Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
(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-second
- Why our attention is our most powerful (and misdirected) asset
- What happens when leaders disconnect from real human scale
- How to build a meaningful life and business without waiting for permission
- The 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.
Episodes
27 episodes
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...
Being Authentic Kinda Sucks with Brad Farris
Authenticity had a good run, or so it may seem.In this thought-provoking episode of Working Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive deep into the concept of authenticity in a world increasingly dominated by artificia...
The Myths of Mentoring OR Why There are So Few Leaders with Brad Farris
In this episode of Working Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris explore the complex and often misunderstood topic of mentoring. Is it truly about passing knowledge from an experienced leader to a junior employee, or is...
The Strange State of Email Marketing
In this episode of Working Broken, Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris take a deep dive into the world of cold emails—why they’re everywhere, why people swear by them, and whether they actually work. Spoiler alert: they’re not fans.
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Growth vs Scale: The Silicon Vallyification of Everything
In this episode of Working/Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive deep into the burning debate: Is it better to grow naturally, or should you aggressively scale your business? With wit and candor, they explore how the mean...
