The Ryan Vet Show
To lead well today, you have to understand the forces that shaped yesterday and the ones reshaping tomorrow. You were made to Inspire Forward...and every episode helps you do just that.
The Ryan Vet Show is where leaders come to understand why the world, and the people in it, work the way they do. Hosted by Ryan Vet, USA Today bestselling author, generational futurist, and contrarian leadership thinker, the show blends research, lived experience, and narrative to help you navigate tomorrow with more insight, perspective, and practical wisdom.
Each week, Ryan explores the ideas shaping today’s workplace and culture:
- Generational dynamics and the behaviors that form each cohort
- Leadership and organizational psychology
- Change management and the forces driving adaptation
- Entrepreneurship and real-world decision making
- Communication, influence, and human behavior
- How the past explains the present and the present shapes the future
The show features two core formats:
- Long-form interviews with leaders, thinkers, entrepreneurs, and creators whose stories reveal the “why” behind their work, decisions, and impact.
- Weekly readings of the COLLIDE newsletter, where Ryan breaks down cultural shifts, generational insights, and leadership lessons with a story-rich, research-backed lens.
Whether you’re an executive, a manager, an entrepreneur, an educator, or simply navigating cross-generational tension, The Ryan Vet Show gives you the insight and tools to lead with clarity, curiosity, and intentionality.
If you want a show that’s intellectually grounded, practically useful, and deeply human — welcome.
This is your place to understand the world more clearly and lead it more thoughtfully.
Episodes
39 episodes
Why Wozniak Got Cheered and Schmidt Got Booed: What Commencement Boos Reveal About AI, Gen Z, and the Velocity Gap
The Class of 2026 didn't boo the future. They booed being told the future had already been decided for them. The strangest commencement season in memory, and the leadership lesson hiding inside it.Generational futurist, USA Today ...
Tom LeNoble: Facebook Employee Number 57, the Adult in the Room, and Finding Unity
Tom LeNoble was employee number 57 at Facebook, recruited out of Palm, the Palm Pilot and Treo company, back when it was still "the Facebook" and still lived inside college networks. He was older than almost everyone in the building, the person...
Nicki Petrossi: Scrolling 2 Death, AI Companion Bots, and the Fight to Keep Kids Safe Online
Content warning: this episode discusses online harms to children, including suicide, self-harm, and online predation. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and ...
America Turns 250: They Signed the Declaration Without Agreeing - United Not Uniform, the Generational Pendulum, and the Middle Ground We Never Lost
On July 4, 1776, fifty-six men who agreed on almost nothing signed the Declaration of Independence anyway. Two hundred fifty years later, we have forgotten how they did it.Generational futurist, USA TODAY bestselling author, and ...
Weh'yee Barkon: The Millennial Digital Nomad, Africa Rising, and Building a Borderless Life
What happens when you trade a fast-rising San Francisco startup job for a one-way ticket to Casablanca and no plan past three nights in a hostel? Weh'yee Barkon found out. He joins Ryan Vet, a friend of more than two decades, to talk about t...
Is America Going Black and White Again? - The Wizard of Oz, Gen Z's Grayscale Rebellion, and the Overstimulation Era
The Wizard of Oz taught a generation to gasp when the world turned to color. Now Gen Z is deliberately turning its phones back to black and white.Generational futurist, USA TODAY bestselling author, and international keynote spea...
Lenore Skenazy: Free Range Kids and Why Overprotection Is the Real Danger
We convinced ourselves that childhood is more dangerous than ever, right as crime hit historic lows. Lenore Skenazy, founder of Free Range Kids and president of Let Grow, joins The Ryan Vet Show to explain why overprotection became the actua...
There Is No Such Thing as a Fragile Child: What We Created When We Tried to Keep Kids Safe
We didn't raise a fragile generation. We renamed discomfort as danger, then removed the very experiences that make kids strong. The contrarian case for why there is no such thing as a fragile child.Generational futurist, USA Today...
Kevin Stinehart: Rebuilding Recess and Why Play Is a Developmental Need, Not a Want
We engineered the friction out of childhood, then acted surprised when kids could not handle it. Kevin Stinehart, the third grade teacher and play advocate featured in chapter 11 of Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation, joins The Ryan Vet...
The Mothers Who Kept the Window Open: What We Lost When We Took Away the Village
The hardest part of modern motherhood isn't the work. It's that we now do it alone. The work was always going to be hard. The village was the part we could have kept.Generational futurist, USA Today bestselling author, and keynote...
Mike Schneider of Acre Homes: The Generational Housing Question, the Broken Affordability Math, and Shared Ownership
The affordability math from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s is broken. Mike Schneider, founder of Acre Homes and longtime real estate operator, joins The Ryan Vet Show to walk through what actually happened to home ownership in America, and what com...
Michaeleen Doucleff: Hunt, Gather, Parent, Dopamine Kids, and What Modern Parenting Gets Wrong
What if everything we know about modern parenting is wrong? NPR global health correspondent and bestselling author Michaeleen Doucleff joins The Ryan Vet Show for the first guest episode of year two, on Hunt, Gather, Parent, Dopamine Kids, a...
Is the American Dream Dead or Just Different?
The American Dream isn't dead. It's been redefined. And the generation rewriting it isn't asking permission.Generational futurist, USA Today bestselling author, and keynote speaker Ryan Vet traces the rise, the reality check, and ...
Start Here: What Shapes Us, and Where Are We Going
What shapes us? And where are we going? This is the Start Here episode of The Ryan Vet Show, the line in the sand between the essays that built this podcast and the conversations that will define what comes next.Generational futur...
Gen Z Is Ungrounded and Going Back to the Mall - The Generational Pendulum Swings Back to In-Person
The most digital generation is going back to the mall. Generational futurist Ryan Vet explains why Gen Z's IRL revival is a leadership signal. Ryan Vet, generational futurist, expert in generations, and AI keynote speaker, unpack...
What the Class of 2026 Is Really Bringing to the Workforce: Loneliness, AI, and the Mentor Gap
The Class of 2026 is the loneliest generation ever to walk across a graduation stage, and the workforce is not ready for them.Generational futurist Ryan Vet, an expert in generations and AI keynote speaker, unpacks why the colleg...
Justin Bieber Doesn't Own His Own Songs Anymore - What Coachella Revealed About Millennials and the Internet
At Coachella 2026, Justin Bieber walked on stage, sat down at a MacBook, and started playing YouTube videos of his twelve-year-old self. Millennials in the crowd wiped away tears.Generational futurist Ryan Vet unpacks why that Coa...
We've Never Been More Alone - Why the Most Connected Generation Is the Loneliest in History
We are the most digitally connected society in human history. We are also, by every measure, the loneliest.The U.S. Surgeon General compared loneliness to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The loneliest adults are not in nur...
Disagreement Used to Cost You Something
Disagreement used to cost you something. Today, it costs nothing — and that's the problem.The Berlin Wall is remembered for what it built. But what it really destroyed was the middle: the shared space where people could disagree, ...
Is Gen Z Really Going Back to Church? — The Composition Effect Explains What the Headlines Miss
Generational futurist Ryan Vet cuts through the Easter headlines: Gen Z isn't experiencing a religious revival — the data reveals something far more nuanced, and far more important for leaders and parents to understand.Every sprin...
The Real Barrier in Cross-Generational Communication - Why Trust, Not Style, Is What's Really Broken
Poor communication costs U.S. businesses $1.2 trillion annually, but what if the deepest barrier across generations isn't how we talk, but whether we trust the person talking?In this episode, Ryan unpacks why the biggest breakdow...
Gen Alpha Turned 13 - The Generational Prism on Growing Up in 2026
The first Gen Alpha teenagers have arrived. What does turning 13 look like for a generation born into AI, pandemics, and a world that generates whatever you ask for?In this episode of the Collide podcast, generational futurist an...
What We Lost When Life Got Easier - Washing Machines, Dishwashers, and The Velocity Gap
What do washing machines, smartphones, and artificial intelligence have in common?They were all designed to make life easier.But they may have also changed the human experience in ways we didn’t anticipate.In this episode, Rya...
The Velocity Gap - Gen Z's Contradiction with AI
What happens when technology moves faster than our morality?In this episode of The Ryan Vet Show, futurist, entrepreneur, and USA TODAY bestselling author Ryan Vet explores a powerful idea he calls The Velocity Gap — the space between te...
The Retirement Home That isn’t for Boomers, it's for Gen Z
A viral story recently circulated online about a “Gen Z retirement home” in Malaysia — a quiet sanctuary where burned-out young adults can unplug, eat communal meals, and live in structured solitude for a few hundred dollars a month....
