Nir Eyal on belief, motivation, and the end of suffering

Summation with Auren Hoffman

Summation with Auren Hoffman
Nir Eyal on belief, motivation, and the end of suffering
Sep 01, 2026
Auren Hoffman

Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked, which became Silicon Valley's playbook for building habit-forming products, Indistractable, on taking your attention back, and the new book Beyond Belief. He taught at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and is one of the sharpest thinkers on what to do with technology.

In this episode of Summation, Nir and Auren discuss:

  • Why to-do lists set you up to feel like a failure and what to do instead
  • Why 90% of the time you check your phone, it's an uncomfortable emotion, not a notification
  • Why beliefs are tools, not truths, and how swapping one can end your suffering
  • Why this is the safest generation of kids in history and still gets a moral panic

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Nir Eyal on X at @nireyal

Episode Artwork Nir Eyal on belief, motivation, and the end of suffering 1:07:26 Episode Artwork SecureAuth CEO Geoff Mattson on the coming fraudpocalypse and the death of the password 45:46 Episode Artwork Fmr. Senator Cory Gardner: why the AI race is won on boring infrastructure and how China wins by making America hate AI 53:33 Episode Artwork CodeRabbit CEO Harjot Gill on software's new bottleneck and zero to $50m ARR in 2 years 55:22 Episode Artwork Moritz Baier-Lentz on why the future of AI runs on video games 1:05:01 Episode Artwork OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji: measuring the greatest technology of our time 56:31 Episode Artwork Anthropic’s Felix Rieseberg: why AI wins a Nobel before a Pulitzer 1:06:33 Episode Artwork Fifth Wall CEO Brendan Wallace: the data center land grab and the most stable asset on earth you still can't buy 53:10 Episode Artwork Striveworks CEO Jim Rebesco on drone swarms, AI for warfighters, and the end of air superiority 1:00:04 Episode Artwork Short-seller Carson Block: a fugitive CEO, Libyan spies, and $50B fraud 1:10:47 Episode Artwork Facet CEO Anders Jones on the biggest heist in finance, how advisors really sell permission, and the great boomer wealth transfer 49:36 Episode Artwork Charles Duhigg on the writing AI can't touch, what GLP-1s really do to your brain, and the serendipity tax 1:03:42 Episode Artwork SignalFire CEO Chris Farmer on why venture funds now last 20 years and the hiring boom behind the layoffs 46:03 Episode Artwork GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent 39:59 Episode Artwork Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn 50:10 Episode Artwork Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource 1:00:06 Episode Artwork Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office 1:02:03 Episode Artwork Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war 1:05:23 Episode Artwork Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office​ 57:44 Episode Artwork Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on why trades are AI-proof, the trillion-dollar home services market, and why software stopped being a capital asset 58:53 Episode Artwork Eric Ries on why "bad governance" outperforms, the case against shareholder primacy, and AI's Chernobyl moment 58:46 Episode Artwork Fmr. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on NATO, nuclear energy, and how to disagree without blood 1:01:18 Episode Artwork Fmr Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on chips, China, and lessons from Andy Grove 58:10 Episode Artwork Vlad Tenev and Tudor Achim on mathematical superintelligence, why math is harder than code for LLMs, and the end of buggy software 48:54 Episode Artwork Retired 4-star General John Allen on Iran, AI hyperwar, and Taiwan’s future 55:19