Since May 1, 2025
We made Solved to answer life’s biggest questions once and for all.
- 21
- Topics Solved
- 72
- Hours Listened
- 10,098
- Words Spoken
Hosted by
Mark Manson
and Drew Birnie
Our Team
- Drew Birnie
- Stephanie Arakelian
- Zenya Giatzoglou
- Andrew Nishimura
- Jess Choi
- SJ van Breda
Our Guiding Principles
-
Most shows would take a topic like confidence and stretch it over eight weeks with a different guest each time. We put the whole thing in one episode and let it run three to six hours. It takes as long as the question genuinely takes. And to get the whole answer in one place.
-
Once we’ve covered a question, we don’t come back to it. No fresh take next year, no part two, because nothing was left out the first time. That forces every episode to live up to its name. It also means an episode from two years ago is just as useful as the one we released last month.
-
The people we bring on have nothing launching that month and nothing to sell you. We go to researchers who’ve spent their careers on the question we’re trying to solve and can tell us where the evidence is. When the science is genuinely contested, you’ll hear that instead of a polished soundbite.
-
Most podcasts chase big names to pull in someone else’s listeners. We build around the research, and bring someone in when they add what a study can’t: a specific perspective, lived experience, or expertise you can’t get from a paper. Don’t expect a revolving door of celebrity interviews.
-
We’ll write up the research, the frameworks, and the sources, so you can go back to them without scrubbing through hours of audio. We started making these for the people who want to do more with what they learned after listening. And we don’t plan on stopping. All free, right here.
Finding Your Life Path
Why Keeping Your Options Open Is Holding You Back
You've probably spent years doing exactly what you were told: explore, keep your options open, try everything. A depressed Danish philosopher from the 1840s would say that's exactly how you lose yourself. In this episode, Drew and I dig into Kierkegaard's three stages of commitment, the tragic life of Casanova (who had more fun than anyone in history and died completely alone), and Dan Gilbert's research on why your brain handles big decisions better than you think. We cover why the freest generation alive is also the most paralyzed, why committing to the wrong thing still beats committing to nothing, and the grief nobody warns you about when you finally choose one life and close every other door behind you. This one's for everyone who's been keeping their options open and quietly wondering why none of them feel like enough.
