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PODCAST

What Works

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that"s not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It"s time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host

business entrepreneurship

All Episodes

43:09

Oh Joy! On Facing Down Burnout

What Works ·

2026/04/09

Another episode featuring HBO's The Pitt? You know it. This time: finding your course of action in the space between personal challenges and systemic and structural failings.Footnotes:Read the essay version here."Rethinking Busyness" on What WorksHBO's The Pitt"Changes in Burnout and Satisfaction With Work–Life Integration in Physicians and the General US Working Population Between 2011 and 2023"AMA STEPS ForwardA Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville★ Support this podcast ★

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66:29

The Wages of Hierarchy

What Works ·

2026/03/20

On March 11, the 5-time World’s Best Restaurant, Noma, began a 3-month Los Angeles residency. The vanguard establishment of New Nordic Cuisine, was finally available to Americans without an international flight. All-inclusive bookings—sold out well ahead of opening day—went for $1500 per person.Diners, arriving in luxury vehicles with tinted windows, anticipated the hyper-local, painstakingly presented menu designed by Noma’s celebrated chef René Redzepi. But first, they had to make it past

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25:41

Technicians, Visionaries, and the Myth of Going Solo

What Works ·

2026/03/12

To the uninitiated, "being your own boss" sounds pretty nice. Of course, the moment you go into business for yourself, you realize the wide variety of skills it requires—skills that you yourself do not possess. Skills that you don't want to and have no intention of learning. Being your own boss means balancing a host of functions within one corporate (that is, "body") system. You can address the variety of those functions in a number of ways: learn, hire, minimize, or fight like hell and

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29:11

This Process is a Mess

What Works ·

2026/03/05

I live for people explaining how they approach analysis and critique. I desperately want to know how other people think about things so I can learn to think in new ways. I want a compelling intellectual or journalistic project, but I also want to know how it was conceived and executed.I hope you enjoy hearing that kind of behind-the-scenes, too, because that's exactly what this episode is. It's a case study that I shared with the last cohort of Making Sense, my 8-week program for turning

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24:04

How I Learn a New Skill

What Works ·

2026/02/19

So a couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Final Cut Pro and committed to learning how to use it. Despite logging hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in other video editing software, this is a big challenge. I took some time to reflect on how I make sense of learning a new skill like this—because learning new skills is an essential component of navigating the 21st-century economy.Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode here.The Adult Learner by Malcolm Knowles"Apple Creator Studio is

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9:58

Wait... what?!

What Works ·

2026/02/12

You’re going along, minding your own business, and then it hits you: “Wait, what?!” Your expectation or assumption bumps against the facts. Things aren’t the way you thought they were. It’s not always a life-altering surprise. It might be something tiny—just enough of a shock to make you rethink what you thought you knew.Today, how we resolve those “Wait, what?!” moments.I’m kicking off my 8-week workshop series, Making Sense, on March 24. This program walks you through the sensemaking

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54:29

Rethinking Higher Ed for the 21st-Century Economy...

What Works ·

2026/02/05

It's no secret that one of my, let's say, special interests is higher education. The reasons for this are at least threefold. First, I have a kid heading off to college next year. Second, I have past regrets and future fantasies about the academy. And third, the world of work and the realm of education overlap in myriad ways.Work and education have always had a close relationship. Access to education influences access to different types of work. New forms of work influence how we organize

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13:11

Grieving The Future Self

What Works ·

2026/01/29

A brief meditation on grief at the loss of one's future self and how often that loss passes unacknowledged.Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode.“10:00 am” (Season 1, Episode 4) The Pitt on HBO“Ho’oponopono” on WikipediaUnlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise KnottThe Human Condition by Hannah ArendtMore from Tara:Blank Slate is a guide to rethinking your business for sustainability.Making Sense is an 8-workshop on creating compelling media through sensemaking. New cohort

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21:14

Circling Back

What Works ·

2026/01/22

How often do you revisit old work? Do you have systems for circling back to what you've created in the past to see how you could improve upon it or take it in a new direction? In this episode, I consider the practice of circling back through Mckenzie Wark's theory of "hacking." And I explain why my latest project, Blank Slate, is a hack and how it came to be.Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode.Learn more about rethinking your small business status quo with Blank Slate."Broken

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29:48

Making Intelligence Masculine Again

What Works ·

2026/01/15

I've had all the various parts of this episode swirling in my head for months—from The Paperclip Maximizer to The Great Feminization to Meta's Masculine Energy to mind-body dualism to the AI industry's role in what I propose is The Great Re-Masculinization. It is absolutely about both the present and the future of work, and whether we accept the inevitability of regressing to an imagined past or forge into a more dynamic, multi-dimensional workplace that values the contribution of all sorts

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23:07

What Else Must Be True?

What Works ·

2026/01/08

Have a big decision on your mind? Trying to choose between a bunch of good options?Today, I'm talking about decision-making… not so much how to choose, but the context of our choices. No decision gets made in a vacuum. Choices are always framed by circumstances, relationships, emotions, fears, and desires.The good news is that deepening our self-knowledge can be a great way to illuminate the context of our choices and point us in a productive direction. So I'm sharing an exercise from my

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51:33

Getting My $#*! Together: A Messy Review of 2025

What Works ·

2025/12/04

Here we are at the tail end of 2025. I just "opened" my Spotify Unwrapped... And after 3 years of burnout recovery, I’m finally ready to figure out what getting my shit together in the shadow of everything I’ve learned about myself and my needs in the last five years is going to look like.It’s tempting to assume that getting one’s shit together is a forward-looking pursuit. You know, “Here are all the things I’m going to do.” But, in my opinion, an important part of getting one’s shit

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30:18

On Getting Attention, Encoding Messages, and Diving...

What Works ·

2025/11/20

How do you get people to care about what you care about?It's a marketing question. A movement-building question. A question at the heart of the attention economy. And in one form or another, it's the question I've probably received more than any other over the last 15+ years. After all, there is no silver-bullet social media plan, no door-knocking strategy, no magical meeting agenda that produces results if the message at its heart doesn’t resonate with those receiving it.This episode is in

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18:55

Drifting Toward the Status Quo

What Works ·

2025/10/23

If you’ve ever chosen an ambitious, unconventional, or deeply meaningful aim only to see your plan devolve into something far more run-of-the-mill, this one is for you.Footnotes:Read the essay version of this episode."AI Can't Even Turn On the Lights" on The VergecastAbout OpenAI"Applying Systems Archetypes" via The Systems ThinkerSam Altman saying we've "surpassed" the definition of AGI from 5 years agoMore from Tara on AI:"What is a search engine? Or, Anne Leckie versus the 'Well,

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29:45

Rethinking Busyness (With Help From HBO's The Pitt)

What Works ·

2025/10/02

Try as we might, many of us can’t shake the overwhelming sense that we're just too damn busy—that feeling that there’s something we’re forgetting about, somewhere we should be, some person we should be checking on. Busyness is sticky. And that’s because busyness is more than the amount of stuff we have on our to-do lists or the appointments on our calendars. Busyness is social, structural, and even political—though our go-to “solutions” for it tend to be individual. This episode examines

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21:15

Delightful Misdirection (Or How to Rethink Your Options)

What Works ·

2025/09/04

How we think about a problem or goal really matters. The variables we include, the relationships we draw between them, the flows of influence or resources—they change the interventions we choose. They change what interventions might even be possible.Today, an episode about crosswords, coffee shops, and rethinking your assumptions.☞ By the way, just 3 spots remain in this cohort of Making Sense! Registration closes September 12, but I expect those spots will be spoken for by then. If you

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8:25

We Can't Quit Turning Leisure Into More Work

What Works ·

2025/08/21

I'm pretty sure The New York Times is trolling me.Footnotes:Read the written version of this episode."Hobbies Too Relaxing? Try 'Leisure Crafting'" by Lora Kelley in The New York Times"Research: How 'Leisure Crafting' Can Help You Recharge" by Alexander B. Hamrick, et al., in Harvard Business Review"Our Yearning for Competence" by Tara McMullin"Always Be Optimizing" by Tara McMullinSelf-Help, INC by Micki McGeeTurn your meaningful ideas into remarkable media—and help others make sense of

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20:43

The Spectacle of Competence

What Works ·

2025/08/14

"Competence porn" is an indistinct genre of media that showcases people doing their jobs (loosely defined) exceptionally well, often using niche skills or uncommon expertise. You've no doubt seen it in documentaries, in short-form video, and even in a courtroom procedural or medical drama. What is it that's so appealing about competence porn? And why call it "porn?" And what can it tell us about what's missing from our work? This episode gets into all of that. But first, I gotta tell you

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30:40

3 Ways I Make Sense of the Unexpected & Perplexing

What Works ·

2025/08/07

In the last episode (written version), we talked about how "sensemaking starts with chaos" and that chaos arises when our expectations don't match reality. That mismatch occurs because the mental model we have that creates our expectations doesn't work for the situation at hand. To alleviate the frustration (or at least make sense of it), we need a new mental model.Well, in this episode, I want to share 3 mental models that I use to make sense of things that frustrate people I care

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17:15

Make It Make Sense

What Works ·

2025/07/31

"Sensemaking starts with chaos," says organizational theorist Karl Weick. Chaos is the confusion and frustration we feel when things don't turn out the way we expect them to. To make sense of the chaos, we have to look past the results and examine how we came to expect what we did. This is the first part in a miniseries on sensemaking and media. Next week, I'll share some of the mental models I use to make sense of what feel chaotic to me.This miniseries is good on its own—and even better

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