The Yes Theory Podcast

Ever struggled to do your laundry, re-register your car, or make time to go to the dentist? It might make you feel like you’re terrible at “adulting,” but it turns out that’s actually more normal than you think and there might be a pretty solid explanation: burnout. Anne Helen Peterson, author of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, joins Matt in this episode to talk about th...

“Hope makes you follow your dreams,” says actress Dina Shihabi, from the Amazon Original Jack Ryan. “I would have nothing in my life if I didn't have hope.” We’re living through a pretty dark time right now. There’s this constant stream of negative news coverage and criticism. It’s hard to feel certain or confident about anything. Which is why it’s more important than ever to tap into our collecti...

Pandemics and vast uncertainty aside, life is hard. And for whatever reason, it seems to be getting harder. Studies have shown that the average kid today experiences more anxiety than the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s.  It feels like there’s this undercurrent of anxiety to everything we do. But instead of dealing with it, we fill our calendars with back-to-back appointments and our live...

Remember the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated? You probably learned it in kindergarten. Chances are you haven’t really upped your kindness game since. Most of us haven’t. The older we get, the more responsibilities, anxieties, and personal pursuits take over. And kindness simply doesn’t make the to-do list.  It’s not that we think kindness is any less important than in kind...

Before Yes Theory, we were just three guys trying to figure out what we wanted to do in life. We didn’t know much, just that we didn’t want to walk predictable paths. Luckily, we each had mentors that inspired us to stop thinking and start doing--anything and everything outside our comfort zones.  In this episode, we call back two of those early mentors to talk about why having novel experiences i...

If 2020 was a question, it would be… how the heck do you make the best of a situation when you can’t even understand the situation?  When we asked Harvard Professor and Atlantic columnist, Arthur Brooks, he said so matter of factly, “You have to be an entrepreneur about your life.”  And when we asked Ozan Varol, the self-described perpetual dropout (but more importantly the rocket scientist, lawye...

Welcome to Yes Theory — the audio experience. We’re your hosts Thomas Brag, Ammar Kandil, and Matt Dajer. You may know us from our YouTube channel with the same name, or maybe not.  We believe the best things in life are outside your comfort zone. We’re talking about meaning, connection, you know all the good stuff. Over the last 5 years, we’ve made a habit of seeking discomfort and creating video...