[Bonus Episode] Change Your Habits, Change Your Life with Maneesh Sethi
15 Dec 2025 · 34 min
Bonus podcast episode (JJ Virgin bonus session) featuring Maneesh Sethi (founder of Pavlok). The conversation covers habit change strategies: JJ’s habit-audit approach, Maneesh’s "big five" core habits (sleep, eating well, exercise, mindfulness, water), and how Pavlok (app + wearable that vibrates, beeps, and can deliver electrical stimuli) is used to break bad habits (aversion protocols, sleep alarms) and form new ones (apps for gratitude, journaling, fitness). Practical tips emphasized include environmental control (remove triggers), small step commitments (48-hour or 30-day challenges), accountability, and the distinction between breaking bad habits and forming good ones. Show notes and a special Pavlok offer are provided at jjvirgin.com/pavlok.
Questions this episode answers
May 15, 2021.
jjvirgin.com/pavlok (spelled out in episode as P A V L O K).
Chapters
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You shouldn't be controlled by food. It's fuel. And you can totally get to that point. I was a total bingy overeater, lived on ice cream. I actually went to work at an ice cream store in high school because I thought it would cure me of my ice cream issues. So all it did was make me gain 10 pounds.
I was like, it's like some of the alcoholics I know who become bartenders because they're like, I want to push it away. I'm like, you guys, you guys, come on, come on.
Yeah, ridiculous. It doesn't work. So note to self, if you've got a cookie issue, don't go work at Mrs. Fields. It will not work. Hey, it's JJ and welcome to Ask the Health Expert. But this isn't just any old Ask the Health Expert expert session.
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Welcome to today's podcast. This is a fun topic. We are going to be talking about how you can get rid of bad habits and form good ones and some really simple things that you can do to make these things stick. And I've been kind of obsessed. This is my year of habit shifting because last year I dropped a little bad habit that it started. Can I blame it on my husband? Probably not. We started after we started dating. We started having a bottle of wine every night. And boy, after, over time, something happened and we didn't have a bottle of wine for a couple days. And we're like, wow, we have so much more energy. And we stopped. And when we stopped, I didn't even pay attention to it. I just was like, gosh, I feel so much better. Wow, this is so much better. And I noticed if I drank anything but dry Farm wines. We'll put dry farm in the show notes that I felt crappy. And so now I only drink dry farm wines if I'm drinking wine. But I also don't, don't drink very often. Only if we're at some kind of a special event. Dropped five pounds, have way more energy. And it was just a habit shift. And it just made me start to go, okay, let's look at all the habits out there that are key. And I'm just going to pick one at a time because this is a journey, right? You're never done. And I'm going to work on one at a time. And so that's what I did. So I'm going to give you all my habit audit that I put together. And I also left some extra lines in there for you to add your own. And what's cool is you're going to hear Manish, my guest today, Manish Sethi. He is going to talk about the top five habits of highly successful people.
Right?
Healthy habits. And they are all on this sheet, by the way. So that's where I'd start. If any of these are not your habits, I'm betting since you're listening, they all are. But you know, we always have room for improvement, right? So that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about habits. I'm going to give you my habit audit. And we are going to be talking with Maneesh Sethi. Now I got to know Manish cause I met his brother Ramit and he introduced me to his brother. His brother is the founder of a company called Pavlok. And it's a behavior company and it uses technology. He uses technology in psychology. Things that he learned when he was at Stanford studying under BJ Fogg. And he has been all over with this. Cause it's really kind of fun. He's been on Steve Harvey, Shark Tank, Good Morning America. And it started out it's a bracelet. And when I first, he first got it, I was like, gotta make this cuter. It's, this is not attractive. Now he's got a cute one for us women. But what it does is it shocks you and so it can gamify you, improving your habits. He's gonna explain how this all came to be. It's pretty funny. But the cool thing is is it works. So this all today is about how to form good new habits, how to break old, bad habits. What are the most important habits that you should change. And then again, download that habit audit. And that is going to be along with the cheat sheet, all the notes, and a really special deal from manish@jjvirgin.com Pavlock and that is P O P A V L O K P A V L O K. All right, before we dive in, a word about one of my favorites.
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Alrighty, Maneesh Sethi. Welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.
Hey, I'm excited to chat JJ Well.
I still think back to when you brought your little device to our event and proceeded to shock everybody.
Sounds like I think you got the right.
So we're going to be talking a little bit about Pavlok and you know what a fun party gag it is, but it really all comes around. You know, I love the statement that you talk about, about wearing your willpower. And over here this year, one of the initiatives we have is, you know, people don't change 180 degrees. They're not going to. That's. I think one of the biggest reasons people fail is they. They start at the beginning of the year and they go, okay, I'm going to lose £100 and I'm going to start sleeping well and I'm going to exercise and I'm going to eat better and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know, no, you're not either. Let's just pick one thing that you can win at, be successful, and then build. And so I am big in habits, and I know that this is all about habits. So let's kind of dive in because I've created a habit audit, which I'm going to be sharing with everybody. And I know we have a way for them to make sure that they get their habits dialed in, which we'll be sharing as well. But let's talk about how you even got interested in all of this. Why habits? Why padlock?
Habits are interesting to me. Basically. I have the worst habits in the world. And so the way I look at it is as long as I figure out how to help everybody else, then I don't have to feel bad about keeping my own bad habits. Or less a joke, but ever since.
I was a kid, but I was thinking of our night together in New York and I'm like, yeah, that would be true. I watched some bad habits go down that night. And worse than that, you tried to coerce me into bad habits. Yeah.
The truth is, I grew up with severe adhd and I had a lot of trouble focusing and getting stuff done. And so I found that through my self improvement, like learning when I was younger that the secret to success was always in habits. Like that quote by Aristotle, you are what you repeatedly do. And as I went to school, I went to Stanford University and I got to work under Professor BJ Fogg, who's one of the originators of habit psychology. And so he, when I worked with him, I learned a lot about how human beings are motivated and human beings, who we think we are is not who we are. We think that we have willpower and that today is going to be the day that I'm going to get home from work and get to the gym. But just like every other day, it changes. When I get home and I sit on the couch, you know, and so I got really interested in that, and I started this blog after I took a leave of absence from Stanford. This blog was about travel. I would let my users vote on where I would go and what I would do. And along the travel trip, I started doing experimentation on myself to become more productive. So I did this one experiment where I hired a girl to follow me around. And every time I wasted time or went on Facebook, she would slap me in the face. It was.
Did you? Oh, it's too bad that there weren't just, like, Facebook and Instagram Live back then.
No, but I have a video of it on. On the website. On my website. And what happened is I posted this video online because I went. I. I wrote five months of content in five days. I had this girl sitting next to me, and every time I would waste time, she'd remind me and tap me on the shoulder and if need be, slap me. And what happened was I just got writing and I posted this article online. It went viral. And I said a few weeks later, what if I made a dog collar that could zap me every time I went on Facebook? And that was the idea for Pavlok. It was a wearable device that doesn't just track what I do, but actually changes what I do. That was how the idea came about.
Yes. And I think we bought one of the first iterations you brought over to our mindshare group and started shocking people, which is awesome. At a party. It is hilarious to see. And we're going to talk about, like, where this is now, but before we go there, because at the beginning of the year when I just made this decision, I'm sick to death of seeing people struggling and frustrated. And let's just break this down into a series of habits, and then you can figure out which ones you need to do and work on them one by one. So I'd love to know from you what you see is some of the most important habits for people who are happy, healthy, and successful.
Yeah, sure. I call them the big five. And so if you took every human being in America or every human being in the world who's suffering from any sort of illness or problem or mental thought process, and you had all of them sleep a full night of eight hours of sleep, and they all ate a relatively healthy diet, and they all exercise three to five times a week, and they all drank a couple liters of water at least a day, and they all meditated at least once a day, maybe once every few days, I think that you would find a massive Shift in health across the entire population. The big five, I think, are sleep, eating well, exercising a little bit. A little bit of mindfulness and drinking water. And what we found is that they all kind of go together. It's like when you start focusing on one habit at a time for specifically. Specifically sleep. If you start focusing on one habit at a time, the rest naturally fall into place. The mind, the anxiety, the continuous racket of talk in your mind starts to quiet down, and the ability for you to achieve goals and reduce compulsions just becomes natural. So if I were to say one thing, it would be sleep. If I were to say five, it was.
I love that. You know, it's funny, I just came back from a Tony Robbins event, and, you know, they tell you, okay, it starts at 9 in the morning. It ends at 11 or 12 at night. There's no breaks. I'm like, what? You know? And, you know, so I have to get eight hours of sleep. Like, that's it. Like, I. So I would. I left at nights and went and got sleep, and I was with a bunch of people. All of them got sick. By the end, they were trashed. I'm like, you know, you're not even learning anything anymore. You're just a puddle.
But even worse, I bet at Tony Robbins events, he's really good at, like, convincing you to upsell later on.
Oh, yeah, he wears you down. You bought, like, people bought everything.
Don't have enough sleep for several nights in a row. It's very easy to convince people of things. And so. And that's actually part of his system now. It's got its positives and negative.
So there you go. You guys gotta. You gotta sleep. And having said that, it was an amazingly valuable seminar. But I also was wide awake throughout. So good for now let's talk about this, because you just named five that are definitely on my habit audit as, like, key ones. So I love that you said that. I also put in flossing, which is one that I need to get better on. Confidentially. And maybe the Pavlok can help me here. And so let's talk about what the heck the Pavlok is, because I keep saying them. People are like, what is that? And how does it help here?
Sure. There is the Pavlok, which is a device, and there's Pavlok, the company, which is what I really care about, which is we help you achieve your goals. We make sure that you hit your goals with habits and behavior, whatever it takes. And I found that our product is one of the keys or one of the best ways to help jumpstart that process. But in no way is this conversation or call or anything I do about selling a product. It's about teaching people how they can achieve the goals that they have. And so we at our company have a specific metric. We have a very specific, very high goal, very, I don't know how to say the word, but extremely difficult to achieve goal. And that goal is 100% adherence to any goal or habit that any human being has by the time I die. So we have this green light that only turns on if 100% of our users hit 100% of their goals over the last six months. And I want that light on. So starting with there. That is the fundamental goal of what we do now, what we have, the product and products that we sell is a. It's called Pavlok. It is a technology. It's a software app plus a hardware device, plus a community and a digital currency that all ties together to help you form habits that you set for yourself. And I'll explain that a little simpler. The first thing we have is the Pavlok app. You can download that without having any hardware device. The Pavlok app lets you program in goals that you want to achieve. It lets you set, set expectations, goals, time schedules, and then lets you breaks down your habit goals into a step by step process, allowing you to achieve those goals over time. The hardware device that it can so.
So Manish, if someone said to and goes, okay, my goal is a hundred pound weight loss. It would like help them set reasonable goals over time so they can achieve this.
Sure. We start off, we're doing it once a one new app a month this year. So we started off with Gratitude as our January app.
Oh, that's fantastic.
It helps you form the habit of gratefulness. It's like a gratitude journal with reminders and social cues and then rewards for achieving your gratitude journal. Next month is a journaling. So daily journaling about what you're doing and then I believe in March will begin with fitness. So the app alone will help you form good habits. The hardware device is extremely powerful for helping you break bad habits and remember to use the app. So what the hardware device does is it is a device that either it sits on your wrist, it can either sit standalone as its own little device, or you can connect it with an Apple watch connector so it becomes part of the watch strap. It's able to vibrate, beep, and release electrical stimuli when it's told to. So for a good example is Waking up in the morning. The device tracks your sleep and vibrates to wake you up gently in your light stage of sleep. We have an app for sleep tracking, and if you're a heavy sleeper, you can set it to make sure you do jumping jacks to turn off the alarm or else you'll get electric shocks. The waking up habit has been pretty critical, actually. It's our number one habit by far. And we found that waking up in the morning, a lot of people just don't get out of bed.
I know you did that one. Because of you.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I was like, why did you keep me out so late last night?
Yeah. So let's, you know, know, let's just shift gears because you, you see people. I mean, I work in weight loss, so I hear from people over and over and over again that they set these goals and then they don't do them, you know, so. Especially if there's something, say someone's trying to quit sugar. Sure, let's go that one. And they've tried and they've tried and tried. Now I would tell them, just do the sugar impact diet. This is, you know, there it is. But they've tried and they've tried and they've tried. What, what do you just say to someone like this? What can they do? Like, is this how they ensure success? Are there some little secrets in here that can help make them, make them sure they'll make it this time? Because my feeling is the more often you fail, the more it kind of gets into your inner, you know, brain that you're a failure. And then it gets even harder.
Sure. So forming a good habit and breaking a bad habit are fundamentally different problems. So you're asking me about how do I remove something? How do I break a bad habit of eating sugar? And so I like to start off, first of all by creating the right environment. So the right environment is a home that doesn't have any sugar around it. And second.
Right, get the enemy out of the house, everybody. There it is. Yeah. And then throw your car keys away at night. In fact, here's what would be awesome is if, like when you walk out of the, out of the kitchen after dinner, there was a full lockdown. Like it just locked down and there was an armed guard and then your car keys were taken away. So if you tried to drive out anywhere. And obviously I'm being facetious, but you know, that's where people get in trouble. Right. I literally used to have someone who would drive to the fast food places at midnight. I'M like, come on.
Right, Exactly. And to be clear, like when you say facetious, what I hear is opportunity. Because the act of breaking a bad habit is something that is only possible. It's really hard to have a smoking habit if there's a person standing next to you for the next nine months who every time you grab a cigarette, smacks it out of your hand. Right. In the same way, having accountability is incredibly powerful for sugar and sugar. I'm sure you know this, you definitely know this. But sugar is extremely addictive. It's a drug that's like cocaine. It's a drug that once it's in your system, it changes the way you think. And you think you're the kind of person who needs sugar without realizing that you haven't had a day without sugar in so long. The first thing I recommend is to get rid of sugar for a period of time. So a small commitment for any habit change is important. Can you go one meal without having any carbs or sugar? Can you go a day? If you can get yourself, you know, 48 hours without having any sugar, you start to reduce those cravings. So those two, those are the first two parts of environmental shift A is the external environment shouldn't have any triggers of sugar around you, but also get it out of your body, get that craving to go back to normal. Okay, that's the first step. The second step I think is to create a small step by step goals over what you're going to do for the next month. So these 10 day trials or 30 day challenges are awesome. I think they're really, really good. And the sugar impact diet, do you guys have a period of time where you have no sugar and then you slowly add some more in?
Yes, we actually do. For virgin diet, we have a seven day free challenge. We're building one right now for Sugar impact. And then during sugar Impact, what we do that I found work and it really fits in with what you're saying is I have them identify and taper over the first week, just taper it down out of their body. And then they go two weeks where it is totally out. But I have them go slowly into it and then take it and then, you know, so they're getting used to not having sugar all the time because, you know, people fuel their body on it and then you pull it out and they crash. So yeah, and there's we trend.
It's funny because it happens to me too. Like for the first four months of last year I did a keto diet. So I had no carbs whatsoever. And then, you know, I finished the diet and I was like, okay, let me go celebrate with a pizza. And then eight months later, I'm fat. I'm like, how the hell did that just happen? Like, I was the healthiest person in the world and then I was suddenly not healthy. And it's me, you know what I mean? What happened to me was I simply had one day where I cooked myself a couple meals and then I was back on the train. You know what I mean? And in the same way people like, a lot of this comes down to this thought process of I have to be perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. So exactly what you said. If you can like just not have one or two skittles at the end of that Skittle pack, it's a huge deal. Like just throwing away those last two means that you've been able to give up something and slowly building those little, I can push this away. Followed by I don't want it anywhere near me. Followed by the rest of the body. Just not having sugar for a few days, exactly, like on your diet, becomes a very powerful change. You add on top of that accountability. So that's telling your friends or telling your family or telling even your Facebook feed that I'm going to do this challenge and I'm going to report back in every day. That becomes the key for the beginning of habit change. Does that make sense?
Yes, totally.
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I think what we put to into all of our programs is major accountability. You know, signing a commitment contract, being accountable both to yourself and to a partner.
And also I've noticed that like with, with regards to sugar specifically, carbs are this really interesting. You can eat infinite carbs. It's really amazing. Like chips. Like I can eat two or three bags and it doesn't feel like I'm full, but like you can't have two steaks or you can't have like four pounds of vegetables and still feel like you are not full.
So yeah, not only are you not full, you're actually. I remember one of my kids said this, he said, because I let them eat their Halloween candy because I knew what would happen. It made them sick and they never touched again. And he literally said, you know, I'm eating this and I feel sick and hungry. Like it was just making him hungrier. It's almost crazy.
You crack cocaine and it makes you feel a little sick and hungry. It's like, all right, well, I'll take.
Your word for that one.
I don't do crack, okay? It's an addictive drug.
Okay.
Addictive drugs.
Like, I think we have a habit to break here.
Oh, yeah, no, exactly. No, of course. That's not exactly. Of course I don't do crack. But what I'm saying is addictive drugs do the same thing in your brain, just like sugar. Sugar is designed to make you excited. Because of the way we evolved, sugar was not around, so when you got some, it meant that you had the calories to exist. Or our brains and bodies evolved to, like, a little bit of it. But now that we can create it at will, it suddenly becomes this very addictive substance that you really, really want more of. And so that said, I think that's pretty clear. But what you just also said is very, very similar to how Pavlok kind of works. So getting somebody to eat so much, but they get a little sick, that's kind of the foundations of our most well known use case, which is breaking bad habits for good. So I've used this on tortilla chips, for example. Like you said, if you get really sick on sugar, or if somebody drinks too much tequila, for example, and gets a little nauseous, sometimes, that habit goes away forever. That's known as an aversion. And we use Pavlok to help you build aversions towards habits you want to stop. So the way it works with sugar is usually you pick an item, a type of sugary food you want, and you'll eat it for the next five days. In fact, you get to eat all of it, but you're going to be zapped while you eat it. We have these five minute audio sessions where it says, all right, bring the food to your mouth, bring it back up, and you just follow the instructions. And as you eat it, you get the slight zap. You set the strength so you don't want it to be painful, but you want it to be uncomfortable. And what happens is you're going to want to put down the sugary dish. But if you don't, if you stick through with just the five minutes for five days, your brain builds this Pavlovian connection, this association that makes you actually stop liking the flavor of that food.
Wow.
And that's kind of what our bread and butter is for, helping people break bad habits. I think we're the only.
Yeah, because you talk about break bad habits and form good habits as being two different things.
Yeah, exactly. Forming good habits is a different concept, which I'm happy to switch over if you'd like to.
Is it? Is it? I mean, which one's more difficult?
I think that with Pavlok, breaking bad habits is really easy, and without it, it's really hard. Forming good habits is always hard, no matter if you have Pavlok or not. But it's a lot easier than quitting an addiction if you don't have, you know, our tool. So with regards to breaking a bad habit, the. If you don't have a padlock, no problem. You can download the app and we explain how to use just a rubber band to get started.
But that's actually how I started dealing with, you know, all these negative thoughts and judgments just using a rubber band.
Isn't it crazy how effective? Also, you start to notice the triggers a little earlier on in the day that are caught thoughts. A small band is effective. Pavlok is. A lot is very effective. But like, people just assume that they. They don't. We had this one user of our product early on, she had severe depression and she asked me if Pavlok could help. And I said, look, I don't know about brain levels or anything, but I do believe that a lot of depression is a negative thought loop in the brain and I could probably help with that. So for the next few days, whenever you catch yourself in a negative thought sequence, zap yourself, smile and text me where you are. And so the first day, she caught herself at work. The second day, she was on her way to work. On the third day, she was reaching for her front door. Fourth day, front door. Fifth day, front door. And I said, what's going on with your front door? What is there? Well, there was a flower vase sitting next to her front door. She and her twin sister, when she was 16, had a birthday party. Her friend got. Her sister got a ton of gifts and she got nothing. And her twin sister said, here, have this flower vase. Well, that vase was triggering thoughts of Nobody loves me and nobody cares. All she did was throw away the flower vase and her depression drastically reduced. She didn't feel symptoms until 4pm the next day. It was insane.
Wow. Just connecting the dots.
Yeah. Removing.
Yeah.
You can't eat sugar. You can't eat sugar if there's no sugar. Or in 100 mile radius of you. Right. You can't, can't trigger these, these things unless you have a trigger.
Right.
And that is why it's so important. Like with food, we all have our things that are triggers. Like for me, I know that if there was cheesecake, mocha, ice cream or popcorn in the house that I, you know, at 11 o' clock at night, bad things are going to happen, happen. And so why would I bring them in? Like, I don't need to do that. I know exactly what my deal is. I'm not ever bringing those anywhere near me.
A really good tactic. I've been like, you don't need willpower all day. You just need willpower when you're purchasing food, you know? And so I liked using Instacart or like uber, uber food delivery or whatever. I liked purchasing groceries that were shipped to me because it would allow me not to have all the stimuli of everything that I wanted. All the sugary food just right there at the grocery store. But then it could become a recurring purchase. So I would buy it on Instacart with just the healthy food items and then I would just continuously rebuy that same, that same thing, save time. But I just didn't have to worry about the risk of the sugary food getting in there.
Yeah, and it's great for parents too, because we can watch our kids when they go off to college and ensure they're eating healthy, that is. I totally, totally stalk my son's Instacart and make sure he's doing what he's supposed to be doing. He's super good. But it is cool. Now we're up against the time. We're actually goofing off and going, going long. But can't help myself here. But I know that I've got a habit audit for everybody. So we always have awesome show notes and today is no different. And they are at jjversion.com forward/pavlok. That is P, a V, L, O K. Because I remember when you were first making them too. I'm like, you got to make them so they're pretty. For us women, we don't want to.
Wear some like, you know, dude, much prettier, I swear.
Good. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I got I. A girl walked up, she got it, she wore it, she's like, you know what? This really isn't ugly. I was like, yes, yes, we did it.
I told you, I told you early on. You listen I'm so happy about that. All right. That is fantastic. And what is the most important bad habit you've ever broken, Manish?
For myself, yes. Let's see. The most public one was tortilla chips. I'd say the most powerful bad habit I've broken was definitely overeating. Sugar and carbs for sure. That was it.
Awesome. There you go.
Breaks down your brain, the way it reverberates to how just when you don't have cravings and your body feels nice and empty, instead of just desiring more food like a rab. Like a rabid animal, it just. It's just good.
It's freeing. It sets you free. We should not be focused. Our diet shouldn't be our hobby. You know, weight loss is not a hobby. You shouldn't be controlled by food. It's fuel. And you can totally get to that point. I was a total bingy overeater, lived on ice cream. I actually went to work at an ice cream store in high school because I thought it would cure me of my ice cream issues. And you know what? If I had had Pavlok, I would have been fine. But I didn't. So all it did was make me gain ten pounds.
I was like, it's like some of the alcoholics I know who become bartenders because they're like, I want to push it away. I'm like, you guys, you guys, come on.
Come on. Yeah.
What?
Ridiculous. It doesn't work. So note to self, if you've got a cookie issue, don't go work at Mrs. Fields. It will not work.
It won't work.
So again, I want to remind everyone, jjvirgin.com pavlok and that is P, A V L, O K. Hey, this is one of those things, Honestly, Manish, this is for everybody. Because the way you become amazing in life is purely by your habits. Your habits take you down or your habits lift you up. And so here's now a way to help form good ones and break bad ones. Now, we know that's different and a simple tool to be able to help you do it. So make sure you go there, grab that special deal. And, Manish, it's been awesome. Thank you so much for making the time.
Thank you so much for inviting me, jj.
There was your deep dive bonus episode of Ask the Health Expert. We will be dropping these bonus episodes as amazing experts and incredible titles come to us. You don't want to miss out on this, do ya? Stay in the know. Be the first to know. Go to subscribetoj.com and I'll hook you up.
Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.
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