Episode notes
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 Works HBO'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 Forward A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville ★ Support this podcast ★
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What Works
Tara McMullin · Business · English
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 cr
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4 Jun 2026 · 21 min
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Today, I'm resharing an episode from last spring but with a fresh introduction about the feeling (too) late and some timely advice for my daughter, who graduates from high school tomorrow. It might be a good one to share with the graduate in your life! *** This episode is about the long term —the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens. How we perceive time and our ability to do what's meaningful to us in time does have to be constrained by the urgency of now . There are ways to feel more grounded and create more possibilities at the same…
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28 May 2026 · 15 min
Rethinking Social Media
"No matter how hard you post or what sites you do it in it’s never going to be 2019 again." — Amanda Mull on Bluesky I'm thinking about getting back on social media. Weird, I know. But (1) I have a distribution problem, and (2) it's not what it used to be... which is bad, but maybe also good for me? Today, I'm putting my thoughts into words and relying on a new essay by communications scholar danah boyd to make sense of why getting back on platforms feels vaguely appealing. Footnotes: Read the essay version of this post. " Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media " by danah boyd in Social Media…
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21 May 2026 · 23 min
Just Because You Can: The Eggbeater Effect Revisited
Eight months before ChatGPT launched to the world, I wrote about "the eggbeater effect," or the tendency for labor-saving tools to create new labor. Four years later, I'm revisiting that idea. Remember: just because you can doesn't mean you should . Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. " The Stepford Wives " on You're Wrong About More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan " The Illusion of AI Productivity Gains " by Philippa Hardman " AI Doesn't Reduce Work—It Itensifies It " by Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye in Harvard Business Review " AI's big productivity boost?…
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Apples, Oranges, and Iceberg Metrics
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20 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
The Wages of Hierarchy
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 the protesters. They held signs that said, “Noma broke me,” “Prestige is not a paycheck,” and “No…
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Technicians, Visionaries, and the Myth of Going Solo
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 hope the problem goes away on its own. Today, I'm exploring how we think about who a small business owner…
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19 Feb 2026 · 24 min
How I Learn a New Skill
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Wait... what?!
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 process and takes you step by step through applying it to a media-making project. By the end of the 8…
