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Better Offline

Monologue: How Better Offline Saved Me

Better Offline

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Technology

4.6687 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the story of how writing The Man That Destroyed Google Search saved his life.

The Man That Destroyed Google Search: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-that-destroyed-google-search/id1730587238?i=1000653621646

YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.

You can also order a limited-edition Better Offline hat until 5/22/25! https://cottonbureau.com/p/CAGDW8/hat/better-offline-hat#/28510205/hat-unisex-dad-hat-black-100percent-cotton-adjustable

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LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ 

Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials:

https://twitter.com/edzitron

https://www.instagram.com/edzitron

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com

https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed human.

0:06.0

Callsome Media.

0:09.0

Hello and welcome to this week's better off-line monologue.

0:11.9

I'm your host, that's it.

0:12.7

Tron.

0:17.5

Betta-offline.

0:20.5

I could not, for the life of me, work out what I wanted to talk about for this week's

0:24.6

monologue. I am a little burned out. And Robert and Sophie are telling me I should take a break

0:29.2

sometime and I will at some point everyone I promise. But I was seeing and thinking last night

0:36.0

about what I was going to do today and I ended up sketching out some thoughts. And I realized that this show genuinely helped me turn my life around. It's a little dramatic. But BetRofline really truly helped me leave a very dark place I was in in April 2024. I would argue it on some degree saved my life, and I will tell you how today.

0:56.2

It's a monologue. You already had a great interview with Karen Howe this week. I'm going to give you a

1:01.3

little schmaltz, a little bit of who I really am. And I worry this is ferociously self-involved

1:08.0

or pretentious, but at least it's from the heart, right?

1:16.4

So back when I started the show in early 2024, I was really lost as a person, but also was someone who would call themselves a creative. I'd agreed to do the show and knew I was capable

1:20.2

of pushing out content, but my personal life had become, let's just say, very bad. I was in a bad

1:26.8

situation, I was overweight, I was unhappy. Therapy was kind of grinding at me. It didn't feel like it was changing anything because I was kind of in a depressive state where I didn't want to talk to anyone, which is why I wouldn't talk to my friends at all. And I had this fucking podcast I had to do that I love the idea of, but I lacked confidence. I

1:45.1

lacked the piss and vinegar you know me for today. And one day, as I struggled to work out

1:51.1

what the fuck I was doing that week, I sat down to write the script for an episode about

1:55.0

Sheehan, which is a Chinese clothing giant that grew its brand entirely online. And it was coming up on my birthday, April 25th, and it's a day I really enjoy. So I was pushing myself to do something, anything, to get this episode off my plate, and move on to planning the day, which was a few weeks out, that would end up being dog shit like it always was. And I was bought. I didn't care about Sheehan. I didn't care what I was doing. I didn't think you would either. And I sat there thinking about whether or not I could realistically do better offline anymore or my newsletter or really end of this crap. And what can I say? My birthday kind of sucks and it always kind of led me to a weird slump. But I was in one that day anyway. I was really not in a great place. And if I'm honest, I was kind of spiraling. So I closed this Google Doc and I sat, teary-eyed, staring at the ceiling. Barboo, my cat was on top of me, kind of, I was sat at this table and he shoved himself kind of on top of my knees, which he does when he knows I'm hurting, which is lovely. And I sat there

2:51.0

thinking about things, and I was drafting in my head something about not doing the newsletter

2:55.8

anymore and wondering how the fuck I was going to do 40 or so more episodes. I was really quite

...

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