that conclusion himself. In this clip, Drew and I get into what the famous study actuall

Why Constraints Actually Make You Happy Sep 27, 2026 771 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. Here's the uncomfortable truth about happiness: the decisions you can't undo are the ones that make you happiest. Harvard's Dan Gilbert calls it the psychological immune system, and it kicks in hardest when a door is truly closed behind you. Drew and I get into the one-sentence prenup that's a masterclass in incentiv

Why Your Brain Can't Handle Modern Dating Sep 24, 2026 531 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. Your brain was built for a world of scarcity, and it has no idea what to do with dating apps, endless scrolling, and infinite choice. Drew walks through the study where men rated their own relationships lower after seeing ten attractive faces for a few seconds, which is roughly thirty seconds online. We also get into

Stop Trying to Be Confident (Do This Instead) Sep 22, 2026 1195 Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/confidence Performance builds confidence far more than confidence builds performance. Mark shares the four sources of self-efficacy, the power of starting with the smallest possible action, and stories from his years as a dating coach, when clients paid thousands only to learn that all they needed to do was say hello. Chapters

Why Chasing More Never Made Me Happy Sep 20, 2026 684 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. I spent years traveling the world, dating whoever I wanted, working from a laptop anywhere on earth. It slowly made me miserable, and I want to tell you exactly why. In this one I get honest about the ADHD, the avoidant attachment, and the diminishing returns of chasing novelty on every front at once. The thing that

Why Kierkegaard Said Anxiety Is Actually Freedom Sep 17, 2026 540 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. Your anxiety might not be fear. It might be freedom. Kierkegaard popularized the word anxiety, and his definition still hits harder than anything in a modern self help book: the dizziness of too much freedom. Every option you leave open is one you feel guilty for not taking. Drew and I unpack why standing at the edge

Why Smart People Confuse Luck With Skill Sep 15, 2026 673 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 If you want the entire luck framework in one place, this is the clip. I tie it all together: the three types of luck, the two traps that keep people stuck (thinking it's all luck, or thinking you earned every bit of it), and why the longer you live, the more your decisions outweigh whatever you were born into. Heaven luc

The Philosopher Who Predicted Instagram in 1846 Sep 13, 2026 690 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. A philosopher in 1846 predicted your Instagram feed. After a tabloid roasted him for months, Kierkegaard wrote some of the sharpest criticism of media ever put on paper. He named the thing that happens when everyone is connected to everyone: leveling, the quiet pressure to never stand out. Drew and I get into why the

Why Nobody Feels Like a Real Adult Anymore Sep 10, 2026 628 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. Why does nobody feel like a real adult anymore? For most of history, cultures had rites of passage that moved you from one identity into the next. We deleted the ritual but kept the awkward in-between phase, and now people get stuck there into their thirties. Drew and I walk through liminality, emerging adulthood, an

How Your Brain Tricks You Into Avoiding Decisions Sep 8, 2026 549 Watch the full Commitment episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/tc7phn0t. Most people think they're keeping their options open. What they're actually doing is running from a decision. In this one, Drew and I break down Kierkegaard's three stages of life and a brilliant follow-up from Walter Kaufmann, who mapped the ten sneaky ways we avoid commitment. He called it decidophobia. Drew shares

The 4 Habits Of Extremely Lucky People Sep 3, 2026 794 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 After a decade of research, Richard Wiseman found that lucky people share four specific habits. None of them are mystical, and every one of them can be learned. In this clip Drew and I walk through all four, and I get honest about which ones I actually live and which one took me years to figure out. Plus the true story o

How Napoleon Manufactured His Own Luck Sep 1, 2026 896 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Napoleon was the poorest, smallest, most bullied kid at his academy, and he became maybe the most statistically improbable commander in history. I read the whole biography this year and could not stop thinking about him. In this one I get into how he manufactured his own luck: obsessing over high-leverage skills before a

Confidence Comes From Evidence, Not Your Thoughts Aug 30, 2026 621 Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/confidence Confidence is built, not felt. Mark and Drew unpack Bandura's famous snake-phobia experiment, how "guided mastery" cured lifelong fears in a single afternoon, and why that same principle proves confidence is domain-specific and built from real evidence. Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Classic Snake Phobia Experim

The Career Bet That Pays 1000x More Aug 27, 2026 638 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Some games are rigged in your favor before you play a single hand. A lucky dentist is barely better off than an unlucky one. A lucky musician is a millionaire. In this clip Drew and I break down power laws and why the game you choose, the industry, the career, the city, matters more than how hard you grind inside it. I u

You Can't Change Your Luck. Do This Instead Aug 25, 2026 1002 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Drew grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere and spent years convincedheI got dealt a bad hand. He was wrong, and it took him a long time to see it. In this one we get into why the internet quietly makes almost everyone feel less fortunate than they are, how gratitude is really about widening your frame of refer

Your Life Is A Game Of Poker. Here's How To Win Aug 23, 2026 488 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 People burn a lot of energy fighting over whether success is luck or skill. Wrong fight. In this one I break down the framework that reorganized how I think about all of it: San Sai, an ancient Chinese model that splits luck into three kinds. The luck you're born with, the environment you put yourself in, and the way you

How Lucky Are You Really? Aug 20, 2026 500 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Two babies are born on the same day, one in Norway, one in Sierra Leone, and one of them will live 21 years longer. Neither picked a thing. This is the luck everyone fixates on, and it's also the luck you're worst at interpreting. In this clip I run the actual numbers, get into the philosopher's thought experiment that r

Why Lucky People Find More Money Aug 18, 2026 562 Watch the full Luck episode on the Solved podcast: go.markmanson.net/h0g98i67 Why do two people walk into the same coffee shop and one spots the cash on the floor while the other walks right past it? Richard Wiseman ran the studies, and the results are wild. Lucky people literally see more of what's in front of them. In this clip Drew and I get into how luck behaves like a skill you can train, and

Myers-Briggs Is a Horoscope for Smart People Aug 16, 2026 1253 Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change You've probably taken the Myers-Briggs test, put your type in a LinkedIn bio, or had a boss organize your team around it. In this clip, Drew and I get into why that four-letter label is closer to a horoscope than a science. I tell the real story of where MBTI came from: not a lab, but a mother-daughter pair working from a

Why Positive Thinking Ruins Your Life Aug 13, 2026 1108 Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/confidence Do affirmations actually work? Mark and Drew go through the research on affirmations, vision boards, and power posing, why most of it failed to replicate, and how affirmations can actually make people with low self-esteem feel worse. Plus the WOOP method that makes visualization genuinely useful. Chapters ⇨ Sig

The Anxious Preacher Who Invented Modern Confidence Aug 12, 2026 953 Watch the full Confidence episode on the Solved podcast:https://mrk.mn/confidence Nearly every piece of confidence advice we have inherited traces back to one anxious 1940s preacher, Norman Vincent Peale, and his book The Power of Positive Thinking. Mark and Drew break down the "feel fallacy," the mistaken belief that you have to feel confident before you can perform, and the surprising fact that

How to Actually Change Your Life Aug 9, 2026 671 Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change Most people who try to change themselves are working on the wrong layer, and that's why they keep failing. In this clip, Drew and I lay out the framework that runs through the entire Change episode: the self operates on three layers at once. Your personality traits are the base, your natural set point, and they barely move.

Can You Really Change Who You Are? Aug 8, 2026 818 Watch the full Change episode on the Solved podcast: https://mrk.mn/change Everyone's taken a Big Five personality test at some point, but almost nobody knows what the results actually mean, or whether they're stuck with them for life. In this clip, Drew and I break down the single most replicated finding in all of psychology: the Big Five (OCEAN) traits, what each one actually predicts about you

Social Media: The Global Shame Machine Sep 26, 2025 604 What happens when technology turns the entire planet into your tribe? Social media has essentially scaled shame to infinity — transforming our ancient survival instincts into a 24/7 shame machine. From cancel culture mobs to shameless trolls, the internet has distorted the way we relate to one another, fueling anxiety, outrage, and paranoia. Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/0M9b8bi6Ap

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