Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier

Nick Richtsmeier
  • 5.0 (2)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED SEMIWEEKLY

(formerly Working/Broken) Brains On. Hearts Open. Forward Motion... for the Post-Digital World. The world has gotten very good at telling us what’s broken. Platforms. Politics. Power. Business. Culture. Every feed reminds us we’re smaller than we thought, and that the real decisions are being made somewhere else. When that message sinks in deeply enough, disengagement, even nihilism start become the default position. Businesses holding out for "someday." Ideas in limbo. Fear run amok. Our ability to make the world a long lost fantasy. We become spectators in a life we’re supposed to be living. Damns Given is a show for those who refuse to surrender their agency. Hosted by strategist and author Nick Richtsmeier, Damns Given is a forum for Nick and his guests fight back against the "it-is-what-it-is-isms" of our day and the abandonment of agency that the algorithmic systems have demanded of us, calling us forward into a post-digital world where we are free again to ask betting questions of: How the internet has trained us to think algorithm-first and self-secondWhy our attention is our most powerful (and misdirected) assetWhat happens when leaders disconnect from real human scaleHow to build a meaningful life and business without waiting for permissionThe small decisions and risks that actually move the world forward The premise is simple: We already know what’s broken.Now we ask:How do we show up anyway?No doomscrolling disguised as insight. No performing for the feed. Just honest conversations with thinkers, builders, and leaders who are navigating this moment with clarity — and giving a damn about the future they’re helping shape. Because the game isn’t over. And the people who still care will decide what happens next. You can find additional resources at DamnsGiven.com.

  1. AI's Gift Reveal of Internet Religion (and what's next for Working/Broken)

    11/03/2025

    AI's Gift Reveal of Internet Religion (and what's next for Working/Broken)

    Send us a text Sometimes you become a part of the thing you're trying to fix. And as the internet content world crashes around us, pulled to the floorboards by AI, Brad and Nick reflect on the work of podcasting and content creation, focusing on some hard lessons learned in the last year. But beyond just ruminating on what's gone wrong (and how that, in a very meta way, is what has gone wrong with this and many podcasts), the hosts pivot to big changes coming for Working/Broken and what that means for people who want to make a difference in the world we're making together. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Working Broken Podcast 00:56 Reflections on Podcasting Journey 03:10 Identifying What's Working and What's Broken 05:54 Shifting Perspectives on Content Creation 08:45 Exploring Agency and Cultural Impact 11:51 The Need for Change in Podcast Structure 14:43 Introducing the New Direction: Dams Given 19:51 The Attention Economy and Its Impact 23:48 Reframing Our Approach to Attention 27:42 Understanding Internet Poisoning 31:32 Detoxing from Algorithmic Thinking 34:16 The Future of the Podcast and Community Engagement Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    38 min
  2. The End of Marketing as We Know It — Trust is All We Have Left

    10/09/2025

    The End of Marketing as We Know It — Trust is All We Have Left

    Send us a text In this episode, Brad and Nick dive into what marketing is becoming now that we live in a post-trust, post-algorithm, post-authenticity world. They’re not interested in tactics—they’re interested in how the deep cultural forces reshaping trust, commerce, and identity are scrambling what it even means to “market” something. Together, they explore: Why traditional marketing frameworks no longer applyHow the best marketing today isn’t marketing at all—it’s signalWhat happens when attention becomes too expensive for most businesses to buyWhy people aren’t buying messages—they’re buying alignmentHow real resonance begins when you quit trying to prove and start trying to beThis is a powerful conversation for anyone who senses that our current approach to audience, storytelling, and persuasion has gone stale—but hasn’t quite found language for what’s next. As always, the episode lives up to the Working/Broken premise: challenging listeners who followed the rules of the game, only to discover the game changed mid-play. Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    39 min
  3. We Weren't Built for This with Alexandra Pasi, PhD

    09/23/2025

    We Weren't Built for This with Alexandra Pasi, PhD

    Send us a text In this episode, host Nick Richtsmeier sits down with Lexi Pasi, a PhD in Communication and expert in the field of AI, to unpack what’s actually happening to our attention, language, and selves in today’s online environments. Lexi brings academic depth, cultural critique, and personal insight to the conversation—exposing how platforms not only distort what we say, but who we become in the process. Lexi and the hosts explore questions at the heart of the Working/Broken project: What if the reason work—and life—feels so off is because the very mediums we communicate through are bending us into shapes we didn’t choose. They tackle how social media trains us to self-narrate constantly, creates performance-driven personalities, and incentivizes simplistic, binary, hot-take thinking over honest, complex, and often uncertain expression. Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    48 min
  4. The Myth of Inevitability and How it Makes Culture

    07/31/2025

    The Myth of Inevitability and How it Makes Culture

    Send us a text This episode isn’t about AI. Not really. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves about technology, power, and what we’re allowed to feel. Nick and Brad take apart the myth of inevitability around artificial intelligence—specifically large language models (LLMs)—and ask who benefits from that myth. Spoiler: it’s not you. Nick’s viral post about saying “no” to wearable AI at the dinner table sets the stage. What followed? A flood of people thanking him for drawing a line—and another flood accusing him of condemning his children to a lifetime of ruin. The episode explores what it means to lead with agency, discernment, and humility in a culture obsessed with optimization. Brad reminds us that the promises of tech are almost always overblown—and the consequences are rarely predicted. (Remember when the internet was going to make us all smarter?) Together, they call B.S. on the assumption that every AI advancement is a step toward progress. They don’t offer easy answers—but they do offer a better question: “What are we becoming as we adopt these tools?” Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    40 min
  5. Should Jobs Still Require Degrees?

    07/14/2025

    Should Jobs Still Require Degrees?

    Send us a text On this episode, we tackle a longstanding battle that has nearly boiled over: the role of college in career-preparation. Or, more specifically, why do hiring managers still require degrees for new roles? And should they?  The old biases persist: many hiring managers still view a degree as a shorthand for maturity, responsibility, and readiness. But with roles evolving fast and the shelf life of job-specific skills shrinking, is that shortcut doing more harm than good? In the end, Brad and Nick are do what they always do, plunging us into the fundamental question of what higher ed's job is and should be in a functioning society... and is this a functioning society at all? Together, they explore: Why “entry-level” doesn’t mean what it used toHow automation and AI are softening the bottom of the job marketThe tension between hiring for the current role vs. hiring for a pathThe challenge of finding people who can evolve with the organizationWhether freelance might be a better fit than full-time in many casesHow the university system became a cultural scapegoat—and what we lose when we misunderstand itEnsure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    30 min
  6. Remix Culture and the Scraped Internet

    06/17/2025

    Remix Culture and the Scraped Internet

    Send us a text In this introspective and timely episode, Brad and Nick take on a deceptively simple question: Do we really own our ideas anymore? Prompted by Nick’s recent experience of having his writing lifted and reposted—sometimes respectfully, sometimes not—the conversation weaves through authorship, digital ethics, AI scraping, and the deeper emotional terrain of publishing on the internet. What begins as a conversation about plagiarism quickly becomes something bigger: a meditation on intellectual generosity, attribution, and the meaning of creative work in a remix culture. Nick wrestles with the tension between wanting his writing to matter and his desire to be part of the conversation his work sparks. Brad adds reflections on how creative inspiration often flows from one source to another and how acknowledging that is more art than science. In this jam-packed discussion, they also hit: How human creativity works (messy, layered, integrative)The rise of AI and its flattening effect on original voiceThe emotional whiplash of going viralWhy traditional publishing may be a spiritual balm in an age of digital entropyAt the core: the internet changed how we think about ownership. AI is changing it again. So where does that leave creators, thinkers, and leaders trying to say something real? Referenced Resources: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Ezra Klein and Derek ThompsonDefinition of “Palimpsest” Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    28 min
  7. Nick Power: The Essential Art of Being Real on the Internet

    05/30/2025

    Nick Power: The Essential Art of Being Real on the Internet

    Send us a text In this wide-ranging interview style episode, host Nick Richtsmeier sits down with one of the most unexpected and impactful voices on LinkedIn in 2025: Nick Power, the marketer and writer behind a wave of unfiltered, politically-aware, and often hilarious posts that challenged the business-as-usual tone of the platform. What began as a creative shift away from conventional “thought leadership” turned into something larger: a community movement, a form of resistance, and an experiment in what truth-telling looks like on a platform built for polished personal brands. In this episode, we unpack the unexpected intersection between late-stage capitalism, artful forms of digital protest, and rethinking the religion of personal brand. The Nicks take us through their takes on what the #weirdLinkedIn movement meant, and what happens next. Resources Referenced 📚 Ezra Klein on the Temptation to Assume the End Referenced for insight on acting in the present rather than assuming outcomes are predetermined.📱 Sharon McMahon / @sharonsaysso on Instagram Praised by Nick Power for making complex news stories accessible and balanced.💡 The Noun Project Nick Power is Head of Marketing at this resource for design icons and visual taxonomies.Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    46 min
  8. Is "Politics" Breaking Work?

    05/21/2025

    Is "Politics" Breaking Work?

    Send us a text In this timely and unfiltered episode, Brad and Nick explore the increasingly tangled relationship between politics and work culture. They ask the central question: Has politics become so pervasive that it’s breaking our ability to lead, work, and think clearly? Key Themes: The Blurring Line Between Culture and Politics: Brad and Nick debate whether culture is now downstream from politics or whether it's still the other way around. Nick argues that cultural trends, even fringe ones, often precede political movements (e.g., mommy bloggers influencing public health debates).The Role of Algorithms: The hosts criticize how algorithmic thinking is shaping what we consume, from news headlines to music to political discourse, and how it narrows our perspectives. Fear and Existential Framing: Every political issue today is presented in existential terms, which creates emotional fatigue and disrupts our ability to engage meaningfully in leadership and life.Leadership, Brands, and Point of View: In today’s climate, leaders and companies can’t afford to be neutral. Nick makes the case that if you’re not willing to state a point of view—on the issues that matter to your work—you lose trust and relevance. Creating Better Culture: Iif we want better politics, we must first invest in better culture—through storytelling, creativity, and human connection. He criticizes cultural homogeneity (driven by platforms like Spotify or Netflix) as a breeding ground for bland politics and weak leadership.Notable Quotes: "Bad culture makes bad politics." – Nick"Politics feels like a tax on my attention—it's stealing time from the things I care about." – Brad"Culture is a product of human relationships. You can't make good culture with machines." – Nick"If you're going to be in business today, you need a point of view. Period." – NickReferenced Resources: The Cult of Creativity by Samuel W. Franklin A deep dive into how “creativity” became central to modern work and business culture. Tangle Newsletter A politically balanced daily newsletter that presents left, right, and center perspectives on current events. Ensure you are fully subscribed through your favorite podcast app so you do not miss a single episode. Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

    43 min
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Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

(formerly Working/Broken) Brains On. Hearts Open. Forward Motion... for the Post-Digital World. The world has gotten very good at telling us what’s broken. Platforms. Politics. Power. Business. Culture. Every feed reminds us we’re smaller than we thought, and that the real decisions are being made somewhere else. When that message sinks in deeply enough, disengagement, even nihilism start become the default position. Businesses holding out for "someday." Ideas in limbo. Fear run amok. Our ability to make the world a long lost fantasy. We become spectators in a life we’re supposed to be living. Damns Given is a show for those who refuse to surrender their agency. Hosted by strategist and author Nick Richtsmeier, Damns Given is a forum for Nick and his guests fight back against the "it-is-what-it-is-isms" of our day and the abandonment of agency that the algorithmic systems have demanded of us, calling us forward into a post-digital world where we are free again to ask betting questions of: How the internet has trained us to think algorithm-first and self-secondWhy our attention is our most powerful (and misdirected) assetWhat happens when leaders disconnect from real human scaleHow to build a meaningful life and business without waiting for permissionThe small decisions and risks that actually move the world forward The premise is simple: We already know what’s broken.Now we ask:How do we show up anyway?No doomscrolling disguised as insight. No performing for the feed. Just honest conversations with thinkers, builders, and leaders who are navigating this moment with clarity — and giving a damn about the future they’re helping shape. Because the game isn’t over. And the people who still care will decide what happens next. You can find additional resources at DamnsGiven.com.

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