As someone who loves both advice columns and podcasts, I thought The Mel Robbins Podcast would be a great fit. This show launched in 2022, and since then has cranked out over 300 episodes dispensing guidance on health, money, and happiness — all while generating mixed headlines.
Robbins, a top podcaster, has been in the news recently over accusations that she appropriated the idea for her blockbuster self-help tome from a viral Facebook post authored by Cassie Phillips. While the “let them” nomenclature is identical, it is difficult to trace a direct line from a social media poem to an entire book. Indeed, many of her ideas can be traced back to Stoicism and Buddhism. So, is iterating on an ancient idea for the modern age fundamentally plagiarism? And is taking an idea from a scroll-on Facebook post worthy of the threat of cancellation?
At my editor’s urging, I chose three recent episodes to decode on topics that are personally compelling to me: money management, time management, and joy in life. I also added an episode that addresses Robbins’s bestselling 2024 book, The Let Them Theory.
After listening to these chosen episodes, it does seem appropriate that Robbins’s catchphrase of “let them” came from somewhere on the internet, as her podcast is essentially the audio version of clickbait.
In episode 327, “The Best Financial Advice You’ll Ever Hear,” the premise is decoupling emotionally driven spending. The guest is Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money. Let’s first note that neither Housel nor Robbins has a background in psychology. Still, understanding how money interplays with social dynamics and the pressure to present a certain way is certainly an important topic. However, listening feels more like scrolling through an article titled “The One Trick to Lose Belly Fat” — you keep going because you want an answer, even though you know it’s not there. Forty-five minutes in, there’s an aside about compound interest from investments. In an era where living costs increasingly outstrip real wages, the narrative engenders more head-nodding from folks who do have investments than it provides any real instruction for those who are trying to learn something about money.
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Robbins, as a host, is a practiced and eloquent speaker, and she brings to the mic both force and conviction. It’s compelling to hear her speak with such confidence. And her guests operate in her same orbit, often harvested directly from the bestseller lists of pop-psychology books.
In episode 322, “How to Get Things Done, Stay Focused, and Be More Productive,” we get the life-changing advice of… making lists. Guest Cal Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown who has done important work on attention management and the role of algorithms. With such a highly credentialed guest who understands at a fundamental level how the algos are vying for our time, this episode could be extremely salient. But whenever Newport is really getting into it, we are pulled to a sponsor break.
The lack of truly actionable advice, it seems, is part of The Mel Robbins Podcast model. As with much of the self-help industry, most of these so-called experts would be out of a job if their claims were ever required to be proven true or measured in practice.
It’s worth mentioning that Robbins is Gen-X, and her audience, according to Sirius, is largely Gen Z women. I can see how Z-ers, who have lived in a very precarious world, love the conviction of someone with a true gift for public speaking. I’m Gen X, like Robbins, and I also feel moved by the conviction. Even so, I could not tamp down the concern that listening to this podcast is more like seeing another a Live Laugh Love sign hanging in a suburban kitchen rather than hearing a real conversation about how people much younger than me — and Robbins — will ever be able to afford said kitchen.
In episode 332, “Try This Today: 6 Small Ways to Have More Fun Even When Life Feels Hard,” Robbins describes the whimsical effect of donning pink glasses. She also recommends being the first to dance at a wedding, and suggests that, when chit-chatting about what happened over the weekend with work colleagues, to lead with something funny or ridiculous. “Bring the joy,” as she puts it, and position oneself to “drive the fun bus.”
Is this actual advice? Or is it deeply unserious filler content designed to shift our perspective, but not our material reality? Because if anyone, especially professional women, try to “drive the fun bus” at work, they’re likely to be met with bad outcomes. Robbins, as a former attorney, should know this.
By the time I pushed play on episode 326, “Let Them: How To Take Back Your Peace and Power,” it was clear that whether iterated on, plagiarized, or borrowed without attribution from Cassie Philips, this podcast is rooted in the promotion of Robbins as a brand. Despite introducing herself as “your friend Mel,” she’s not our friend. Primarily, she has books to sell.
The “Let Them Theory” espouses the concept that if someone is unhappy with your actions, then just let them. If you don’t quite understand the actions of others, you can also just let them exist, and you don’t need to think any deeper on it.
It could be a striking concept if it weren’t so rooted in hubris. It takes a certain kind of confidence to ignore how other people feel about your behavior, and for listeners seeking ways to engender that confidence, they won’t find it, largely because the “theory” is illustrated with truly ridiculous examples. Robbins goes on (and on) about encountering a person riding a unicycle on the freeway, opining that, despite the annoyance of their presence, she has the option to just let them ride.
If the objective of the “Let Them” theory is to, in Robbins’s own words, “stop letting other people’s opinions, drama, and judgment impact your life,” what is the message of an encounter with a random person cycling on the highway? They are strangers to one another. Robbins is shifting judgement onto the unicyclist before it can disrupt her day.
Superficial salves remains the crux. The podcast starts with truly interesting ideas, actively avoids getting substantive, and then distracts with wacky anecdotes. The slick production value offers a veneer of authority.
Robbins has a massive audience, but I came away with a sense of being productized. Ultimately, my recommendation is to do with this podcast what Robbin’s does with the unicyclist: just pass on by.
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Wendy J. Fox is the author of four books of fiction, including the novel If the Ice Had Held and the Colorado Book Award-winning What If We Were Somewhere Else. She has written for The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, Self, Business Insider, Electric Literature, and Ms. among other publications, and her work has appeared in many literary magazines.