The Art of the Zag

AI now polls worse than ICE. Joe and Shane break down five stories of the AI revolt: booed CEOs, Gen Z sabotage, a $500M Claude Code bill, and the parent rebellion nobody’s pricing in.  Chapters: (00:00) The AI backlash is everywhere (03:00) AI now polls worse than ICE (08:15) The real story of the Luddites (17:05) Eric Schmidt gets booed (29:42) Is the jobpocalypse canceled? (48:08) The $500M Cla...

At Google I/O this week, the company revealed that the traditional 10 blue links experience is being replaced with a Gemini-powered AI chat experience. Joe and Shane break down what this means for publishers, creators, and anyone who still thinks of the web as a place you visit. Why would Google detonate its own golden goose? Joe and Shane work through the possibilities: cognitive entrenchment, th...

AI demos look great. AI in real production work? Different story. Last quarter, Shane wrapped a TV show — a hybrid of live action and animation. Going in, the social media hype around AI animation tools suggested they could carry real production work. Shane tested them and was massively disappointed. Every frame of animation in the final show ended up being done by humans. That's the AI reality ga...

What if a neuroscientist could measure exactly which stories change your brain -- and which ones fall flat? Dr. Paul Zak is the neuroeconomist who spent two decades answering that question. His lab discovered that great stories spike oxytocin -- the neurochemical behind trust -- and built a platform that can predict which messages will change behavior with over 80% accuracy. Joe and Shane have wri...

Two ex-McKinsey consultants quit the firm in the early 90s to do the opposite of what McKinsey does. The first time they tried it, one company found $400 million in earnings. Jeremy Eden and Terri Long, co-CEOs of Harvest Earnings Group and authors of the New York Times bestseller "Low-Hanging Fruit," join Joe Lazer and Shane Snow to break down the Idea Harvest methodology — a 100-day process that...

How does a fiction writer build one of the most influential tech publications on the planet – by publishing 15,000-word essays for an audience that everyone says has no time to read? Mario Gabriele, founder of The Generalist (163K+ subscribers, $22/month), broke every conventional rule of media and won. In this episode, Joe and Shane sit down with Mario to steal the secrets behind his unlikely med...

How does a poet get corporations like Nike, Google, and Toyota to pay $50,000+ per performance? Grammy-nominated spoken word artist Sekou Andrews created "Poetic Voice" — a groundbreaking fusion of spoken word poetry and keynote speaking that has made him what Forbes calls "the de facto poet laureate of corporate America." In this episode of The Art of the Zag, Sekou tells us how a 5th grade teach...

Why don't we trust the Terminator? He's strong, smart, and always keeps his word — but nobody would trust him. The answer reveals the hidden psychology of trust that most people never think about. In this episode, Joe Lazer and Shane Snow sit down with Dr. F. David Schoorman, a Purdue University professor whose research on trust has been cited over 50,000 times — including what's widely considered...

A 55-year-old man had metal plates ripped from his leg with zero painkillers. His vital signs stayed completely stable. How? The science of belief — and it changes everything you think about your limits. Bestselling author Nir Eyal (Hooked, Indistractable) joins Joe Lazer and Shane Snow to reveal why your biggest limitations aren't physical — they're psychological. His new book Beyond Belief break...

In this episode, Shane Snow interviews Joe Lazer about his new book—Super Skill: Why Storytelling Is the Superpower of the AI Age, which launched this past week as an Amazon #1 New Release. They dissect why companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are paying $500K+ for storytelling roles, how storytelling serves as a meta-skill that makes us better at all the soft skills that matter most in the next ag...

There’s one terrifying fact about AI that most people are shocked to learn: They’re a black box. We don’t really know how they work. That’s right—we’re spending trillions of dollars on a technology that’s almost zoodoo magic. The consequences of this are dire. It increases the existential risk of AI. It also means that when a model runs awry, AI producers can’t debug it. But one startup is changin...

Following the murder of Alex Pretti by border patrol agents, it’s never been more important for us to be able to discern truth from reality and understand when we’re being manipulated.  That’s why, for the second episode of The Art of the Zag, I wanted to have a conversation with my co-host Shane Snow about a semi-viral essay he wrote following the murder of Alex Pretti in Minnesota: “How to Tell...

In the first episode of The Art of the Zag, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie reveals his strategy to cure social media's "mental illness" and how Substack will handle the coming deluge of AI slop.  Plus, Joe and Shane's 2026 predictions!  Have a pitch for a guest or feedback on the show? Email guest@joelazer.com . Get the Art of the Zag on: * Spotify * Apple Podcasts * YouTube Get full access t...

Best-selling authors and long-time buddies Shane Snow and Joe Lazer explore how to win by zagging when everyone else is zigging—in business and in life. Learn breakthrough strategies for building trust, telling better stories, and winning the AI Age from the world's most innovative founders, authors, and icons. Have an idea for a guest? Email guest@joelazer.com . Get full access to The Storytellin...