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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast "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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast "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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast "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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast On June 8, Skye Pillsbury opened the latest edition of her newsletter, The Squeeze , with the header RIP Gimlet. She continued: I’m heartbroken over the news that Spotify has laid off another 200 podcast employees, though I’m not shocked. — Skye Pillsbury, The Squeeze I devoured Alex Blumberg's Startup when it first came out, which was about a year before I started podcasting. Then, I inhaled Reply All when it launched, and despite its later troubles, was genuinely moved by its final episode. I ...
Jun 12, 2023•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’m about to write the most journalistic thing I’ve ever written: I received a tip. I wish I could say it was an “anonymous tip” because that sounds even more journalistic. But it wasn’t anonymous, though I won’t say who it was. Anyhow, my source told me about a small business owner—someone who sells online courses and does quite well—paying an outrageous sum for a fairly standard service. This, of course, was not an isolated incident. I didn't really need a tip. I know all about this kind of th...
Jun 08, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to the 3rd edition of This is Not Advice , my advice column that’s not an advice column for paid subscribers of What Works. This week, I am tackling a question that came up during last week’s workshop on media ecosystems (link to replay below!) and that my husband Sean asked me just this morning. It also came up a number of times during a workshop on audio essays that I taught earlier this year. So I’m going to assume this is something that a lot of folks struggle with—myself included on...
Jun 05, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is all about trust and responsibility—and how those qualities impact the cost of doing business and the work that's required for any company to be successful. And specifically, it's about something I'm calling the Trust-Profit Paradox. Simply put, you can't build trust and optimize for profit at the same time. After losing my ish listening to The Verge 's Nilay Patel stump Airbnb's Brian Chesky with a question about AI-generated images on the Decoder podcast, I started to think a...
May 25, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast What are we really talking about when we talk about our hopes and fears about AI? It's us. We're the problem. Actually, we're not the problem—we're more like the solution. But that's less mimetic. Sure, this is yet another pod hitting your feed with a take on AI. I'll assure you, though: this episode isn't really AI. There's no fear-mongering or cute suggestions for prompts. It's a bit of a meditation on the very human parts of our relationship with technology. And it's probably one of the most ...
May 22, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast There's a sort of inside joke in the online business space of coaches, creators, and service providers. Or maybe, at this point, it's an "outside joke?" Q: What's the surest way to make more money as a creator or small business owner? A: Teach other people how to make money as a creator or small business owner. Hilarious, right? Anyhow, this isn't some weird quirk of extremely online people. It's something huge companies do, too. Douglas Rushkoff calls it "going meta." You can see it in the stoc...
May 18, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast “This cancerous economic principle means that executives and venture capitalists have abandoned the concept of value within a business. Through decades of corporate greed, production has become almost entirely separated from capital, meaning that executives (and higher-ups) are no longer able to understand the nature of the businesses they are growing.” — Ed Zitron, “Absentee Capitalism” This might sound weird—but most companies today aren’t in the business it appears they’re in. Netflix isn’t r...
May 11, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s quick episode is a sample of something I’m creating for paid subscribers to What Works. I’m calling it my “This is Not Advice” column. Or, TINA for short. Not to be confused with TINA a la “ there is no alternative ”—if you know, you know. Paid subscribers not only receive this subscriber-directed content, but they also have the chance to, well, direct the content! When you’re a paid subscriber, you can write in with a question, topic, or observation that you’d like my take on—some added...
May 08, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast What does a bad movie from 1992, loss aversion, Steinbeck, pizza, farm animals, and the founder of a software company have in common? Well, you’ll find them all in this episode. This episode will take you places . I don’t want to spoil it. So suffice it to say, this episode is all about questioning why we act the way we do when it comes to how we scale up (and scale down) our dreams. Footnotes: Learn more about Nathalie Lussier and AccessAlly Far and Away (1992 film) Oklahoma land rush of 1893 “...
May 04, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast I am on board when it comes to technological progress. I look forward to updating my devices (although I don’t do it as frequently as I used to). New apps and features excite me. I’m pretty quick to adapt to change. I am not a Luddite. Or so I thought. “The word Luddite still means an old-fashioned type who is anti-progress,” writes Jeanette Winterson in her book 12 Bytes . “But the Luddites of the early 19th century were not against progress; they were against exploitation.” Reading these lines...
Apr 27, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast It seems like every company today claims to be "on a mission" to change the world or improve our lives. They bill themselves as social movements more than profit-driven enterprises. It sounds nice. But how does it really function in the lives of workers? Do these missions meaningfully improve our communities? In this episode, I briefly explore the history of the corporate mission statement and then dive into a critique of the bestselling leadership book, Start with Why . You'll hear why the Star...
Apr 20, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast At least in my corner of social media, there are a lot of folks asking what makes a business ethical. Or, perhaps more accurately, there are a lot of folks answering that question. And there are probably even more folks worried that there’s something unethical about the way they run their businesses. They’re afraid they haven’t checked all the ethical business boxes. When Brooke Monaghan emailed me to ask whether I wanted to have a messy conversation about some of the messaging around ethical, e...
Apr 11, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast This Earth Month... buy more stuff?! We're about to be bombarded with messaging about corporate climate initiatives. We'll have the chance to buy merch to "support" the planet. And we'll be incentivized to spend more so that a small portion can be donated to organizations fighting climate change. As you might expect, it's all marketing. Earth Month and Earth Day seem to have become another excuse for a sale. But we miss a key issue in our fight for change if we stop at the "greedy corporation" c...
Apr 04, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast "All parasites have value, Sibling Dex. Not to their hosts, perhaps, but you could say the same about a predator and a prey animal. They all give back—not to the individual but to the ecosystem at large." — Mosscap, in A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers For the next few months, I'm focusing on some big projects and taking my foot off the gas of the podcast a bit. But since writing is how I think, my big projects spin off shorter pieces as I work through ideas. I'll share some of these ...
Mar 28, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve called myself a recovering overachiever. I’m recovering not from the drive to excel but from the anxiety inherent to wondering if anything I achieve will ever be enough . And folks, it’s a struggle. The philosophy Byung-Chul Han describes this anxiety as central to contemporary society. He dubs our modern age the “Achievement Society” and argues that our plethora of potential projects and opportunities work to maximize our productivity. After all, what better way to inspire people to greate...
Mar 14, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast We all have deep human needs—for belonging, for autonomy, for creative expression, for safety and security. But modern life can make it a real challenge to get those needs met in meaningful ways. Instead, we’re offered products with flashy marketing messages. Kitchen gadgets, social media platforms, clothing, personal care products, and many others offer to help us live our best lives. Financial and educational products promise a greater sense of security and autonomy. But do these commodities r...
Feb 28, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast What makes an idea valuable? What turns it into a product that can be bought, sold, or rented? Ideas turn into capital assets thanks to our system of intellectual property rights. But understanding IP isn’t simply a matter of learning what a trademark or patent is, and then learning how to leverage it to create wealth. To truly understand intellectual property, we need to under property —what it is and why it exists—first. In this episode, I explore the origins of our conception of private prope...
Feb 21, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is Part 2 of The Economics of Getting (and Paying) Attention. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, I highly recommend starting there! In today’s episode, I explore the “right to publicity” and the value of celebrity as an economic condition. From there, we get into how audience-building businesses gain efficiency by vertically integrating media, ads, and offers and how micro-media creators often leverage monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices. Footnotes: “ New wellness price point just dr...
Feb 14, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
