Manduka: Peter Sterios

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37:51Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1997, and Peter has just learned that if he wants to get one of those thick black yoga mats from Germany, he'll have to buy a thousand of them, like$25 ,000 worth. Because Klaus, the guy who makes them, isn't looking for a customer. He's looking for a business partner. Yeah, well, he wanted a distributor in the United States. He wasn't interested in shipping from Germany. And I just felt like this relationship was one of those moments. He's offering me an opportunity to start a business. And so from that moment, I thought, okay, I've got a decision to make.

38:33I'll get back to you. Yeah. Were you still running the architecture office? Yeah. So you got that going. You're teaching yoga. I had a yoga studio. I had an architecture office. and I was remodeling our house, major remodel, where we were living out of a single bedroom with one bathroom and the rest of the house was gutted. Got it. And this guy's saying, the minimum order is$25 ,000. So I'm trying to understand from the end of that phone call with Klaus in Germany where he's like, you got to order$25 ,000 to, I don't know, maybe a week later where you're like, okay, I'll do this. What did you start?

39:09Tell me about your thought process. How do you connect the dots to him saying you've got to order$25 ,000 worth of it to you thinking, well, maybe I can actually sell these and make money off of this? The thing about making money off it was instantaneous because even in the short time in San Luis Obispo, every student that saw his mat wanted one. So all of a sudden, the wheels inside my head were spinning. So it was more, where am I going to get the money? and we were remodeling our house$80 ,000 in debt with credit card debt. And the way I was funding the house remodel was at a time when credit cards had these things called convenience checks, where you could get an advance of$10 ,000 to$20 ,000 for zero interest, actually, if you paid it off in time.

40:00And so I just thought, well, shit, I'm already doing all these other credit cards. I'll just get a few more,$25 ,000, it's two more credit cards, and I'll just purchase it and then worry about paying the cards off when I need to worry about it. Yep. All right. So you decide you're going to get this cash advance and then use that to buy the$25 ,000 worth of yoga mats. And then you would just, presumably the plan was you'd sell them in your yoga studio. Correct. It's a risk, but you have a pretty good idea that you could sell them. You put the order in and I have to assume it's going to take a, I don't know, a month or two before they get there.

40:40Thousand yoga mats arrive. Did you have like a warehouse or a place that they got to? I naively believed that I could put the mats in my garage. Just the garage seemed big enough to hold a small container worth of mats. And so I just figured I'd cross that bridge when it happened. And sure enough, I overestimated. And so I had to basically clear out everything that was in my garage to make room for the mass. They show up to your, what, like a UPS truck or like, I don't know, a moving truck? No, a small container. A container. A small container. Full of, and what, they just, like a forklift just like drops it on your driveway?

41:24Yeah, they came on pallets, 18 boxes per pallet. The neighbor kid that I hired would help me move it into the garage, stacked floor to ceiling. All right, so you get this full shipment. And you've got a thousand yoga mats, but you have a yoga studio, so you can sell them there. But still, selling a thousand just out of your studio, I have to imagine, would be hard. It was impossible. It wasn't, it was the, when you start a business without a business plan, you have this passion that you can solve any problem. And that was my mentality. That's the way I grew up. That's what my dad taught me that, you know, problems are opportunities.

42:11That was one of my dad's favorite things to say. And so that's the mentality that I'll deal with that when it happens. and there's so many personal things that happened during those times including divorce that freed up space in my house where I could use parts of the house for warehouse as well so yeah so you were going through a divorce and starting this business and yeah I can't imagine it was an easy time but um but what was the I mean the name Manduka how did you what I mean did because they were just pieces of material for astroturf so how did you decide i mean it makes sense you want to differentiate them if there were going to be other yoga mats so how did you decide to use that name and to come up with a logo and and then to brand them so because shandor introduced me to the mat i i wanted to find a name that kind of gave a little bit of acknowledgement to the roots of the map.

43:17And so when I thought about words that Shandor used, Sanskrit words that might make a great word for a yoga mat company, especially a yoga mat company that has excellent grip, and obviously a frog came to mind. And I thought, well, what's the Sanskrit word for frog? And there was a word called Becca. And unfortunately, at that moment, there was a company that was starting to offer product called Becca Yoga Products. And so that name was out. And the other name was Manduka for frog. And the reason I like Manduka, and when I realized it, that was it, because Shander's Hungarian. And when he says the word Manduka with his Hungarian accent, it was so funny to hear.

44:05It was just this, my Hungarian accent isn't very good, but Manduka. And so every time he would say that, I'd giggle. And it was subconscious. I don't know why I was giggling. Sometimes he even called me on it. He's like, what are you laughing at? Not so funny. And so for me, yes, this is the perfect word. And frog because it was a grippy, like a, yeah. Yeah. And then I obviously did some research on the symbolism of frog. And it's quite an auspicious animal, especially in yogic terminology. And to me, that was really a perfect word for this company. Yeah. I have to assume that it was clear in 1997 that even though yoga was growing, I mean, the market in San Luis Obispo would have been too small to kind of get these sold there.

45:00How did you – so, I mean, initially – I mean, you were obviously – you'd studied with Iengar. You were writing for the Yoga Journal at this point and knew some people or probably a lot of people in the yoga community. How did you just create awareness about the product or this thing that you were trying to sell initially? The connections that I had through Yoga Journal, there was a network of what I call celebrity yoga teachers. that I was getting to know at these conferences where we'd sit around and eat and I'd meet, you know, some big names in those days were already making$100 ,000 a year as a yoga teacher.

45:42So there was money to be made there. And I wanted to associate with those teachers. And I would go out of my way at these conferences to kind of rub elbows with. And they became my friends in a way. And so that first shipment came. I gave 75 mats for free to every celebrity yoga teacher I knew. Wow. You gave it to them and said, hey, try this. And when you say celebrity yoga teacher, who are your names? Baron Baptiste, Shiva Ray. Shiva Ray, very famous yoga teacher. Patricia Walden, Eric Schiffman in LA. Eric Schiffman, who had massive follow-ins. Massive. And I have a funny story about this guy.

46:26Eric Schiffman, this last guy that I described, in the early days of orders, all we had was an answering machine at our yoga studio to take orders. And this pattern started showing up that on Monday morning, I'd have 25 orders from Tulsa or 25 orders from Oklahoma City. And I'm like, what is going on in these Midwest towns? and then I realized I suspected it was Eric and I checked his schedule on his little um little bit of web presence that he had in those days and sure enough it was where he was teaching weekend workshops and so he was at the end we custom built Eric is six foot four we custom built him a mat that was a hundred inches long instead of 72 inches long and so he was an easy guy for me to develop this relationship with because he was doing it for free.

47:24Like he was an influencer before influencers got paid. And he was just, and, and, and these were also different because a yoga mat was just like this afterthought, but this was heavy. Already it was unusual. Like people probably noticed them, notice these celebrity yoga teachers using them. So in, you know, The other thing that I'm curious about is in 1997, these were very expensive compared to – I mean, a yoga mat was like – you go to Target or maybe not Target then, but you go somewhere and get one for like$20,$25. Oh, cheaper. Cheaper. You get them for like$15. Yeah. And these were like$60.

48:04$65 was the advertised price. I mean, that is, you know, already that, I mean, there's an argument to be made that because the price point was so high, it did attract attention, right? People like, well, wow, if it's so expensive, it must be really special. I think it worked. The one, as I started to ramp this business up, I actually, a friend of mine was a business consultant and I hired him. I said, listen, I want to hire you. I want to get your expertise. Here's the business model. And I said, an indestructible product, lifetime guarantee, one color, heavy. He said, you're insane. Don't do it.

48:43There's no built-in obsolescence. There's nothing. It's a dead end. Don't do it. And I said, here's your money. Thank you for the advice. And, you know, and then I moved on because I knew that it was filling a void. I mean, for years, first three years, I was the only person in that space. Yeah. And there was nothing like it. There was nothing like it. And I guess you, I mean, once you started to see how people responded to that first shipment, you went to Germany. You went to that factory in Frankfurt that was essentially making mats for AstroTurf. but you kind of what you went to them and said hey could you could you actually on your line like make me mat specifically for for fitness and yoga that's exactly what we did there were a couple you know customer issues that we were starting to see we had to address one of them was the weight that these mats were heavy which created some problems for smaller people like carrying them and we you know just worked with it in a way we we didn't back away from it we did eventually two years after we launched the black mat we came out with this alternative mat that wasn't black and it was half the weight we also had a problem with slipping and so the early mats weren't designed tactilely on the top surface to resist sweat, you know, to resist slipping.

50:21And so we, I went on that trip, one of about six trips to Germany over the years, just to meet and maintain relationship with. That first trip was addressing weight, color, and slip. Because it was black, and it was seven pounds and it and if you sweat it was correct so and we solved with that one trip we solved all those problems um and we even i anticipated a problem that that i thought would be happening once they started to be used as studio mats by creating a texture on the bottom surface of the mat which was this dot pattern that you see in shower mats and things like that that helps the mat stay put on a hardwood floor or a stone floor.

51:11So that was that first trip. It was a very productive trip. And that was about a year in or less? About two years in. And now here's the thing. I mean, you alluded to this a couple minutes ago, which is when you talk to a business consultant in front of yours, which is you have, well, you were offering a guarantee. It was designed to be the one yoga mat you will ever need to buy. We weren't offering the guarantee at the start, but we had a tagline. The tagline was good for a lifetime or two. We had this little or two lifetimes as a joke. But we didn't explicitly do the lifetime guarantee until about year eight.

51:53So, but even then, you were selling a product that you knew most people would only buy one of. Correct. And in the late 90s, you know, it wasn't today, it's a$40 billion industry, but in the late 90s, it wasn't. But did you have a sense that something was changing in yoga that that it was starting to, there was kind of like this boom happening? The boom was definitely happening in terms of the growth of yoga studios. Yeah, because this is still pre Lululemon, I think. It's pre Lululemon. Yeah. So the products and especially the clothing products hadn't really in those days been realized. So I didn't know what the extent was, but I didn't believe the business consultant that it was limited.

52:47I just figured that whatever the United States is doing, it's going to track internationally at some point. and that's what's happened that that the growth started happening in the strangest of places especially in taiwan or in japan and then i realized that that's where shandor teaches in taiwan and japan and when he would be traveling with his mat there people in japan would say where do you get them and he'd send them to us so we started to have within three years we had an international business going as well. And especially when we made those technical adjustments to the grip and the textures, it increased the price to 75, but the performance just easily paid for that additional money.

53:38And this is obviously pre like Instagram influencers and social media marketing. This is the late 90s, early 2000s. I saw there's an ad that you put in yoga journal, like a print ad. And it's just like, it says Manduka. And then it's just a list of like the most prominent yoga teachers. And that presumably an ad like that at the time would have had a significant impact. Yeah. The first week that ad ran, we doubled sales. And then three weeks later, we're still doubling every week our sales. And it got to the point where that first year, I think we were on back order for three months out of 12, just because we couldn't keep up.

54:20And there was a two-month lag time between the order and the delivery. Well, because you were probably a tiny part of this Frankfurt factory, this German factory's business. Their main business was AstroTurf. Well, it was carpet under layman and AstroTurf. Yeah, exactly. It was a huge factory. And so the production cost from Germany was high, but our costs, our sales price was high. And we managed that. And we never sold the big box stores in the early days. We tried to maintain our studio relationships and our individual retail customers. And big box was only a thing that came later. And so what I'm trying to figure out is, because from what I gather reading about these early days was that you constantly had cash flow issues.

55:09Like you were constantly not able to make payments. But if they were like flying off the shelves, if you could not actually, I mean, if it was just, you know, you were growing like by 100 % every year, what was going on? Was it just, you just weren't managing the business right? Well, the problem in those early days is we didn't have a finance department. We didn't have, it was me. It was just like five of you. I had a warehouse guy. I had a marketing gal. I had an office manager who dealt with customers. And I had a kind of an outside sales rep who was basically a guy that just made commission and would travel a lot.

55:50And we didn't really have anyone managing the money. where we would get into trouble is when we'd send a shipment to yoga works who had at that time you know beginning to have seven eight franchise yoga works around this chain yeah so and they wouldn't pay us on time the retail business was perfect but the wholesale business would catch us literally with our pants down sometimes and then then we'd have to hustle yeah because in the early days, I had to pay half at the time of order and half at the shipping date. So basically, I had to pay 100 % of that inventory before it even left Germany or on the day that it left Germany.

56:36Because obviously, because your terms were not going to be great because... I was a business that was... Tiny. Yeah. And because as our orders grew, the business was like, the factory was a little cautious like what if we send all these mats but with track record and a relationship from that first visit the second visit was how do we change the terms and so we changed it thank you thankfully 25 up front 25 when it ships 25 after the first month and the balance after the second month and And that allowed you to basically function sustainably. Yeah, that was the key. When we come back in just a moment, why Peter eventually decides to sell Manduka and how he then has to learn to let go of it.

57:32Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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1:00:00Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. So it's the early 2000s, and Manduka is still just a five-person company, but it's starting to make some money and even turn a profit. And after specializing in just one product, that heavy black yoga mat, Manduka starts to branch out. First to lighter weight mats, and then to other yoga accessories. You know, bolsters, blocks, straps, eye pillows, all sorts of creative and useful tools. So I went out and I sourced materials that were organic cotton or whatever it was. We even did some air inflatable yoga bolsters to experiment with lighter weight things so students could travel with them.

1:00:44So I just, I didn't look at the balance sheet, the spreadsheets and say, okay, this is going to cost too much to make. I just said, this is a product that studios need or individuals at home need. And they all sold reasonably well. Yeah. And so that was growing the bottom line for us. Our international business was growing. Everything was growing. But to that point where I could manage it all, I was starting to see something's got to shift. And at the time, I mean, I think Gaia or Gaia, I mean, that I think, which is the biggest, probably one of the biggest yoga brands in the world was already out there.

1:01:27Did you see companies like that as like a competitor or sort of like we want to be like them or big or bigger than them? No, no. I just looked at what my intuition led me towards and also what I was listening to studio owners and friends of mine, what was needed, what was lacking. And as a studio owner myself, what was needed and lacking in my own studio. I guess the other – I mean another thing that was going on while – I mean because you start Manduka in 97 and, you know, you – obviously you're selling one mat and then you start to have the factory change the formula and then you go to two mats, sort of a lighter mat.

1:02:07But something else happens, which is your mentor, you know, this guy that you practice with, right, Shandor. I guess at a certain point he kind of pushes you away. He says, you've got to go on. What happens? I mean, you're his student. And what? He encourages you to stop practicing with him? What happened? so after 20 years of being his student but also 10 years as being his North American business manager you know the relationship was solid he was the best man in my first wedding but I mean there were signs that things were changing and I was not really paying attention to them because I thought our relationship was solid.

1:03:00What I see in hindsight now is he realized in maybe my personality something lacking and this devotion to the guru and maybe it was even starting from my Catholic upbringing, there was something broken in that way of relating to myself. And in a nutshell, I think what he gave me is now what I consider the ultimate gift. Because ultimately in yoga and in business, frankly, in a way, we all have that moment where we confront the, let's call it the inner teacher. Like who knows what's best for our lives? It's not outside ourselves, it's within ourselves. And if I'd have listened on a business level, if I'd have listened to the advice that I was getting from these experts, I would have never started Manduka.

1:04:10And likewise, if I had been a follower of Shandor for the last 20 years, I wouldn't be here talking to you, I don't think, to be honest. But what explained it? I mean, it seems odd. I mean, he was mad at you for some reason. It's weird. I don't know. Did you ever understand why he was angry? I don't see it as anger, but that state of confusion lasted for a year, maybe, maybe two, because simultaneously I was, my wife had already left, but the divorce wasn't final. Well, my dog, probably the only real friend at that time in my life that I felt close to my dog, died unexpectedly from a brain tumor.

1:05:01So you couldn't have piled in more stress into a life and still running all these other businesses and things. Hmm. Tell me what was going on. I mean, I know that you obviously went through a number of really huge challenges, the divorce and the fallout from the end of your partnership and friendship with Shandor. And then you had kind of a scary health diagnosis. I think it was a tumor that was found. Yeah. It turned out to be benign, but it was still scary. Yeah. It must have been really scary. Yeah, it was one of those moments that life can gift you with if you kind of make it to that realization where you decide what's truly important.

1:05:50And this is where my, you know, at that point, 25, 30 years of yoga practice really overlaid into my personal and professional life as a business owner. And that was a gift from this diagnosis, the diagnosis which initially was cancer. And it turned out after they removed the tumor to be benign. And that was after four years of treating it holistically, naturally. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So all of this is the backdrop for a decision you make in 2007 to step down as a CEO of your company, your business. You owned it. It was yours. I'm assuming you were feeling just overwhelmed that you just couldn't do it anymore.

1:06:50You didn't want to run it anymore. Once I made the decision to sell, I didn't feel overwhelmed. But leading up to that? Yeah. Yeah, of course. It's like saying goodbye to a child, you know, that this and even to this day, guy, you know, like Manduka is still part of me. And yesterday I get this email still from Manduka that's celebrating 25 years and they acknowledge me in the email, which is just, of course, I'm I'm it's part of me. Tell me about the decision to sell. 2007, 2008, this is obviously the beginning of the financial crisis. You guys hit about$2.5 million in sales. So you're still very small.

1:07:33But, I mean, fast forward today, Manduka is a really big company. Tell me the motivation for selling. You were just tired. You were just done. uh i was at a crossroads and looking at the second half of my life and the second half of my life i wanted to be different than the first half of my life and that the the fatigue wasn't so much the issue as the quality of life and um i made the choice for quality of life over some legacy of corporate success. And I, I, um, when I made that decision, I had a sales trip down to yoga works and I was talking to their buyer and I said, Hey, by the way, if you know anyone who wants to buy a yoga mat company, I might want to talk to them.

1:08:30And, uh, the buyer, who's this guy, you know, I didn't know that well said, well, I actually, I think I know someone. And I go, who's that? And he said, me. And I laughed at him. I said, well, that's wonderful, but I think I'm probably going to ask more than you can afford. He said, oh, well, I know people and, you know, I can introduce you and I want to be a part of it. And that's how it started. I didn't have to go find anyone to go find someone. I just started in a YogaWorks warehouse. house. And eventually, this person sort of organized the funding, the financing to buy it? This person introduced me to a venture group in New York.

1:09:15This is Channelstone Partners. Right. And so he made the introductions. And part of the introduction, like he didn't want a finder's fee. He just wanted a job. And he was the COO, chief of operations for the new company. Wow. So basically, it was a fairly quick acquisition. I mean, you sort of put out your price and they agreed to it? No, no. It took a year. From that moment in the warehouse to the day we signed on the dotted line. And it was unbelievable timing because a month after we signed, the whole economy collapsed. And that was a bit worrisome for me a little bit. But no, we negotiated over a year and they were new at this.

1:10:04And there was a little bit of haggling over price, but I basically told them we were undercapitalized, understaffed, and we still produce$2.5 million in gross sales. The potential for this company is 10 to 15x what you're getting it for. And they said, yes, we agree. And in the end, that's how we came to a price. So you signed an agreement with them to stay on for, I think, five more years. Yes. And in the press release from that time, you're quoted as saying, you know, this is great. We're going to maintain our core values. A lot of, you know, these are the right partners. They share my dedication to this vision.

1:10:45They have the best interest of the company and our customers at heart. And that's normal. You know, you see that in any acquisition press release. Did that come to fruition? Was that actually how it played out? You know, appearances and what actually is the reality is sometimes quite diverse. And I would say that the first, I mean, their first decision, which I was against, was to move the company from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles. And the reason I was against it was the quality of life issues. And we had this perfect working model of what I was concerned about, which was Patagonia, where Chouinard sold it to Venture Group and they moved it, I think, somewhere in Southern California.

1:11:37and then he bought it back and moved the company back to Ventura because it was close to a beach break for all his surfer employees and he had a quality of life for his employees that was more valuable than the bottom line. And so that track record of Patagonia was fresh in my mind and I was saying, listen guys, yes, it's going to cut costs for shipping and it's going to get a bigger labor pool and bigger access to customers but I guarantee you in another five or ten years San Luis Obispo is going to be the place you want to have your headquarters because you'll be able to attract people here and they didn't listen and that that was kind of the first heads up for me that you know the press release is one thing the reality is another and within a couple years of this employment agreement with them they would pay me to create ideas and develop products and then they would act without any regard to my recommendations and they learned some painful lessons without even acknowledging that in a way I was correct but at the end of three years they stopped communicating with me and the last two years of my employment with them they paid me and they never called me which is the way it happens I guess sometimes.

1:13:00But the brand has definitely strived to present itself as honoring its roots. And the different generations of owners, I think there's been four generations of different venture capital groups now, they've all in their own unique ways tried to maintain that reputation of Manduka. You know, I'm curious what you make of where yoga is now because it is what started out at least in the West as a sort of hippy-dippy spiritual thing. It was, you know, I think first came to the U.S. in the 20s or something like one of the world's fairs and then, you know, really kind of kicks off in the Bay Area, San Francisco in the 50s.

1:13:50And today it's not – I mean it is a massive part of the fitness industry. is a, I mean, in 2016, it was like$17 billion in the US alone. So the global, I think the global yoga market's like$40 billion. And that's like, that's a significantly huge market. I mean, you're talking about, it's not the beauty industry, but it's like, it's really big. And, you know, the things that Manduka sells, the accessories and those Lululemons and all the other brands out there that have really become multi, you know, million, billion dollar businesses on the back of this, what originally began as this spiritual practice in rural India.

1:14:33I mean, of course, it's inevitable. It happens with so many things. But I don't know, do you have mixed feelings about that? I don't. I mean, I played a major role in that, you know, corporate transition of the traditions of yoga into a Western environment. And I felt my place was part of a lineage of innovators to make yoga more accessible for people with bad ankles on the floor, you know, bad knees on the floor, whatever, to be able to get down to the floor and practice yoga and then stand up and feel safe with balance and stability. So the legacy of Manduka is that it was built by yoga teachers.

1:15:23I didn't have a sales department until year six, I think. So to me, that was something that I, to this day, feel really good about. As you sort of recount your story and where, you know, quite a story, right? From Fresno to Santa Fe and New Zealand and India, back to San Luis Obispo. And this brand that you built, that you created, is now one of the biggest brands in yoga. How much of where you are today do you attribute to how hard you worked and how much do you think has to do with just chance and luck and just serendipity, coincidence? I would say the title of my book is Gravity and Grace. And everyone has a relationship to this word grace, whether it's a spiritual or a religious meaning or just appreciating nature, where we feel this non-physical connection to things or energies, etc.

1:16:35And I want to maybe finish this with a story. About nine years ago, I was in Spain in this little fishing village called Catequez on the eastern coast of Spain. And so I took a train up the coast and then I drove to this little village and I get terribly lost. and now I'm starting to worry because the rental car to get back to the train station, I can't remember where I parked the car. So I'm standing in this maze. There's people and merchants and little shops and I look down right at the window of the shop and here's a Manduka sticker on the inside of the glass and I'm like, oh my God. The door's locked.

1:17:24I look in and it's this tiny little yoga studio And that feeling of being lost and then having this little logo that I drew on a napkin in a restaurant, you know, how many years ago? That frog. That frog. I drew that frog on a napkin. And that frog symbol has survived, you know, four venture capital groups. and I'm seeing it in some little village in Spain. That to me is such a gift to my life. That's Peter Sterios, founder of Manduka. By the way, even though he fell out of touch with his former mentor, Shandor Ramite, they did have an unexpected reunion about four years ago when they ran into each other at a farmer's market in San Luis Obispo.

1:18:20It was awkward in a way, but it was also beautiful because for the first time since the breakup, he exchanged a hug with me. He walked over to me. We embraced like brothers. And it was like, how are you? And we had a moment of just exchanging as two people, not teacher guru. And now it confirms for me this wisdom that he provided me by saying goodbye. And it was beautiful. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow our show so you never miss a new episode. And it's free on Apple and Spotify. Just click the follow button at the top. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt at id.wondery.com.

1:19:09If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at How I Built This and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, I'm at Guy.raz. This episode was produced by Kira Wakim with music composed by Ramtin Erablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

1:19:51If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.