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.
Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
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 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.
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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.
