We spend a lot of our lives absorbing definitions of success, certainty, and what we should build next. The harder work is learning to recognize what is actually true.

David Kidder is an entrepreneur, investor, author, and co-founder of Bionic, where he has worked with founders and some of the world’s largest organizations to discover and build new possibilities.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore truth, discernment, permission, and the courage to question what we think we know. They talk about why telling the truth creates agency, how inherited ideas can shape our choices, and what becomes possible when we create enough space to discover what is genuinely worth pursuing.

The way we use AI reveals more than our relationship with technology. It reveals what our workplaces reward, the roles we learn to play, and the parts of ourselves we leave at the door.

Bestselling author and collaboration expert Erica Dhawan joins Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin to explore the human questions behind the AI conversation. Her book, Use Your Brain, makes the case for independent thinking, discernment, and agency in an increasingly automated world.

Together, they unpack the costumes we wear at work, the pressure to perform rather than be ourselves, and what we risk when we outsource our judgment and creativity. At the heart of the conversation is a question about culture: are we creating workplaces where people can think for themselves, contribute what only they can, and show up as who they are?

What if fear could help us find our way to joy? In this episode of From the Culture, Amanda Slavin and Dr. Marcus Collins sit down with author, filmmaker, and advocate Tanya Selvaratnam to explore the difference between fear that protects us and fear that keeps us from living fully.

Drawing on her experiences of intimate violence, illness, and rebuilding her life, Tanya shares how she has learned to trust herself, stay open to serendipity, and make room for joy without denying pain. From knowing when to pause to finding people we can trust, the conversation explores the tools that help us reclaim our agency.

Together, they ask what it means to be shaped by our experiences without being defined by them, and how those in power can create cultures where people feel safe, heard, and free to thrive.

Rejection, loneliness, heartbreak, stress, and disappointment don’t stay contained to one part of our lives. They shape how we think, how we relate to other people, and how present we’re able to be.

Dr. Guy Winch is a psychologist, bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading voices on emotional health. Through books including Emotional First Aid, How to Fix a Broken Heart, and Mind Over Grind, he has helped millions of people understand how to care for the emotional injuries we all experience.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore the emotional lives we bring into everything we do. They talk about rejection and rumination, loneliness and heartbreak, the ways work follows us home, and how learning to care for ourselves changes the way we show up for the people around us.

Success rarely follows the version of the story we imagined at the beginning. Sometimes growth means persevering. Sometimes it means letting go. And sometimes it means creating an entirely new table when the one you were trying to reach no longer fits who you are becoming.

Dhar Mann is an entrepreneur, creator, and founder of Dhar Mann Studios, one of the world’s largest digital storytelling companies. His path has included extraordinary success, major failure, reinvention, and the experience of building again from moments that could have looked like endings.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore how we know when to keep going and when to release an old version of the dream, what failure can reveal about who we are becoming, and how our definition of success changes over time.

Because sometimes the most important thing we can do is keep going. And sometimes it is realizing we are allowed to build a different table.

Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky is a bestselling author and speaker whose work explores friendship, belonging, purpose, and human connection, including Friendship in the Age of Loneliness and The Quarter-Life Breakthrough.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore the relationship between connection and agency. They talk about the people and communities that help us trust ourselves, what it means to create the conditions for someone else to grow, and how workplaces and relationships can expand our sense of what we are capable of becoming.

Because agency may begin within us, but the conditions that allow it to grow are often created together.

Children are already forming opinions, making choices, creating culture, and developing their sense of who they are through the media and technology surrounding them. Jennifer Kotler Clarke is a developmental psychologist and leader whose career has spanned Sesame Workshop and Google, working at the intersection of children, media, learning, and technology.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore the media and technology diet surrounding kids, the role those experiences play in developing agency, and what changes when children are treated as active participants in shaping the world around them.

They talk about understanding the whole child behind the digital experience, creating healthier agreements with technology, and designing a future that makes room for kids’ ideas, perspectives, choices, and voices.

Because the future is already being shaped. The question is whether kids get to help shape it.

The way we understand ourselves shapes the way we understand everyone around us.

Heather Malenshek is a global marketing and brand leader whose career has spanned Harley-Davidson, Land O’Lakes, and some of the world’s most community-driven organizations. Across those experiences, she has worked at the intersection of identity, belonging, purpose, and the stories people tell about who they are.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin explore perspective, compassion, and the ability to see the whole person in front of us. They talk about how self-awareness changes the way we lead, how different experiences shape what people see and believe, and why curiosity about another person’s perspective can transform relationships, organizations, and culture.

What becomes possible when we understand ourselves well enough to see other people more clearly?