MONEY TRAUMA

A Documentary Podcast Series

3 out of 4 Gen-Zs and Millennials have PTSD-like symptoms caused by financially induced stress. Mental health and trauma have gotten more into the mainstream, and yet we don’t apply the same lens to money. 

Money Trauma is a six part podcast mini-series that challenges the idea that money behaviours are a purely rational topic. It uncovers commonly referred to economic experiences like financial stress, gambling, wealth accumulation and impulsive spending from a trauma-informed and social perspective - something that has never been done before with the topic. Follow researcher and facilitator Miho Soon and award-winning audio producers Phoebe McIndoe and Marta Medvesek on a journey all over the world speaking to experts about how these stories contradict the real experience people have psychologically and socially - and who ends up benefitting from these stories.

Season 1

Episode

What if our relationship with money isn’t about discipline, intelligence, or willpower at all — but about survival, safety, and belonging?

In this opening episode, we explore money trauma: the often invisible ways financial behaviors are shaped by fear, shame, scarcity, and inherited beliefs. From overspending and avoidance to perfectionism and burnout, we unpack the rationality myth of money; how class, relational and racial experiences activates the nervous system, and what could happen if we start talking about it differently.

What is Money Trauma?

Episode

Laziness - it’s something we’ve all heard, or said before. It’s is one of those heavily thrown around terms, that could be said with in loving banter, or be heavy with projected accusation. But what does it actually mean?

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Going around the world, we’ll explore tropes of how laziness is portrayed, and how it was created to serve colonial capitalism. In the contemporary, we explore its ongoing weaponization against the most vulnerable in society. Does it even exist? What does it have to do with our biology - and how we respond to stress? If it isn’t laziness, what is it? And how do we move out of it - personally and collectively?

The Myth of Laziness

Episode

What is the emotional world beneath the rich - those who inherit or accumulate large amounts of wealth? How is the impulse behind 'the goalpost never stops moving' connected to psychological security? Who benefits from the rich getting richer?

Speaking with people who work closely with the ultra-wealthy, we examine how the systems surrounding the rich enforce dynamics of wealth accumulation. We ask what common stories and experiences sustain these structures, whose interests they serve, and what might become possible if wealth were aligned with values of real social impact - for the many and not the few.

The Psychology of
Wealth Accumulation

Season 2

Episode

Modern masculinity tells men that they have to have money, status and power to be valuable to society, and themselves. How does this show up in the male psyche - from the everyday man to the darker corners of the internet and society?

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This episode explores the cultural discourse men are exposed to from a first person and expert point - how masculinity evolved through the industrial revolution, and why more boys are becoming more conservative, isolated or violent. Going through cases of famous scams, interviews with gang members and men’s work in the therapy room - we uncover what harm these stories perpetuate, and what it would take to change course.

Men & Money

Episode

Gambling is a practice and institution that has a long history of being heavily integrated part of many societies. Today, as financial technologies become more widely available - gambling-esque tactics have also been more widely available to everyday people. What are the consequences, and why is it so enticing?

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This episode explores the undercurrents of gambling - how its evolved and the correlation with trauma & economic impoverishment. From the casino room to intimate interviews with family members, we explore alternatives to the dreams it enables. “Of course we gamble - we dream of winning a ticket to get you out of being poor.”

Gambling

Episode

Having a good job is an essential component of living ‘the good life’ - a doorway of rags to riches for some, or meaning and fulfillment for others. But what are the experiences in modern work culture, and what dreams does it let down?

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This episode takes a deep dive into the psyche of burnt-out entrepreneurs to employees stuck in 'bullshit jobs.' We speak to accountants who step in as makeshift therapists soothing clients overwhelmed by financial anxiety, and exploring the cognitive dissonances employees feel while being scared to leave their jobs. How do these things create tension with capitalism’s harms - activists who want to tear all the harmful industries down. What does it mean to actually be in a position of security and alignment while running a business?

Business As Usual

Guests

Chantel Chapman

Nafasi Ferrell

Nafasi Ferrell is a community connector & facilitator focused on building bridges, healing, and transforming racial and economic equity. She is the founder and principal consultant of Narratives Unbound LLC, equipping clients with the knowledge and confidence to understand the colonial history of money, develop a positive relationship with it, tackle debt and create a solid financial future. Her work focuses on working adults, youth and families to support them in decolonizing their wealth building through education, saving, investing, and redistribution. 

Chantel Chapman is a financial trauma educator, and founder & of the Trauma of Money Institute, where she created the Trauma of Money (TOM) Method — a framework for understanding and healing the emotional, psychological, and systemic roots of financial behavior. She is also the author of the newly released bestseller book, the Trauma of Money.

Denise Bradford

Richard Kahler

Denise Bradford is a Lifestyle Medicine educator, public health advocate, and the founder of Essential Wellness Center in Ningbo, China. Denise saw a need in communities to address rising health epidemics and worsening environmental and climate degradation. She recognized that most lifestyle changes by an individual were extremely challenging and often failed as an endeavor.

Rick (Richard) Kahler, MSFP, CFP®, CFT™, CeFT® is a pioneering financial therapist, educator, and founder of Advanced Wellbeing, LLC and the Kahler Financial Group. He has spent over four decades integrating traditional financial planning with emotional and psychological dimensions of money, co-founding the Financial Therapy Association and developing Internal Financial Systems™ Financial Therapy.

Jake Hayman

Iris Brilliant

Iris Brilliant is a money coach, and regularly runs workshops, 1-1 coaching & cohorts on supporting people with wealth to move money to social justice, and to transform how we relate to money, family and community along the way. Iris was the National Organizer at Resource Generation, where she has helped move over $10M to social justice movements. She has also worked as a donor advisor for Movement Voter Project, where she advised donors on their political giving towards the 2020 and 2022 elections. She has helped raise over $5M to grassroots organizations working in swing states.

Jake Hayman is a London-based author and long-time advisor to values-led wealth holders, known for his book Wealth Unpublished which explores how wealthy people and their advisors grapple with inequality, redistribution, and ethical stewardship of extreme wealth. He has worked as an advisor to values-led wealth holders for almost 20 years, and is the founder/co-founder of What The Future Holds, The Good Ancestor Movement, The Progressive Advisor's Movement, and many other movements.

Jonathan Yong Tienxhi

Tanya Master

Jonathan Yong Tienxhi is a sociologist and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Tunku Abdul Rahman Graduate Student Scholarship. His research focuses on race and ethnicity, Southeast Asian studies, and decolonial theory, particularly examining how different ethnic groups in Malaysia experience and interpret everyday racism, and how these experiences connect to broader historical and institutional dynamics

Tanya Master is an IFS-informed psychosomatic coach who works with professionals, leaders, and creatives to address chronic stress, burnout, relational complexity, and embodied patterns that aren’t resolved through insight alone. Her approach integrates Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic tracking, nervous system regulation, and other embodied, trauma-informed methods to help clients develop emotional capacity, clarity, and self-leadership.

Brett Scott

Felipe Mercado

Brett Scott is an author, economic anthropologist and former financial broker exploring the politics of money systems, finance and digital technology. He’s the author of Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for our Wallets and The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. He has written for publications like The Guardian, Business Insider & New Scientist & spoken at over 300 events about cashless society, fintech, cryptocurrency, monetary reform, economic activism, alternative finance and the politics of technology.

Dr. Felipe Mercado, Ed.D., MSW is a transformational educator, counselor, social worker, and founder of Wise Souls LLC, an organization dedicated to integrating compassion, wellness, leadership development, and social harmony into personal and professional life. He is the author of "A Journey to Compassion: Learning to Stand Firm in the Face of Pain."

Jasmine Rashid

Alberto Cossu

Alberto Cossu is Assistant Professor in media and communication within the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester. He is the author of the upcoming book on the intersection of crypto and masculinity called 'Magic Money Men.'

Jasmine Rashid is a financial activist, writer, and impact investing professional. She is the author of The Financial Activist Playbook: 8 Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Wellbeing. In her role as Director of Impact for Candide Group, she helps investors flow tens of millions of dollars to predominately women & BIPOC-led social justice-focused companies, funds, and organizations building the economy we deserve.

Creators

About The Host

Miho Soon

Miho Soon is a researcher, facilitator and designer from Malaysia. She has brought hundreds of people in movements and organisations together to talk about the incredibly potent and taboo topic of the human emotional relationship to money and work - and how that connects to a systemic context around economic growth and participation. Her work has been featured at the Tate Modern London, the United Nations, Unicef, Resilience.org, the Cannes Film Festival & The Guardian. She is an affiliate fellow of the Post Growth Institute, and is currently based in Berlin, Germany.

Co-Producer

Phoebe McIndoe

Phoebe McIndoe is an award-winning radio journalist and sound artist and the founder of Small Audio Art. Her recent series County Lines (BBC Radio 4) was Amnesty and BFA nominated and won silver at the ARIAs, and was nominated by DIG's awards for outstanding international journalism. She has worked as a producer with BBC’s Woman Hour, The Guardian’s Today in Focus, The World Service and charities like NSPCC - to tell survivor led documentaries.

Editor

Marta Medvesek

Marta is an award-winning audio producer from Croatia. She's produced work for BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and World Service, German public broadcasters Deutschlandfunk Kultur and rbb - Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg, Croatian and Slovenian National Broadcaster, Resonance FM, Radiotopia, and for Blinkist. Since winning the Best European Radio Documentary prize at the 2021 Prix Europa, her piece “Fly or Die” has already traveled to festivals and classrooms in a dozen countries all over the world, and has been translated into four languages.

Money Trauma:
Transforming Trauma in Capitalism

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Money Trauma is a partner of the Post Growth Institute.


Special thanks for Luca Bentley for the beautiful artwork.

All rights reserved, Miho Soon 2026