Show me the money. Go ahead, say it out loud. Feels good, doesn't it? Now ask yourself why you hesitated.

That hesitation is exactly where this episode starts.

Dr. Patti Fletcher, Lynne Cuppernull, and Dan Ward go well past the balance sheet on this one. Because it turns out when you pull the thread on money, you don't end up talking about money for very long. You end up talking about fear, safety, power, and value. The working-class kid whose mother paid CCD tuition in installments while the teacher announced it to the whole first-grade class. The Armenian genocide and everything it stripped away, not just wealth but everything, passed down generation to generation in ways most of us never stop to examine. The women working three shifts, two of them unpaid, and getting brunch on Mother's Day once a year as compensation.

The questions get uncomfortable fast: Why is it easier for women to ask for money on someone else's behalf than for themselves? Who gets called ambitious for wanting more, and who gets called greedy for the exact same ask? Does money buy happiness, or is it just a proxy for the things we are actually afraid to name? And when the richest man in the world says money can't buy happiness, what exactly is he asking you to believe?

Also: Maud weighs in. Humans invented money. So why does it feel like money has power over humans rather than the other way around?

That one will stay with you.

Listening for the Questions is available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, leave a review, and bring a question.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS POD EPISODE:

High Income Improves Evaluation of Life But Not Emotional Well-being, Daniel Kahneman & Angus Deaton, 2010

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-buys-happiness-after-all/

AI Boom is driving the economy, NYT Nov 2025

Billie Eilish asking “why are you a billionaire?” https://youtube.com/shorts/BB_buANeTS4?si=tlSfGneqKBJn3M6d

Listening for the Questions is where curiosity is our compass.