Over the next few weeks, I've got something a wee bit different for you! This is the very first edition of Cold Pitch, an experimental media project from YellowHouse.Media. Cold Pitch explores media, curiosity, and identity through a variety of forms and methods. In this first edition, Sean McMullin (my husband & partner at YellowHouse.Media) and I talk about, well, cold pitches . A cold pitch, simply put, is a request to a stranger to do something for you. Podcasters deal with cold pitches ...
Nov 30, 2023•31 min
This is the final installment in Strange New Work, a series that uses speculative fiction to explore radical work futures. Power. Some fear it. Others hoard it. Some with power speak softly. Others carry a big stick. Power is charisma, or coercion, or violence. Power is name recognition, or money, or computer code. Regardless of your definition or perceptions of it, power plays a critical role in how we work. Today, we explore power—what we can do with it, how we can grow it, and, critically, ho...
Nov 02, 2023•33 min
This is the penultimate episode of Strange New Work, a special series from What Works that explores the future of work through the lens of speculative fiction. What's the most undervalued skill of the 21st-century economy? Moderation. I very well might be forgetting something. But with more of our lives and work showing up online every day, the way our feeds, data, and connections are moderated is critical to our daily lives. Moderation can be many things—it's how platforms are designed, how con...
Oct 26, 2023•35 min
I've got something short, sweet, and really special for you today. Sean, my husband, my go-to extrovert shield, and the co-founder of YellowHouse.Media has a new project that is pretty cool, if I do say so myself. It's a hotline! Or rather, it's a weekly call-in prerecorded pep talk. It's sort of like a podcast, but you have to call a phone number to hear it. Trust me, this is a very Sean thing to do. Each week, he shares a fresh pep talk along with a poem, some tunes, and other audio goodies. Y...
Oct 23, 2023•4 min
This is the 6th installment of Strange New Work, a special series that uses speculative fiction to explore radically different work futures. Find the work you were born to do. Do what you were meant to do. Discover the work that makes you feel alive. We've all heard these messages. Crack open any career, self-help, or personal development book on your shelf, and you're sure to find a similar message. It seems pretty convenient that our "purpose" in life is work , doesn't it? In this episode, I u...
Oct 19, 2023•28 min
This is the 5th installment of Strange New Work, a special series that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine radically different work futures. Think the future of housework looks like Rosey the Robot from The Jetsons ? Or maybe just a fleet of Roombas keeping every inch of a house free of dust or dirt? Think again. Housework is ready for a much, much bigger disruption. Of course, housework is rarely portrayed in pop culture space cowboy science fiction. And when it is, it's all ab...
Oct 12, 2023•34 min
This is the 4th installment in Strange New Work, a special series from What Works that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine new ways of working. Social and professional norms aren't natural or innate. They're political. Those in power exert their preferences on those who aren't, and throughout history, have exerted social, cultural, and physical violence to either force subjugated people to assimilate or drive them out of society altogether. Speculative fiction is rife with tales...
Oct 05, 2023•32 min
This is the third installment in Strange New Work, a series that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine the future of work. Today's work happens in tiny slivers of time. And we try to optimize each minute or hour for all its worth. But remarkable work? Well, that takes time. And lots of it. The kinds of work that are central to our evolving economy—care work, maintenance work, creative work—require more time rather than more optimization. In this episode, I consider how viewing wor...
Sep 28, 2023•35 min
This is the 11th edition of This is Not Advice, a "not advice" column for premium subscribers of What Works. In this episode and essay , I tackle the assumed quid pro quo that's at the heart of content marketing. It's that quid pro quo that causes us to see the ideas, information, and stories we share online as a favor that demands something in return—follows, subscriptions, and sales. When we say, "I'm tired of sharing all this stuff for free and not seeing sales in return," we're hinting at th...
Sep 27, 2023•10 min
This is the second episode in my new series, "Strange New Work." Artist and writer Morgan Harper Nichols is a world-builder. She says, " Worldbuilding, for me, [is] a form of expansive hope—a necessary imagination for being alive." What is world-building? It's the process of creating secondary, fictional worlds. There's world-building in all sorts of fiction—but especially science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. And world-building as a practice—a necessary imagination—can be a tool fo...
Sep 21, 2023•29 min
The future of work doesn't have to be an extension of today's reality. This is the first installment in Strange New Work, a new series from What Works about imagining radically different ways of working and doing business. In this episode, I take a closer look at speculative fiction and its role in the collective imaginary. Is science fiction all space operas and apocalyptic battles? Not hardly. Science fiction isn't really about the future. It's a commentary on and reimagining of the present. F...
Sep 14, 2023•28 min
Join Tara McMullin for a journey into the far future of work, and consider how we can create more humane, inclusive, and supportive work environment. The first episode of Strange New Work drops September 14! You can find Strange New Work wherever you listen to podcasts—and each new episode will drop in the What Works feed, too! Support the show at: whatworks.fyi Strange New Work is brought to you by What Works with Tara McMullin and YellowHouse.Media. ★ Support this podcast ★...
Sep 08, 2023•3 min
Today’s episode is a sneak peek of Work In Practice , my new 12-week training program for guides of all kinds. This program offers a toolkit for identifying the beliefs and stories that make a more sustainable relationship with work possible. If you’re a coach, consultant, manager, or trainer who works with people rethinking how they work, this is for you . *** "Anyone can succeed if they work hard and apply themselves!" That's the voice of meritocracy. Unfortunately, that sweet, encouraging voi...
Sep 07, 2023•26 min
There are rules you know about—and rules you don't. Some rules are written down—and other rules are "just the way things are." And there are rules that make things clear to everyone—and rules that exclude through their lack of clarity. Charlie Gilkey is on a mission to bring those unclear rules and unspoken agreements out in the open and improve the way we work in the process. His new book, Team Habits: How Small Changes Lead to Extraordinary Results , is both a treatise on better work and a det...
Aug 24, 2023•24 min
Play, learn, work, retire—those are the four stages of what Mauro Guillén calls the sequential mode of life . In his new book, The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society , he proposes a new story for moving through life. It's a story that actually reflects the facts on the ground—rather than our grandparents' idea of what life was supposed to look like. In this episode, I talk with Guillén about his research and his vision for how life, learning, and work could be differe...
Aug 17, 2023•25 min
This is the 8th edition of This is Not Advice , my "not-advice" column for premium subscribers of What Works . Today, I'm talking about our over-reliance on metrics and how easily we're seduced by reductive data . When does a metric turn into an incentive for bad behavior? And why are we so happy to accept the feeling of clarity and certainty without actually understanding what's going on? Click here to upgrade your subscription and get the full episode! Or learn more about becoming a Premium Su...
Aug 14, 2023•9 min
Making work for the public seems to come with a slew of fuzzy social expectations. What do we owe our readers, listeners, viewers, and followers? What more is expected beyond the post, episode, or video? How do you navigate the tension between care and boundaries? When I came across a LinkedIn post that Randi Buckley made, I felt a wave of relief. Her answer to those questions? Nothing. We owe nothing more than we've already given. In this episode, I share wisdom from Randi, additional wisdom fr...
Aug 10, 2023•25 min
The media give us wildly exaggerated images of wealth and consumption. And even if we recognize that a tv show or an Instagram account is more fantasy than reality, those images impact what we believe we should be earning and buying. MoneyZen author Manisha Thakor calls the result Counterfeit Financial Culture and argues that it's one of the reasons we end up feeling like we're never quite enough. In this episode, Manisha details Counterfeit Financial Culture, and I offer the mimetic theory of d...
Aug 07, 2023•25 min
At age 50, Manisha Thakor realized that she'd sacrificed her life at the altar of work. How did that happen? And what was she to do about it? Manisha's new book tackles how to unwind a toxic relationship with work and money. Footnotes: MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough by Manisha Thakor Find out more about Manisha Thakor Alienation by Rahel Jaeggi Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan What Works by Tara McMullin NEW : I’m teaching a 12-week training program for coaches, managers, consu...
Aug 03, 2023•29 min
This is an excerpt from the 7th edition of This is Not Advice —a not-advice column exclusively for premium subscribers. In this episode, I take a closer look at flexibility. When is it a feature? When is it a bug? When does flexibility create more opportunities for learning or value? And when does it devolve into chaos? To hear the whole episode, become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month. You'll get twice monthly This is Not Advice episodes, plus (mostly) full-length interviews with the ...
Jul 31, 2023•10 min
This episode originally ran on May 25, 2022. It's been lightly remixed for today's release! “Rugged individualism” is the very language we speak in America. It shapes the way we approach work, family, and society. And rugged individualism has a direct impact on the decisions we make about our businesses and careers. In this short episode, I unpack where rugged individualism comes from and highlight a different way forward. Footnotes: Rugged Individualism Monologue by Terry Smith " The Myth of Ru...
Jul 27, 2023•13 min
So much of our modern discourse around productivity, empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal growth includes messages about our bodies. These messages might not be explicit, but the messages are there—and our brains pick them up loud and clear. Similarly, we might not realize that we’re sharing messages that insert themselves into how others perceive their own bodies—but many of us are. It’s impossible to talk about self-discipline, accountability, or efficiency without those concepts leavin...
Jul 20, 2023•55 min
This is an episode of "This is Not Advice," a bonus podcast I do for premium subscribers of What Works. Instead of just a teaser this week, I wanted to share the whole episode with you. If you'd like to receive future episodes, go to whatworks.fyi/subscribe and become a premium subscriber for just $7/month. For this edition of This is Not Advice , I wanted to piggyback on the conversation I had with Jay Acunzo about social media generally and Threads specifically. Part of the conversation that d...
Jul 17, 2023•29 min
This is an episode about Meta's new app, Threads. It's also about Substack and Substack's new-ish feature, Notes. But really, it's an episode about what we're looking for from the category we call "social media" and how we think about achieving those ends. And perhaps what it's really, really about is how we go looking for and creating meaning in the digital sphere. Jay Acunzo, a writer, podcaster, and public speaker who thinks a lot about online content, was one of the 100+ million people to gi...
Jul 13, 2023•29 min
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," say Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Capitalist liberal democracy is construed as the "end of history"—the culmination of millennia of civilizational progress, the inevitable outcome of a long march toward justice and freedom. But is it? And if it's not the best system for our economic and political needs, what is the alternative? It's almost impossible to imagine. But, despite what Margaret Thatcher said, there is an al...
Jul 06, 2023•59 min
Welcome to the 5th edition of This is Not Advice, a non-advice column for premium subscribers of What Works. If you’re already a premium subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, I still think you’re great—and you can read a solid chunk of this column for free. Or, subscribe to get access to full-length columns and podcast episodes. Or, read this excerpt here. Next week, I’m teaching a workshop on how to pitch yourself to appear on podcasts for YellowHouse.Media. I’ll show you how to find shows to p...
Jul 03, 2023•12 min
"Failure" got a glow-up sometime in the last 20 years. Instead of something to be feared, gurus tell us to embrace failure. That failure is a waypoint on the path to success. But this shift in our relationship with failure has only further inscribed the winner-loser binary that causes so much of our anxiety about the future. What if "failure" wasn't part of the "success" formula? What if we looked beyond conventional notions of failure and success to question whether those ideas even matter at a...
Jun 29, 2023•29 min
Buckle up—today's episode was inspired by something that got me really worked up this week: "I think home-baking is one of the stupidest things anyone can engage in," says Rick Easton of Jersey City's Bread and Salt. This episode is about shoulds and supposed-tos, baking at home, and the ways we devalue certain kinds of labor. Whether or not home-baking is your thing, you'll recognize the way value is narrowly defined by culture and, I think, gain new language for the worthiness of work that doe...
Jun 22, 2023•27 min
"Outsiders" shoulder a disproportionate burden when it comes to fitting in. Can we demand more from the "insiders?" This is a preview of the 4th installment of This is Not Advice, a not-advice column for paid subscribers of What Works . If you’re not a paid, enjoy the first half of this essay (audio or written) or upgrade your subscription to access the whole thing. For just $7 per month, you get access to bonus content and help me make this show! For a written version of this episode, go to: ww...
Jun 20, 2023•6 min
What gets labeled as "authentic" is often quite predictable. It's a market-compatible expression of what was once something unique or personal. Authenticity is a vibe— and a valuable one at that. "Predictably unique" is how David A. Banks defines authenticity in his book, The City Authentic . Authenticity, or what's "predictably unique," describes how culture, place, and style are packaged to become recognizable—and, therefore, consumable—to a general audience. And while Banks's interest is in t...
Jun 15, 2023•24 min
