The Double Win

Most ambition advice is about how to reach the top of the mountain. Luke Burgis points out that many of us have an upstream problem: we’re climbing a mountain we don’t actually care about. Michael and Megan sit down with Burgis, a Wall Street suit turned entrepreneur turned philosopher, father, and author of several books on desire. They unpack why not all desires are created equal, how to unearth the ones that lead to real satisfaction, and what the monastic tradition offers those of us who will never be monks. This conversation gives you a way to separate what you actually want from the noise of mimetic desire.

Memorable Quotes

1. “Ambition without a sense of self or a differentiation of self is just a highly sophisticated form of conformity.”
2. “You can get really good at achieving goals without wondering whether they’re the right goals in the first place.”
3. “A simple exercise is just: Name the models of your desire. Who are the people who have given you your own desires?”
4. “One of the easiest ways to kind of determine whether a desire is thin or thick is: Does it persist through different seasons of life, through different environments, through different friend groups, through different relationships?”
5. “A lot of people go straight to productivity and organization… before asking the most important question: Should I even be trying to integrate this at all?”
6. “Each person has an unrepeatable calling, something that only they can do with their unique history and situation and context. I think our thickest desire is oriented towards living out of a personal vocation... Thick desire is a signpost to a calling which can be lived out in and through our work.”
7. “Being in communion means learning how to be a differentiated self with a calling while also being part of something bigger. And sometimes that creates a little bit of tension, and our instinct is to flee any form of tension or any anxiety. And I think there’s a lot to be learned from sitting in the tension to be a part and to be oneself.”
8. “Which kinds of communities and groups flatten any kind of distinctiveness? And which ones actually allow people to evolve and to be part of the whole, or to be part of the body without demanding that they be something that they’re not, or demanding that they sacrifice their integrity?”

Key Takeaways

1. Your Ambition Might Be Borrowed. Mimetic desire means we absorb what we want from the people we watch. Whose careers do you track closely, with mixed feelings? Naming our models of desire creates helpful distance for effective discernment.
2. Thin Desires Are Short-Lived. We might feel thin desires strongly, but they erode when the context shifts. A thick desire persists across seasons, relationships, and jobs. Write down what you want, then wait: Is the desire durable?
3. The Tension of Communion. Being in communion requires being a differentiated self and participating in the larger whole—which creates an enduring, unresolvable tension. We must have the courage to decide who we will be without fleeing or falling into crowd instinct.
4. Every Check Comes with Terms. A financially sound decision can still be the wrong one if it commits you to work you don’t believe in. When there’s money on the line, weigh the funder’s desires for alignment with your own before you agree to terms. 
5. You Might Need a Rule. There’s a reason the Rule of Saint Benedict has governed communal life for fifteen hundred years. Setting your own rules of engagement within your organization or just for yourself can equip you to navigate complex situations before you’re in the middle of one.
6. Discernment is a Community Endeavor. Blind spots are invisible from the inside. Recruit the people closest to you—whether within formal groups or informal relationships—to offer feedback on complex decisions. (But be sure to filter for communities that invite you to become yourself rather than requiring conformity.)

Resources

• Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis
• The One and the 99: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion by Luke Burgis
• Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person by Luke Burgis and Joshua Miller
• lukeburgis.com
• The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
• LifeFocus

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Chaos always prompts us to search for something solid. Confronted by the upheaval of economic reckoning, ecological exhaustion, and existential uncertainty, our souls are reaching for anything tangible and true. We want what’s real. That’s the core message of Ryan Levesque, a seven-time Inc. 5000 CEO who walked away from his former life to move with his family to a farm in Vermont. He joins Michael and Megan to talk about his book Return to Real and how we can respond wisely to the hunger felt in our souls and in the marketplace within an artificial, digital age. He unpacks how we can craft moments—at work and at home—that reward what makes us uniquely human. Because that’s what we’re all longing and looking for.

Memorable Quotes

1. “The double craving—what your body, your heart, what your spirit is starving for right now—is also what much of the market is starving for. And when you can find the intersection… there’s economic opportunity. What’s good for your biology can also be good for your bottom line.”
2. “The last decade, in many ways, in business was a story about dopamine… ‘Create an app that’s addictive so people keep coming back to it.’ But if we look at most of the maladies of modern life—loneliness, disconnection—they are symptoms of a lack of the neurotransmitter oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter of trust, of love.”
3. “We’re swimming in this sea of artificial everything, and we’re seeking truth. We live in an era of a default state of distrust… We no longer trust our eyes and ears, our sensory experience, when we are experiencing the world through a screen.”
4. “The truth is in the tension. It’s not ‘Throw AI in a bin.’ It’s not ‘Go 100% analog.’ It’s about picking the right moments and the right places to insert it.”
5. “People will pay for work that’s been attached to a real human life… When people see the work and the effort that’s gone into something, they value it. That’s the provenance premium.”
6. “Just because the technology is capable of doing something doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s how we should be using that technology.”
7. “I tell my kids all the time: ‘Choose your hard, otherwise your hard will choose you.’ What we’ve done and what we’re doing is not easy… but all things in life worth doing are hard.”
8. “If you are not analog by design, you will become digital by default… There are trillion-dollar technology companies that will not stop until every moment of human attention has been consumed and monetized… So if you're not fighting against those forces actively… then you will be consumed by the digital vortex.”

Key Takeaways

1. Your Craving and Your Market’s Are the Same. What your body and spirit want right now also reflect what much of your market wants. That double longing reveals economic opportunity.
2. Optimize for Oxytocin. Dopamine has long been stealing the headlines, but the neurotransmitter of the next decade is oxytocin, which signals trust and love. How can you make your business more human?
3. Don’t Advertise Your AI. Deploy AI away from customer-facing environments. The technology we use helps power what’s possible, but the work people value is attached to human effort and human lives.
4. Defying Digital Requires Intention. In a world built on and by technology where trillions are spent on directing our attention, we must seek out ways to reintegrate what’s real—to choose analog by design.
5. A Rhythm You Can Try Today.  Slowing for a few moments can shift an entire day. Ryan Levesque suggests a simple resolution from Ali Jafarian: Touch earth before touching a screen.

Resources

• Return to Real: The Last Human Advantage in an Age of Artificial Everything by Ryan Levesque
• The Digital Contrarian (Ryan’s Weekly Newsletter)
• The Full Focus Insider (Megan Hyatt Miller’s Newsletter)
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Most of us know we’re moving too fast, but can’t figure out how to stop. In this episode, journalist and author Carl Honoré joins Michael and Megan to explain how we got addicted to speed, what we’re missing out on as a result, and why slowing down is a skill that requires practice. They dig into the warning signs that you’re living too fast and the hidden math that makes quick fixes more expensive than slow ones. Our world moves fast. The good news is, you don’t have to.

Memorable Quotes

1. “There’s an intimate bond between slowness and remembering… Everything just moves very fast, nothing sticks, and you don’t remember anything.”
2. “Slow is a byword for lazy, boring, stupid, unproductive, all the things nobody wants to be associated with. And this taboo works like this: It means that even when we can feel in our bones that it’d be good for us to put on the brakes, even when we’re yearning to slow down, we don’t do it, because the taboo makes us feel ashamed, guilty, afraid.”
3. “People often say, ‘We don’t have time for a slow fix. We only have time for a quick fix,’ right?... But then later on, when the quick fix proves to have failed and blows up in our face, we always find time then to pick up the pieces and deal with the fallout, don’t we?”
4. “In this road runner culture, we are all marinated in adrenaline… I think we are now chemically, emotionally, physically, and biologically addicted to the rush of speed, and that drives us into the arms of the quick fix.”
5. “We need to build in little rituals—whether it’s meditation, reading a bit of poetry, sketching, whatever it is—that reacquaint us with slower, deeper rhythms… It kind of inoculates you against the virus of hurry… and allows you to come back into the fray with a mindset that is more still, more calm, more focused, more able to see the big picture.”
6. “It’s about doing things at, at the right speed. Musicians have a beautiful term for this. They call it the tempo giusto, right? The correct tempo for each piece of music… It’s putting quality before quantity. It’s being present, being in the moment… Slow is about doing everything not as fast as possible, but as well as possible.”
7. “One of the best ways to find that deeper, slower, healthier, richer rhythm, is spending time in nature. Because nature is the ultimate cradle of slowness. Everything happens in nature at the right pace.”
8. “Judiciously applied slowness can fire up creativity, can supercharge innovation, can deepen communication, and can avoid costly mistakes.”

Key Takeaways

1. Live in Tempo. There’s no one right speed, and slower isn’t always better. Musicians have a word for what we’re after: tempo giusto, the correct tempo for the piece. Sometimes, that tempo is fast! The skill is discerning the right speed, and moving at that pace.
2. Your Body Sends the Bill. Constant exhaustion, sloppy mistakes at work, and weeks you can’t quite recall are all symptoms of a life lived in overdrive. Your body isn't built to sustain that pace. Sooner or later, the bill comes due.
3. Quick Fixes Are Expensive. We reach for the fast solution because we believe we don’t have time for the slow one. But quick fixes usually create costly problems. Investing in slowness up front saves us hours and dollars.
4. Pull the Andon Rope. In Toyota factories, any worker at any rank could pull a rope and stop the entire production line when they spotted a problem. Everyone had permission to slow down and go find the root cause. What would that make possible in your company?
5. Slowness Requires Practice. Deciding to slow down won’t undo decades of speed. Slowing requires intentional practice. Choose hobbies or activities that require you to downshift—and don’t be surprised if you feel restless at first.

Resources

• In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré
• The Slow Fix by Carl Honoré
• carlhonore.info 

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

It's no secret that machine intelligence is evolving by the day. But what if there's a uniquely human intelligence that's altogether different? In this episode, neuroscientist, researcher, and Special Ops consultant Angus Fletcher joins Michael and Megan to explore our uniquely human contribution to the world. They unpack why children are more creative than AI, what intuition truly is (it's not pattern recognition), and how embracing your inner child can make you a better entrepreneur.

They also delve into human relationships, examining why mystery and curiosity are the engines of lasting love and how three simple practices helped turn around a 90% divorce rate among Army Special Forces operatives.

Memorable Quotes

1. “I think our brains are smarter than computers. I think children are more creative than AI. And I think that one of the real powers of the human brain is that unlike a computer, it doesn't need a lot of information. I think that it can handle volatility and uncertainty and all these kinds of things.”
2. “What we need to do as humans now is we need to say, ‘Hey, AI is great because it can handle all the label stuff, it can handle all the efficiency. It's time for us to get back to being human again,’ and realizing that being human again means cherishing the way that people are not like the labels I put on them."
3. “What's the one thing you learn in school? You learn that there's an answer, and the system has it. And what we know is that the more that a child believes that there's a right answer, the less likely she is to come up with a new answer. And so school, by its very method, crushes entrepreneurs.”
4. “Humans don't predict the future, we make the future. And the way that we make the future is we see a possibility that no one else has seen before, and we move faster to make that possibility happen, and that is unpredictable because it relies on the ability to spot exceptions faster.”
5. “When you despair, it's over. When you despair, you've already told yourself the end of the story, and so you've given up. Whereas what you've always gotta realize is that you're still in control, and you can still write the last chapter.”
6. “The reason that the hedonic treadmill exists is because once your brain has automated something, it wants you to move on from it. Your brain actually doesn't want you to take pleasure in automated activities because your brain wants you to automate something and then grow. Growth is what your brain takes perpetual pleasure from.”
7. “All the wisdom, all the emotional strength you have, those come from moments in your life when you struggled, when you failed, when you experienced setbacks and maybe even tragedies. And so really what you wanna do is you wanna start being thankful for those hard times because you realize those were a source of growth.”
8. “What we teach the operators is… to ask the other person who, what, when, where, how, but never why. Because the moment you ask ‘Why?’, you serve a judgment, and the conversation is over… The moment you've made a judgment, your relationship is over. You've fallen out of love. Love is about mystery.”

Key Takeaways

1. AI Optimizes. Humans Innovate. Computers excel in transparent, stable, data-rich environments. The human brain evolved for the opposite: murky, volatile, unpredictable conditions. Anytime you need something new, something human, or something that has never existed before, humans will always have the edge.
2. Intuition Is the Opposite of Pattern Recognition. That widely accepted belief that intuition is pattern recognition? It's demonstrably wrong. Computers are far better at pattern matching than humans, yet they have terrible intuition. Real intuition is the brain's ability to spot anomalies, exceptions, and outliers—the foundational skill of every entrepreneur.
3. Leave Optimizing to the Robots. The hedonic treadmill is real: the more you automate your life and work, the less pleasure you get from it. Your brain rewards growth. Leaders who focus exclusively on efficiency are, paradoxically, making themselves more replaceable in an AI world.
4. Your Inner Child Is Your Competitive Advantage. Children notice what's special. They don't think in labels and categories but embrace individuality and discovery. Reconnecting with that capacity—through travel, unfamiliar conversations, art, and genuine curiosity—is how you recultivate the intuition that school and workplace culture have suppressed.
5. Mystery Is Key to Love. Love thrives on the feeling that there's always something more to discover about your partner. Great partners keep asking questions: Who? What? When? And how? But they rarely ask Why?, because that renders judgment, and judgment kills curiosity and connection.

Resources

• Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know by Angus Fletcher
• Operation: Human (Angus Fletcher's newsletter)

Watch on YouTube at:  https://youtu.be/7w38CL5iX2Y

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound