Emma Gannon's Success Myth Diaries series questions money, fame, and midlife success scripts.
Ctrl Alt Delete pairs gentle one-on-one conversations with a steady suspicion of traditional success. Across interviews and replay episodes, it treats work, wellbeing, money, creativity, and public life as personal subjects rather than career advice topics.
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Ctrl Alt Delete is an interview-format podcast hosted by British author Emma Gannon, who conducts one-on-one conversations that typically open on work or career and move into wellbeing, creativity, and personal history. A recurring format within the show is the Success Myth Diaries mini-series, tied to Gannon's book The Success Myth, in which each episode examines a specific inherited belief about success — around money, fame, anxiety, or spirituality — with a single guest. Guests in this series include Jeff Hamaoui of the Modern Elder Academy discussing midlife and inherited 'success scripts', Financial Diet founder Chelsea Fagan on self-publishing economics and money shame, actor Sian Clifford on fame and perfectionism, author Tim Clare on anxiety and creative self-worth, and psychotherapist Fiona Arrigo on spirituality and collective burnout. The show also features standalone and replayed interviews with writers and creatives, such as novelist Nick Hornby discussing rejection and gatekeeping in publishing, and Lena Dunham discussing online harassment, privacy, and the pressures of public visibility. Episodes run roughly 28 to 37 minutes and are conversational and reflective in tone rather than instructional or list-driven. The host's questioning tends to start from a concrete professional milestone — an award, a book deal, a health diagnosis — before widening into questions of identity, self-worth, and what 'enough' means. The show is not built around tactical career advice; it reads closer to a long-form personal essay conducted in conversation. Listeners who enjoy hearing writers, actors, and thinkers reflect candidly on ambition, burnout, and reinvention are the core audience. Production is a straightforward two-person interview with no panel format, no regular co-host, and no narrative sound design.
Made for: People re-examining career, creativity, and success who prefer reflective long-form conversation over tactical productivity advice.
What sets it apart: Episodes are often structured around Gannon's own book The Success Myth, using its named 'success myths' as an interview frame with guests spanning therapy, publishing, and entertainment rather than a fixed career-advice format.
Ctrl Alt Delete subverts the traditional career show. Instead, it's for people who are more interested in shaping their work rather than letting their work shape them. The main focus is work, wellbeing and creativity. Hosted by bestselling author Emma Gannon, she has a gentle line of questioning that starts with work, and ends up wherever the conversations lead. Named Best Business podcast by Vuelio, Webby award nominee and named 50 Best Podcasts by Sunday Times, Ctrl Alt Delete is a gateway into new ideas – with past guests varying far and wide including Elizabeth Gilbert, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Jacqueline Wilson, Lena Dunham, Ju...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Emma Gannon turns conversations about achievement into a clear-eyed examination of the pressures shaping work, money and personal definitions of success.
Ctrl Alt Delete follows Emma Gannon into conversations about the stories people attach to achievement. The interview format gives guests room to examine money, fame, productivity and career identity through lived decisions rather than abstract rules.
Success enters the witness box; Emma Gannon helps you cross-examine money, fame, anxiety and midlife.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tim Clare makes anxiety feel readable, funny, and worth questioning without pretending it has a neat fix.
Emma Gannon's conversation with Tim Clare treats anxiety as a faulty alarm: irritating, overactive, sometimes ridiculous, but not useless. The strongest idea is Clare's call to repair your relationship with anxiety rather than chase a permanently calm life.
A reflective conversation on spirituality, security, and loosening the grip of accumulation as proof of success.
Emma Gannon's conversation with Fiona Arrigo treats spirituality as a return to relationship: with values, with other people, and with the feeling of having enough.
A reflective midlife conversation about inherited success scripts, purpose, and building a less fragile next chapter.
Midlife is framed here as a point where success can be questioned rather than doubled down on. Emma Gannon talks with Jeff Hamaoui about the scripts people inherit around purpose, community, and well-being, and the most useful idea is the purpose tree exercise: look at what has…
A calm, thoughtful conversation about fame, busyness, self-tracking, and the difficult practice of knowing when enough is enough.
Emma Gannon and Sian Clifford use fame as the doorway into a more useful conversation about what success does to the nervous system. Clifford is sharp on the way money, status, and self-tracking can turn into the same old scoreboard, whether that means checking an Apple Watch…
A grounded conversation about money, creative control, and letting go of success markers that no longer fit.
Emma Gannon frames money as one of the success myths that can pull people away from a life that actually feels fulfilling. With Chelsea Fagan, founder and CEO of The Financial Diet, the conversation gets concrete fast: Chelsea talks through the pressure to make her first fiction…
A warm 2017 replay about online pressure, privacy, and the need for creative breathing room.
Lena Dunham's replayed 2017 conversation with Emma Gannon lands best when it treats online life as something felt in the body: the rush of being noticed, the panic of being visible, and the relief of letting a good night stay mostly private.
Nick Hornby turns rejection, feedback, and creative nerve into a grounded listen for writers learning who to hear.
Nick Hornby's replay conversation is a steady, useful listen for writers trying to stay loose around rejection, feedback, and the pressure to move beyond familiar material.
Community talk with spirituality, books, healing, and backbone.
Reflective systems for sustainable academic life.
Emma Gannon returns after a year-long hiatus to announce her new book, 'A Year of Nothing', which explores her recovery from chronic burnout and themes of wellbeing and creativity.
Anxiety gets treated less as an enemy and more as a noisy alarm with dodgy timing.
Fiona Arrigo treats spirituality as a way back to relationship, safety, and enoughness.
Midlife gets a cleaner look here.
Celebrity stays in the frame, but it is not the main event.
Money is the success myth Emma Gannon puts under pressure.
Lena Dunham returns in a replayed conversation recorded in 2017.
Rejection sits close to the writing life.