Passion Struck with John R. Miles

What happens when you achieve the life you thought you wanted, only to realize you no longer feel connected to it? For John R. Miles, that question became impossible to ignore. After years of executive success, demanding workweeks, and responsibilities that kept growing, a simple question from his young son stopped him in his tracks: “Dad, why don't you ever laugh anymore?” In this special live co...

What if the voice you use to motivate yourself is the very voice keeping you stuck? You push harder after a mistake. You judge yourself for falling short. You tell yourself that if you were more disciplined, more successful, or simply better, you would finally feel worthy. But what if being hard on yourself isn't making you stronger? What if it’s making it harder to recover, grow, and move forward...

What if the behaviors that made you successful are the same ones keeping you from feeling fulfilled? You learned to be dependable. You became the overachiever, the caretaker, the person who never asks for help. People praised your strength, relied on your generosity, and rewarded your ability to get things done. But what if those behaviors began as ways to feel safe, earn love, or prove you were w...

What if the beliefs you hold about yourself, your future, and the world around you are shaping what happens next more than you realize? Shawn Achor, bestselling author and one of the leading voices in positive psychology, joins John R. Miles to explore the science behind The Power of Beliefs. Drawing on research in psychology, medicine, education, and human performance, Shawn explains how the way...

What if you can be successful, needed, productive, and admired, and still feel like you don't matter? That's the paradox at the heart of John R. Miles' new book, The Mattering Effect . In this special conversation, originally recorded for Mick Hunt's Mick Unplugged , Mick sits down with John to explore the personal story behind the book and the question that changed the direction of John's life: D...

What if the biggest problem in your life isn't what's wrong with you—but what's happening to you? Burnout. Loneliness. Disconnection. Exhaustion. The feeling that you're constantly working, producing, improving, and performing, yet somehow becoming less visible to yourself. What if these aren't separate problems? What if they're different expressions of the same unanswered human question: Do I mat...

What if the way you’ve been taught to adapt is actually making you lose yourself? For weeks, The Adaptive Human has explored what it takes to navigate a world that keeps changing. Angela Duckworth showed us that our environments shape who we become. Martin Seligman showed us the power of agency. David Epstein revealed how constraints can unlock better thinking. Cole Brauer showed us what happens w...

What if you're working harder and harder—but you're still moving in the wrong direction? Alec Litowitz learned this lesson during a mountain bike race in the Pyrenees, when hesitating before a blind downhill jump nearly sent him over the handlebars. Years later, that same lesson became a framework for how he thinks about investing, leadership, AI, and life: You can't stay stuck between decisions w...

What if the things we think are helping our children succeed are actually making it harder for them to become independent? Dr. Peter Gray has spent decades studying childhood, play, education, and human development. In his new book, Restoring Childhood , he argues that childhood has a fundamental biological purpose: gradually learning to take charge of your own life. But modern childhood looks inc...

Why What Matters Most Is Rarely the Loudest What if the things getting the most attention in your life aren't actually the things that matter most? We live in a world that rewards visibility. The viral headline. The impressive title. The dramatic turnaround. The big announcement. The person who creates the most noise in the room. But some of the most valuable things in life work differently. They...

What if the question you’re avoiding is the one you most need to answer? We often think courage means doing something difficult or frightening. But Scott Simon says the place people struggle most isn't physical courage—it’s having the courage to ask and answer hard questions. In this episode, Scott Simon and Gregory Stock bring together two decades-long bodies of work: Scott’s exploration of coura...

You're smart. You're informed. So why do you still make terrible decisions? We like to believe that intelligence and information protect us from bad decisions. They don't. Professor Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and Fellow of the British Academy, returns to Passion Struck to reveal the psychological forces that can distort our judgment—from confirmation bias and ancho...

What if the proof you're waiting for never comes? The apology. The promotion. The recognition. Someone finally admitting they were wrong about you. Someone finally telling you that you belong. What if you're waiting for proof that you don't actually need? After conversations with Cole Brauer and psychologist Marisa Franco, John R. Miles noticed a powerful connection between their work. Cole was to...

Why do you still feel like you're not enough—even when your life looks successful from the outside? You can have a successful career, loving relationships, and people who genuinely care about you—and still struggle to believe you're worthy of love, connection, or belonging. Marisa G. Franco, psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Platonic , returns to Passion Struck to explore th...

What happens when someone tells you that you're too small to do the thing you've been working toward your entire life? For Cole Brauer, that moment could have been the end of the story. Instead, it became part of the beginning. Cole was told she was too short to compete in the Southern Ocean. She was cut from a major team after traveling across the Atlantic and giving up paid opportunities to purs...

What if having more freedom doesn't always make you more free? We tend to believe that adaptability means having more options, more resources, more independence, and more control. But after conversations with Martin Seligman and David Epstein, I began to see a different pattern. Sometimes unlimited freedom creates paralysis. Sometimes individual willpower becomes isolation. And sometimes our great...

Have you ever felt like you need more options, more time, more freedom, or a bigger opportunity before you can finally make progress? What if the opposite is true? Today, John R. Miles sits down with New York Times bestselling author David Epstein, author of Range and The Sports Gene , to explore why constraints can sometimes unlock the creativity and focus that unlimited freedom cannot. David's n...

Have you ever reached a point where you stopped believing that what you do could actually make a difference? Maybe you tried harder. Maybe you kept showing up. But after enough setbacks, rejection, or disappointment, something inside you started asking, "Why bother?" Today, John R. Miles sits down with Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the most influential psychologists of our time and a pioneer of posi...

Have you ever worked harder and harder at something, only to wonder why nothing seems to change? You may assume the answer is that you need more discipline, more motivation, or more grit. But what if the problem isn't you? Today, John R. Miles explores that question through two very different lenses: Angela Duckworth's research on how situations shape our behavior and Jared Diamond's work on when...

What makes someone a great leader? Is it talent? Timing? Character? Circumstance? Or simply being the right person in the right place at the right moment? Today, John R. Miles sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and bestselling author Jared Diamond to explore one of the biggest questions in his new book, Profits, Profits, Profits, Coaches and Kings: When Do Leaders Matter? After spendi...

If you’ve been trying to change your life but keep falling back into the same habits, this episode is for you. Today, John R. Miles sits down with Angela Duckworth, one of the world’s leading psychologists and the bestselling author of Grit. Angela has spent her career studying why some people are able to achieve their goals and reach their potential. But in her new book, Situated , she shares a p...

If you constantly feel like you should be doing more, achieving more, or becoming more, this episode is for you. Today, John R. Miles sits down with Caleb Campbell, a former NFL player and author of the new book Unstriving. For much of his life, Caleb believed that success would finally make him feel like he was enough. But after spending years pursuing achievement and reaching goals he once dream...

What if everything you’ve been told about midlife is wrong? If you’ve ever worried that your best years are behind you, that it’s too late to change, or that getting older automatically means losing your energy, purpose, or sense of possibility, this episode is for you. Today, John R. Miles sits down with Dr. Margie Lachman, a leading lifespan psychologist and author of Primetime: A New Vision for...

What if the thing you regret most someday isn't what you did—but what you never tried? In this episode of Passion Struck, John R. Miles sits down with behavioral economist and bestselling author Dan Ariely to explore why we make decisions that don't always serve our long-term well-being. Dan's research reveals a surprising pattern: in the moment, we tend to regret the risks we take. But when we lo...

What would change if you stopped worrying so much about what everyone else thinks of you? Actor, entrepreneur, and father Josh Duhamel has spent decades in the spotlight, but he says one of the biggest things he has learned with age is that he no longer needs to pretend for anyone—and that caring too much about other people's opinions once kept him from living his “full version” of himself. In thi...