Talk Therapy

We have a new podcast!!! You're going to love it. It's called Ordinary Astronauts and it's about tech, product building, and the psychology of work.Find it in your favorite podcast app here: https://pod.link/1636172848  

Hey friends! It's been awhile! We figured, what better way to come back than with a conversation with Dan and Nathan's actual therapist: Dan Tarplin. Every Wednesday for almost two years we've been seeing Dan to work on our relationship with each other and with the business, and it's been one of the best investments we've ever made. In this conversation we talk about what we've figured out over these two years, and what we're still working on. Enjoy!

What does it mean to crave admiration and respect? How can we handle it if we feel we're not getting it? The usual Ted Lasso gang (Dan, Nathan, Rachel) convene to recap the finale of season 2. Of course we talk about everything that happened with Nate's storyline, but we also talk about how we've all been in similar situations as Nate, and what Ted could have done better. All in all, it's been a great season and really fun to unpack with y'all!

(Ahoy, there! Spoilers ahead!) This week, the gang obsesses over Dan’s galaxy brain theory connecting Nate’s downfall with Sam’s courtship by the Ghanaian billionaire. Questions include: should Nate be fired? What do you do when forgiveness doesn’t change a perpetrator’s behavior? How do you design a consequence? Will Ted use the revelation of his panic attack to further the cause of mental health awareness in sports? Finally, Rachel explains how men should behave when a woman says she’s been kissed without her consent. Star Wars references abound. Show notes: Rachel mentions a hilarious Twitter comedian’s take on “Ted Lasso speak”—watch it here!

(Spoilers, as usual!) In this special double-header, the crew discusses some of the biggest episodes of the season so far. What is going on with Nate? What did Jamie's confrontation with his father unlock in Ted, and why? How do our parents affect us, and why is vulnerability so hard, yet so important? We explore all these questions and more!

In the this episode of Ted Lasso, Higgins decides to take Coach Beard aside and ask him whether he really thinks it's a good idea to get back into a relationship with Jane, because the last time they were together it was pretty tumultuous. We all face situations like this in the world of work: should we tell our founder when we're worried about their company? How can we tell our coworkers when we're worried about them? The paradox of these situations is on the one hand, we'll never have the context they do. But on the other hand, by having some distance we will have perspective that they can't. The key? Humility. After that discussion, we go over what's going on with Ted's breakdown, where things will go with Rebecca and her mystery lover, and predict what's happening in the rest of this season.

Dan, Nathan and Rachel, discuss what is perhaps the low point of a season that has already had its share of peaks and valleys. Why does the latest installment of Ted Lasso feel untrue to both the spirit of the show and the world beyond it? Listen through to find out—and to hear how each of the hosts hope the creators might turn it around in the season's back end.

Dan, Nathan, and Rachel compare their differing reactions to Ted Lasso's seasonably questionable Christmas episode. Is it a repreive from contrived plotting? Or a symptom of a followup season that hasn't decided on its core conflict yet?

We're partnering with Amazon this week to let our listeners know you can listen to Talk Therapy with a simple Alexa command!Just tell your Alexa speaker to play Talk Therapy—it's a great way to listen.

Dan, Nathan and Rachel reunite to discuss the second and third episodes of Ted Lasso's sophomore season, which they much prefer to the premiere. From deeply-felt thematic throughlines about mentor/mentee relationships, to the funniest gags in the show's history, the trio is engaging with Ted Lasso—or is it Led Tasso?—from every angle, so make this the recap podcast you listen to! Also, as a reminder, there are spoilers in this episode!

It's a very special time of year—a new season of Dan and Nathan's favorite show on management, positivity and leadership is starting back up. That's right, it's Ted Lasso time—and for the Apple show's second season, Talk Therapy will be welcoming fellow viewer and editor extraordinaire Rachel Jepsen to recap each episode after it airs! In this discussion of the season premiere—just in time for you to be caught up for today's followup—Dan, Nathan and Rachel discuss an opening beat that didn't quite land, the show's dip into therapy as a theme, and much more.

Nathan got himself a new fitness tracking device—and promptly found himself using it to track something unexpected: emotions. Returning to a recent management misunderstanding with Dan, he explains how the device alerted him to what he was feeling, and why his initial interpretation of his own reactions didn't hold up to scrutiny.

Nathan and Dan welcome Joshua Ogundu, a fellow member of the LA tech community, to the podcast for an open and insightful conversation about the benefits of therapy, and why it's never too late to begin. Take it from Joshua, whose openness about recently starting therapy is an inspiration, and a reminder that the practice can yield surprising results, from pattern recognition to being in touch with your senses.

Read Ali's Divinations piece, "The Inner Ring of the Internet."

Hot off a week spent brushing up on the finer points of game theory, Dan tells Nathan why a study in human behavior—specifically, cooperation—has conclusions that put cofounder relationships into a fresh new context. It turns out that just because the stakes of every interaction between founders may not be life and death, social biology makes a good rubric for understanding power and collaboration.

Nathan's been staying up to write into the wee hours of the night. Talking with Dan about how he balances sporadic work habits with a cohabitating relationship, he drills down on a larger question: how do we decide what's important? As the cofounders exchange their ongoing rubrics for prioritizing tasks, they hit on something crucial about running a business: you don't just prioritize in order to get the work done—you do it to give yourself cause for optimism.

Nathan's working more than ever, but it's also paradoxically helped to solve his burnout. In this episode, Dan and Nathan explore Nathan's experience with ADHD, and how working on things he's excited about—rather than things he thinks he *should* do—can work as a strategy that helps him be extremely productive.

Listen to Talk Therapy #5 from last year, in which Dan and Nathan reflect on how adding Tiago Forte to the bundle defied their growth expectations, and what they learned.

After talking with previous guest Alex Lieberman about panic and anxiety, Dan and Nathan walk through their memories of a panic attack that Dan experienced. In an effort to make peace with something that was deeply troubling at the time it happened, Dan has a lot of questions to answer for himself—and luckily, Nathan is there to ask them.

“I would say the last 3 months have been probably the most anxious months of the last 6 years for me.” Alex Lieberman’s identity for the past 7 years has been almost entirely about being the co-founder and CEO of Morning Brew. He created it from scratch, grew it to a $20m business, and then sold it for a reported ~$75m to Axel Springer, the parent company of Insider. But now all of that is in the past. While Alex will always be a co-founder of Morning Brew, he doesn’t own the business anymore. And, about a month ago, an even bigger change happened: Alex stepped out of the CEO role, and his co-founder Austin Rief stepped up. Exiting is always an awkward topic. On the one hand, it can make you very rich. On the other hand, it carries with it a whole host of complicated issues: a loss of identity, a loss of purpose, and a changed relationship with the people you work with most closely. Unfortunately, most founders never talk about this to anyone beyond their inner circle. There is a fear of being seen as weak, or as a complainer. But the best leaders understand the power that comes from honest vulnerability. Fortunately, in the first few minutes of this interview Alex Lieberman refers to himself as an “oversharer.” And he doesn’t shy away from talking about exactly the kinds of things that most people think they need to keep to themselves. In this interview we talk about: - What it was like to sell his business, and to move from CEO to Executive Chairman. - Why the last few months have been the most anxious of his career since founded Morning Brew - His worries about how people might perceive his move to Executive Chairman, and his relationship with his co-founder - His feelings of lost identity, and his fears around losing what he is most passionate about - His struggles with OCD and panic during his years building Morning Brew, and the ways he’s worked to cope with them Alex comes off as vulnerable, honest, and extremely self-aware. We were honored to have him on, and we think you’ll learn a lot from this episode. We did too.