How to Set (And Keep) Your Boundaries, Solved

More from SOLVED with Mark Manson

1. 

   E15 · 18 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

   Romantic Love, Solved

   We put love on trial — literally. Drew and I squared off in a full debate over whether romantic love is overrated. I made the case that love is basically your brain's con man, a neurochemical hijacking designed to make you delusional about deeply flawed people, and that the most intoxicating relationships are often the most toxic. Drew fought back with the evidence that love is the foundation of social infrastructure, physical health, and long-term happiness. By the end, we came to a gentlemen’s agreement: a framework that explains why we're all chasing the wrong kind of love, and what the…

2. 

   E14 · 4 Feb 2026 · 4 hr 29 min

   Dating, Solved: Why Finding the Right Person Feels So Hard

   Most people aren’t bad at dating, they’re just trying to solve the wrong problem. We treat dating like a personality test (“Am I attractive enough? Confident enough?”) when it’s actually a multi-stage process, and each stage punishes completely different mistakes. That one misunderstanding explains why dating feels so confusing, why men and women keep blaming each other, why dating apps feel brutal, and why so much dating advice makes things worse instead of better. In this episode of Solved, Drew and I break down why modern dating feels so broken, and why it actually isn’t. We dig into the…

3. 

   E13 · 15 Jan 2026 · 2 hr 31 min

   How to Quiet Your Ego (Without Losing Yourself), Solved

   Most people think ego is either something you need to kill off entirely or inflate to take over the world. Both are wrong. In this episode, we dig deep into what ego actually is—how it evolved, why it matters, and how it secretly runs your life without you realizing it. We hit Freud, Buddhism, David Hume, Jung’s shadow self, and even the Navy SEALs to unpack why your ego isn’t always the enemy—it’s mostly just misunderstood. Then we get into how to quiet your ego without losing your identity, and yes, we talk psychedelics, too. This is everything you were never taught about ego—but should’ve…

4. 

   E11 · 15 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 26 min

   Solved, Answers: Finding Purpose, Failing Better, and the AI Future

   This one’s different. In this special year-end episode, I answer your questions—from the deep stuff about purpose and motivation, to the uncomfortable realities of change, burnout, failure, and dealing with unsupportive family. I also share the behind-the-scenes chaos of building SOLVED this year, what I learned about making massive, meaningful content, and what’s coming in 2026 (spoiler: boundaries, ego, and maybe some live shows). This is part personal, part philosophical, and part therapy session disguised as a podcast. If you’ve been wondering what’s next—or why you feel stuck—this one’s…

5. 

   E10 · 4 Dec 2025 · 4 hr 44 min

   Finding Your Purpose, Solved

   This is the episode I’ve been waiting to make for a long time. Purpose has been at the core of everything I’ve written and done for over a decade—and in this episode, we go all the way down the rabbit hole. From Viktor Frankl surviving Auschwitz to the myth of “finding your one true purpose,” we break down what purpose really is, why you feel lost without it, and how you can build it into your life. We also get uncomfortable (in the best way) and talk about the dark side of purpose—how it can burn you out, trap you in toxic ambition, or become an excuse to ruin your life. And I have a very…

6. 

   E9 · 15 Nov 2025 · 2 hr 4 min

   Comparing Yourself to Others, Solved

   We all compare ourselves to other people—our friends, coworkers, strangers on the internet—and most of the time, it makes us feel like shit. But why do we keep doing it? In this episode of Solved, we dig into the uncomfortable truth behind social comparison, how it quietly ruins our self-worth, and why most of what we envy in others is a projection of our own insecurity. We also get into the brutal paradox of success, the toxic loop of chasing status, and how the constant measurement of our lives against others is one of the dumbest things we do as a species. If you’ve ever felt not good…

7. 

   7 Oct 2026 · 3 hr 44 minNew

   Failure, Solved

   Fail fast. Fail forward. Fail better. As a society, we’ve turned failure into a slogan to celebrate, but somehow we’re more afraid of it than ever. So what's going on? Most of us say failure is our best teacher, but I doubt many of you have ever walked away from a failure doing a happy dance. IInstead, you probably let the moment rattle around in your head at some ungodly hour, then played it a little safer the next time. Don't worry, you're not the only one. Today, Drew and I break down why every piece of advice you've ever received about failure has, well… failed you. We cover why…

8. 

   2 Sep 2026 · 4 hr 10 min

   Finding Your Life Path, Solved

   You've been told your whole life to explore, keep your options open, try new things. And you've done exactly that. Moved cities, pivoted careers, taken every personality quiz. But here's what nobody warns you about: all that freedom might be the thing keeping you stuck. This episode digs into a depressed 19th century Danish philosopher who diagnosed our entire modern crisis 180 years before we lived it. We tell the story of Casanova, history's most famous fuckboy, who had more adventures than anyone alive and died completely alone with nothing but 2,000 pages of memories nobody believed. We…

9. 

   E24 · 5 Aug 2026 · 3 hr 49 min

   How to Get Lucky, Solved

   Ask most successful people how they got where they are, and the answer is usually some version of "good timing." Everyone else swears they earned it. We're terrible at seeing our own luck clearly, and even worse at realizing how much of it we could create. In this episode, Drew and I get into why: the psychology that makes us deny luck even exists, and what changes the moment you stop pretending everything is earned. We start with Warren Buffett - why a man worth tens of billions says the single most important thing that ever happened to him was where and when he was born. Then there's…

10. 

    E24 · 1 Jul 2026 · 3 hr 57 min

    How to Build Confidence, Solved

    Confidence isn't something you build. It's what's left over. You've done the pose. Hands on hips, chest out, an affirmation on a sticky note stuck to the mirror. And then you walked into the room feeling exactly the same, or worse. Here's what nobody tells you: the entire concept of confidence you've been sold was invented by an anxious preacher in the 1940s who mistook his own coping mechanism for a universal law. The research is even uglier. Affirmations reliably make insecure people feel less secure. Visualizing success decreases motivation. The most famous confidence technique in history…

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