What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy.
The Podcast
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 Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today.
Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and critic who studies emerging forms of work and identity in the 21st-century economy. Bringing a rigorous critique of conventional wisdom to topics like success and productivity, she melds conceptual curiosity with practical application. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Quartz, and The Muse.
Featured Episodes
The Many Hats of Leigh Stein
Who (or what) do you play on social media? Leigh Stein is a poet, satirist, and critic who performs a few different versions of herself on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. In fact, she’s come to see social media as a kind of performance art—one that allows us to experiment with identity and world-building.
How to Define Hard-to-Define Work Stress
So, you're stressed. Or work feels intense. Or you're putting more energy than you should into manifesting a day with “no surprises."
But why? Even if you're not working on an especially challenging project or hustling to get in under a deadline, the work we do can be stressful in a sort of ambient and ambiguous way. And we might downplay that stress because, hey, aren't we just lucky to have a cool job like this? But that stress is real—and making sense of it gives us strategies for reducing it.
Seeing Software
Do you see your software? Do you see how it influences how you run meetings, brainstorm ideas, fulfill your responsibilities, and communicate with others? Do you see how its text boxes, radio buttons, tabs, search results, and menus train you to think?
Do you see it, or do you just use it?
Preservation in the Post-Information Age with Sari Azout
We're overloaded and overwhelmed by information. There's more content than you could ever hope to consume. More scientific theories, philosophical concepts, and art forms than you could ever hope to engage with. Enter personal knowledge management (PKM). It's a modern term for an ancient practice—how one collects, preserves, and utilizes knowledge worth remembering.