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The Becoming You
Podcast with Suzy Welch
Becoming You with Suzy Welch, a top Apple podcast for self-discovery, takes on the question almost everyone asks eventually: What should I do with my life? Host Suzy Welch, an NYU Stern professor, three-time New York Times bestselling author, and creator of the research-backed Becoming You methodology, brings a social scientist's rigor and a veteran journalist's nose for a story to every episode. One week she's unpacking the data behind the values that quietly drive our choices, from the hunger for fame to the pull of beauty. The next she's pressing a labor economist on whether AI is coming for your job, or taking live calls from listeners at a crossroads. Along the way, Achilles and the Renaissance share airtime with career pivots, family friction, and guests ranging from top researchers to Suzy's own best friend. It's smart, candid, often laugh-out-loud funny, and never woo-woo, and it leaves you a little closer to becoming you.
Episodes
Episode 138 | Oct 13, 2026 | 32 min
The King of New York’s Hottest Club Has Seen It All. And He’ll Never Leave.
Is this the best town in the world, or do you need to get out of here? For some people, there’s only one answer, and it’s never negotiable. This week on Becoming You, Suzy skips the scholar and brings in someone who lives the value of Place, which is the value of location, out loud: Fabrizio Brienza, the “Door God” who decides who gets into Paul’s Casablanca, one of the hottest clubs in New York. Born in Campobasso, Italy, and shaped by Miami and Los Angeles, Fabrizio is clear that after New York, everywhere else feels like going from a Rolls-Royce to a Toyota Corolla. Yes, with the rats and all. In this latest installment of a 16-part series on the values that drive how we live, Suzy tells the story of how Place became a gatekeeping value in her scientifically-validated assessment, The Values Bridge: Where you live is one of the first things to figure out before you plan anything else. Where does Place fall for you as a value? Found out with a special discount code below. Find Fabrizio Brienza on Instagram and TikTok . As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 136 | Oct 6, 2026 | 36 min
Does Family Really Have to Come First?
Suzy is obsessed with her grandchildren. Completely, unapologetically obsessed. But for most of her life, she didn't organize her decisions around family, and for a long time that came with a question a lot of people are afraid to ask: Does putting myself before my family make me a bad person? Becoming You is about figuring out what actually matters to you so you can make better choices about your work, your relationships, and your life. One way to get there is the Values Bridge, Suzy’s scientifically validated assessment that identifies the values that really drive you, not the ones you think you're supposed to have. In this 16-part series, Suzy is exploring those values one at a time. This week: Familycentrism, one of the most emotionally loaded values of all. Family therapist Vienna Pharaon joins Suzy to unpack why family comes with so many expectations and why the "black sheep" is often just the person with lower Familycentrism. Then Becoming You certified coach Lola Persons gets personal about loving her family fiercely without building her life around them, and why she calls it "not the Brady Bunch, but it's okay." Because maybe the question was never how much you love your family. Maybe it's how much of your life you want to organize around them, and whether we can stop judging the people who answer differently. Where does Familycentrism fall for you? Take the Values Bridge to find out, with a discount code in the show notes. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . Find Vienna Pharaon on Instagram , Substack , and find her book "The Origins of You" here , along with her quiz here . Find Lola Persons on LinkedIn here . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 134 | Sep 29, 2026 | 31 min
3 Numbers That Explain the Most Divided Value in America
There may be no value more contentious than this one — so contentious that Suzy Welch almost didn't include it in her own methodology at all. This episode is the next installment of an epic 16-part deep dive, one episode for each of the 16 values in the language Suzy created with the Values Bridge, her scientifically validated assessment tool. This week's value is Cosmos — faith, in any tradition, not one in particular — and it's the most polarized value on the entire Values Bridge at that. Suzy sits down with Ryan Burge, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, author of “The Vanishing Church,” and the researcher behind the Substack “Graphs About Religion,” to unpack the state of faith in America today. Suzy also gets personal, telling the story of her own faith journey since age 14, and confessing something she's never said on the podcast before. Tune in for more. If you liked this episode, please leave a review! Take the Values Bridge yourself and find out where Cosmos falls for you, with the link and discount code below. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . Find Ryan Burge's Substack "Graphs About Religion" here , his book "The Vanishing Church" here , and X , LinkedIn , Instagram. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 132 | Sep 22, 2026 | 38 min
What If Office Politics Are Secretly Telling You Something You Need to Hear?
Christina hates office politics. Who doesn't? But after 20-plus years in corporate marketing, she's started asking herself a much harder question: What if the problem isn't the politics — what if it's her? This week on Becoming You, Suzy talks to Christina, a brand management veteran who recently quit her job, unsure whether she's actually cut out for corporate life at all, or just tired of playing a game she never wanted to play. Suzy shares her own bruising run-in with office politics from her early career days, before turning diagnostic on Christina's story. And it points toward one particular next move: Stop trying to survive inside a culture that will always clash with who you are, and go build the one that won't. It's a conversation about self-awareness, entrepreneurship, and the difference between throwing in the towel and finally stepping into your authentic self. If you liked this episode, please leave a review! As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 130 | Sep 15, 2026 | 59 min
If Your Life Were an Asteroid, How Big a Crater Would It Leave?
How do you make a fun, upbeat podcast about a value that makes literally everyone uncomfortable — the people who have it and the people who don't? That's the challenge Suzy Welch sets for herself this week on Becoming You. This episode is the next installment of an epic 16-part deep dive, one episode for each of the 16 values in the language Suzy created with The Values Bridge, her scientifically validated assessment tool. We all hold these values, ranked 1 to 16 in a different order for each of us, and understanding the language can change everything. That's because values aren't virtues like happiness or honesty — they're choices about how you live your life, and there's no good or bad, right or wrong, about which ones you hold. This week's value is Radius: the drive to change the world in big, systemic ways. Suzy explains why so few of us have it (just 10%, ranking 14 out of 16 values) and reveals the single most shocking data point in the Values Bridge dataset about it. Suzy also draws a hard line between Radius and its frequently confused cousin, Non-Sibi — the value of helping people one-on-one — and explains why wanting to change the world doesn't necessarily mean wanting to help people individually. Then Suzy goes to 20,000 feet with Dr. Jay Van Bavel, professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU and author of The Power of Us, to debate whether Radius is a value or an identity — and to unpack why movements built around Radius so often turn on themselves. Finally, Suzy sits down with Kitty Block, CEO of Humane World for Animals, whose own Radius story involves twenty veterinarians, a runaway dog, and a face full of bruises. Take the Values Bridge yourself and find out where Radius falls for you. Link and discount code below. Find Jay Van Bavel on LinkedIn , X , and his book, The Power of Us . Find Kitty Block at Humane World for Animals . As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 128 | Sep 8, 2026 | 45 min
It's Okay to Care How Things Look. And No, You're Not Shallow.
Suzy continues her deep dive into the 16 values from the Welch-Bristol Values Inventory with Beholderism — our desire for beautiful things: our homes, our clothes, our stuff, ourselves. It's the #4 most prevalent value in the general population, #2 for women overall, and yet it's one of the values people are most likely to feel ashamed of. Suzy walks through the data on who has it and who doesn't, shares the story of the time her Beholderism led her to knock on a Finnish mayor's door, and sits down with legendary interior designer Elizabeth Lawrence of Williams Lawrence. Then Dr. Evelyn Welch — historian, MBE, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, and Suzy's friend of 52 years — joins to explain why beauty and consumerism have been linked since long before the Renaissance. If you've ever felt silly for caring how things look, this episode is your permission slip. Find Elizabeth Lawrence on Instagram @ elizabeth_m_lawrence and @ williams_lawrence_interiors . Elizabeth Lawrence and Bunny Williams: Decoration available here . As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 126 | Sep 1, 2026 | 40 min
Is AI Coming for Your Job? An Economist Gives It to Me Straight
This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch hits pause on the values deep-dive series for something urgent: the state of work today. After Suzy casually dropped the phrase "job hugging" on a recent appearance at the Today Show — which is the trend of people gripping their jobs because they're terrified of what's coming — the reaction was, in Suzy's words, an internet meltdown. So she brought in Chief Labor Economist Sania Khan, formerly of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and then an AI company, to separate the panic from the data. They get into it: whether AI is coming for every job or about to create a wave of new ones, why "low hire, low fire" is quietly locking younger workers out of the labor market, and why a second-year analyst should be more nervous right now than almost anyone else in the building. Sania lays out the proactive work exercise she'd give any 22-year-old, or any 40-year-old, staring down a job that suddenly needs a rewrite. If you've got a job, want a job, or are quietly panicking about either, this one's for you. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 124 | Aug 25, 2026 | 66 min
The Value We All Judge the Most
This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch continues the series' deep dive into the 16 human values with one of the most misunderstood: Workcentrism, the value of organizing your life around work. It ranks 15 out of 16 for the general population, and it's the only value in the entire Values Bridge inventory with a negative authenticity gap — meaning most people want even less of it, not more. Suzy unpacks why Workcentrism is unique among all the values: it's the one you may not hold, but are still forced to express. She's joined by Tina Doran, SVP of Retail and Commerce at Mastercard, who has Workcentrism as her number-one value, for a conversation about what it actually feels like to build a life around work without apology. Then Suzy sits down with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas of Babson College and Christopher Wong Michaelson of NYU and the University of St. Thomas, co-authors of “Is Your Work Worth It?”, to explore why society equates high Workcentrism with workaholism, why hiring managers reward it even when performance data doesn't back it up, and why the pandemic, quiet quitting, and the shifting economy have all reshaped how we relate to work. As always, Suzy reminds us: values aren't virtues, they're choices — and no one should be judged for the ones they hold. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 123 | Aug 18, 2026 | 72 min
The Three Things Working Against Your Friendships
Suzy Welch was standing in her kitchen when the phone rang. Her best friend's voice was different before she even said a word. "I can't be friends with you anymore," she said — and hung up. It was the last time they spoke for fifteen years. There's no word for that kind of loss. No apparatus, no ceremony, no bereavement leave, no language for losing a friend the way there is for a marriage or a family. This week on Becoming You, Suzy digs into why. She starts with the data on The Values Bridge value of Belonging — a value that lands dead center for most people, #8 out of 16, and is the value of friendship, community, and being part of the group. Only 1% of people have it as their #1 value. Suzy talks with one such person, Rachel Gillman Rischall of The Connection Code, about what it's like to live Belonging as a top value, runs down the three biggest eurekas she had preparing for this episode, and sits down with NYU Stern's friendship expert Julianna Pillemer to discuss the surprising science of friendship at work. Finally, Suzy reunites with Sue Jacobson, the friend from that phone call, to talk about what really happened, why it took fifteen years to find out, and what brought them back. Come along, my friends. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 122 | Aug 11, 2026 | 61 min
The Four Things No One Tells You About Fame
This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes on fame, or what the Becoming You methodology calls Luminance, one of the 16 values measured by The Values Bridge, Suzy's psychometric tool for figuring out what actually matters to you. And of all 16, this is the one people are least willing to own. Only 3% rank it in their top 5. Most people bury it near the very bottom. Suzy thinks that's not because so few of us feel it, it's because it's the one value you're not supposed to say out loud. Suzy opens with a story she's never quite gotten over: a college friend whose hunger for fame she once dismissed, judged, and didn't understand, and the friendship it cost her, for good, decades later. She goes back 3,000 years to Achilles, who's given a choice between a long forgotten life and a short one with undying glory, and picks glory, and nobody in the Iliad thinks he's a narcissist for it. Then she gets into the actual research on why people want to be known: for status, for a platform to do good, as the byproduct of doing great work, or simply so they're not forgotten. Plus: actress Paloma Garcia-Lee talks with real candor about what it's like to hold this value and live it out loud, and casting director Sophia Welch (and frequent guest, and Suzy’s daughter), who's spent 14 years in rooms full of people chasing the spotlight, rejoins to talk about what fame really rewards, and what it really costs. If you've ever wanted to be known, or caught yourself judging someone else for wanting it, this episode is for you. Follow Paloma Garcia-Lee here . As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 121 | Aug 4, 2026 | 61 min
The Three Things No One Tells You About Being the Boss of Your Own Life
Agency is the number two value in the Becoming You data set—the drive to be the author of your own life, no exceptions, no apologies. But according to Suzy, it's the Jekyll and Hyde of values: sometimes it's your best friend, helping you build the life you actually want. Other times it's the thing quietly running through the history of wars, divorces, and career fails, because your Agency is always bumping up against someone else's. In this deep dive episode, Suzy takes you 3,000 years back to the earliest recorded signs of Agency. She sits down with NYU Stern self-determination scholar Steve Blader to unpack why some people need to run their own show and others don't. And she talks to Pastor Jimmy Scroggins about the 18% of people for whom Agency is a low value—including what it actually means to hand your Agency over to a higher power, and why that's not the same thing as having none. Plus: entrepreneur and content creator Drew Henry joins to talk about how Agency shaped his career pivot from corporate marketing to working for himself—and the time it got him called into an HR meeting over an out-of-office request. (You'll want to hear the email he sent.) If you've ever felt like you had to be the one calling the shots, or wondered why you can't seem to let go of control, this episode is for you. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch
Episode 120 | Jul 28, 2026 | 40 min
The Three Things No One Tells You About Happiness
This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch tackles the value everyone assumes they already understand: happiness. Using data from the Values Bridge — the assessment that has now been taken by hundreds of thousands of people — Suzy reveals that Eudemonia, the value of personal happiness, self care, flourishing, and fun, is far from universal. It skews by gender, it drops off sharply with age, and it even shifts with income. Suzy traces the philosophical fault lines around happiness, from Aristotle's insistence that it's a whole life and not a good afternoon, to the Stoics' case for tranquility over feeling, to the Buddhist idea that the chase itself might be the trap. Along the way, she shares a deeply personal story about discovering Dostoevsky in tenth grade and dropping it on her family at Christmas dinner — with her sister Elin along to set the record straight. Whether Eudemonia sits at the top of your values list or, like Suzy's, near the bottom, this episode makes the case that knowing exactly where you stand on fun and self care is one of the most useful things you can know about yourself. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge . You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package. Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book . You can follow and tag Suzy on: • Instagram: @suzywelch • Linkedin: @suzywelch • TikTok: @suzywelch • YouTube: @suzywelch_ • X: @SuzyWelch