Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
Brains On. Hearts Open. Forward Motion. For the Trustbroken Economy
The world has gotten very good at telling you what's wrong. The platforms are extractive. The institutions are hollow. The algorithm is running the show. Your attention is the product. And somewhere along the way, the message landed: the real decisions are being made somewhere else, by someone else, and there's not much you can do about it.
That message is a lie. But it's a convincing one. And when it sinks in deeply enough, disengagement becomes the default. Businesses hold out for someday. Ideas sit in limbo. Leaders optimize for survival instead of building for what they actually believe. We become spectators in a life we're supposed to be living.
Damns Given is for the people who refuse to go that quietly and want the practical tools how to play a different game.
Hosted by strategist, author, and Trust-Made Growth® founder Nick Richtsmeier, this is a show about what it actually takes to build something real — a venture, a community, a career, a life — in an economy designed to extract everything it can before you notice. Each episode goes one layer beneath the surface conversation to find what's actually true and what's actually worth doing about it.
We've talked to a former OpenAI insider about the AI industry's incentive to frighten you. An urban economist about how we've spent 50 years designing cities for dissatisfaction. A negotiation strategist who walked away from a million-dollar platform because it was stealing his focus. Engineers navigating an identity crisis nobody named. Leaders learning that trust isn't a feeling, it's a biological reality with rules you can learn.
The questions the podcast will both answer, and keep bringing you back to:
- Why does every system keep producing the same problems, and what does it take to actually change one?
- What does it cost to build on a foundation of extraction, and what becomes possible when you don't?
- How do you lead when the people around you are two to three times more lonely, anxious, and overwhelmed than they appear?
- What happens when you stop optimizing for the algorithm and start building for the humans who actually have to trust you?
- What does it mean to give a damn in an economy that seems to punish anyone for doing so?
No doomscrolling dressed up as insight. No performing for the feed. No quippy takes recycled from LinkedIn. Just honest conversation with thinkers, builders, and leaders who are navigating this moment with their eyes open and their agency intact. The game isn't over. The people who still care will decide what comes next.
Come think with us.
Find every episode, the Super Show Notes, and the Trust-Made community at DamnsGiven.com
Episodes
31 episodes
Revenue Models: The Hidden Operating System of Your Venture
Damns Given Episode 2.15:"What is one way you can become more knowledgeable about the business case for whatever you're selling? One notch more knowledgeable. The more we think about these economic tools as mechanisms for value delivery...
Two Basic Rules for Being Online without Losing Your Mind
"Trust doesn't look like attention."In fact, the things that steal our attention, grab it out of the agorithmic haze are some of the most trust-breaking things we face. Just because something is good at dragging us into its orbit, doesn...
A Real Life Moment of Resistance & a Heartfelt Debate w/ Janice Porter about Relationships Now
"The obsession with up and to the right is definitionally gonna make you less effective because it forces you to act in ways because it forces you to act in ways that are contrary to the natural flow of how things change."Most leaders a...
Businesses are Systems & Systems Will Resist Change, Until You Give Them a Really Good Reason Not To
"Every system is working exactly as designed. Even when those designs weren't intentional. Especially when those designs weren't intentional."You've moved departments around. You've changed leaders. You've fixed the website. You've brou...
Why They Like You But Won't Hire You: Selling in a Trust-Made Way
"People liking you is not the same as people trusting you. It is simply not the same." This episode is about why nice people get ghosted. Why saying "yeah, I can do that" on a sales call is a death trap. And why you're burning trust all the whi...
Sick Towns, Extraction & the Future of Place: If we change the community, we can change the culture with Jeff Siegler
What does your neighborhood have to do with your business or your capacity to lead? More than you think.Jeff Siegler spent years running Ohio's Main Street program — traveling community to community, dispensing conventional wisdom about ...
The Three Systemic Changes that Created the Trustbroken Era and the Foundations of Trust-Made Growth
Something went wrong in the way we build companies. Not because anyone was evil. Not because the tools were bad. But because a series of well-intentioned shifts — the social web, the data-driven management era, the touchless transaction economy...
How Trust Really Works: Opening the aperture and expanding the pool of meaning so we can hear and see each other
What does a Trust-Made decision actually look like in practice? Don't guage it by the marketing discourse who want to frame it in moralisms, political side-taking, and feel good "integrity" vibes. A starving lion has integrity. It's authentic a...
Don't Wait for Things to Get Better: Recognizing Contraction and Taking Action
Something is happening across almost every industry right now and most leaders are incentivized to ignore it. Nick calls it contractive behavior. And once you know what to look for, you'll see it everywhere.This episode connects four se...
Using AI without It Using You: AI Risk, Labor, Dangerous Incentives, What Joe CEO Should Do with Tim Marple
Tim Marple has a PhD in political science, spent time at Google and OpenAI, and left before his equity vested, unwilling to accept what staying would cost him. Now he co-leads Maiden Labs, a nonprofit focused on measuring emerging technologies ...
All I Have to Sell You is Scar Tissue: A Quick and Deep Dive in How Change Happens
A CultureCraft client once described working with Nick as "getting smashed in the face and then hugged afterward." Nick can't disagree, and in this episode he unpacks exactly why that's the goal.Real leadership development isn't therapy...
Be Worth Talking To: How to Ask Better Questions in an Attention-Starved World
Ep 2.04Curiosity Isn't a Personality Trait. It's a Practice... and once you learn it, all doors are open to you.Welcome to our new short episode format... where Nick focuses on a single question that arose with a client or within th...
AI Transformation Hype and the Future of Software with Amy Carrillo Cotten
Episode 2.03: In this episode of Damns Given, host Nick Richtsmeier interviews Amy Carrillo Cotten, an expert in engineering transformation who answers the question, "What's the future of software engineering now that AI is here?"Softwa...
Radical Specificity, Quitting LinkedIn, and the Challenge of Building ONLY What you Want
Should you quit LinkedIn? Should you move aggressively upmarket? How little can you do to still build what you want to build?Episode 2.02: In this episode of Damns Given, host Nick Richtsmeier interviews Jacob Warwick, who in early 2026 ...
Reducing Cognitive Load, Freeing Minds, and Digital Minimalism with José Briones
In this episode, Nick Richtsmeier launches the pod into its second season with with guest Jose Briones, a digital minimalism strategist. They discuss the importance of digital minimalism in recovering balance in a technology-saturated world, th...
Internet Poisoning and What to Expecting 2026 with Brad Farris
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 les...
Trust is All We Have Left and Marketing Apocalypse with Brad Farris
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...
This is the Wrong AI, We Weren't Built for This with Alexandra Pasi, PhD
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 environme...
The Myth of Inevitability and AI's Culture Grab with Brad Farris
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—specific...
Higher Ed vs Hiring: The strange incompatibility of these old friends with Brad Farris
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 bia...
Theft is So Cool Right Now - Is Ownership Dead? with Brad Farris
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 respectfull...
Nick Power: The Essential Art of Being Real on the Internet
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 wr...
More Politics at Work, Please with Brad Farris
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, wor...
Sex and Fear Still Sell Right? Well, at least Fear - with Brad Farris
In this thought-provoking episode, Nick and Brad unpack how fear has traditionally been used as a primary tool in marketing and communication—from political campaigns and media to brand messaging. Drawing on personal experience in market...
No One Knows What's Going On with Brad Farris
In this powerful and timely episode, Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive into the pervasive undercurrent of fear that’s shaping both politics and the workplace. From the physiological and psychological roots of fear to its impact on le...
