# What's Your Problem? — Podcast & Newsletter
> Status: Planning
> Vision: The hilarious, unexpected, and sometimes practical show about problems nobody sees correctly
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## The Concept
**"What's Your Problem?"** is the flagship content series for Word And Mouth. Every episode/issue takes one problem — historical, contemporary, or hyper-local — and runs it through the PROBLEM framework:
1. **The Problem Everyone Saw** (the obvious surface issue)
2. **The Problem That Was Actually There** (the real diagnosis)
3. **The Unexpected Solution** (what actually worked)
4. **What You Can Steal** (actionable takeaways)
**The Twist:** We make it hilarious. Unhinged. Occasionally profound.
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## Pilot Episode: "When a Mouse, a Monk, and a Radio Station Solved the Impossible"
### The Hook
Three stories that have NO business being in the same episode — and yet they're all teaching the same lesson.
### The Three Stories
| Story | Era | Problem | The Twist |
|-------|-----|---------|-----------|
| **Room 40** | WWI, 1917 | Bureaucracy blocks data | The "door mouse" runs, not reports |
| **Abbot Suger** | France, 1144 | Theology vs physics | Move the support OUTSIDE the building |
| **Times Radio** | UK, 2020 | Loss-making radio | It's not radio, it's a retention moat |
### Why They're Related
1. **All three look like failures on the surface** — a shy publisher, a theological compromise, a P&L disaster
2. **All three hide genius in plain sight** — the running, the buttress, the subscriber economics
3. **All three require looking at DIFFERENT problems than advertised**
### Structure (45-60 mins)
**Act 1: The Setup** (10 mins)
- "I want to tell you about failure. Specifically, three failures that weren't."
- Introduce the three stories as seemingly unrelated
- Promise: "By the end, you'll see the pattern."
**Act 2: Room 40** (12 mins)
- The bathtub codebreakers and the bureaucratic wall
- "Do you want America in the war, Sir?"
- Takeaway: **Proximity without communication is worse than distance**
**Act 3: Suger** (12 mins)
- The light problem and Bernard's critique
- The beautiful mistake (three people = one saint)
- Takeaway: **Move the constraint outside the building**
**Act 4: Times Radio** (12 mins)
- The "loss-making" radio station
- The moat model and retention economics
- Takeaway: **Don't measure the moat's fishing revenue**
**Act 5: The Thread** (8 mins)
- Reveal the pattern: All three solved the WRONG problem correctly
- The PROBLEM framework revealed
- Call to action: "What problem are YOU solving wrongly?"
### Hilarious/Unexpected Elements
- Running theme: "Door Mice" — the unlikely heroes who just recognise the moment
- Recurring bit: "OK but why do I care about a 12th century monk?"
- Sound design: Cathedral acoustics for Suger, WWI radio static for Room 40
- Callback: "Fishing revenue" becomes the running joke
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## Newsletter Format
**Subject line formula:** `What's Your Problem?: [Unexpected pairing]`
**Examples:**
- `What's Your Problem?: A mouse, a monk, and a £15M loss`
- `What's Your Problem?: When Klarna hired back the humans`
- `What's Your Problem?: Why your biggest competitor is your own org chart`
**Structure:**
1. **The Hook** — The story that doesn't sound like business advice (200 words)
2. **The Reframe** — What the problem actually was (200 words)
3. **What You Can Steal** — 3-5 bullets, first-person, actionable (150 words)
4. **The Door Mouse Question** — A question for reflection (50 words)
5. **CTA** — "Reply to this email with YOUR problem"
**Tone Target:**
- Not LinkedIn thought leadership
- Not dry HBR analysis
- Energy: "Drunk history meets the FT meets your wittiest friend"
- Imagine: The Economist's writing quality, Reductress's irreverence, your most insightful mentor
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## Future Episode Ideas
| Episode | Era | Problem Domain | Hook |
|---------|-----|----------------|------|
| The Trivial Catastrophe | Various | Complexity | When a comma destroyed a company |
| AI Rollbacks | 2024-25 | Automation | Klarna's robots learned empathy |
| The Hiring Paradox | TBD | Hiring | Why we hire wrong on purpose |
| The Kitchen Problem | TBD | Behaviour | Making takeaway harder than cooking |
| The Dublin Bridge | TBD | Infrastructure | 11 years of broken remote control |
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## Production Notes
**Recording Setup:**
- Studio (TBD) or remote?
- Video capture for YouTube clips?
**Distribution:**
- Podcast: Spotify, Apple, YouTube Music
- Newsletter: Beehiiv or Substack?
- Website: Embed on /arsenal/podcast/
**Frequency:**
- Newsletter: Weekly? Biweekly?
- Podcast: Biweekly? Monthly?
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## Connections
- [[_private/strategic-brain.md]] — Core positioning
- [[solved/room-40.astro]] — Room 40 case study
- [[solved/suger.astro]] — Suger case study
- [[insights/the-15m-paradox.astro]] — Times Radio case study
- [[newsletter/the-door-mouse.md]] — Original newsletter draft
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`#podcast` `#newsletter` `#content-series` `#whats-your-problem`