The Design of Meaning — Amin Aramesh on Building a Life That Works

The Teacher Who Stopped Working

There is a quiet rebellion in the story of Amin Aramesh. A rebellion not of protest, but of redesign.
Eight years ago, he walked out of a university corridor in Tehran—leaving behind a PhD, a title, and the linear promise of a safe career. In that moment of disorientation, he did something radical: he began listening. Out of that confusion grew KarNakon—literally “Don’t Work”—a podcast that became one of Iran’s most thoughtful explorations of what it means to work with purpose rather than pressure.

When he joined Hossein Nasiri on Cozy Corner, Amin revisited that turning point and the long path that followed: from oil rigs to classrooms, from self-doubt to structured reflection, from personal curiosity to collective learning. The conversation revealed not just the biography of a podcaster, but the philosophy of a man who turned confusion into curriculum.

From Lost Engineer to Listener

Before there was KarNakon, there was a restless engineer. Amin studied mechanical engineering, spent years in industry, and found himself surrounded by machines that moved efficiently while he did not. “I realized,” he told Hossein, “I didn’t like technical engineering work. I wasn’t learning anymore.”

In search of meaning, he returned to academia, starting a PhD with the dream of becoming a lecturer. Yet even there, the satisfaction never came. “I liked the idea of teaching,” he said, “but not the system built around it.” One morning, sitting in the graduate office, he withdrew from the program. No grand plan—just a feeling that life had to be re-designed.

Out of that limbo emerged a question that would shape everything: What kind of work makes a person feel alive?

He began reading obsessively, taking courses, talking to people from different fields, tracing the invisible thread that connects purpose to profession. To process what he was learning, he started writing—a blog series of thirty weekly posts about people who seemed to “live with their work.” Those texts, published every Thursday, were the seed that would later bloom into KarNakon.

The Birth of “Don’t Work”

The name was provocative by design. KarNakon—“Don’t Work”—was both confession and critique. On one level, it mocked the cultural idea that work must be painful to be real. On another, it asked a moral question: If your job adds nothing to the world, why do it?

Amin explained to Hossein that KarNakon stands on two legs—personal and social.
On the personal side, it challenges the routine misery of doing something just for money or approval. “If that’s what work is,” he says, “then don’t work.” But he also insists that meaningful work demands skill, curiosity, and courage. You have to learn what else is possible.

The second leg is social. A job, he argues, should create value beyond the self. “When your work improves others’ lives,” he says, “you feel better about your own.” That reciprocity—between inner fulfillment and outer contribution—is the heart of KarNakon.

The First Recordings

The early days were humble. Amin recorded the first episodes in friends’ offices after hours, using a small Sony voice recorder placed between two chairs. No studio, no crew, just genuine curiosity. “We’d finish work, sit down, and start talking,” he recalls. The first nineteen episodes were audio-only. Then came Google Meet calls, then a small studio, and finally a polished visual podcast.

What never changed was the intention. “From the start,” he says, “I wasn’t in the entertainment business. I was in education.” KarNakon became his way of teaching without a classroom—a place where the lesson emerged through story.

Design Thinking for Life

The turning point arrived when Amin discovered Stanford University’s Life Design Lab, where two engineers—like him—had adapted design-thinking methods for life and career decisions. He devoured their materials and localized them for Iranian audiences, blending global frameworks with local realities.

“I realized their syllabus didn’t address what our students actually struggle with,” he told Hossein. “At Stanford they never talk about what to do when your mother says, ‘I won’t forgive you if you quit your PhD.’”

So he rewrote the curriculum. Decision-making, ambiguity tolerance, and family negotiation became part of his lessons. Over the next few years, more than 6,000 students took his career-design courses—learning to prototype their futures instead of waiting for permission to live them.

Each class became an extension of the podcast; each podcast, a continuation of his teaching. The two streams fed each other, forming a feedback loop between learning and storytelling.

Teaching Through Conversation

Amin approaches every KarNakon episode as a design experiment: empathy, insight, iteration. “Each conversation is a prototype,” he says. “You test, learn, and improve.”

He begins with pre-interviews—not to rehearse, but to align. “If you go too deep before recording, you lose the freshness,” he notes. The goal is to sketch the map, not walk the road. During the real talk, he lets curiosity lead. “The best question,” he says, “is the one I genuinely want to know the answer to.”

Over time, that method made him not just a better host but a better listener. “Podcasting taught me to hear,” he says quietly. “In real life, I interrupt people. On the podcast, I’ve learned to wait.”

Listening, for Amin, is not politeness—it’s pedagogy. It’s how ideas reveal themselves.

The Evolution of a Podcaster

In eight years, KarNakon has evolved through several distinct phases.

Phase 1: The Audio Years — raw, experimental, driven by instinct.
Phase 2: The Video Leap — moving online during the pandemic, expanding reach.
Phase 3: The Teaching Turn — the podcast merges with his life-design workshops.
Phase 4: The Growth Mindset — marketing, Reels, and community-building double the audience.

Today the show has a loyal following across platforms, a Telegram community of 12,000, and nationwide recognition. “In public universities,” Amin notes, “about 20 percent of students I meet have heard of KarNakon. That’s meaningful.”

Despite that visibility, he resists celebrity culture. “I never wanted to be a performer,” he tells Hossein. “I wanted to be useful.”

Authenticity over Perfection

As the show matured, Amin began studying other hosts—Joe Rogan, Steven Bartlett, even Iranian icons like Mehran Modiri—but only to learn what not to imitate. “At some point,” he says, “trying to sound perfect made me feel fake. I realized I’d rather be flawed but real.”

He draws a line between professionalism and performance. “If the curiosity isn’t personal, the whole thing collapses. Then you’re just reading questions like state TV.”

That philosophy has shaped his guest policy too. He refuses “pay-to-play” interviews, turning down lucrative offers. “If someone pays just to be on the show,” he laughs, “that’s my cue to say goodbye.”

For Amin, integrity is not ideology—it’s instinct. “My questions are mine,” he says. “I never ask something just because it might go viral.”

Selling as a Sacred Act

Still, meaning alone doesn’t pay the bills. Early on, Amin survived by freelancing in SEO while KarNakon grew. Later, his courses and consulting projects became sustainable income streams. Yet for years he avoided mentioning them on the podcast, embarrassed to “sound commercial.”

A conversation with Hamid Mahmoudzadeh, founder of Didar CRM, changed his mind. “He told me, ‘Selling is a sacred act,’” Amin recalls. “‘If what you offer truly helps people, not selling it is a disservice.’”

That reframed everything. He began to speak about his courses with honesty but without hype—offering money-back guarantees, emphasizing learning over profit. “We don’t promise riches,” he says. “We teach real skills.”

The result: steady growth, loyal alumni, and a model of creative sustainability rooted in transparency.

Building a Community of Learners

What began as a podcast has become an ecosystem: paid courses, mentorship programs, consulting for companies like Zarrin Roya, DG Next, and Yektanet, plus a growing online network that functions as a learning community.

Listeners message him not as fans but as students. Teachers across Iran assign KarNakon episodes as homework. Some high-school instructors even play episodes in class or award bonus points for reflections.

“That’s when it hit me,” Amin says. “If a chemistry teacher gives extra credit for listening to KarNakon, maybe it’s time to design a proper curriculum around it.”

This realization led to his newest project: a free eight-week course for high-schoolers on career and life design, launching this fall. It uses selected podcast episodes as lesson material, adds exercises in attention management and gamified learning, and invites teachers to send feedback through a custom online system.

“If we can influence even ten percent of students,” he says, “we could change the direction of their lives.”

Education as Design

At the core of Amin’s work lies a single belief: education is design. Like a good designer, the teacher prototypes experiences, tests reactions, and iterates. “You can’t just lecture people into clarity,” he tells Hossein. “You have to create the conditions for discovery.”

That’s why his courses include personal diagnostics, mentorship, and structured assignments—32 exercises over eight weeks, each reviewed by mentors who exchange hundreds of messages with participants. “Watching videos isn’t learning,” he insists. “Interaction is.”

The result is a model of education that is participatory, emotional, and adaptive—a living dialogue rather than a static syllabus.

The Economics of Meaning

Hossein and Amin dive into the pragmatic side of creative work: sustainability. Both agree that in Iran’s fragile media economy, ethical monetization is a survival skill.

Amin rejects the myth that meaningful projects must stay poor. “If you’re doing something valuable,” he says, “you have a duty to keep it alive—and that means making money.” Financial health, for him, is part of moral health. “Otherwise you burn out, and the good work dies with you.”

Through teaching, sponsorships, and consulting, KarNakon now supports itself. But Amin’s ambitions are larger than income. “I dream of bringing career design into high schools nationwide,” he says. “To normalize the idea that you can design your life intentionally.”

The Host as Student

Perhaps Amin’s most disarming trait is his humility. Despite being a teacher to thousands, he still calls himself a learner. “If I listed what brings me joy,” he tells Hossein, “learning would be at the top.”

Every guest, he says, becomes a temporary mentor. “Through KarNakon I’ve met people I could never afford to consult with. Some charge more for an hour than I could pay—but on the podcast, I get to learn from them for free.”

That attitude turns podcasting into apprenticeship. The microphone becomes a bridge between curiosity and wisdom.

The Social Value of Dialogue

Midway through their conversation, Hossein observes that talk-based shows in Iran carry an unusual weight. “We’re producing conversation in a culture that rarely practices it,” he says. Amin agrees.

In societies where public discourse often swings between propaganda and outrage, the simple act of two people thinking aloud becomes civic work. “If you help people talk better,” Amin says, “you help them live better.”

He dreams of normalizing transparent collaboration between creators, of removing the stigma around making money from educational media. “When something is both ethical and sustainable, everyone wins,” he adds.

From Guest to Question

Over the years, Amin’s focus has shifted from guests to questions. “At first, the guest was my topic,” he says. “Now the question is.”

He now organizes upcoming episodes around themes—like uncertainty, value creation, or social responsibility—choosing guests who can illuminate each angle. The result is a more cohesive narrative, a podcast that functions like a slow-moving research lab.

For him, KarNakon is no longer just a show; it’s a long-term investigation into what it means to live well and work wisely.

The Future Classroom

When asked about the road ahead, Amin’s eyes light up. His next chapter is not media expansion but educational reform.

“I want KarNakon to become a platform for teachers,” he says. “Imagine if students everywhere could use podcast episodes as part of their syllabus—learn responsibility, curiosity, and focus.”

To that end, he’s building a new website with lesson plans, mentorship guidelines, and a self-learning framework that schools can adopt freely. “It’s all about scalability,” he explains. “If one teacher in Mashhad and another in Shiraz can both use it, we’re multiplying impact without losing authenticity.”

He laughs when Hossein asks if he’ll make it a paid program. “Not this one,” he says. “This one should stay free.”

Meaning as Practice

Near the end of their talk, Amin reflects on what KarNakon has given him. His voice softens: “It’s given my life meaning. Just knowing—even a little—that I’m helping someone think differently… that’s enough.”

He pauses, then adds, “You know, I feel indebted to KarNakon. It’s taught me more than I’ve ever taught anyone.”

Hossein smiles. “That’s the mark of a real teacher,” he says. “The ones who never stop learning.”

Lessons from “Don’t Work”

Amin Aramesh’s story is not a tale of escape from work—it’s a guide to transforming it. Through his journey, five quiet lessons emerge:

1. Confusion is fertile. The loss of direction that made him quit his PhD became the soil for invention.
2. Work is design. Every career, like every product, can be prototyped and iterated.
3. Teaching is conversation. Knowledge grows when stories replace sermons.
4. Sustainability is moral. To serve others, a creator must survive.
5. Authenticity is discipline. The hardest work is staying true in a system built for imitation.

The Corner and the Classroom

As the cameras fade, the kinship between Cozy Corner and KarNakon becomes evident. Both are sanctuaries for slow thought in a fast world. One explores creativity as craft; the other explores work as meaning.

“Maybe we’re all teachers who never planned to teach,” Hossein muses. Amin nods. “Maybe,” he says, “and maybe that’s the best kind.”

In a culture that measures success by speed, KarNakon and Cozy Corner offer a different metric: depth. They remind us that the most important work often begins when we stop merely working—and start listening, questioning, and designing the lives we wish to live.