Mike Schmitz and Cory Hixson
248 episodes listed below
Nonfiction ideas, tested in real life.
Bookworm follows two recurring voices as they work through nonfiction books and compare the ideas against projects, teaching, creator work, and personal routines. The result is thoughtful, candid reading companionship for people who want books to change how they think and act.
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Bookworm is a nonfiction reading show for people who want books to become usable, not merely finished. The format is simple: two recurring voices read the same book, return with notes, and talk through what actually stuck. Recent selections lean toward self-improvement, productivity, habits, communication, work, creativity, and the mind. A book about working genius prompts a careful look at energy, project roles, and the limits of workplace assessments. A storytelling book becomes a practical argument about flaws, pain points, short teaching stories, and the gap between literary theory and everyday communication. A coaching book pushes the conversation toward better questions, especially the value of finding the real challenge before rushing toward solutions. A burnout book opens a broader debate about work, dignity, kaizen, and whether a critique has fairly understood the people doing the job. A book about intentionality leads into values, goal editing, and a rejection of easy productivity formulas. Other episodes move through behavioral science, reading, visual thinking, AI tools, conferences, plugins, PKM quizzes, and the maintenance work behind the show itself. The appeal is in the friction. The voices are willing to admire a book and still press on weak research, overreaching examples, or language that seems too loose. They also bring the books back to their own active projects, from teaching and workshops to creator tools and reading systems. Follow-up matters here. Action items reappear, sometimes completed and sometimes forgotten, which gives the show a grounded rhythm rather than a tidy expert posture. The pacing is relaxed, but the thinking is hands-on. Bookworm is especially strong when a book offers a framework that sounds useful but needs stress-testing. Instead of treating nonfiction as instruction to obey, the show treats it as a conversation partner. That makes it a fit for readers who enjoy practical books, but want more than highlights, hype, or a neat list of takeaways.
Made for: Bookworm suits thoughtful nonfiction readers who care about productivity, habits, coaching, creativity, attention, and work. It is especially suited to people who like reading along and hearing ideas challenged before adopting them.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by pairing book discussion with recurring follow-up and real attempts at application. Its skepticism is practical: frameworks, assessments, and productivity claims are measured against lived work, teaching, creator projects, and reading systems.
Bookworm is dedicated to doing more than just reading books. Mike Schmitz & Cory Hixson read a book every two weeks and discuss ways to apply the author's lessons to their lives.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bookworm tests personal-development ideas against the hosts' actual habits, turning each discussion into a candid exercise in applied learning.
Bookworm turns each book into an ongoing test of what survives contact with ordinary life. Mike Schmitz and Cory Hixson revisit earlier action items before working through the current title, openly reporting what they completed, postponed, or reconsidered.
This is the book club that checks last episode's homework before assigning you more.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at Lencioni's working-genius model, tested against real work, personal reactions, and light skepticism.
Bookworm brings Lencioni's working-genius model into the place where neat categories run into ordinary work. The hosts connect it to schedule advising through Excel forms, one host's attempts to hand background tasks to AI tools, and the useful clarity that comes from naming…
A practical look at flaws, pain points, and short stories built to carry a message.
Bookworm turns the flawed self into a working question for short-form storytelling: what makes a story useful when it only has a few minutes to do its job?
A clear, practical look at how one question can keep problem-solving focused on the real challenge.
Bookworm's review of The Coaching Habit centers on a useful discipline: ask the coaching question before rushing into the fix. The hosts focus on the book's third chapter and its key prompt, "What's the real challenge for you?" From there, the discussion follows how one…
A grounded discussion of workplace dignity, kaizen, and whether work systems drain people or give them more voice.
Bookworm frames its discussion around the way workplace habits can press on the mind, dignity, and a worker's sense of voice. The hosts let the argument develop at a measured pace, especially when one pushes back on using Toyota and kaizen as examples of systems that wear people…
A skeptical, useful look at values, goals, and why SMART goals deserve a harder look.
The review treats Chris Bailey's Intentional less like a neat productivity manual and more like a grounded argument about values and how to use them.
A grounded look at why new technology lands better when it keeps a familiar shape.
Bookworm turns a thread about new ideas into a practical lesson on why unfamiliar technology often needs a familiar handle. The discussion circles around "the most advanced yet acceptable," using Apple's shift from Touch ID to Face ID as a clean example of progress that still…
A candid Bookworm conversation turns a packed week into a clearer map of what gives energy and what drains it.
Bookworm frames the reading challenge as a practical check on where time is really going. One host owns up to leaving The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry unread and making daily affirmations without using them, then pivots to Paul Lumens' I've Got Time, read for a Focus podcast…
Emma Gannon's Success Myth Diaries series questions money, fame, and midlife success scripts.
Reflective systems for sustainable academic life.
Community talk with spirituality, books, healing, and backbone.
Bookworm's hosts review Patrick Lencioni's The Six Types of Working Genius, comparing its six-gear model of wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and tenacity to Lencioni's earlier Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Corey and Mike Schmitz review Will Storr's 'The Science of Storytelling,' a fiction-writing guide built from a storytelling course and organized around just four dense chapters.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory dissect Michael Bungay Stanier's 2016 book 'The Coaching Habit,' built around seven short questions from his consulting firm Box of Crayons.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey work through the introduction and first four chapters of Jonathan Malesic's "The End of Burnout," a book by a former tenure-track professor who quit after finding the job he'd idealized in college "kind of awful." They test Christina Maslach's three-part burnout model, exhaustion, cynicism, and diminished accomplishment, against their own lives, with Corey describing how his dean checks in on faculty wellbeing without ever saying the word "burnout." The hosts push back on Malesic's evidence, singling out a cited statistic that 86% of burned-out school teachers also met criteria for depression as one cherry-picked study rather than solid research.
Two hosts discuss a book about decision making and share their experiences creating goal and project inventories.
Mike and Cory discuss Chris Bailey's book 'Intentional,' exploring productivity through values-based frameworks, goal editing, and overcoming procrastination.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey review Hacking the Human Mind by Richard Shotton and Michael Aaron Flicker, a behavioral-science-through-marketing book built around 16 brand case studies.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory dig into 'Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain' by Maryanne Wolf, whose central argument is that reading is proof of brain plasticity because humans were never biologically wired to do it.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory review 'Sketch Your Mind: Nurture a Playful and Creative Brain' by Zsolt Viczian, the developer of the Excalidraw plugin, who wrote the eleven-chapter book in six weeks with AI as a writing partner ahead of the PKM Summit in the Netherlands.
On Bookworm, Mike picks Toxic Grit by Amanda Goetz after hearing her speak at the Craft + Commerce conference, and warns upfront that neither host is the book's intended female audience.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey discuss Ryan Holiday's Wisdom Takes Work, the fourth and closing book in his Stoic Virtue series.
Bookworm's hosts open with follow-up on a personal-retreat-aligned plan to write a book throughout November, a decision to attend the Sponsor Games conference in San Antonio after Justin Moore's book convinced one host, and an unresolved struggle over which of several projects to commit to for audience growth.
Bookworm's hosts open with follow-up on prior action items, including a 'granny hobby' idea of low, slow cardio, and one host's progress separating a putting-off list from his personal retreat planner, before turning to Justin Moore's Sponsor Magnet.
On Bookworm, hosts Corey and Mike work through Chris Guillebeau's Time Anxiety, the author of The $100 Startup and founder of the now-defunct World Domination Summit conference.
The hosts review Chandler Bolt's 'Published: The Proven Path from Blank Page to 10,000 Copies Sold,' a 27-chapter, seven-section guide tied directly to Bolt's business, self-publishing.com.
Bookworm's hosts open with a promotion for a new personal-retreat planner product, then review follow-up items including a Zapier Copilot automation for pulling creator-business metrics into a dashboard and a lukewarm result from working through a scaling book's goal-setting questions.
Corey and Mike review The Science of Scaling by Dr.
Bookworm hosts review From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks, unpacking his idea of a 'strivers' curse' -- the terror high-achievers feel as their skills inevitably decline in their 30s to 50s.
Corey and Mike review AI Snake Oil by Princeton researchers Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, a book arguing predictive AI often fails to deliver on its promises while generative AI mostly does what it claims.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory discuss Pat Flynn's 'Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less,' an eight-chapter book built around the line 'action without information is chaos, but information without action is a waste.' Before the book discussion, Mike announces he has already restructured his Library PKM community's pricing to $49 a month billed quarterly ($147 a quarter), directly inspired by Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income membership model.
Corey and Mike review The 5 Resets by Dr.
Bookworm's hosts open with one host's recap of the Craft + Commerce conference and a shared story about a stranger who reached over and switched off his airplane reading light, echoing a nearly identical scene from the book they're about to discuss.
Mike and his co-host review 'The Confident Mind' by Dr.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory review Daniel Pink's When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, the first Pink book covered in the show's 222-episode history.
On Bookworm, Mike brings Wild Courage by Jenny Wood -- a former Google executive who built the company's Own Your Career program -- after Nick Milo tipped him off to it.
Bookworm hosts Mike and his co-host review Sahil Bloom's The Five Types of Wealth, covering its time, social, mental, physical, and financial wealth framework.
Corey and Mike review Jim Murphy's Inner Excellence, a sports-psychology book that they say went viral after an NFL player was seen reading it on the sideline.
On Bookworm, Mike picks Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the Ness Labs founder and former Google employee whose PACT framework -- purposeful, actionable, continuous, trackable -- replaces traditional SMART goals with time-boxed trials.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory review 'The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind' by Wharton professor Jonah Berger, a listener-recommended book built around the acronym REDUCE: reactants, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence.
Corey and Mike review 'Make It Stick' by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel, a research-based book on learning and memory recommended by listener Ward.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey discuss The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, a book that stages Adlerian psychology as a five-night Socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a skeptical youth.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey discuss Poor Charlie's Almanack, a compilation of eleven talks given by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime Berkshire Hathaway partner, edited together by Peter Kaufman.
Bookworm hosts review Simple Marketing for Smart People by Billy Broas and Tiago Forte, debating whether framing marketing as 'education' oversimplifies what it actually takes to sell something.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey open with a follow-up segment covering side projects, including Corey's prototype for a Writebook-style personal publishing site and Mike's early success outsourcing to a fractional video editor, before turning to their main subject: Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" in the Gregory Hayes translation.
Bookworm hosts Mike and his co-host review Chase Jarvis's Never Play It Safe, working through its seven 'levers for life': attention, time, intuition, constraints, play, failure, and practice.
The Bookworm hosts discuss Anti-Time Management by Richie Norton, which reframes productivity around prioritizing attention and 'time tipping' rather than traditional time management.
Bookworm's hosts open with a follow-up check-in on prior action items, including one host's progress protecting morning deep-work blocks at a coworking space and a plan to take two weeks off around Christmas and New Year's before starting recurring off-weeks in 2025.
Corey and Mike review Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, a 28-day guided study built around embracing imperfectionism rather than chasing productivity perfection.
Bookworm hosts Mike and his co-host discuss Paul Millerd's Good Work: Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition, the sequel to The Pathless Path.
Bookworm hosts Mike and Corey discuss Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks, a fifth-grade teacher and 38-time Moth Grand Slam winner, working through the book's three parts on finding, crafting, and telling a story.
Bookworm hosts Mike and his co-host review 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest, taking turns each round naming the essay that gave them the biggest takeaway.
Mike Schmitz reads his own eulogy, which mentions his wife Rachel, five children, and a goal of giving away over $10 million.
Your feelings, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, choices, values, limits, gifts, thoughts, desires, and love are what you are responsible for within your boundaries.
To the second, when the 15-or-30-minute timer on my iPhone crossed the threshold, the Time Warner rep offered the deal.